Part 39 (1/2)
Henry Barron held up a page of the _Times_ and pointed to its first column.
”I sent it in some time ago.”
”And pray what does your parish think of it?”
”They won't support me.”
”Thank G.o.d!”
Barron rose majestically to his feet, and from the rug surveyed his thin, fair-haired son. Stephen had just ridden over from his own tiny vicarage, twelve miles away, to settle some business connected with a family legacy with his father. Since the outbreak of the Reform Movement there had been frequent disputes between the father and son, if aggressive attack on the one side and silent endurance on the other make a dispute. Barron scorned his eldest son, as a faddist and a dreamer; while Stephen could never remember the time when his father had not seemed to him the living embodiment of prejudice, obstinacy, and caprice. He had always reckoned it indeed the crowning proof of Meynell's unworldly optimism that, at the moment of his father's accession to the White House estate, there should have been a pa.s.sing friends.h.i.+p between him and the Rector. Yet whenever thoughts of this kind presented themselves explicitly to Stephen he tried to suppress them. His life, often, was a constant struggle between a genuine and irrepressible dislike of his father and a sore sense that no Christian priest could permit himself such a feeling.
He made no reply to his father's interjection. But Barron knew very well that his son's self-control was no indication of lack of will; quite the contrary; and the father was conscious of a growing exasperation as he watched the patient compression of the young mouth. He wanted somehow to convict and crush Stephen; and he believed that he held the means thereto in his hand. He had not been sure before Stephen arrived whether he should reveal the situation or not. But the temptation was too great.
That the son's mind and soul should finally have escaped his father, ”like a bird out of the snare of the fowler,” was the unforgivable offence. What a gentle, malleable fellow he had seemed in his school and college days!--how amenable to the father's spiritual tyranny! It was Barron's constant excuse to himself for his own rancorous feeling--that Meynell had robbed him of his son.
”You probably think it strange”--he resumed harshly--”that I should rejoice in what of course is your misfortune--that your people reject you; but there are higher interests than those of personal affection concerned in this business. We who are defending her must think first of the Church!”
”Naturally,” said Stephen.
His father looked at him in silence for a moment, at the mild pliant figure, the downcast eyes.
”There is, however, one thing for which I have cause--we all have cause--to be grateful to Meynell,” he said, with emphasis.
Stephen looked up.
”I understand he refused to sanction your engagement to Hester Fox-Wilton.”
The young man flushed.
”It would be better, I think, father, if we are to talk over these matters quietly--which I understood is the reason you asked me to come here to-day--that you should avoid a tone toward myself and my affairs which can only make frank conversation difficult or impossible between us.”
”I have no desire to be offensive,” said Barron, checking himself with difficulty, ”and I have only your good in view, though you may not believe it. My reason for approving Meynell in the matter is that he was aware--and you were not aware”--he fell into the slow phrasing he always affected on important occasions--”of facts bearing vitally on your proposal; and that in the light of them he acted as any honest man was bound to act.”
”What do you mean!” cried Stephen, springing to his feet.
”I mean”--the answer was increasingly deliberate--”that Hester Fox-Wilton--it is very painful to have to go into these things, but it is necessary, I regret to say--is not a Fox-Wilton at all--and has no right whatever to her name!”
Stephen walked up to the speaker.
”Take care, father! This is a question of a _girl_--an unprotected girl!
What right have you to say such an abominable thing!”
He stood panting and white, in front of his father.
”The right of truth!” said Barron. ”It happens to be true.”
”Your grounds?”
”The confession of the woman who nursed her mother--who was _not_ Lady Fox-Wilton.”
Barron had now a.s.sumed the habitual att.i.tude--thumbs in his pockets, legs slightly apart--that Stephen had a.s.sociated from his childhood with the long bullying, secular and religious, that Barron's family owed to Barron's temperament.