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The Case of Richard Meynell

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




"Dear Hester!--we are sending a telegram as soon as the post-office is
open to Lady Fox-Wilton."

Hester moved her hand impatiently.

"She's not my mother, and I'm glad. Where is--_my mother_?" She laid a
strange, deep emphasis on the word, opening her eyes wide and
threateningly. Catharine understood at once that, in some undiscovered
way, she knew what they had all been striving to keep from her. It was no
time for questioning. Catharine rose quietly.

"She is here, Hester, I will go and tell her."

Leaving one of the maids in charge, Catharine ran down to the doctor, who
gave a reluctant consent, lest more harm should come of refusing the
interview than of granting it. And as Catharine ran up again to Mary's
room she had time to reflect, with self-reproach, on the strange
completeness with which she at any rate had forgotten that frail
ineffectual woman asleep in Mary's room from the moment of Hester's
arrival till now.

But Mary had not forgotten her. When Catharine opened the door, it was to
see a thin, phantom-like figure, standing fully dressed, and leaning on
Mary's arm. Catharine went up to her with tears, and kissed her, holding
her hands close.

"Hester asks for you--for her mother--her real mother. She knows."

"_She knows_?" Alice stood paralyzed a moment, gazing at Catharine. Then
the colour rushed back into her face. "I am coming--I am coming--at
once," she said impetuously. "I am quite strong. Don't help me, please.
And--let me go in alone. I won't do her harm. If you--and Mary--would
stand by the door--I would call in a moment--if--"

They agreed. She went with tottering steps across the landing. On the
threshold, Catharine paused; Mary remained a little behind. Alice went in
and shut the door.

The blinds in Hester's room were up, and the snow-covered fells rising
steeply above the house filled it with a wintry, reflected light; a
dreary light, that a large fire could not dispel. On the white bed
lay Hester, breathing quickly and shallowly; bright colour now in
each sunken cheek. The doctor himself had cut off a great part of her
hair--her glorious hair. The rest fell now in damp golden curls about her
slender neck, beneath the cap-like bandage which hid the forehead and
temples and gave her the look of a young nun. At first sight of her,
Alice knew that she was doomed. Do what she would, she could not restrain
the low cry which the sight tore from the depths of life.

Hester feebly beckoned. Alice came near, and took the right hand in hers,
while Hester smiled, her eyelids fluttering. "Mother!"--she said, so as
scarcely to be heard--and then again--"_Mother_!"

Alice sank down beside her with a sob, and without a word they gazed into
each other's eyes. Slowly Hester's filled with tears. But Alice's were
dry. In her face there was as much ecstasy as anguish. It was the first
look that Hester's _soul_ had ever given her. All the past was in it; and
that strange sense, on both sides, that there was no future.

At last Alice murmured:

"How did you know?"

"Philip told me."

The girl stopped abruptly. It had been on her tongue to say--"It was that
made me go with him."

But she did not say it. And while Alice's mind, rushing miserably over
the past, was trying to piece together some image of what had happened,
Hester began to talk intermittently about the preceding weeks. Alice
tried to stop her; but to thwart her only produced a restless excitement,
and she had her way.

She spoke of Philip with horror, yet with a perfectly clear sense of her
own responsibility.

"I needn't have gone--but I would go. There was a devil in me--that
wanted to know. Now I know--too much. I'm glad it's over. This life isn't
worth while--not for me."

So, from these lips of eighteen, came the voice of the world's old
despairs!

Presently she asked peremptorily for Meynell, and he came to her.

"Uncle Richard, I want to be sure"--she spoke strongly and in her natural
voice--"am I Philip's wife--or--or not? We were married on January 25th,
at the Mairie of the 10th Arrondissement, by a man in a red scarf. We
signed registers and things. Then--when we quarrelled--Philip said--he
wasn't certain about that woman--in Scotland. You might be right. Tell me
the truth, please. Am I--his wife?"

And as the words dropped faintly, the anxiety in her beautiful
death-stricken eyes was strange and startling to see. Through all her
recklessness, her defiance of authority and custom, could be seen at last
the strength of inherited, implanted things; the instinct of a race, a
family, overleaping deviation.

Meynell bent over her steadily, and took her hand in both his own.

"Certainly, you are his wife. Have no anxiety at all about that. My
inquiries all broke down. There was no Scotch marriage."

Hester said nothing for a little; but the look of relief was clear. Alice
on the farther side of the bed dropped her face in her hands. Was it not
only forty-eight hours since, in Paris, Meynell had told her that he had
received conclusive evidence of the Scotch marriage, and that Hester was
merely Philip's victim, not his wife? Passionately her heart thanked him
for the falsehood. She saw clearly that Hester's mortal wounds were not
all bodily. She was dying partly of self-contempt, self-judgment.
Meynell's strong words--his "noble lie"--had lifted, as it were, a
fraction of the moral weight that was destroying her; had made a space--a
freedom, in which the spirit could move.

So much Alice saw; blind meanwhile to the tragic irony of this piteous
stress laid at such a moment, by one so lawless, on the social law!

Thenceforward the poor sufferer was touchingly gentle and amenable.
Morphia had been given her liberally, and the relief was great. When the
nurses came at midday, however, the pulse had already begun to fail. They
could do nothing; and though within call, they left her mainly to those
who loved her.

In the early afternoon she asked suddenly for the Communion, and Meynell
administered it. The three women who were watching her received it with
her. In Catharine's mind, as Meynell's hands brought her the sacred bread
and wine, all thought of religious difference between herself and him had
vanished, burnt away by sheer heat of feeling. There was no difference!
Words became mere transparencies, through which shone the ineffable.

When it was over, Hester opened her eyes--"Uncle Richard!" The voice was
only a whisper now. "You loved my father?"

"I loved him dearly--and you--and your mother--for his sake."

He stooped to kiss her cheek.

"I wonder what it'll be like"--she said, after a moment, with more
strength--"beyond? How strange that--I shall know before you! Uncle
Richard--I'm--I'm sorry!"

At that the difficult tears blinded him, and he could not reply. But she
was beyond tears, concentrating all the last effort of the mind on the
sheer maintenance of life. Presently she added:

"I don't hate--even Philip now. I--I forget him. Mother!" And again she
clung to her mother's hand, feebly turning her face to be kissed.

Once she opened her eyes when Mary was beside her, and smiled brightly.

"I've been such a trouble, Mary--I've spoilt Uncle Richard's life. But
now you'll have him all the time--and he'll have you. You dear!--Kiss me.
You've got a golden mother. Take care of mine--won't you?--my poor
mother!"

So the hours wore on. Science was clever and merciful and eased her pain.
Love encompassed her, and when the wintry light failed, her faintly
beating heart failed with it, and all was still....

"Richard!--Richard!--Come with me."

So, with low, tender words, Mary tried to lead him away, after that
trance of silence in which they had all been standing round the dead. He
yielded to her; he was ready to see the doctor and to submit to the
absolute rest enjoined. But already there was something in his aspect
which terrified Mary. Through the night that followed, as she lay awake,
a true instinct told her that the first great wrestle of her life and her
love was close upon her.




CHAPTER XXIV


On the day following Hester's death an inquest was held in the
dining-room at Burwood. Meynell and old David, the shepherd, stood out
chief among the witnesses.

"This poor lady's name, I understand, sir," said the gray-haired Coroner,
addressing Meynell, when the first preliminaries were over, "was Miss
Hester Fox-Wilton; she was the daughter of the late Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton;
she was under age; and you and Lady Fox-Wilton--who is not here, I am
told, owing to illness--were her guardians?"

Meynell assented. He stood to the right of the Coroner, leaning heavily
on the chair before him. The doctor who had been called in to Hester sat
beside him, and wondered professionally whether the witness would get
through.

"I understand also," the Coroner resumed, "that Miss Fox-Wilton had left
the family in Paris with whom you and Lady Fox-Wilton had placed her,
some three weeks ago, and that you have since been in search of her, in
company I believe with Miss Fox-Wilton's aunt, Miss Alice Puttenham. Miss
Puttenham, I hope, will appear?"

The doctor rose--

"I am strongly of opinion, sir, that, unless for most urgent reasons,
Miss Puttenham should not be called upon. She is in a very precarious
state, in consequence of grief and shock, and I should greatly fear the
results were she to make the effort."

Meynell intervened.

"I shall be able, sir, I think, to give you sufficient information,
without its being necessary to call upon Miss Puttenham."

He went on to give an account, as guarded as he could make it, of
Hester's disappearance from the family with whom she was boarding, of the
anxiety of her relations, and the search that he and Miss Puttenham had
made.

His conscience was often troubled. Vaguely, his mind was pronouncing
itself all the while--"It is time now the truth were known. It is better
it should be known." Hester's death had changed the whole situation. But
he could himself take no step whatever toward disclosure. And he knew
that it was doubtful whether he should or could have advised Alice to
take any.

The inquiry went on, the Coroner avoiding the subject of Hester's French
escapade as much as possible. After all there need be--there was--no
question of suicide; only some explanation had to be suggested of the
dressing-bag left within the garden gate, and of the girl's reckless
climb into the fells, against old David's advice, on such an afternoon.

Presently, in the midst of David's evidence, describing his meeting with
Hester by the bridge, the handle of the dining-room door turned. The door
opened a little way and then shut again. Another minute or two passed,
and then the door opened again timidly as though some one were hesitating
outside. The Coroner annoyed, beckoned to a constable standing behind the
witnesses. But before he could reach it, a lady had slowly pushed it
open, and entered the room.

It was Alice Puttenham.

The Coroner looked up, and the doctor rose in astonishment. Alice
advanced to the table, and stood at the farther end from the Coroner,
looking first at him and then at the jury. Her face--emaciated now beyond
all touch of beauty--and the childish overhanging lip quivered as she
tried to speak; but no words came.

"Miss Puttenham, I presume?" said the Coroner. "We were told, madam, that
you were not well enough to give evidence."

Meynell was at her side.

"What do you wish?" he said, in a low voice, as he took her hand.

"I wish to give evidence," she said aloud.

The doctor turned toward the Coroner.

"I think you will agree with me, sir, that as Miss Puttenham has made the
effort, she should give her evidence as soon as possible, and should give
it sitting."

A murmur of assent ran round the table. Over the weather-beaten
Westmoreland faces had passed a sudden wave of animation.

Alice took her seat, and the oath. Meynell sitting opposite to her
covered his face with his hands. He foresaw what she was about to do, and
his heart went out to her.

Everybody at the table bent forward to listen. The two shorthand writers
lifted eager faces.

"May I make a statement?" The thin voice trembled through the room.

The Coroner assured the speaker that the Court was willing and anxious to
hear anything she might have to say.

Alice fixed her eyes on the old man, as though she would thereby shut out
all his surroundings.

"You are inquiring, sir--into the death--of my daughter."

The Coroner made a sudden movement.

"Your daughter, madam? I understood that, this poor young lady was the
daughter of the late Sir Ralph and Lady Fox-Wilton?"

"She was their adopted daughter. Her father was Mr. Neville Flood, and
I--am her mother. Mr. Flood, of Sandford Abbey, died nearly twenty years
ago. He and I were never married. My sister and brother-in-law adopted
the child. She passed always as theirs, and when Sir Ralph died, he
appointed--Mr. Meynell--and my sister her guardians. Mr. Meynell
has always watched over her--and me. Mr. Flood was much attached to him.
He wrote to Mr. Meynell, asking him to help us--just before his death."

She paused a moment, steadying herself by the table.

There was not a sound, not a movement in the room. Only Meynell uncovered
his eyes and tried to meet hers, so as to give her encouragement.

She resumed--

"Last August the nurse who attended me--in my confinement--came
home to Upcote. She made a statement to a gentleman there--a false
statement--and then she died. I wished then to make the truth public--but
Mr. Meynell--as Hester's guardian--and for her sake, as well as mine--did
not wish it. She knew nothing--then; and he was afraid of its effect upon
her. I followed his advice, and took her abroad, in order to protect her
from a bad man who was pursuing her. We did all we could--but we were not
able to protect her. They were married without my knowing--and she went
away with him. Then he--this man--told her--or perhaps he had done it
before, I don't know--who she was. I can only guess how he knew; but he
is Mr. Flood's nephew. My poor child soon found out what kind of man he
was. She tried to escape from him. And because Mrs. Elsmere had been
always very kind to her, she came here. She knew how--"

The voice paused, and then with difficulty shaped its words again.

"She knew that we should grieve so terribly. She shrank from seeing us.
She thought we might be here--and that--partly--made her wander away
again--in despair--when she actually got here. But her death was a pure
accident--that I am sure of. At the last, she tried to get home--to me.
That was the only thing she was conscious of--before she fell. When she
was dying--she told me she knew--I was her mother. And now--that she is
dead--"

The voice changed and broke--a sudden cry forced its way through--

"Now that she is dead--no one else shall claim her--but me. She's mine
now--my child--forever--only mine!"

She broke off incoherently, bowing her head upon her hands, her slight
shoulders shaken by her sobs.

The room was silent, save for a rather general clearing of throats.
Meynell signalled to the doctor. They both rose and went to her. Meynell
whispered to her.

The Coroner spoke, drawing his handkerchief hastily across his eyes.

"The Court is very grateful to you, Miss Puttenham, for this frank and
brave statement. We tender you our best thanks. There is no need for us
to detain you longer."

She rose, and Meynell led her from the room. Outside was a nurse to whom
he resigned her.

"My dear, dear friend!" Trembling, her eyes met the deep emotion in his.
"That was right--that will bring you help. Aye! you have her now--all,
all your own."

On the day of Hester's burying Long Whindale lay glittering white under a
fitful and frosty sunshine. The rocks and screes with their steep beds of
withered heather made dark scrawls and scratches on the white; the smoke
from the farmhouses rose bluish against the snowy wall of fell; and the
river, amid the silence of the muffled roads and paths, seemed the only
audible thing in the valley.

In the tiny churchyard the new-made grave had been filled in with frozen
earth, and on the sods lay flowers piled there by Rose Flaxman's kind and
busy hands. She and Hugh had arrived from the south that morning.

Another visitor had come from the south, also to lay flowers on that
wintry grave. Stephen Barron's dumb pain was bitter to see. The silence
of spiritual and physical exhaustion in which Meynell had been wrapped
since the morning of the inquest was first penetrated and broken up by
the sight of Stephen's anguish. And in the attempt to comfort the
younger, the elder man laid hold on some returning power for himself.

But he had been hardly hit; and the depth of the wound showed itself
strangely--in a kind of fear of love itself, a fear of Mary! Meynell's
attitude toward her during these days was almost one of shrinking. The
atmosphere between them was electrical; charged with things unspoken, and
a conflict that must be faced.

* * * * *

The day after Hester's funeral the newspapers were full of the sentence
delivered on the preceding day, in the Arches Court, on Meynell and his
co-defendants. A telegram from Darwen the evening before had conveyed
the news to Meynell himself.

The sentence of deprivation _ab officio et beneficio_ in the Church of
England, on the ground of heretical opinion and unauthorized services,
had been expressed by the Dean of Arches in a tone and phraseology of
considerable vehemence. According to him the proceedings of the
Modernists were "as contrary to morality as to law," and he marvelled how
"honest men" could consent to occupy the position of Meynell and his
friends.

Notice of appeal to the Privy Council was at once given by the Modernist
counsel, and a flame of discussion arose throughout England.

Meanwhile, on the morning following the publication of the judgment,
Meynell finished a letter, and took it into the dining-room, where Rose
and Mary were sitting. Rose, reading his face, disappeared, and he put
the letter into Mary's hands.

It was addressed to the Bishop of Dunchester. The great gathering in
Dunchester Cathedral, after several postponements to match the delays in
the Court of Arches, was to take place within a fortnight from this date,
and Meynell had been everywhere announced as the preacher of the sermon,
which was to be the battle-cry of the Movement, in the second period of
its history; the period of open revolt, of hot and ardent conflict.

The letter which Mary was invited to read was short. It simply asked that
the writer should be relieved from a task he felt he could not adequately
carry out. He desired to lay it down, not for his own sake, but for the
sake of the cause. "I am not the man, and this is not my job. This
conviction has been borne in upon me during the last few weeks with an
amazing clearness. I will only say that it seems to represent a
command--a prohibition--laid upon me, which I cannot ignore. There are of
course tragic happenings and circumstances connected with it, my dear
lord, on which I will not dwell. The effect of them at present on my mind
is that I wish to retire from a public and prominent part in our great
Movement; at any rate for a time. I shall carry through the Privy Council
appeal; but except for that intend to refuse all public appearance. When
the sentence is confirmed, as of course it will be, it will be best for
me to confine myself to thinking and writing in solitude and behind the
scenes. 'Those also serve who only stand and wait.' The quotation is
hackneyed, but it must serve. Through thought and self-proving, I believe
that in the end I shall help you best. I am not the fighter I thought
I was; the fighter that I ought to be to keep the position that has been
so generously given me. Forgive me for a while if I go into the
wilderness--a rather absurd phrase, however, as you will agree, when
I tell you that I am soon to marry a woman whom I love with my whole
heart. But it applies to my connection with the Modernist Movement, and
to my position as a leader. My old friends and colleagues--many of them
at least--will, I fear, blame the step I am taking. It will seem to them
a mere piece of flinching and cowardice. But each man's soul is in his
own keeping; and he alone can judge his own powers."

The letter then became a quiet discussion of the best man to be chosen in
the writer's stead, and passed on into a review of the general situation
created by the sentence of the Court of Arches.

But of these later pages of the letter Mary realized nothing. She sat
with it in her hands, after she had read the passage which has been
quoted, looking down, her mouth trembling.

Meynell watched her uneasily--then came to sit by her, and took her hand.

"Dearest!--you understand?" he said, entreatingly.

"It is--because of Hester?" She spoke with difficulty.

He assented, and then added--

"But that letter--shall only go with your permission."

She took courage. "Richard, you know so much better than I,
but--Richard!--did you ever neglect Hester?"

He tried to answer her question truly.

"Not knowingly."

"Did you ever fail to love her, and try to help her?"

He drew a long breath.

"But there she lies!" He raised his head. Through the window, on a rocky
slope, half a mile away, could be seen the tiny church of Long Whindale,
and the little graveyard round it.

"It is very possible that I see the thing morbidly"--he turned to her
again with a note of humility, of sad appeal, that struck most poignantly
on the woman's heart--"but I cannot resist it. What use can I be to any
human being as guide, or prophet, or counsellor--if I was so little use
to her? Is there not a kind of hypocrisy--a dismal hypocrisy--in my
claim to teach--or inspire--great multitudes of people--when this one
child--who was given into my care--"

He wrung her hands in his, unable to finish his sentence.

Bright tears stood in her eyes; but she persevered. She struck boldly for
the public, the impersonal note. She set against the tragic appeal of the
dead the equally tragic appeal of the living. She had in her mind the
memory of that London church, with the strained upturned faces, the
"hungry sheep"--girls among them, perhaps, in peril like Hester, men
assailed by the same vile impulses that had made a brute of Philip
Meryon. During the preceding months Mary's whole personality had
developed with great rapidity, after a somewhat taciturn and slowly
ripening youth. The need, enforced upon her by love itself, of asserting
herself even against the mother she adored; the shadow of Meynell's cloud
upon her, and her suffering under it, during the weeks of slander; and
now this rending tragedy at her doors--had tempered anew the naturally
high heart, and firm will. At this critical moment, she saved Meynell
from a fatal step by the capacity she showed of loving his cause, only
next to himself. And, indeed, Meynell was made wholesomely doubtful once
or twice whether it were not in truth his cause she loved in him. For
the sweet breakdowns of love which were always at her lips she banished
by a mighty effort, till she should have won or lost. Thus throughout she
showed herself her mother's daughter--with her father's thoughts.

It was long, however, before she succeeded in making any real impression
upon him. All she could obtain at first was delay, and that Catharine
should be informed.

As soon as that had been done, the position became once more curiously
complex. Here was a woman to whom the whole Modernist Movement was
anathema, driven finally into argument for the purpose of compelling
the Modernist leader, the contriver and general of Modernist victory, to
remain at his post!

For it was part of Catharine's robust character to look upon any pledge,
any accepted responsibility, as something not to be undone by any mere
feeling, however sharp, however legitimate. You had undertaken the
thing, and it must, at all costs, be carried through. That was the
dominant habit of her mind; and there were persons connected with her on
whom the rigidity of it had at times worked harshly.

On this occasion it was no doubt interfered with--(the Spirit of Comedy
would have found a certain high satisfaction in the dilemma)--by the fact
that Meynell's persistence in the course he had entered upon must be,
in her eyes, and _sub specie religionis_, a persistence in heresy and
unbelief. What decided it ultimately, however, was that she was not only
an orthodox believer, but a person of great common sense--and Mary's
mother.

Her natural argument was that after the tragic events which had occurred,
and the public reports of them which had appeared, Meynell's abrupt
withdrawal from public life would once more unsettle and confuse the
public mind. If there had been any change in his opinions--

"Oh! do not imagine"--she turned a suddenly glowing face upon him--"I
should be trying to dissuade you, if that were your reason. No!--it is
for personal and private reasons you shrink from the responsibility
of leadership. And that being so, what must the world say--the ignorant
world that loves to think evil?"

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