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The Case of Richard Meynell

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




There was silence a moment. Then Dornal said:

"How will it all affect the trial?"

"In the Court of Arches? Technically of course--not at all. But it will
make all the difference to the atmosphere in which it is conducted. One
can imagine how certain persons are already gloating over it--what use
they will make of it--how they will magnify and embroider everything. And
such an odious story! It is the degradation of a great issue!"

The little Bishop frowned. As he sat there in the dignity of his
great library, so scrupulously refined and correct in every detail of
dress, yet without a touch of foppery, the gleam of the cross on his
breast answering the silver of the hair and the frank purity of the
eyes, it was evident that he felt a passionate impatience--half moral,
half esthetic--toward these new elements of the Meynell case. It was
the fastidious impatience of a man for whom personal gossip and scandal
ranked among the forbidden indulgences of life. "Things, not persons!"
had been the time-honoured rule for conversation at the Palace
table--persons, that is, of the present day. In those happy persons who
had already passed into biography and history, in their peccadilloes no
less than their virtues, the Bishop's interest was boundless. The
distinction tended to make him a little super- or infra-human; but it
enhanced the fragrance and delicacy of his personality.

Dornal was no less free from any stain of mean or scandalous gossip than
the Bishop, but his knowledge of the human heart was far deeper, his
sympathy far more intimate. It was not only that he scorned the slander,
but, hour by hour, he seemed to walk in the same cloud with Meynell.

After some further discussion, the Bishop took up Barron's letter again.
"I see there is likely to be a most painful scene at the Church Council
meeting--which of course will be also one of their campaign meetings--the
day after to-morrow. Barron declares that he means to challenge Meynell
publicly to vindicate his character. Can I do anything?"

Dornal did not see anything could be done. The parish was already in open
rebellion.

"It is a miserable, miserable business!" said the Bishop unhappily. "How
can I get a report of the meeting--from some one else than Barron?"

"Mr. Flaxman is sure to be there?"

"Ah!--get him to write to me?"

"And you, my lord--will send for Meynell?"

"I think"--said the Bishop, with returning soreness--"that as he has
neither written to me, nor consulted me, I will wait a little. We must
watch--we must watch. Meanwhile, my dear fellow!"--he laid his hand
on Dornal's shoulder--"let us think how to stop the talk! It will spoil
everything. Those who are fighting with us must understand there are
weapons we cannot stoop to use!"

* * * * *

As Dornal left the Palace, on his way past the Cathedral, he met young
Fenton, the High Churchman who some months earlier had refused to
recognize Meynell after the first Modernist meeting in Markborough.
Fenton was walking slowly and reading the local newspaper--the
same which contained the anonymous letter. His thin, finely modelled
face, which in a few years would resemble the Houdon statue of St. Bruno,
expressed an eager excitement that was not unlike jubilation. Dornal was
practically certain that he was reading the paragraph that concerned
Meynell, and certain also that it gave him pleasure. He hurriedly
passed over to the other side of the street, that Fenton might not accost
him.

Afterward, he spent the evening, partly in writing urgently in Meynell's
defence to certain of his own personal friends in the diocese, and partly
in composing an anti-Modernist address, full of a sincere and earnest
eloquence, to be delivered the following week at a meeting of the Church
party in Cambridge.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Cyril Fenton had also spent the evening in writing. He kept an
elaborate journal of his own spiritual state; or rather he had begun to
keep it about six months before this date, at the moment when the
emergence of the Modernist Movement had detached him from his nascent
friendship with Meynell, and had thrown him back, terrified, on a more
resolute opposition than ever to the novelties and presumptions of free
inquiry. The danger of reading anything, unawares, that might cause him
even a moment's uneasiness had led to his gradually cutting himself off
entirely from modern newspapers and modern books, in which, indeed, he
had never taken any very compelling interest. His table was covered by
various English and French editions of the Fathers--of St. Cyprian in
particular, for whom he had a cult. On the bare walls of his study
were various pictures of saints, a statuette of the Virgin, and another
of St. Joseph, both of them feebly elegant in the Munich manner. Through
his own fresh youthfulness, once so winning and wholesome, something
pinched and cloistered had begun to thrust itself. His natural sweetness
of temper was rapidly becoming sinful in his own eyes, his natural love
of life also, and its harmless, even its ideal, pleasures.

It was a bitter winter day, and he had not allowed himself a greatcoat.
In consequence he felt depressed and chilled; yet he could not make up
his mind to go to bed earlier than usual, lest he should be thereby
pampering the flesh. He was thoroughly dissatisfied with his own
spiritual condition during the day, and had just made ample confession
thereof in the pages of his diary. A few entries from that document will
show the tone of a mind morbid for lack of exercise:

"D. came to see me this morning. We discussed war a good deal. In
general, of course, I am opposed to war, but when I think of this ghastly
plague of heresy which is sweeping away so many souls at the present
moment, I feel sometimes that the only war into which I could enter
with spirit would be a civil war.... In a great deal of my talk with D. I
posed abominably. I talked of shooting and yachting as though I knew all
about them. I can't be content that people should think me 'out' of
anything, or a dull fool. It was the same with my talk to S. about church
music. I talked most arrogantly; and in reality I know hardly anything
about it.

"As to my vow of simplicity in food, I must keep my attention more on the
alert. Yet to-day I have not done so badly; some cold ends of herring at
breakfast, and a morsel of mackerel at lunch are the only things I have
to reproach myself with; the only lapses from the strict rule of
simplicity. But the quantity was deplorable--no moderation--not even a
real attempt at it. Whenever I am disgusted with myself for having eaten
too much at dinner, I constantly fail to draw the proper inference--that
I should eat less at tea....

"I feel that this scandal about poor Meynell is probably providential. It
must and will weaken the Modernist party enormously. To thank God for
such a thing sounds horrible, but after all, have we any right to be more
squeamish than Holy Writ? 'Let God arise and let His enemies be
scattered.' The warnings and menaces of what are called the Imprecatory
Psalms show us plainly that His enemies must be ours."

He closed his book, and came to shiver over the very inadequate fire
which was all he allowed himself. Every shilling that he could put aside
was being saved in order to provide his church with a new set of altar
furniture. The congregation of the church was indeed fast ebbing
away, and his heart was full of bitterness on the subject. But how could
a true priest abate any fraction of either his Church principles, or his
sound doctrine, to appease persons who were not and could not be judges
of what was necessary to their own spiritual health?

As he warmed his thin hands, his bodily discomfort increased his
religious despondency. Then, of a sudden, his eyes fell upon the portrait
of a child standing on the mantelpiece--his sister's child, aged four.
The cloud on the still boyish brow lightened at once.

"Tommy's birthday to-morrow," he said to himself. "Jolly little chap!
Must write to him. Here goes!"

And reaching out his hand for his writing-case he wrote eagerly, a letter
all fun and baby-talk, and fantastic drawings, in the course of which
Tommy grew up, developed moustaches, and became a British Grenadier.

When he had finished it and put it up, he lay back laughing to himself, a
different being.

But the gleam was only momentary. A recurring sense of chill and physical
oppression dispersed it. Presently he rose heavily, glanced at his open
diary, reread the last page with a sigh, and closed it. Then, as it was
nearly midnight, he retreated upstairs to his bare and icy bedroom, where
half-an-hour's attempt to meditate completed the numbness of body and
mind, in which state ultimately he went to bed, though not to sleep.

* * * * *

The meeting of the Church Council of Upcote was held in the Church House
of the village a few days after the Bishop's conversation with Canon
Dornal. It was an evening long remembered by those who shared in it.
The figure of Meynell instinct with a kind of fierce patience; the face
rugged as ever, but paler and tenderer in repose, as of one who,
mystically sustained, had been passing through deep waters; his speech,
sternly repressed, and yet for the understanding ear, enriched by new
tones and shades of feeling--on those who believed in him the effect
of these slight but significant changes in the man they loved was
electrical.

And five-sixths of those present believed in him, loved him, and were
hotly indignant at the scandals which had arisen. They were, some of
them, the élite of the mining population, men whom he had known
and taught from childhood; there were many officials from the
surrounding collieries; there was a miners' agent, who was also one of
the well-known local preachers of the district; there were half a dozen
women--the schoolmistress, the wife of the manager of the coöperative
store, and three or four wives of colliers--women to whom other women in
childbirth, or the girl who had gone astray, or the motherless child,
might appeal without rebuff, who were in fact the Rector's agents
in any humanizing effort.

All these persons had come to the meeting eagerly expecting to hear from
the Rector's own lips the steps he proposed to take for the putting down
of the slanders circulating in the diocese, and the punishment of their
authors. In the rear of the Council--who had been themselves elected by
the whole parish--there were two or three rows of seats occupied by other
inhabitants of the village, who made an audience. In the front row sat
the strange spinster, Miss Nairn, a thin, sharp nosed woman of fifty, in
rusty black clothes, holding her head high; not far from her the dubious
publican who had been Maurice Barron's companion on a certain walk some
days before. There too were Hugh and Rose Flaxman. And just as the
proceedings were about to begin, Henry Barron opened the heavy door, hat
in hand, came in with a firm step, and took a seat at the back, while a
thrill of excitement went through the room.

It was an ancient room, near the church, and built like it, of red
sandstone. It had been once the tiny grammar school of the village.
Meynell had restored and adapted it, keeping still its old features--the
low ceiling heavily beamed with oak, and the row of desks inscribed with
the scholars' names of three centuries. Against the background of its
white walls he stood thrown out in strong relief by the oil lamp on the
table in front of him, his eyes travelling over the rows of familiar
faces.

He spoke first of the new Liturgy of which copies had been placed on the
seats. He reminded them they were all--or nearly all--comrades with him
in the great Modernist venture; that they had given him the help of their
approval and support at every step, and were now rebels with him against
the authorities of the day. He pointed to his approaching trial, and the
probability--nay the certainty--of his deprivation. He asked them to be
steadfast with him, and he dwelt on the amazing spread of the Movement,
the immense responsibility resting upon its first leaders and disciples,
and the need for gentleness and charity. The room was hushed in silence.

Next, he proceeded to put the adoption of the new Liturgy to the vote.
Suddenly Barron rose from his seat at the back. Meynell paused. The
audience looked in suppressed excitement from one to the other.

"I regret," said the Rector, courteously, "that we cannot hear Mr. Barron
at this moment. He is not a member of the Church Council. When the
proceedings of the Council are over, this will become an open meeting,
and Mr. Barron will then of course say what he wishes to say."

Barron hesitated a moment; then sat down.

The revised Liturgy was adopted by twenty-eight votes to two. One of the
two dissentients was Dawes, the colliery manager, a sincere and
consistent evangelical of the Simeon School, who made a short speech in
support of his vote, dwelling in a voice which shook on the troubles
coming on the parish.

"We may get another Rector," he said as he sat down. "We shall never get
another Richard Meynell." A deep murmur of acquiescence ran through the
room.

Meynell rose again from his seat.

"Our business is over. We now become an open meeting. Mr. Barron, I
believe, wishes to speak."

The room was, at this point, densely crowded and every face turned toward
the tall and portly form rising from the back. In the flickering
lamplight it could be seen that the face usually so ruddy and full was
blanched by determination and passion.

"My friends and neighbours!" said Barron, "it is with sorrow and grief
that I rise to say the few words that I intend to say. On the audacity
and illegality of what you have just done I shall say nothing. Argument,
I know, would be useless. But _this_ I have come to say: You have just
been led--misled--into an act of heresy and rebellion by the man who
should be your pastor in the Faith, who is responsible to God for your
souls. _Why_ have you been misled?--_why_ do you follow him?" He flung
out his hand toward Meynell.

"Because you admire and respect him--because you believe him a good
man--a man of honest and pure life. And I am here to tell you, or rather
to remind you, for indeed you all know it--that your Rector lies at this
moment under a painful and disgraceful charge; that this charge has been
circulated--in a discreditable way--a way for which I have no defence and
of which I know nothing--throughout this diocese, and indeed throughout
England; that your fair fame, as well as his are concerned; and,
nevertheless, he refuses to take the only steps which can clear his
character, and repay you for the devotion you have shown him! I call upon
you, sir!"--the speaker bent forward, pointing impressively to the
chairman of the meeting and emphasizing every word--"to take those steps
at once! They are open to you at any moment. Take them against myself!
I have given, I will give, you every opportunity. But till that is done
do not continue, in the face of the congregation you have deceived and
led astray, to assume the tone of hypocritical authority in which you
have just spoken! You have no moral right to any authority among us; you
never had any such right; and in Christian eyes your infidel teaching has
led to its natural results. At any rate, I trust that now, at last, even
these your friends and dupes will see the absolute necessity, before
many weeks are over, of either _forcing_ you to resign your living, or
_forcing_ you to take the only means open to honest men of protecting
their character!"

He resumed his seat. The audience sat petrified a moment. Then Hugh
Flaxman sprang to his feet, and two or three others, the local preacher
among them. But Meynell had also risen.

"Please, Mr. Flaxman--my friends--!"

He waved a quiet hand toward those who had risen, and they unwillingly
gave way. Then the Rector looked round the room for a few silent
instants. He was very white, but when he spoke it was with complete
composure.

"I expected something of this kind to happen, and whether it had happened
or no I should have spoken to you on this matter before we separated. I
know--you all know--to what Mr. Barron refers--that he is speaking of the
anonymous letters concerning myself and others which have been circulated
in this neighbourhood. He calls upon me, I understand, to take legal
action with regard both to them and to the reports which he has himself
circulated, by word of mouth, and probably by letter. Now I want you
plainly to understand"--he bent forward, his hands on the table before
him, each word clear and resonant--"that I shall take no such action!
My reasons I shall not give you. I stand upon my life among you and my
character among you all these years. This only I will say to you, my
friends and my parishioners: The abominable story told in these
letters--the story which Mr. Barron believes, or tries to make himself
believe--is untrue. But I will say no more than that--to you, or any one
else. And if you are to make legal action on my part a test of whether
you will continue to follow me religiously--to accept me as your leader,
or no--then my friends, we must part! You must go your way, and I
must go mine. There will be still work for me to do; and God knows our
hearts--yours and mine."

He paused, looking intently into the lines of blanched faces before him.
Then he added:

"You may wish to discuss this matter. I recognize it as natural you
should wish to discuss it. But I shall not discuss it with you. I shall
withdraw. Mr. Dawes--will you take the chair?"

He beckoned to the colliery manager, who automatically obeyed him. The
room broke into a hubbub, men and women pressing round Meynell as he made
his way to the door. But he put them aside, gently and cheerfully.

"Decide it for yourselves!" he said with his familiar smile. "It is your
right."

And in another moment, the door had opened and shut, and he was gone.

* * * * *

He had no sooner disappeared than a tumultuous scene developed in the
Church room.

Beswick, the sub-agent and local preacher, a sandy-haired, spectacled,
and powerfully built man, sprang on to the platform, to the right hand of
Dawes, and at last secured silence by a passionate speech in defence of
Meynell and in denunciation of the men who in order to ruin him
ecclesiastically were spreading these vile tales about him "and a poor
lady that has done many a good turn to the folk of this village, and
nothing said about it too!"

"Don't you, sir"--he said, addressing Barron with a threatening
finger--"don't you come here, telling us what to think about the man
we've known for twenty years in this parish! The people that don't know
Richard Meynell may believe these things if they please--it'll be the
worse for them! But we've seen this man comforting and uplifting our old
people in their last hours--we've seen him teaching our children--and
giving just a kind funny word now an' again to keep a boy or a girl
straight--aye, an' he did it too--they knew he had his eye on 'em! We've
seen him go down these pits, when only a handful would risk their lives
with him, to help them as was perhaps past hope. We've seen him skin
himself to the bone that other men might have plenty--we've heard him
Sunday after Sunday. We _know_ him!" The speaker brought one massive hand
down on the other with an emphasis that shook the room. "Don't you go
talking to us! If Richard Meynell won't go to law with you and the likes
of you, sir, he's got his reasons, and his good ones, I'll be bound. And
don't you, my friends"--he turned to the room--"don't you be turned back
from this furrow you've begun to plough. You stick to your man! If you
don't, you're fools, aye, and ungrateful fools too! You know well enough
that Albert Beswick isn't a parson's man! You know that I don't hold with
Mr. Meynell in many of his views. There's his views about 'election,' and
the like o' that--quite wrong, in my 'umble opinion. But what does that
matter? You know that I never set foot in Upcote Church till three years
ago--that bishops and ceremonies are nought to me--that I came to God, as
many of you did, by the Bible class and the penitent form. But I declare
to you that Richard Meynell, and the men with him, are _out for a big
thing!_ They're out for breaking down barriers and letting in light.
They're out for bringing Christian men together and letting them worship
freely in the old churches that our fathers built. They're out for giving
men and women new thoughts about God and Christ, and for letting them put
them into new words, if they want to. Well, I say again, it's _a big
thing_! And Satan's out, too, for stopping it! Don't you make any mistake
about it! This bad business--of these libels that are about--is one of
the obstacles in our race he'll trip us up on, if he can. Now I put it to
you--let us clear it out o' the way this very night, as far as we're
concerned! Let us send the Rector such a vote of confidence from this
meeting as'll show him fast enough where he stands in Upcote--aye, and
show others too! And as for these vile letters that are going round--I'd
give my right hand to know the man who wrote them!--and the story that
you, sir"--he pointed again to Barron--"say you took from poor Judith
Sabin when her mind was clouded and she near her end--why, it's base
minds that harbour base thoughts about their betters! He shall be no
friend of mine--that I know--that spreads these tales. Friends and
neighbours, let us keep our tongues from them--and our children's
tongues! Let us show that we can trust a man that deserves our trust. Let
us stand by a good man that's stood by us; and let us pray God to show
the right!"

The greater part of the audience, sincerely moved, rose to their feet and
cheered. Barron endeavoured to reply, but was scarcely listened to. The
publican East sat twirling his hat in his hands, sarcastic smiles going
out and in upon his fat cheeks, his furtive eyes every now and then
consulting the tall spinster who sat beside him, grimly immovable, her
spectacled eyes fixed apparently on the lamp above the platform.

Flaxman wished to speak, but was deterred by the reflection that as a
newcomer in the district he had scarcely a valid right to interfere. He
and Rose stayed till the vote of confidence had been passed by a large
majority--though not so large as that which had accepted the new
Liturgy--after which they drove home rather depressed and ill at ease.
For in truth the plague of anonymous letters was rather increasing than
abating. Flaxman had had news that day of the arrival of two more among
their own country-house acquaintance of the neighbourhood. He sat down,
in obedience to a letter from Dornal, to write a doleful report of the
meeting to the Bishop.

* * * * *

Meynell received the vote of confidence very calmly, and wrote a short
note of thanks to Beswick. Then for some weeks, while the discussion of
his case in its various aspects, old and new, ran raging through England,
he went about his work as usual, calm in the centre of the whirlwind,
though the earth he trod seemed to him very often a strange one. He
prepared his defence for the Court of Arches; he wrote for the
_Modernist_; and he gave as much mind as he could possibly spare to the
unravelling of Philip Meryon's history.

In this matter, however, he made but very slow and disappointing
progress. He became more and more convinced, and his solicitor with him,
that there had been a Scotch marriage some eighteen months before this
date between Meryon and the sister of a farmer in the Lothians, with whom
he had come in contact during a fishing tenancy. But what appeared in the
course of investigation was that the woman concerned and all her kindred
were now just as anxious--aided by the ambiguities of the Scotch marriage
law--to cover up and conceal the affair as was Meryon himself. She could
not be got to put forward any claim; her family would say nothing; and
the few witnesses hitherto available were tending to disappear. No doubt
Philip was at work corrupting them; and the supposed wife was evidently
quite willing, if not eager, to abet him.

Every week he heard from Mary, letters which, written within bounds fully
understood by them both and never transgressed, revealed to him the
tremulous tenderness and purity of the heart he knew--though he would not
confess it to himself--he had conquered. These letters became to him the
stay of life, the manna which fed him, the water of healing and strength.
It was evident that, according to his wish, she did not know and was
determined not to know the details of his struggle; and nothing helped
him more than the absolute trust of her ignorance.

He heard also constantly from Alice Puttenham. She, too, poor soul--but
how differently!--was protecting herself as best she could from an odious
knowledge.

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