Part 6 (1/2)
”Mrs. Bateson--come to your husband--he is dying!”
The woman, deadly white, threw back her head proudly. But Meynell laid a peremptory hand on her arm.
”I command you--in G.o.d's name. Come!”
A struggle shook her. She yielded suddenly--and began to cry. Meynell patted her on the shoulder as he might have patted a child, said kind, soothing things, gave her her husband's message, and finally drew her from the room.
She went upstairs, Meynell following, anxious about the physical result of the meeting, and ready to go for the doctor at a moment's notice.
The door at the top of the stairs was open. The dying man lay on his side, gazing toward it, and gauntly illumined by the rising light.
The woman went slowly forward, drawn by the eyes directed upon her.
”I thowt tha'd come!” said Bateson, with a smile.
She sat down upon the bed, crouching, emaciated; at first motionless and voiceless; a spectacle little less piteous, little less deathlike, than the man on the pillows. He still smiled at her, in a kind of triumph; also silent, but his lips trembled. Then, groping, she put out her hand--her disfigured, toil-worn hand--and took his, raising it to her lips. The touch of his flesh seemed to loosen in her the fountains of the great deep. She slid to her knees and kissed him--enfolding him with her arms, the two murmuring together.
Meynell went out into the dawn. His mystical sense had beheld the Lord in that small upper room; had seen as it were the sacred hands breaking to those two poor creatures the sacrament of love. His own mind was for the time being tranquillized. It was as though he said to himself, ”I know that trouble will come back--I know that doubts and fears will pursue me again; but this hour--this blessing--is from G.o.d!”...
The sun was high in a dewy world, already busy with its first labours of field and mine, when Meynell left the cottage. The church clock was on the stroke of eight.
He pa.s.sed down the village street, and reached again the little gabled house which he had pa.s.sed the night before. As he approached, there was a movement in the garden. A lady, who was walking among the roses, holding up her gray dress from the dew, turned and hastened toward the gate.
”Please come in! You must be tired out. The gardener told me he'd seen you about. We've got some coffee ready for you.”
Meynell looked at the speaker in smiling astonishment.
”What are you up for at this hour?”
”Why shouldn't I be up? Look how lovely it is! I have a friend with me, and I want to introduce you.”
Miss Puttenham opened her garden gate and drew in the Rector. Behind her among the roses Meynell perceived another lady--a girl, with bright reddish hair.
”Mary!” said Miss Puttenham.
The girl approached. Meynell had an impression of mingled charm and reticence as she gave him her hand. The eyes were sweet and shy. But the unconscious dignity of bearing showed that the shyness was the shyness of strong character, rather than of mere youth and innocence.
”This is my new friend, Mary Elsmere. You've heard they're at Forked Pond?” Alice Puttenham said, smiling, as she slipped her arm round the girl. ”I captured her for the night, while Mrs. Elsmere went to town. I want you to know each other.”
”Elsmere's daughter!” thought Meynell, with a thrill, as he followed the two ladies through the open French window into the little dining-room, where the coffee was ready. And he could not take his eyes from the young face.
CHAPTER III
”I am in love with the house--I adore the Chase--I like heretics--and I don't think I'm ever going home again!”
Mrs. Flaxman as she spoke handed a cup of tea to a tall gentleman, Louis Manvers by name, the possessor of a long, tanned countenance; of thin iron-gray hair, descending toward the shoulders; of a drooping moustache, and eyes that mostly studied the carpet or the knees of their owner. A shy, laconic person at first sight, with the manner of one to whom conversation, of the drawing-room kind, was little more than a series of doubtful experiments, that seldom or never came off.
Mrs. Flaxman, on the other hand, was a pretty woman of forty, still young and slender, in spite of two boys at Eton, one of them seventeen, and in the Eleven; and her talk was as rash and rapid as that of her companion was the reverse. Which perhaps might be one of the reasons why they were excellent friends, and always happy in each other's society.