Part 3 (1/2)

”I shouldn't wonder if the Flaxmans were of some use to you in the village,” said Stephen, taking up his hat. ”They're rich, and, they say, very generous.”

”Well, if they'll give me a parish nurse, I'll crawl to them,” said the Rector, settling himself in his chair and putting an old shawl over his knees. ”And as you go out, just tell Anne, will you, to keep herself to herself for an hour and not to disturb me?”

Stephen Barron moved to the door, and as he opened it he turned back a moment to look at the man in the chair, and the room in which he sat. It was as though he asked himself by what manner of man he had been thus gripped and coerced, in a matter so intimate, and, to himself, so vital.

Meynell's eyes were already shut. The dogs had gathered round him, the collie's nose laid against his knee, the other two guarding his feet. All round, the walls were laden with books, so were the floor and the furniture. A carpenter's bench filled the further end of the room.

Carving tools were scattered on it, and a large piece of wood-carving, half finished, was standing propped against it. It was part of some choir decoration that Meynell and a cla.s.s of village boys were making for the church, where the Rector had already carved with his own hand many of the available surfaces, whether of stone or wood. The carving, which was elaborate and rich, was technically faulty, as an Italian primitive is faulty, but _mutatis mutandis_ it had much of the same charm that belongs to Italian primitive work: the same joyous sincerity, the same pa.s.sionate love of natural things, leaves and flowers and birds.

For the rest, the furniture of the room was shabby and ugly. The pictures on the walls were mostly faded Oxford photographs, or outlines by Overbeck and Retsch, which had belonged to Meynell's parents and were tenderly cherished by him. There were none of the pretty, artistic trifles, the signs of travel and easy culture, which many a small country vicarage possesses in abundance. Meynell, in spite of his scholar's mastery of half-a-dozen languages, had never crossed the Channel. Barron, lingering at the door, with his eyes on the form by the fire, knew why.

The Rector had always been too poor. He had been left an orphan while still at Balliol, and had to bring up his two younger brothers. He had done it. They were both in Canada now and prospering. But the signs of the struggle were on this shabby house, and on this shabby, frugal, powerfully built man. Yet now he might have been more at ease; the living, though small, was by no means among the worst in the diocese.

Ah, well! Anne, the housekeeper and only servant, knew how the money went--and didn't go, and she had pa.s.sed on some of her grievances to Barron. They two knew--though Barron would never have dared to show his knowledge--what a wrestle it meant to get the Rector to spend what was decently necessary on his own food and clothes; and Anne spent hours of the night in indignantly guessing at what he spent on the clothes and food of other people--mostly, in her opinion, ”varmints.”

These things flitted vaguely through the young man's sore mind. Then in a flash they were absorbed in a perception of a wholly different kind. The room seemed to him transfigured; a kind of temple. He thought of the intellectual life which had been lived there; the pa.s.sion for truth which had burnt in it; the sermons and books that had been written on those crowded tables; the personality and influence that had been gradually built up within it, so that to him, as to many others, the dingy study was a place of pilgrimage, breathing inspiration; and his heart went out, first in disciples.h.i.+p, and then in a pain that was not for himself. For over his friend's head he saw the gathering of clouds not now to be scattered or dispersed; and who could foretell the course of the storm?

The young man gently closed the door and went his way. He need not have left the house so quietly. The Rector got no sleep that evening.

CHAPTER II

The church clock of Upcote Minor was just striking nine o'clock as Richard Meynell, a few hours later than the conversation just recorded, shut the Rectory gate behind him, and took his way up the village.

The night was cold and gusty. The summer this year had forgotten to be balmy, and Meynell, who was an ardent sun-lover, s.h.i.+vered as he walked along, b.u.t.toning a much-worn parson's coat against the sharp air. Before him lay the long, straggling street, with its cottages and small shops, its post-office, and public-houses, and its occasional gentlefolks'

dwellings, now with a Georgian front plumb on the street, and now hidden behind walls and trees. It was evidently a large village, almost a country town, with a considerable variety of life. At this hour of the evening most of the houses were dark, for the labourers had gone to bed.

But behind the drawn blinds of the little shops there were still lights here and there, and in the houses of the gentility.

The Rector pa.s.sed the fine perpendicular church standing back from the road, with its churchyard about it; and just beyond it, he turned, his pace involuntarily slackening, to look at a small gabled house, surrounded by a garden, and overhung by a splendid lime tree. Suddenly, as he approached it, the night burst into fragrance, for a gust of wind shook the lime-blossom, and flung the scent in Meynell's face; while at the same time the dim ma.s.ses of roses in the garden sent out their sweetness to the pa.s.sers-by.

A feeling of pleasure, quick, involuntary, pa.s.sed through his mind; pleasure in the thought of what these flowers meant to the owner of them.

He had a vision of a tall and slender woman, no longer young, with a delicate and plaintive face, moving among the rose-beds she loved, her light dress trailing on the gra.s.s. The recollection stirred in him affection, and an impulse of sympathy, stronger than the mere thought of the flowers, and the woman's tending of them, could explain. It pa.s.sed indeed immediately into something else--a touch of new and sharp anxiety.

”And she's been very peaceful of late,” he said to himself ruefully, ”as far at least as Hester ever lets her be. Preston's wife was a G.o.dsend.

Perhaps now she'll come out of her sh.e.l.l and go more among the people. It would help her. Anyway, we can't have everything rooted up again just yet--before the time.”

He walked on, and as the farther corner of the house came into view, he saw a thinly curtained window with a light inside it, and it seemed to him that he distinguished a figure within.

”Reading?--or embroidering? Probably, at her work. She had that commission to finish. Busy woman!”

He fell to imagining the little room, the embroidery frame, the books, and the brindled cat on the rug, of no particular race or beauty; for use not for show; but sensitive and gentle like its mistress, and like her, not to be readily made friends with.

”How wise of her,” he thought, ”not to accept her sister's offer since Ralph's death--to insist on keeping her little house and her independence. Imagine her!--prisoned in that house, with that family.

Except for Hester--except for Hester!”

He smiled sadly to himself, threw a last troubled look at the little house, and left it behind him. Before him, the village street, with its green and its pond, widened under the scudding sky. Far ahead, about a quarter of a mile away, among surrounding trees, certain outlines were visible through the July twilight. The accustomed eye knew them for the chimneys of the Fox-Wiltons' house, owned now, since the recent death of its master, Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton, by his widow, the sister of the lady with the cat and the embroidery, and mother of many children, for the most part an unattractive brood, peevish and slow-minded like their father. Hester was the bright, particular star in that house, as Stephen Barron had now found out.

Alack!--alack! The Rector's face resumed for a moment the expression of painful or brooding perplexity it had worn during his conversation of the afternoon with young Barron, on the subject of Hester Fox-Wilton.