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The Case of Richard Meynell

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




The temperature of Sir Wilfrid's address rose day by day, and the case
for the prosecution closed thunderously in a fierce onslaught on the
ethics of the Modernist position, and on the personal honesty and
veracity of each and every Modernist holding office in the Anglican
Church, claiming sentences of immediate deprivation against the
defendants, of their vicarages and incumbencies, and of all profits and
benefits derived therefrom "unless within a week from this day they (the
defendants) should expressly and unreservedly retract the several
errors in which they have so offended."

The court broke up in a clamour of excitement and discussion, with crowds
of country parishioners standing outside to greet the three incriminated
priests as they came out.

The following morning Meynell rose. And for one brilliant week, his
defence of the Modernist position held the attention of England.

On the fourth or fifth day of his speech, the white-haired Bishop of
Dunchester, against whom proceedings had just been taken in the
Archbishop's Court, said to his son:

"Herbert, just before I was born there were two great religious leaders
in England--Newman and Arnold of Rugby. Arnold died prematurely, at
the height of bodily and spiritual vigour; Newman lived to the age of
eighty-nine, and to be a Cardinal of the Roman Church. His Anglican
influence, continued, modified, distributed by the High Church movement,
has lasted till now. To-day we have been listening again, as it were, to
the voice of Arnold, the great leader whom the Liberals lost in '42,
Arnold was a devoutly orthodox believer, snatched from life in the very
birth-hour of that New Learning of which we claim to be the children. But
a church of free men, coextensive with the nation, gathering into one
fold every English man, woman and child, that was Arnold's dream, just as
it is Meynell's.... And yet though the voice, the large heart, the
fearless mind, and the broad sympathies were Arnold's, some of the
governing ideas were Newman's. As I listened, I seemed"--the old man's
look glowed suddenly--"to see the two great leaders, the two foes of a
century ago, standing side by side, twin brethren in a new battle,
growing out of the old, with a great mingled host behind them."

Each day the court was crowded, and though Meynell seemed to be
addressing his judges, he was in truth speaking quite as consciously to a
sweet woman's face in a far corner of the crowded hall. Mary went into
the long wrestle with him, as it were, and lived through every moment of
it at his side. Then in the evening there were half hours of utter
silence, when he would sit with her hands in his, just gathering strength
for the morrow.

Six days of Meynell's speech were over. On the seventh the Court opened
amid the buzz of excitement and alarm. The chief defendant in the suit
was not present, and had sent--so counsel whispered to each other--a
hurried note to the judge to the effect that he should be absent
through the whole remainder of the trial owing to "urgent private
business."

In a few more hours it was known that Meynell had left England, and men
on both sides looked at each other in dismay.

Meanwhile Mary had forwarded to her mother a note written late at night,
in anguish of soul:

"Alice wires to me to-night that Hester has disappeared--without the
smallest trace. But she believes she is with Meryon. I go to Paris
to-night--Oh, my own, pray that I may find her!--R. M."




CHAPTER XXII


The mildness of the winter had passed away. A bleak February afternoon
lay heavy on Long Whindale. A strong and bitter wind from the north blew
down the valley with occasional spits and snatches of snow, not enough as
yet to whiten the heights, but prophesying a wild night and a heavy fall.
The blasts in the desolate upper reach of the dale were so fierce that a
shepherd on the path leading over the pass to Marly Head could scarcely
hold himself upright against them. Tempestuous sounds filled all the
upper and the lower air. From the high ridges came deep reverberating
notes, a roaring in the wind; while the trees along the stream sent forth
a shriller voice, as they whistled and creaked and tossed in the eddying
gusts. Cold gray clouds were beating from the north, hanging now over the
cliffs on the western side, now over the bare screes and steep slopes of
the northern and eastern walls. Gray or inky black, the sharp edges of
the rocks cut into the gloomy sky; while on the floor of the valley,
blanched grass and winding stream seemed alike to fly scourged before the
persecuting wind.

A trap--Westmoreland calls it a car--a kind of box on wheels, was
approaching the head of the dale from the direction of Whinborough. It
stopped at the foot of the steep and narrow lane leading to Burwood, and
a young lady got out.

"You're sure that's Burwood?" she said, pointing to the house partially
visible at the end of the lane.

The driver answered in the affirmative.

"Where Mrs. Elsmere lives?"

"Aye, for sure." The man as he spoke looked curiously at the lady he had
brought from Whinborough station. She was quite a young girl he guessed,
and a handsome one. But there seemed to be something queer about her. She
looked so tumbled and tired.

Hester Fox-Wilton took out her purse, and paid him with an uncertain
hand, one or more of the shillings falling on the road, where the driver
and she groped for them. Then she raised the small bag she had brought
with her in the car, and turned away.

"Good day to yer, miss," said the man as he mounted the box. She made no
reply. After he had turned his horse and started on the return journey to
Whinborough, he looked back once or twice. But the high walls of the lane
hid the lady from him.

Hester, however, did not go very far up the lane. She sank down very soon
on a jutting stone beneath the left-hand wall, with her bag beside her,
and sat there looking at the little house. It was a pleasant, home-like
place, even on this bitter afternoon. In one of the windows was a glow of
firelight; white muslin curtains everywhere gave it a dainty, refined
look; and it stood picturesquely within the shelter of its trees, and of
the yew hedge which encircled the garden.

Yet Hester shivered as she looked at it. She was very imperfectly clothed
for such an afternoon, in a serge jacket and skirt supplemented by a
small fur collarette, which she drew closer round her neck from time to
time, as though in a vain effort to get warm. But she was not conscious
of doing so, nor of the cold as cold. All her bodily sensations were
miserable and uncomfortable. But she was only actively aware of the
thoughts racing through her mind.

There they were, within a stone's throw of her--Mary and Mrs. Elsmere--in
the warm, cosy little house, without an idea that she, Hester, the
wretched, disgraced Hester, was sitting in the lane so close to them. And
yet they were perhaps thinking of her--they must have often thought about
her in the last fortnight. Mrs. Elsmere must of course have been sorry.
Good people were always sorry when such things happened. And Mary?--who
was eight years older--_older!_ than this girl of eighteen who sat there,
sickened by life, conscious of a dead wall of catastrophe drawn between
her and the future.

Should she go to them? Should she open their door and say--"Here I
am!--Horrible things have happened. No decent person will ever know me or
speak to me again. But you said--you'd help me--if I wanted it.
Perhaps it was a lie--like all the rest?"

Then as the reddened eyelids fell with sheer fatigue, there rose on the
inward sight the vision of Catharine Elsmere's face--its purity, its
calm, its motherliness. For a moment it drew, it touched, it gave
courage. And then the terrible sense of things irreparable, grim matters
of fact not to be dreamed or thought away, rushed in and swept the
clinging, shipwrecked creature from the foothold she had almost reached.

She rose hastily.

"I can't! They don't want to see me--they've done with me. Or perhaps
they'll cry--they'll pray with me, and I can't stand that! Why did I ever
come? Where on earth shall I go?"

And she looked round her in petulant despair, angry with herself for
having done this foolish thing, angry with the loneliness and barrenness
of the valley, where no inn opened doors of shelter for such as she,
angry with the advancing gloom, and with the bitter wind that teased and
stung her.

A little way up the lane she saw a small gate that led into the Elsmeres'
garden. She took her bag, and opening the gate, she placed it inside.
Then she ran down the lane, drawing her fur round her, and shivering with
cold.

"I'll think a bit--" she said to herself--"I'll think what to say.
Perhaps I'll come back soon."

When she reached the main road again, she looked uncertainly to right and
left. Which way? The thought of the long dreary road back to Whinborough
repelled her. She turned toward the head of the valley. Perhaps she might
find a house which would take her in. The driver had said there was a
farm which let lodgings in the summer. She had money--some pounds at any
rate; that was all right. And she was not hungry. She had arrived at a
junction station five miles from Whinborough by a night train. At six
o'clock in the morning she had found herself turned out of the express,
with no train to take her on to Whinborough. But there was a station
hotel, and she had engaged a room and ordered a fire. There she had
thrown herself down without undressing on the bed, and had slept heavily
for four or five hours. Then she had had some breakfast, and had taken
a midday train to Whinborough, and a trap to Long Whindale.

She had travelled straight from Nice without stopping. She would not let
herself think now as she hurried along the lonely road what it was she
had fled from, what it was that had befallen. The slightest glimpse into
this past made her begin to sob, she put it away from her with all her
strength. But she had had, of course, to decide where she should go, with
whom she should take refuge.

Not with Uncle Richard, whom she had deceived and defied. Not with "Aunt
Alice." No sooner did the vision of that delicate withered face, that
slender form come before her, than it brought with it terrible fancies.
Her conduct had probably killed "Aunt Alice." She did not want to think
about her.

But Mrs. Elsmere knew all about bad men, and girls who got into trouble.
She, Hester, knew, from a few things she had heard people say--things
that no one supposed she had heard--that Mrs. Elsmere had given years of
her life, and sacrificed her health, to "rescue" work. The rescue of
girls from such men as Philip? How could they be rescued?--when--

All that was nonsense. But the face, the eyes--the shining, loving eyes,
the motherly arms--yes, those, Hester confessed to herself, she had
thirsted for. They had brought her all the way from Nice to this northern
valley--this bleak, forbidding country. She shivered again from head to
foot, as she made her way painfully against the wind.

Yet now she was flying even from Catharine Elsmere; even from those
tender eyes that haunted her.

The road turned toward a bridge, and on the other side of the bridge
degenerated into a rough and stony bridle path, giving access to two gray
farms beneath the western fell. On the near side of the bridge the
road became a cart-track leading to the far end of the dale.

Hester paused irresolute on the bridge, and looked back toward Burwood. A
light appeared in what was no doubt the sitting-room window. A lamp
perhaps that, in view of the premature darkening of the afternoon by the
heavy storm-clouds from the north, a servant had just brought in. Hester
watched it in a kind of panic, foreseeing the moment when the curtains
would be drawn and the light shut out from her. She thought of the little
room within, the warm firelight, Mary with her beautiful hair--and Mrs.
Elsmere. They were perhaps working and reading--as though that were all
there were to do and think about in the world! No, no! after all they
couldn't be very peaceful--or very cheerful. Mary was engaged to Uncle
Richard now; and Uncle Richard must be pretty miserable.

The exhausted girl nearly turned back toward that light. Then a hand came
quietly and shut it out. The curtains were drawn. Nothing now to be seen
of the little house but its dim outlines in the oncoming twilight, the
smoke blown about its roof, and a faint gleam from a side-window, perhaps
the kitchen.

Suddenly, a thought, a wild, attacking thought, leapt out upon her, and
held her there motionless, in the winding, wintry lane.

When had she sent that telegram to Upcote? If she could only remember!
The events of the preceding forty-eight hours seemed to be all confused
in one mad flux of misery. Was it _possible_ that they too could be
Here--Uncle Richard, and "Aunt Alice?" She had said something about Mrs.
Elsmere in her telegram--she could not recollect what. That had been
meant to comfort them, and yet to keep them away, to make them leave
her to her own plans. But supposing, instead, its effect had been to
bring them here at once, in pursuit of her?

She hurried forward, sobbing dry sobs of terror as though she already
heard their steps behind her. What was she afraid of? Simply their
love!--simply their sorrow! She had broken their hearts; and what could
she say to them?

The recollection of all her cruelty to "Aunt Alice" in Paris--her
neglect, her scorn, her secret, unjust anger with those who had kept from
her the facts of her birth--seemed to rise up between her and all ideas
of hope and help. Oh, of course they would be kind to her!--they would
forgive her--but--but she couldn't bear it! Impatience with the very
scene of wailing and forgiveness she foresaw, as of something utterly
futile and vain, swept through the quivering nerves.

"And it can never be undone!" she said to herself roughly, as though she
were throwing the words in some one's face. "It can never, _never_ be
undone! What's the good of talking?"

So the only alternative was to wander a while longer into these clouds
and storms that were beginning to beat down from the pass through the
darkness of the valley; to try and think things out; to find some shelter
for the night; then to go away again--somewhere. She was conscious now of
a first driving of sleet in her face; but it only lasted for a few
minutes. Then it ceased; and a strange gleam swept over the valley--a
livid storm-light from the west, which blanched all the withered grass
beside her, and seemed to shoot along the course of the stream as she
toiled up the rocky path beside it.

What a country, what a sky! Her young body was conscious of an angry
revolt against it, against the northern cold and dreariness; her body,
which still kept as it were the physical memory of sun, and blue sea, and
orange trees, of the shadow of olives on a thin grass, of the scent of
orange blossom on the broken twigs that some one was putting into her
hand.

Another fit of shuddering repulsion made her quicken her pace, as though,
again, she were escaping from pursuit. Suddenly, at a bend in the path,
she came on a shepherd and his flock. The shepherd, an old white-haired
man, was seated on a rock, staff in hand, watching his dog collect the
sheep from the rocky slope on which they were scattered.

At sight of Hester, the old man started and stared. Her fair hair
escaping in many directions from the control of combs and hairpins, and
the pale lovely face in the midst of it, shone in the stormy gleam that
filled the basin of the hills. Her fashionable hat and dress amazed him.
Who could she be?

She too stopped to look at him, and at his dog. The mere neighbourhood of
a living being brought a kind of comfort.

"It's going to snow--" she said, as she stood beside him, surprised by
the sound of her own voice amid the roar of the wind.

"Aye--it's onding o' snaw--" said the shepherd, his shrewd blue eyes
travelling over her face and form. "An' it'll mappen be a rough night."

"Are you taking your sheep into shelter?"

He pointed to a half-ruined fold, with three sycamores beside it, a
stone's throw away. The gate of it was open, and the dog was gradually
chasing the sheep within it.

"I doan't like leavin' 'em on t' fells this bitter weather. I'm afraid
for t' ewes. It's too cauld for 'em. They'll be for droppin' their lambs
too soon if this wind goes on. It juist taks t' strength out on 'em, doos
the wind."

"Do you think it's going to snow a great deal?"

The old man looked round at the clouds and the mountains; at the
powdering of snow that had already whitened the heights.

"It'll be more'n a bit!" he said cautiously. "I dessay we'll have to be
gettin' men to open t' roads to-morrow."

"Does it often block the roads?"

"Aye, yance or twice i' t' winter. An' ye can't let 'em bide. What's ter
happen ter foak as want the doctor?"

"Did you ever know people lost on these hills?" asked the girl, looking
into the blackness ahead of them. Her shrill, slight voice rang out in
sharp contrast to the broad gutturals of his Westmoreland speech.

"Aye, missy--I've known two men lost on t' fells sin I wor a lad."

"Were they shepherds, like you?"

"Noa, missy--they wor tramps. Theer's mony a fellow cooms by this way i'
th' bad weather to Pen'rth, rather than face Shap fells. They say it's
betther walkin'. But when it's varra bad, we doan't let 'em go on--noa,
it's not safe. Theer was a mon lost on t' fells nine year ago coom
February. He wor an owd mon, and blind o' yan eye. He'd lost the toother,
dippin' sheep."

"How could he do that?" Hester asked indifferently, still staring ahead
into the advancing storm, and trembling with cold from head to foot.

"Why, sum o' the dippin' stuff got into yan eye, and blinded him. It was
my son, gooin afther th' lambs i' the snaw, as found him. He heard
summat--a voice like a lile child cryin'--an he scratted aboot, an
dragged th' owd man out. He worn't deed then, but he died next mornin'.
An t' doctor said as he'd fair broken his heart i' th' storm--not in a
figure o' speach yo unnerstan--but juist th' plain truth."

The old man rose. The sheep had all been folded. He called to his dog,
and went to shut the gate. Then, still curiously eyeing Hester, he came
back, followed by his dog, to the place where she stood, listlessly
watching.

"Doan't yo go too far on t' fells, missy. It's coomin' on to snaw, an
it'll snaw aw neet. Lor bless yer, it's wild here i' winter. An when t'
clouds coom down like yon--" he pointed up the valley--"even them as
knaws t' fells from a chilt may go wrang."

"Where does this path lead?" said Hester, absently.

"It goes oop to Marly Head, and joins on to th' owd road--t' Roman road,
foak calls it--along top o' t' fells. An' if yo follers that far enoof
you may coom to Ullswatter an' Pen'rth."

"Thank you. Good afternoon," said Hester, moving on.


[Illustration: "The old shepherd looked after her doubtfully"]

The old shepherd looked after her doubtfully, then said to himself that
what the lady did was none of his business, and turned back toward one of
the farms across the bridge. Who was she? She was a strange sort of body
to be walking by herself up the head of Long Whindale. He supposed she
came from Burwood--there was no other house where a lady like that could
be staying. But it was a bit queer anyhow.

* * * * *

Hester walked on. She turned a craggy corner beyond which she was
out of sight of any one on the lower stretches of the road. The struggle
with the wind, the roar of water in her ears, had produced in her a kind
of trance-like state. She walked mechanically, half deafened, half
blinded, measuring her force against the wind, conscious every now and
then of gusts of snow in her face, of the deepening gloom overhead
climbing up and up the rocky path. But, as in that fatal moment when she
had paused in the Burwood lane, her mind was not more than vaguely
conscious of her immediate surroundings. It had become the prey of
swarming recollections--captured by sudden agonies, unavailing,
horror-stricken revolts.

At last, out of breath, and almost swooning, she sank down under the
shelter of a rock, and became in a moment aware that white mists were
swirling and hurrying all about her, and that only just behind her, and
just above her, was the path clear. Without knowing it, she had
climbed and climbed till she was very near the top of the pass. She
looked down into a witch's cauldron of mist and vapour, already thickened
with snow, and up into an impenetrable sky, as it seemed, close upon her
head, from which the white flakes were beginning to fall, steadily and
fast.

She was a little frightened, but not much. After all, she had only to
rest and retrace her steps. The watch at her wrist told her it was not
much past four; and it was February. It would be daylight till half-past
five, unless the storm put out the daylight. A little rest--just a little
rest! But she began to feel ill and faint, and so bitterly, bitterly
cold. The sense of physical illness, conquering the vague overwhelming
anguish of heart and mind, began to give her back some clearness of
brain.

Who was she?--why was she there? She was Hester Fox-Wilton--no! Hester
Meryon, who had escaped from a man who had called himself, for a few days
at least, her husband; a man whom in scarcely more than a week she had
come to loathe and fear; whose nature and character had revealed to her
infamies of which she had never dreamed; who had claimed to be her
master, and use her as he pleased, and from whom she had escaped by
night, after a scene of which she still bore the marks.

"You little wild-cat! You think you can defy me--do you?"

And then her arms held--and her despairing eyes looking down into his
mocking ones--and the helpless sense of indignity and wrong--and of her
own utter and criminal folly.

And through her memory there ran in an ugly dance those things, those
monstrous things, he had said to her about the Scotch woman. It was not
at all absolutely sure that she, Hester, was his wife. He had shown her
those letters at St. Germains, of course, to reassure her; and the
letters were perfectly genuine letters, written by the people they
professed to be written by. Still Scotch marriage law was a damned
business--one never knew. He _hoped_ it was all right; but if she did
hate him as poisonously as she said, if she did really want to get rid of
him, he might perhaps be able to assist her.

Had he after all tricked and ruined her? Yet as her consciousness framed
the question in the conventional phrases familiar to her through
newspapers and novels, she hardly knew what they meant, this child of
eighteen, who in three short weeks had been thrust through the fire of an
experience on which she had never had time to reflect. Flattered vanity,
and excitement, leading up almost from the first day to instinctive and
fierce revolt--intervals of acquiescence, of wild determination to be
happy, drowned in fresh rebellions of soul and sense--through these
alternations the hours had rushed on, culminating in her furtive and
sudden escape from the man of whom she was now in mad fear--her blind
flight for "home."

The _commonness_ of her case, the absence of any romantic or poetic
element in it--it was that which galled, which degraded her in her own
eyes. Only three weeks since she had felt that entire and arrogant belief
in herself, in her power over her own life and Philip's, on which she now
looked back as merely ludicrous!--inexplicable in a girl of the most
ordinary intelligence. What power had girls over men?--such men as Philip
Meryon?

Her vanity was bleeding to death--and her life with it. Since the
revelation of her birth, she seemed to have been blindly struggling to
regain her own footing in the world--the kind of footing she was
determined to have. Power and excitement; _not_ to be pitied, but to be
followed, wooed, adored; not to be forced on the second and third bests
of the world, but to have the "chief seat," the daintest morsel, the
_beau rôle_ always--had not this been her instinctive, unvarying demand
on life? And now? If she were indeed married, she was tied to a man who
neither loved her, nor could bring her any position in the world; who was
penniless, and had only entrapped her that he might thereby get some
money out of her relations; who, living or dead, would be a disgrace to
her, standing irrevocably between her and any kind of honour or
importance in society.

And if he had deceived her, and she were not his wife--she would be free
indeed; but what would her freedom matter to her? What decent man would
ever love her now--marry her--set her at his side? At eighteen--eighteen!
all those chances were over for her. It was so strange that she could
have laughed at her own thoughts; and yet at the same time it was so
ghastly true! No need now to invent a half-sincere chatter about "Fate."
She felt herself in miserable truth the mere feeble mouse wherewith the
great cat Fate was playing.

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