Part 46 (1/2)
”Not if I know anything of the _odium theologic.u.m!_ Besides, the Miss Nairns of this world pay small attention to bishops. By the way--I forgot to ask--you can tell me nothing on the subject of the writer of the anonymous letters?--you have not identified him?”
”Not in the least. We are all at sea.”
”You don't happen to have one about you?”
Barron hesitated and fumbled, and at last produced from his breast-pocket the letter to Dawes, which he had again borrowed from its owner that morning. Meynell put it into a drawer of his writing-table without looking at it.
The two men moved toward the door.
”As to any appeal to you on behalf of a delicate and helpless lady--” said Meynell, betraying emotion for the first time--”that I suppose is useless. But when one remembers her deeds of kindness in this village, her quiet and irreproachable life amongst us all these years, one would have thought that any one bearing the Christian name would have come to me as the Rector of this village on one errand only--to consult how best to protect her from the spread of a cruel and preposterous story! You--I gather--propose to make use of it in the interests of your own Church party.”
Barron straightened himself, resenting at once what seemed to him the intrusion of the pastoral note.
”I am heartily sorry for her”--he said coldly. ”Naturally it is the women who suffer in these things. But of course you are right--though you put the matter from your own point of view--in a.s.suming that I regard this as no ordinary scandal. I am not at liberty to treat it as such. The honour concerned--is the honour of the Church. To show the intimate connection of creed and life may be a painful--it is also an imperative duty!”
He threw back his head with a pa.s.sion which, as Meynell clearly recognized, was not without its touch of dignity.
Meynell stepped back.
”We have talked enough, I think. You will of course take the course that seems to you best, and I shall take mine. I bid you good day.”
From the study window Meynell watched the disappearing figure of his adversary. The day was wet, and the funereal garden outside was dank with rain. The half-dead trees had shed such leaves as they had been able to put forth, and behind them was a ragged sky of scudding cloud.
In Meynell's soul there was a dull sense of catastrophe. In Barron's presence he had borne himself as a wronged man should; but he knew very well that a sinister thing had happened, and that for him, perhaps, to-morrow might never be as yesterday.
What was pa.s.sing in the village at that moment? His quick visualizing power showed him the groups in the various bar parlours, discussing the Scandal, dividing it up into succulent morsels, serving it up with every variety of personal comment, idle or malicious; amplyfying, exaggerating, completing. He saw the neat and plausible spinster from whose cruel hands he had rescued a little dumb, wild-eyed child, reduced by ill-treatment to skin and bone--he saw her gloating over the anonymous letter, putting two and two maliciously together, whispering here, denouncing there. He seemed to be actually present in the most disreputable public-house of the village, a house he had all but succeeded in closing at the preceding licensing sessions. How natural, human, inevitable, would be the coa.r.s.e, venomous talk--the inferences--the gibes!
There would be good men and true of course, his personal friends in the village, the members of his Parish Council, who would suffer, and stand firm. The postponed meeting of the Council, for the acceptance of the new Liturgy, was to be held the day after his return from Paris. To them he would speak--so far as he could; yes, to them he would speak! Then his thought spread to the diocese. Charges of this kind spread with extraordinary rapidity. Whoever was writing the anonymous letters had probably not confined himself to two or three. Meynell prepared himself for the discovery of the much wider diffusion.
He moved back to his writing-table, and took the letter from the drawer.
Its ingenuity, its knowledge of local circ.u.mstance, astonished him as he read. He had expected something of a vulgarer and rougher type. The handwriting was clearly disguised, and there was a certain amount of intermittent bad spelling, which might very easily be a disguise also.
But whoever wrote it was acquainted with the Fox-Wilton family, with their habits and his own, as well as with the terms of Sir Ralph's will, so far as--mainly he believed through the careless talk of the elder Fox-Wilton girls--it had become a source of gossip in the village. The writer of it could not be far away. Was it a man or a woman? Meynell examined the handwriting carefully. He had a vague impression that he had seen something like it before, but could not remember where or in what connection.
He put it back in his drawer, and as he did so his eyes fell upon his half-written article for the _Modernist _and on the piles of correspondence beside it. A sense of bitter helplessness overcame him, a pang not for himself so much as for his cause. He realized the inevitable effect of the story in the diocese, weighted, as it would be, with all the colourable and suspicious circ.u.mstances that could undoubtedly be adduced in support of it; its effect also beyond the diocese, through the Movement of which he was the life and guiding spirit; through England--where his name was rapidly becoming a battle-cry.
And what could he do to meet it? Almost nothing! The story indeed as a whole could be sharply and categorically denied, because it involved a fundamental falsehood. He was not the father of Hester Fox-Wilton.
But simple denial was all that was open to him. He could neither explain, nor could he challenge inquiry. His mouth was shut. He had made no formal vow of secrecy to any one. He was free to confide in whom he would. But all that was tender, pitiful, chivalrous in his soul stood up and promised for him, as he stood looking out into the October rain, that for no personal--yes!--and for no public advantage--would he trifle with what he had regarded for eighteen years as a trust, laid upon him by the dying words of a man he had loved, and enforced more and more sharply with time by the constant appeal of a woman's life--its dumb pain, the paradox of its frail strength, its shrinking courage. That life had depended upon him during the worst crisis of its fate as its spiritual guide. He had toward Alice Puttenham the feeling of the ”director,” as the saints have understood it; and toward her story something of the responsibility of a priest toward a confession. To reveal it in his own interest was simply impossible. If the Movement rejected him--it must reject him.
”Not so will I fight for thee, my G.o.d!--not so!” he said to himself in great anguish of mind.
It was true indeed that at some future time Alice Puttenham's poor secret must be told--to a specified person, with her consent, and by the express direction of that honest, blundering man, her brother-in-law, whose life, sorely against his will, had been burdened with it. But the indiscriminate admission of the truth, after the lapse of years, would, he believed, simply bring back the old despair, and paralyze what had always been a frail vitality. And as to Hester, the sudden divulgence of it might easily upset the unstable balance in her of mind and nerve and drive her at once into some madness. He _must_ protect them, if he could.
Could he? He pondered it.
At any moment one of these letters might reach Alice. What if this had already happened? Supposing it had, he might not be able to prevent her from doing what would place the part played toward her by himself in its true light. She would probably insist upon his taking legal action, and allowing her to make her statement in court.
The thought of this was so odious to him that he promptly put it from him. He should a.s.sume that she knew nothing; though as a practical man he was well aware that she could not long remain ignorant; certainly not if she continued to live in Upcote. Then, it was a question probably of days or hours. Her presence in the cottage, when once the village was in full possession of the slander, would be a perpetual provocation. One way or another the truth must penetrate to her.