Part 73 (1/2)
She rose, and Meynell led her from the room. Outside was a nurse to whom he resigned her.
”My dear, dear friend!” Trembling, her eyes met the deep emotion in his.
”That was right--that will bring you help. Aye! you have her now--all, all your own.”
On the day of Hester's burying Long Whindale lay glittering white under a fitful and frosty suns.h.i.+ne. The rocks and screes with their steep beds of withered heather made dark scrawls and scratches on the white; the smoke from the farmhouses rose bluish against the snowy wall of fell; and the river, amid the silence of the m.u.f.fled roads and paths, seemed the only audible thing in the valley.
In the tiny churchyard the new-made grave had been filled in with frozen earth, and on the sods lay flowers piled there by Rose Flaxman's kind and busy hands. She and Hugh had arrived from the south that morning.
Another visitor had come from the south, also to lay flowers on that wintry grave. Stephen Barron's dumb pain was bitter to see. The silence of spiritual and physical exhaustion in which Meynell had been wrapped since the morning of the inquest was first penetrated and broken up by the sight of Stephen's anguish. And in the attempt to comfort the younger, the elder man laid hold on some returning power for himself.
But he had been hardly hit; and the depth of the wound showed itself strangely--in a kind of fear of love itself, a fear of Mary! Meynell's att.i.tude toward her during these days was almost one of shrinking. The atmosphere between them was electrical; charged with things unspoken, and a conflict that must be faced.
The day after Hester's funeral the newspapers were full of the sentence delivered on the preceding day, in the Arches Court, on Meynell and his co-defendants. A telegram from Darwen the evening before had conveyed the news to Meynell himself.
The sentence of deprivation _ab officio et beneficio_ in the Church of England, on the ground of heretical opinion and unauthorized services, had been expressed by the Dean of Arches in a tone and phraseology of considerable vehemence. According to him the proceedings of the Modernists were ”as contrary to morality as to law,” and he marvelled how ”honest men” could consent to occupy the position of Meynell and his friends.
Notice of appeal to the Privy Council was at once given by the Modernist counsel, and a flame of discussion arose throughout England.
Meanwhile, on the morning following the publication of the judgment, Meynell finished a letter, and took it into the dining-room, where Rose and Mary were sitting. Rose, reading his face, disappeared, and he put the letter into Mary's hands.
It was addressed to the Bishop of Dunchester. The great gathering in Dunchester Cathedral, after several postponements to match the delays in the Court of Arches, was to take place within a fortnight from this date, and Meynell had been everywhere announced as the preacher of the sermon, which was to be the battle-cry of the Movement, in the second period of its history; the period of open revolt, of hot and ardent conflict.
The letter which Mary was invited to read was short. It simply asked that the writer should be relieved from a task he felt he could not adequately carry out. He desired to lay it down, not for his own sake, but for the sake of the cause. ”I am not the man, and this is not my job. This conviction has been borne in upon me during the last few weeks with an amazing clearness. I will only say that it seems to represent a command--a prohibition--laid upon me, which I cannot ignore. There are of course tragic happenings and circ.u.mstances connected with it, my dear lord, on which I will not dwell. The effect of them at present on my mind is that I wish to retire from a public and prominent part in our great Movement; at any rate for a time. I shall carry through the Privy Council appeal; but except for that intend to refuse all public appearance. When the sentence is confirmed, as of course it will be, it will be best for me to confine myself to thinking and writing in solitude and behind the scenes. 'Those also serve who only stand and wait.' The quotation is hackneyed, but it must serve. Through thought and self-proving, I believe that in the end I shall help you best. I am not the fighter I thought I was; the fighter that I ought to be to keep the position that has been so generously given me. Forgive me for a while if I go into the wilderness--a rather absurd phrase, however, as you will agree, when I tell you that I am soon to marry a woman whom I love with my whole heart. But it applies to my connection with the Modernist Movement, and to my position as a leader. My old friends and colleagues--many of them at least--will, I fear, blame the step I am taking. It will seem to them a mere piece of flinching and cowardice. But each man's soul is in his own keeping; and he alone can judge his own powers.”
The letter then became a quiet discussion of the best man to be chosen in the writer's stead, and pa.s.sed on into a review of the general situation created by the sentence of the Court of Arches.
But of these later pages of the letter Mary realized nothing. She sat with it in her hands, after she had read the pa.s.sage which has been quoted, looking down, her mouth trembling.
Meynell watched her uneasily--then came to sit by her, and took her hand.
”Dearest!--you understand?” he said, entreatingly.
”It is--because of Hester?” She spoke with difficulty.
He a.s.sented, and then added--
”But that letter--shall only go with your permission.”
She took courage. ”Richard, you know so much better than I, but--Richard!--did you ever neglect Hester?”
He tried to answer her question truly.
”Not knowingly.”
”Did you ever fail to love her, and try to help her?”
He drew a long breath.
”But there she lies!” He raised his head. Through the window, on a rocky slope, half a mile away, could be seen the tiny church of Long Whindale, and the little graveyard round it.