Part 9 (1/2)

”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. n.o.body 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 embarra.s.sment. Within a few feet of her sat the squire of the parish, silent and impa.s.sive. 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sed 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?”