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The Case of Richard Meynell

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




Manvers was aware of Mrs. Flaxman's affection for her brother-in-law's
memory; and it seemed to him natural and womanly that she should be
touched--artist and wordling though she was--by this fresh effort in
a similar direction. For himself, he was touched in another way: with
pity, or a kindly scorn. He did not believe in patching up the Christian
tradition. Either accept it--or put it aside. Newman had disposed of
"neo-Christianity" once for all.

"Well, of course all this means a row," he said at length, with a smile.
"What is the Bishop doing?"

"Oh, the Bishop will have to prosecute, Hugh says; of course he must! And
if he didn't, Mr. Barron would do it for him."

"The gentleman who lives in the White House?"

"Precisely. Ah!" cried Mrs. Flaxman, suddenly, rising to her feet and
looking through the open window beside her. "What do you think we've
done? We have evoked him! _Parlez du diable_, etc. How stupid of us! But
there's his carriage trotting up the drive--I know the horses. And that's
his deaf daughter--poor, downtrodden thing!--sitting beside him. Now
then--shall we be at home? Quick!"

Mrs. Flaxman flew to the bell, but retreated with a little grimace.

"We must! It's inevitable. But Hugh says I can't be rude to new people.
Why can't I? It's so simple."

She sat down, however, though rebellion and a little malice quickened the
colour in her fair skin. Manvers looked longingly at the door leading to
the garden.

"Shall I disappear?--or must I support you?"

"It all depends on what value you set on my good opinion," said Mrs.
Flaxman, laughing.

Manvers resettled himself in his chair.

"I stay--but first, a little information. The gentleman owns land here?"

"Acres and acres. But he only came into it about three years ago. He is
on the same railway board where Hugh is Chairman. He doesn't like Hugh,
and he certainly won't like me. But you see he's bound to be civil to us.
Hugh says he's always making quarrels on the board--in a kind of
magnificent, superior way. He never loses his temper--whereas the others
would often like to flay him alive. Now then"--Mrs. Flaxman laid a finger
on her mouth--"'Papa, potatoes, prunes, and prism'!"

Steps were heard in the hall, and the butler announced "Mr. and Miss
Barron."

A tall man, with an iron-gray moustache and a determined carriage,
entered the room, followed by a timid and stooping lady of uncertain age.

Mrs. Flaxman, transformed at once into the courteous hostess, greeted the
newcomers with her sweetest smiles, set the deaf daughter down on the
hearing side of Mr. Manvers, ordered tea, and herself took charge of Mr.
Barron.

* * * * *

The task was not apparently a heavy one. Mrs. Flaxman saw beside her a
portly man of fifty-five, with a penetrating look, and a composed manner;
well dressed, yet with no undue display. Louis Manvers, struggling with
an habitual plague of shyness, and all but silenced by the discovery that
his neighbour was even deafer than himself, watched the "six-foot-two
Inquisitor" with curiosity, but could find nothing lurid nor torturous in
his aspect. There was indeed something about him which displeased a
rationalist scholar and ascetic. But his information and ability, his
apparent adequacy to any company, were immediately evident. It seemed to
Manvers that he had very quickly disarmed Mrs. Flaxman's vague prejudice
against him. At any rate she was soon picking his brains diligently on
the subject of the neighbourhood and the neighbours, and apparently
enjoying the result, to judge from her smiles and her questions.

Mr. Barron indeed had everything that could be expected of him to say on
the subject of the district and its population. He descanted on the
beauty of the three or four famous parks, which in the eighteenth century
had been carved out of the wild heath lands; he showed an intimate
knowledge of the persons who owned the parks, and of their families,
"though I myself am only a newcomer here, being by rights a Devonshire
man"; he talked of the local superstitions with indulgence, and a proper
sense of the picturesque; and of the colliers who believed the
superstitions he spoke in a tone of general good humour, tempered by
regret that "agitators" should so often lead them into folly. The
architecture of the district came in, of course, for proper notice. There
were certain fine old houses near that Mrs. Flaxman ought to visit;
everything of course would be open to her and her husband.

"Oh, tell me," said Mrs. Flaxman, suddenly interrupting him, "how far is
Sandford Abbey from here?"

Her visitor paused a moment before replying.

"Sandford Abbey is about five miles from you--across the park. The two
estates meet. Do you know--Sir Philip Meryon?"

Rose Flaxman shrugged her shoulders.

"We know something of him--at least Hugh does. His mother was a very old
friend of Hugh's family."

Mr. Barron was silent.

"Is he such a scamp?" said Mrs. Flaxman, raising her fine eyes, with a
laugh in them. "You make me quite anxious to see him!"

Mr. Barron echoed the laugh, stiffly.

"I doubt whether your husband will wish to bring him here. He gathers
some strange company at the Abbey. He is there now for the fishing."

Manvers inquired who this gentleman might be; and Mrs. Flaxman gave him a
lightly touched account. A young man of wealth and family, it seemed, but
spoilt from his earliest days, and left fatherless at nineteen, with only
an adoring but quite ineffectual mother to take account of. Some
notorious love affairs at home and abroad; a wild practical joke or two,
played on prominent people, and largely advertised in the newspapers; an
audacious novel, and a censored play--he had achieved all these things by
the age of thirty, and was now almost penniless, and still unmarried.

"Hugh says that the Abbey is falling into ruin--and that the young man
has about a hundred a year left out of his fortune. On this he keeps
apparently an army of servants and a couple of hunters! The strange
thing is--Hugh discovered it when he went to call on the Rector the other
day--that this preposterous young man is a first cousin of Mr. Meynell's.
His mother, Lady Meryon, and the Rector's mother were sisters. The
Rector, however, seems to have dropped him long ago."

Mr. Barron still sat silent.

"Is he really too bad to talk about?" cried Mrs. Flaxman, impatiently.

"I think I had rather not discuss him," said her visitor, with decision;
and she, protesting that Philip Meryon was now endowed with all the
charms, both of villainy and mystery, let the subject drop.

Mr. Barron returned, as though with relief, to architecture, talked
agreeably of the glories of a famous Tudor house on the west side,
and an equally famous Queen Anne house on the east side of the Chase.
But the churches of the district, according to him, were on the whole
disappointing--inferior to those of other districts within reach.
Here, indeed, he showed himself an expert; and a far too minute
discourse on the relative merits of the church architecture of two or
three of the midland counties flowed on and on through Mrs. Flaxman's
tea-making, while the deaf daughter became entirely speechless; and
Manvers--disillusioned--gradually assumed an aspect of profound
melancholy, which merely meant that his wits were wool gathering.

"Well, I thought Upcote Minor church a very pretty church," said
Rose Flaxman at last, with a touch of revolt. "The old screen is
beautiful--and who on earth has done all that carving of the
pulpit--and the reredos?"

Mr. Barron's expression changed. He bent toward his hostess, striking one
hand sharply and deliberately with the glove which he held in the other.

"You were at church last Sunday?"

"I was." Mrs. Flaxman's eyes as she turned them upon him had recovered
their animation.

"You were present then," said Mr. Barron with passionate energy, "at a
scandalous performance! I feel that I ought to apologize to you and Mr.
Flaxman in the name of our village and parish."

The speaker's aspect glowed with what was clearly a genuine fire. The
slight pomposity of look and manner had disappeared.

Mrs. Flaxman hesitated. Then she said gravely: "It was certainly very
astonishing. I never saw anything like it. But my husband and I liked Mr.
Meynell. We thought he was absolutely sincere."

"He may be. But so long as he remains clergyman of this parish it is
impossible for him to be honest!"

Mrs. Flaxman slowly poured out another cup of tea for Mr. Manvers, who
was standing before her in a drooping attitude, like some long crumpled
fly, apparently deaf and blind to what was going on, his hair falling
forward over his eyes. At last she said evasively:

"There are a good many people in the parish who seem to agree with him.
Except yourself--and a gaunt woman in black who was pointed out to
me--everybody in the church appeared to us to be enjoying what the Rector
was doing--to be entering into it heart and soul."

Mr. Barron flushed.

"We do not deny that he has got a hold upon the people. That makes it all
the worse. When I came here three years ago he had not yet done any of
these things--publicly; these perfectly monstrous things. Up to last
Sunday, indeed, he kept within certain bounds as to the services; though
frequent complaints of his teaching had been made to the Bishop, and
proceedings even had been begun--it might have been difficult to touch
him. But last Sunday!--" He stopped with a little sad gesture of the hand
as though the recollection were too painful to pursue. "I saw, however,
within six months of my coming here--he and I were great friends at
first--what his teaching was, and whither it was tending. He has taught
the people systematic infidelity for years. Now we have the results!"

"He also seems to have looked after their bodies," said Mrs. Flaxman, in
a skirmishing tone that simply meant she was not to be brought to close
quarters. "I am told that it was he brought the water-supply here; and
that he has forced the owners to rebuild some of the worst cottages."

Mr. Barron looked attentively at his hostess. It was as though he were
for the first time really occupied with her--endeavouring to place her,
and himself with regard to her. His face stiffened.

"That's all very well--excellent, of course. Only, let me remind you, he
was not asked to take vows about the water-supply! But he did promise and
vow at his ordination to hold the Faith--to 'banish and drive away
strange doctrines'!"

"What are 'strange doctrines' nowadays?" said a mild, falsetto voice in
the distance.

Barron turned to the speaker--the long-haired dishevelled person whose
name he had not caught distinctly as Mrs. Flaxman introduced him. His
manner unconsciously assumed a note of patronage.

"No need to define them, I think--for a Christian. The Church has her
Creeds."

"Of course. But while this gentleman shelves them--no doubt a
revolutionary proceeding--are there not excesses on the other side? May
there not be too much--as well as too little?"

And with an astonishing command of ecclesiastical detail Manvers gave an
account--gently ironic here and there--of some neo-Catholic functions of
which he had lately been a witness.

Barron fidgeted.

"Deplorable, I admit--quite deplorable! I would put that kind of thing
down, just as firmly as the other."

Manvers smiled.

"But who are '_you_'? if I may ask it philosophically and without
offence? The man here does not agree with you--the people I have been
describing would scout you. Where's your authority? What _is_ the
authority in the English Church?"

"Well, of course we have our answer to that question," said Barron, after
a moment.

Manvers gave a pleasant little laugh. "Have you?"

Barron hesitated again, then evidently found the controversial temptation
too strong. He plunged headlong into a great gulf of cloudy argument,
with the big word "authority" for theme. But he could find no foothold
in the maze. Manvers drove him delicately from point to point,
involving him in his own contradictions, rolling him in his own
ambiguities, till--suddenly--vague recollections began to stir in the
victim's mind. _Manvers_? Was that the name? It began to recall to
him certain articles in the reviews, the Church papers. Was there not a
well-known writer--a Dublin man--a man who had once been a clergyman, and
had resigned his orders?

He drew himself together with dignity, and retreated in as good order as
he could. Turning to Mrs. Flaxman, who was endeavouring to make a few
commonplaces audible to Miss Barron, while throwing occasional sly
glances toward the field of battle, he somewhat curtly asked for his
carriage.

Mrs. Flaxman's hand was on the bell, when the drawing-room door opened to
admit a gentleman.

"Mr. Meynell!" said the butler.

And at the same moment a young girl slipped in through the open French
window, and with a smiling nod to Mrs. Flaxman and Mr. Manvers went up to
the tea-table and began to replenish the teapot and relight the kettle.

Mr. Barron made an involuntary movement of annoyance as the Rector
entered. But a few minutes of waiting before the appearance of his
carriage was inevitable. He stood motionless therefore in his place, a
handsome, impressive figure, while Meynell paid his respects to Mrs.
Flaxman, whose quick colour betrayed a moment's nervousness.

"How are you, Barron?" said the Rector from a distance with a friendly
nod. Then, as he turned to Manvers, his face lit up.

"I _am_ glad to make your acquaintance!" he said cordially.

Manvers took the outstretched hand with a few mumbled words, but an
evident look of pleasure.

"I have just read your Bishop Butler article in the _Quarterly_," said
Meynell eagerly. "Splendid! Have you seen it?" He turned to his hostess,
with one of the rapid movements that expressed the constant energy of the
man.

Mrs. Flaxman shook her head.

"I am an ignoramus--except about music. I make Mr. Manvers talk to me."

"Oh, but you must read it! I hope you won't mind my quoting a long bit
from it?" The speaker turned to Manvers again. "There is a clerical
conference at Markborough next week, at which I am reading a paper.
I want to make 'em all read you! What? Tea? I should think so!" Then, to
his hostess: "Will you mind if I drink a good deal? I have just been down
a pit--and the dust was pretty bad."

"Not an accident, I hope?" said Mrs. Flaxman, as she handed him his cup.

"No. But a man had a stroke in the pit while he was at work. They thought
he was going to die--he was a great friend of mine--and they sent for me.
We got him up with difficulty. He has a bedridden wife--daughters all
away, married. Nobody to nurse him as usual. I say!"--he bent forward,
looking into his hostess's face with his small, vivacious eyes--"how
long are you going to be here--at Maudeley?"

"We have taken the house for a year," said Rose, surprised.

"Will you give me a parish nurse for that time? It won't cost much, and
it will do a lot of good," said the Rector earnestly. "The people here
are awfully good to each other--but they don't know anything--poor
souls--and I can't get the sick folk properly looked after. Will you?"

Mrs. Flaxman's manner showed embarrassment. Within a few feet of her sat
the squire of the parish, silent and impassive. Common report made Henry
Barron a wealthy man. He could, no doubt, have provided half a dozen
nurses for Upcote Minor if he had so chosen. Yet here was she, the
newcomer of a few weeks, appealed to instead! It seemed to her that the
Rector was not exactly showing tact.

"Won't Mr. Barron help?" She threw a smiling appeal toward him.

Barron, conscious of an irritation and discomfort he had some difficulty
in controlling, endeavoured nevertheless to strike the same easy note as
the rest. He gave his reasons for thinking that a parish nurse was not
really required in Upcote, the women in the village being in his opinion
quite capable of nursing their husbands and sons.

But all the time that he was speaking he was chafing for his carriage.
His conversation with Mrs. Flaxman was still hot in his ears. It was all
very well for Meynell to show this levity, this callous indifference to
the situation. But he, Barron, could not forget it. That very week, the
first steps had been taken which were to drive this heretical and
audacious priest from the office and benefice he had no right to hold,
and had so criminally misused. If he submitted and went quietly, well and
good. But of course he would do nothing of the kind. There was a
lamentable amount of disloyalty and infidelity in the diocese, and he
would be supported. An ugly struggle was inevitable--a struggle for the
honour of Christ and his Church. It would go down to the roots of things
and was not to be settled or smoothed over by a false and superficial
courtesy. The days of friendship, of ordinary social intercourse, were
over. Barron did not intend to receive the Rector again within his own
doors, intimate as they had been at one time; and it was awkward and
undesirable that they should be meeting in other people's drawing-rooms.

All these feelings were running through his mind while aloud he was
laboriously giving Mrs. Flaxman his reasons for thinking a parish nurse
unnecessary in Upcote Minor. When he came to the end of them, Meynell
looked at him with amused exasperation.

"Well, all I know is that in the last case of typhoid we had here--a poor
lad on Reynolds's farm--his mother got him up every day while she made
his bed, and fed him--whatever we could say--on suet dumpling and cheese.
He died, of course--what could he do? And as for the pneumonia patients,
I believe they mostly eat their poultices--I can't make out what else
they do with them--unless I stay and see them put on. Ah, well, never
mind. I shall have to get Mrs. Flaxman alone, and see what can be done.
Now tell me"--he turned again with alacrity to Manvers--"what's that new
German book you quote about Butler? Some uncommonly fine things in it!
That bit about the Sermons--admirable!"

He bent forward, his hands on his knees, staring at Manvers. Yet
the eyes for all their intensity looked out from a face furrowed and
pale--overshadowed by physical and mental strain. The girl sitting at the
tea-table could scarcely take her eyes from it. It appealed at once to
her heart and her intelligence. And yet there were other feelings in her
which resisted the appeal. Once or twice she looked wistfully at Barron.
She would gladly have found in him a more attractive champion of a
majestic cause.

"What can my coachman be about?" said Barron impatiently. "Might I
trouble you, Mrs. Flaxman, to ring again? I really ought to go home."
Mrs. Flaxman rang obediently. The butler appeared. Mr. Barron's servants,
it seemed, were having tea.

"Send them round, please, at once," said their master, frowning. "At
once!"

But the minutes passed on, and while trying to keep up a desultory
conversation with his hostess, and with the young lady at the tea-table,
to whom he was not introduced, Mr. Barron was all the while angrily
conscious of the conversation going on between the Rector and Manvers.
There seemed to be something personally offensive and humiliating to
himself in the knowledge displayed by these two men--men who had deserted
or were now betraying the Church--of the literature of Anglican
apologetics, and of the thought of the great Anglican bishop. Why this
parade of useless learning and hypocritical enthusiasm? What was Bishop
Butler to them? He could hardy sit patiently through it, and it was with
most evident relief that he rose to his feet when his carriage was
announced.

* * * * *

"How pretty Mrs. Flaxman is!" said his daughter as they drove away. "Yet
I'm sure she's forty, papa."

Her face still reflected the innocent pleasure that Rose Flaxman's
kindness had given her. It was not often that the world troubled itself
much about her. Her father, however, took no notice. He sat absent and
pondering, and soon he stretched out a peremptory hand and lowered the
window which his daughter had raised against an east wind to protect a
delicate ear and throat which had been the torment of her life. It was
done with no conscious unkindness; far from it. He was merely absorbed in
the planning of his campaign. The next all-important point was the
selection of the Commission of Inquiry. No effort must be spared by the
Church party to obtain the right men.

Meanwhile, in the drawing-room which he had left, there was silence for a
moment after his departure. Then Meynell said:

"I am afraid I frightened him away. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Flaxman."

Rose laughed, and glanced at the girl sitting hidden behind the
tea-table.

"Oh, I had had quite enough of Mr. Barron. Mr. Meynell, have I ever
introduced you to my niece?"

"Oh, but we know each other!" said Meynell, eagerly. "We met first at
Miss Puttenham's, a week ago--and since then--Miss Elsmere has been
visiting a woman I know."

"Indeed?"

"A woman who lost her husband some days since--a terrible case. We are
all so grateful to Miss Elsmere."

He looked toward her with a smile and a sigh; then as he saw the shy
discomfort in the girl's face, he changed the subject at once.

The conversation became general. Some feeling that she could not explain
to herself led Mrs. Flaxman into a closer observation of her niece Mary
than usual. There was much affection between the aunt and the niece, but
on Mrs. Flaxman's side, at least, not much understanding. She thought of
Mary as an interesting creature, with some striking gifts--amongst them
her mother's gift for goodness. But it seemed to the aunt that she was
far too grave and reserved for her age; that she had been too strenuously
brought up, and in a too narrow world. Rose Flaxman had often impatiently
tried to enliven the girl's existence, to give her nice clothes, to take
her to balls and to the opera. But Mary's adoration for her mother stood
in the way.

"And really if she would only take a hand for herself"--thought Mrs.
Flaxman--"she might be quite pretty! She is pretty!"

And she looked again at the girl beside her, wondering a little,
as though a veil were lifted from something familiar. Mary was
talking--softly, and with a delicate and rather old-fashioned choice of
words, but certainly with no lack of animation. And it was quite evident
to an inquisitive aunt with a notorious gift for match making that the
tired heretic with the patches of coal dust on his coat found her very
attractive.

But as the clock struck six Meynell sprang up.

"I must go. Miss Elsmere"--he looked toward her--"has kindly promised to
take me on to see your sister at the Cottage--and after to-day I may not
have another opportunity." He hesitated, considering his hostess--then
burst out: "You were at church last Sunday--I know--I saw you. I want to
tell you--that you have a church quite as near to you as the parish
church, where everything is quite orthodox--the church at Haddon End. I
wish I could have warned you. I--I did ask Miss Elsmere to warn her
mother."

Rose looked at the carpet.

"You needn't pity us," she said, demurely. "Hugh wants to talk to you
dreadfully. But--I am afraid I am a Gallio."

"Of course--you don't need to be told--it was all a deliberate defiance
of the law--in order to raise vital questions. We have never done
anything half so bad before. We determined on it at a public meeting last
week, and we gave Barron and his friends full warning."

"In short, it is revolution," said Manvers, rubbing his hands gently,
"and you don't pretend that it isn't."

"It is revolution!" said Meynell, nodding. "Or a forlorn hope! The laymen
in the Church want a real franchise--a citizenship they can exercise--and
a law of their own making!"

There was silence a moment. Mary Elsmere took up her hat, and kissed her
aunt; Meynell made his farewells, and followed the girl's lead into the
garden.

Mrs. Flaxman and Manvers watched them open the gate of the park and
disappear behind a rising ground. Then the two spectators turned to each
other by a common impulse, smiling at the same thought. Mrs. Flaxman's
smile, however, was almost immediately drowned in a real concern. She
clasped her hands, excitedly.

"Oh! my poor Catharine! What would she--what _would_ she say?"




CHAPTER IV


Meynell and his companion had taken a footpath winding gently down hill
and in a northwest direction across one of the most beautiful parks in
England. It lay on the fringe of the Chase and contained, within its
slopes and glades, now tracts of primitive woodland whence the charcoal
burners seemed to have but just departed; now purple wastes of heather,
wild as the Chase itself; or again, dense thickets of bracken and fir,
hiding primeval and impenetrable glooms. Maudeley House, behind them, a
seemly Georgian pile, with a columnar front, had the good fortune to
belong to a man not rich enough to live in or rebuild it, but
sufficiently attached to it to spend upon its decent maintenance the
money he got by letting it. So the delicately faded beauty of the house
had survived unspoilt; while there had never been any money to spend upon
the park, where the woods and fences looked after themselves year by
year, and colliers from the neighbouring villages poached freely.

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