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A Lost Cause

by Guy Thorne · English · Gutenberg #40539 · 368,593 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Lost Cause

Author: Guy Thorne


        
Release date: August 19, 2012 [eBook #40539]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LOST CAUSE ***

                          A LOST CAUSE

                          BY GUY THORNE

                AUTHOR OF "WHEN IT WAS DARK," ETC.


    G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
    NEW YORK AND LONDON
    The Knickerbocker Press
    1905

    The Knickerbocker Press, New York




PREFACE


A few words are necessary in preface to this story. After _When It Was
Dark_ made its appearance, the writer received a great number of letters
from his readers, and up to the present moment he still continues to
receive them.

Out of nearly two hundred communications, a large proportion are
concerned not so much with the main issue of the tale, as with
controversial matters in the Church of England arising from it.

The definitely Catholic[1] tone of the first book aroused, as might be
expected, vigorous protest, and no less vigorous commendation. The five
or six Bishops--and many other dignitaries--who preached or lectured
about the story avoided the controversial sides of it. But the writer
has received innumerable letters from the clergy and others to the
following effect.

[Footnote 1: The term "Catholic" is here, and throughout the book, used
in the sense in which it is employed by a certain division of the Church
of England and of the Episcopal Church of America.--The PUBLISHERS.]

It was pointed out to him that while the extreme "Protestant" party was
constantly employing fiction as a method of propaganda, churchmen were
almost unrepresented in this way. The Catholic Faith has been bitterly
assailed over and over again in books which are well enough written, and
have sufficient general interest to appeal to the man of the world, who
is often indifferent to the points debated.

After considerable discussion, the writing of _A Lost Cause_ was
resolved upon. The author desires to thank those priests who have
assisted him with their counsel and experience, and begs leave to
explain here something of his aims in publishing the tale.

At no period in modern Church history has the Church been assailed with
such malignance, slander, and untruth as at the present. "Protestantism"
within the Church is a lost cause, it is dying, and for just this reason
the clamour is loudest, the misrepresentation more furious and
envenomed. Shrewd opportunists are taking their last chance of emerging
from obscurity by an appeal to the ignorance of the general public on
Church matters. Looking round us, we see dozens of uneducated and noisy
nobodies who have elected themselves into a sort of irregular prelacy
and dubbed themselves "Defenders of the Faith," with about as much right
as Napoleon crowned himself emperor.

Church people do not take them very seriously. Their voices are like the
cries of hedge-birds by the road, on which the stately procession of the
Church is passing. But the man in the street is more attentive and he
enjoys the colour and movement of iconoclasm. He believes also that the
brawlers have right on their side.

But there is an inherent fairness in the man in the street, and, if this
story reaches him, he will have his opportunity to hear the Catholic
side of the argument.

The author begs to state that no single character in this tale is a
"portrait" of any living person, or of any real person whatever. The
imaginary folk are designed to be merely typical, their methods are
analogous to much that is going on to-day under the pretences of
patriotism and love for religious liberty, but that is all.

There will probably be the usual nonsense written, and the braves of
"Protestantism" will give the usual war-whoops. Whether this is to be
so or not, the author is profoundly indifferent.

He attacks those of the extreme "Protestants" whom he believes to be
insincere and who rebel against the Truth for their own ends. He does
not say or think that all "Protestants"--even the extremists--are
insincere. He has endeavoured to point out that there is as much
difference between the street-corner "Protestants" and the pious
Evangelical Party within the Church as there is between Trinitarians and
Unitarians.

The incident in the tale where the Archbishop of Canterbury compels a
"Protestant" publicist to give up the Blessed Sacrament, which he has
stolen from a church for purposes of propaganda, is founded on fact. It
has not before been made public, except in a short letter to the _Church
Times_ a few months ago, which was written with the design of preparing
Church readers for the detailed publication of such a painful incident.
The facts, however, have been supplied to the writer to make such use of
in the story as he thinks fit. The authors of this disgraceful
profanation have, naturally, been silent on the matter. It is not an
isolated instance. But it is not to be thought that the imaginary
characters concerned in the affair in the story, are intended to
represent, or do in any way, the real heroes of this great blow struck
for "Protestant" truth.

Finally, the noisiest "Protestants" are hitting the Church as hard as
they can. The author has endeavoured to hit back as hard as _he_ can--of
course, in that spirit of Christian love in which the "Protestants"
themselves tell us these controversies are always conducted.

The brawlers have enjoyed an astonishing immunity hitherto, and it is
only fair that battle should be joined now. And, however inadequate his
forces and generalship, that is the writer's aim. He is, of course, a
_franc-tireur_, but he fires his musket on the right side, and with a
perfect assurance of the justice of his Cause.


G. T.




CONTENTS



CHAPTER PAGE

I.--THE INTERRUPTED EUCHARIST 1

II.--MR. HAMLYN AND SON AT HOME 19

III.--LORD HUDDERSFIELD AND THE GUESTS AT SCARNING COURT 38

IV.--LUCY BLANTYRE AT THE CLERGY-HOUSE 69

V.--WEALTHY MISS PRITCHETT AND POOR GUSSIE DAVIES ENTER THE VICARAGE
GARDEN 108

VI.--BOADICEA, JOAN OF ARC, CHARLOTTE CORDAY, JAEL, AND MISS PRITCHETT
OF HORNHAM 127

VII.--THE OFFICES OF THE "LUTHER LEAGUE"--AN INTERIOR 146

VIII.--A PRIVATE CONFERENCE AT MIDNIGHT A YEAR LATER 166

IX.--A UNION OF FORCES 182

X.--LOW WATER AND GREAT EXPECTATIONS 214

XI.--THE NEWS THAT CARR BROUGHT 241

XII.--THE REPARATION OF JANE PRITCHETT EX-PROTESTANT 281

XIII.--THE ARCHBISHOP AND THE HAMLYNS 302




A LOST CAUSE




CHAPTER I

THE INTERRUPTED EUCHARIST


The Church of St. Elwyn was a building of brick that went up to a great
height.

In the crowded district between Hornsey and Wood Green, it was one of
the largest buildings, and, though not externally beautiful, acquired
dignity and impressiveness from its setting of small villa houses, which
made an interminable brick wilderness all round it.

It was nearing the time of the High Celebration on a Sunday morning in
summer. Matins had been said in a side chapel, to a scanty congregation,
at half-past nine, and now the central act of the day was to take place.

The interior of St. Elwyn's was severe but beautiful, save for one or
two minor blemishes here and there.

The eye was caught and carried away down the aisles till it found its
focus on the high altar which was set like a throne, above many marble
steps, in the curve of the distant apse. The sanctuary was lighted from
the sides and so the eye was not disturbed and distracted by hideous
windows of stained glass with their clamorous coal-tar colours, but
could rest quietly upon the altar with its green and gold, its flowers
and central cross.

The organ was hidden away in a side gallery and the pulpit was a stone
bracket high in the sweep of the chancel arch, to which it clung like
the nest of a bird on a cliff side.

All this was as it should be. In so many English churches the object of
the builders appears to have been to destroy all the dignity and beauty
possible in a service. The organ and the pulpit are elevated to the
importance of shrines, and dominate everything like Gog and Magog in the
Guildhall. Everything is done to minimise the place and office of the
altar, to exalt the less important functions of worship, and to prevent
comfortable consciences from being uneasy in the realisation of the
presence of God.

Only one tawdry note could be detected in this beautiful church. The
pictures which hung on the walls round the aisles, and represented the
stations of the cross, were ill-drawn, and stiff in colour and design.
These pictures, which were said by the ignorant and unimaginative to be
idolatrous, or at least "Roman"--a little understood but very
efficacious term of reproach in the parish--were sufficiently like the
hideous stained-glass figures in the Evangelical Church of St. Luke hard
by to have satisfied the most pious lover of ugliness. But those folk,
who so vehemently preferred the medallion portraits of their respectable
ancestors on the walls of a church to any other form of symbol or
decoration, did not see this. They spoke bitterly of the pictures as
being "high," suggesting to outsiders unfamiliar with the parrot cry of
the partisan that they had been kept too long in a warm place.

Since Father Blantyre had been appointed vicar of St. Elwyn's, the
congregation had increased until few of the rush-bottomed chairs were
empty, and on days of great festivals, people would be found kneeling in
the aisles. The opposition party in the parish frequently commented on
this custom, which was thought to savour of heathenism or worse. One or
two people who had spent holidays in continental towns, and had made
excursions into foreign cathedrals in much the same spirit as they went
into the chamber of horrors in the wax-work exhibition, had brought back
news that this habit was in vogue among "the Catholics." It was felt
that real salvation could only be found in a pew, with one's name
legibly written on an ivory tablet at the end and the vestry-clerk
calling for the rent once a quarter in the decent old-fashioned way. Any
one who knelt on the uncushioned stone showed an anxiety to worship and
a superstitious abasement quite unworthy of a bluff, honest, British
Christian; and his doings must be displeasing to a Deity who, the
objectors were persuaded, was--though they did not say so in actual
words--a great _English_ God.

The single bell that summoned the people to Mass--that word which
church-people are becoming less afraid to use in this century--had
ceased. The server was lighting the Eucharistic candles with a long
taper.

As the people came in, it was noticeable that they proceeded to their
places without side-looks at each other, or muttered social greetings.
They went to their seats, young and old, men and women, and began to
kneel and pray.

No one, apparently, had come there to be seen by his fellows.

Since the Catholic Revival in the English Church, no fact has been more
obvious and easily determined than this. It is one which the bitterest
opponent of churchmanship has never been able to deny and has never
attempted to deny. The most prejudiced observer paying an alternate
visit to a church where the Faith is taught and to another which is
confessedly "Protestant" cannot fail to observe the difference. At the
celebration of the Eucharist in a church of the former type, there is an
absolute stillness and reverence. The congregation kneels, it worships.

In the latter, there is an unrest. People do not show marked
consciousness of being in the presence of mysteries. Whatever they may
think, they do not give the observer the impression that they think God
is there. They sit rather than kneel, they notice the clothes of other
people, there is a certain sense that they are doing the right thing in
"patronising" the church, and the Sunday dinner looms large over all.

The man lit the candles. A moment afterwards Father Blantyre entered
with the servers and the service began.

The singing was simple but harmonious. There was nothing especially
noticeable in the hymn or the chanting of the Kyries after the
commandments.

The priest went into the pulpit, kissed the white stole, and placed it,
as a yoke, upon his shoulders. Over his head was a crucifix. He was a
small man, dark of hair, and swarthy of complexion. The nose was
prominent and aquiline, the eyes bright, with a net-work of fine
wrinkles round them, the mouth large and mobile. There was almost a
suggestion of the comedian in his face, that is, in its extreme mobility
and good-humour. One could imagine him as a merry man in his private
life. But mingled with this, one saw at once the lines of an unalterable
purpose, and of conviction. Any strong belief stamps itself upon a man's
face in an unmistakable way. When that belief is purely holy and good,
then we say that the man has the face of a saint.

For a moment or two, Mr. Blantyre looked round the church. The eyes, so
puckered at the corners, very much resembled the eyes of a sailor, who
is ever gazing out towards a vast horizon and through furious winds. Men
who are much occupied with the Unseen and Invisible sometimes have this
look, which is the look of a man who is striving to see God.

The subject-matter of the sermon itself was not very remarkable. It was
a sermon dealing with the aids to worship that symbol gives, showing how
a proper use of material objects may focus the brain upon the reality
behind them. During the last week or two, the local paper had been
printing some violent attacks upon the services at St. Elwyn's, for
there was a by-election in progress and one of the candidates was
seizing the opportunity afforded by a "No Popery" cry.

The local writer, the vicar pointed out, was obviously alarmed lest
people should worship too much. He spoke of the attacks with sincere
good humour and more than once his words provoked a smile. The
journalist, with the sublime ignorance of lesser local scribes, had
spoken of Queen Elizabeth and expressed a fervent desire that the times
of "good Queen Bess" would come again and that the Royal Spinster could
descend on the purlieus of Hornsey and sternly order all Romish toys to
be removed. Father Blantyre quoted Elizabeth's letter to Sandys:

     The queen's majesty considered it not contrary to the Word of
     God--nay, rather for the advantage of the church--that the image
     of Christ crucified,--together with Mary and John, should be placed
     as heretofore in some conspicuous part of the church, where they
     may the more readily be seen by all the people.

The last few words of the sermon were preparatory for the mystery that
was about to begin, an earnest exhortation to all there to make
themselves ready to receive the Lord, who was presently coming among
them.

There was nothing in the short discourse that was remarkable, but its
delivery was extraordinary. The words were uttered with a great
tenderness and solemnity, but quite without any formal note. There was
almost a gaiety in them now and then, a spiritual gaiety that was very
impressive. Father Blantyre leaned over the rail and talked to his
people. The voice, which sank into a whisper at times, and at others
rang out with a sharpness that echoed up in the lofty roof, never once
lost its suggestion of confidential intimacy with those to whom it
spoke. In the entire absence of the usual "preaching" note, the sermon
gained immensely in value with this particular audience. Anything
academic would have been endured, but it would not have gone home.

While the offertory sentences were being sung, the congregation saw
that a small group of people had entered the church, presumably to hear
Mass.

One of the churchwardens was able to find seats for the party about
half-way down the central aisle. The new-comers were four in number. All
of them were men.

It is perhaps strange to speak of one of their number as being the
"leader" of the party, but that was the impression he gave to those
members of the congregation immediately around him. At the close of the
service, moreover, several worshippers agreed with each other that this
person had suggested that to them.

He was a shortish, thick-set man of some five and forty years of age.
His large, intelligent face was clean-shaved. The eyes were small and
very bright, shifting hither and thither in a constant flicker of
observation. The mouth was large, and though the lips were thick and
loose, there was nevertheless a certain resolution in them. They were
frequently curved into a half-smile which had something indescribably
sinister and impudent about it. One saw that, in whatever situation he
might find himself, this person would not easily be abashed or unready.

He wore a frock-coat of shining broadcloth. The waistcoat was cut low,
not as well-dressed people would wear it, showing a large expanse of
imitation shirt-front through which a black stud was thrust. A small bow
of black ribbon served as necktie. In some nameless way, he suggested a
peculiarly unpleasing type of irregular dissenting minister in his
appearance, and this was enhanced by the fact that under one arm he
carried a large Bible of limp leather, secured by an india-rubber band.

Yet, with all this, the new-comer had a remarkable and even arresting
personality. Wherever he went, he would not easily escape notice.

By his side sat a tallish youth with sufficient likeness to him to
proclaim a near relationship.

The young fellow's complexion was somewhat muddy, his hair was smooth
and mouse-coloured, his mouth resembled his father's, except that it had
not the impudent good-humour of the elder man's, and was altogether more
furtive and sly.

The two remaining members of the party were men apparently of the
prosperous small-tradesman type, pursy, flabby with good living, who
had added mutton-chop whiskers to their obvious self-esteem.

To one or two members of the congregation there, the father and son were
not unknown. The thick-set, clean-shaved man was Mr. Samuel Hamlyn, the
editor and proprietor of a small local journal,--the _Hornham
Observer_,--and the youth was his son, who acted as reporter to the
paper and signed himself S. Hamlyn, Junior.

Both were well known in local affairs; Hamlyn was a member of the
school-board and held one or two kindred positions. His religious
sympathies had hitherto been supposed to lie with the numerous
dissenting sects in the parish, all of whom had their bills and other
announcements printed at his office.

The momentary interest and stir created by the entrance of the party
died away almost immediately and Mass continued. Certainly no one in the
church realised that in a few short weeks the fat man with the smile
would be notorious all over England, and that they were to be present at
the very first step in the career of one of the shrewdest of vulgar
opportunists the country had ever known.

The seats reserved for the churchwardens were on the opposite side of
the aisle, but almost upon a level with those in which the new-comers
were seated--perhaps some two rows of chairs behind.

Accordingly Doctor Hibbert, the vicar's warden, had a clear view of the
four men just in front.

Hibbert was an upright, soldierly-looking man, who had, in fact, been an
army surgeon, and had now bought a practice in the parish. He was a
skilful doctor, and a man of considerable mental strength, who had made
himself indispensable in the district and was in the way of becoming a
wealthy man. His earnest churchmanship had not militated against his
success, even among the most extreme Protestants and Dissenters of
Hornham. He was known to be a first-class doctor, and he was too strong
a man for any one to take a liberty with, and of such superior power and
mould to the mass of lower-class people whom he attended that his
opinions were respected.

But going about as he did, among every one in the parish, the Doctor
knew far more of its internal state than any one else. Nothing is
concealed from a medical man in general practice. Confession is
compulsory to him; he sees the secrets of men's lives, knows the
tarnished story of the "respectable" person, as sometimes the heroism of
the outcast. Hibbert had his finger on the public pulse of Hornham in a
measure that Father Blantyre himself could hardly achieve.

It was therefore with some little uneasiness and a good deal of
conjecture that the doctor had noticed the advent of Hamlyn and his
party.

The disturbances to public worship which are so familiar to-day were
quite unknown at that time. Hibbert anticipated nothing of what actually
occurred, but his eye was watchful nevertheless.

The Mass went on.

The servers knelt on the altar steps in cotta and cassock, the priest
moved above them in his stiff, flowered chasuble, robed in the garments
of the Passion of our Lord.

The Comfortable Words were said, and the Sursum Corda began.

A deep throbbing sound came from the organ, and, in one great outburst
of solemn avowal, the congregation lifted up their hearts to God.

    SURSUM CORDA!
    HABEMUS AD DOMINUM
    GRATIAS AGAMUS DOMINO DEO NOSTRO!

Ever since the days of the Apostles, the Mass had been said thus, the
most solemn part of the service had begun with these profound words of
adoration. The doctor forgot all else as he worshipped.

Let it be remembered, in the light of what follows, that the vast
majority of the people there believed this, were waiting for
_this_--they believed that when the priest said the Prayer of
Consecration, our Lord Himself had come suddenly among them.

Throughout the rite there was a growing sense and assurance of One
coming. Most of them were quite sure of it.

Human hearts, worn with the troubles of the week, sick to death, it may
be, of a hard material lot, now bowed in contrition and repentance, or
were filled with a certain Hope. Everything in this world was as
nothing, because, upon the altar before which the priest was bending so
low, they believed that God had come.

In what way, or how, they did not know and could not have explained. Did
they _imagine_ it week after week as they knelt in church? Most of them
_knew_ that it was no imagination or delusion that caught at their
hearts, that changed the air of the building in a swift moment, that
caught up heart and soul and spirit in one great outpouring of love and
faith and adoration.

Was _this_ a fable, as folks sometimes told them? This which dissolved
and broke the chains of bodily sense, banished the world, and enfolded
them with its awful sweetness, its immeasurable joy? What else in life
had power to do this, power to hurry away clogging, material things as
in a mighty spiritual wind, to show them once more the stupendous
sacrifice of the Saviour--what else but the indubitable presence of our
Lord?

The priest held up the Host.

At that supreme moment, Doctor Hibbert, whose state of mind may be taken
as typical of many others there, bent in humble adoration and
contrition.

An absolute silence lay over the church; there was not the slightest
sound or movement in it.

A chair was pushed harshly over the tiles, there was a heavy shuffling
of feet. Such sounds in that holy moment affected some of the
worshippers as a physical blow might have done.

But few people looked up. Many of them did not hear the sound, their
ears being tuned to harmonies that were not of this world.

The doctor heard the noise with his ears, but for a merciful moment it
did not penetrate to his brain. And then with a horrid clangour the
visible things of the world came rushing back to him.

He looked up.

The four men just in front of him had risen in their places. The two
tradesmen were red in the face and manifestly uneasy. They breathed
hard, a breath of ostentatious defiance.

Young Hamlyn was glancing round the church with swift, malevolent
movements of his head. His eyes flickered hither and thither until they
finally settled on the motionless figure at the altar, the figure with
the upstretched arm.

The elder Hamlyn held a paper in his hand, from which he began to read
in a loud, unsteady voice:

"_I, Samuel Hamlyn, a lawful parishioner of St. Elwyn's parish, Hornham,
do hereby rise and protest against the illegal and blasphemous fable of
the Mass as performed in this church. And as a member of the Protestant
Church of England I give notice----_"

Every one had risen to his feet. In a distant corner of the church, a
woman began to shriek. A murmur broke into shouts, there was a crash of
some heavy body falling.

A horrid tumult seemed broken loose, as if it had been confined till now
and had broken its bars with one great effort.

In a second, the four men were surrounded by a pushing crowd of men,
beside themselves with horror and anger. Sticks began to quiver in the
air, the crash of the chairs as they were overturned was like the
dropping rattle of musketry fire.

The hard voice of the brawler had gone up a full tone. In its
excitement, it dominated an abominable chorus of shouting.

In half a minute, the doctor and other members of the congregation had
Hamlyn and his son gripped by the arms and were hurrying them towards
the west door without any answer to their frantic threats and menaces.
The other two men followed stolidly.

Nearly every face was turned away from the altar.

The one or two people who had fallen trembling upon their knees when the
riot was at its height saw that the vicar was also kneeling in adoration
of the Blessed Sacrament.

A loud metallic _clang_ resounded through the church. The door was
barred, the brawlers were shut out.

When the maimed, polluted rite was at last concluded, amid deep sobs
from men and women alike, Father Blantyre gave the blessing. They saw
with deep sympathy that the tears were rolling down his cheeks also.

But the doctor saw, with a sudden quickening of the pulses, that the
first finger and the thumb were joined still. It is the custom of the
priest, after he has broken the bread, that the finger and thumb are
never parted till Mass is said.

They were not parted now.

The fact comforted and cheered the doctor. He had been on battle-fields
and had not known the fear and horror he had known to-day.




CHAPTER II

MR. HAMLYN AND SON AT HOME


Mr. Hamlyn lived in Alexandra Road, Hornham. The actual name of his
house was "Balmoral," and it was one of seven or eight other residences
gathered together under the generic title of "Beatrice Villas."

The father and son turned into the little path which led up to the
imitation satin-wood door some twenty minutes after the gate of St.
Elwyn's had been barred to them. Their companions, Mr. Burgoyne and Mr.
Moffatt, had left them at the corner of the street, very flustered at
what they had done, and with a dull remorse flitting about their thick
skulls, that they had joined in "Hamlyn's little game." Nor did the
repeated assurances of the journalist, that Mr. Herbert--the Liberal
candidate--would "see them through it," help them to recover their peace
of mind. Visions of police-court proceedings and an unenviable notoriety
in the daily papers were very vivid, and they parted with their chief
in mingled sorrow and anger.

Mr. Hamlyn let himself and his son into the little hall of his villa. A
smell of roast meat gave evidence that dinner would soon be ready. Both
men turned into the parlour on the left of the passage. It was a room
which showed signs of fugitive rather than regular use. Two or three
long boxes bearing the name of a local draper stood upon the round table
in the centre. The contents showed that Miss Hamlyn, the agitator's only
daughter, had been occupied in the choice of corsets.

The walls of the parlour were covered with a rich mauve and gold paper,
which gave a dignity to the cut-glass lustres of the chandelier. The
pictures, heavily framed in gold, were spirited representations of
scenes from the Old Testament. On the rack of the rosewood piano--which
stood open--was a song called "Roses that Bloomed in my Heart."

The chairs, arranged around the wall with commendable regularity, were
upholstered in plum-coloured plush. On one of them was a card-box of a
vivid green, containing several clean collars of the particular sort
Hamlyn Junior wore; on another stood the wooden box where his father's
silk hat was kept when not in use on Sundays and other important days.

Mr. Hamlyn took off his frock coat and removed the reversible cuffs that
were attached to the sleeves of his flannel shirt by means of an
ingeniously contrived clip. He then put on a loose coat of black alpaca.
His son, having gone through something of the same process, followed his
father to the sitting-room next the little kitchen.

As the parlour was not often used for ceremonial occasions, the Hamlyns
not being very hospitable people, it served as an occasional
dressing-room also, and saved running up-stairs.

The sitting-room window looked out into the backyard, immediately by the
kitchen door, which led into it. As the Hamlyns came in, they were able
to see their servant throwing some hot liquid--the water in which the
cabbage had been boiled, as a matter of fact--into the grid in the
centre of the yard.

The table was already laid for the meal. As, however, it was rather a
long table and the Hamlyns were only three in family,--Hamlyn being a
widower,--the white cloth was laid only on half of it. One or two
volumes of the Heartsease Novelettes and some artificial flowers, with
which a hat was to be trimmed by Miss Hamlyn, were thus left
undisturbed.

"Dinner didn't ought to be long," Mr. Hamlyn remarked.

"'Ope not," said his son shortly. "I'll holler to Maud."

Miss Hamlyn came in soon afterwards, followed by the maid with a joint
of roast beef. The editor's daughter was a tall girl with sulky lips,
bold eyes, and a profusion of dark hair. This last was now screwed round
her forehead in curling-pins.

The two men attacked their dinner in silence. Both of them had tucked a
handkerchief round their necks, in order to preserve the Sunday
waistcoat from droppings of food, a somewhat wise precaution, as both of
them ate very rapidly.

"Maud," said Hamlyn at length, "can you do a bit of typing for me this
afternoon?"

"No, then, I can't, Pa," she replied resentfully, "and it's like you to
ask it. On the Sabbath, too! I'm going out with Gussie Davies for a
walk."

"Touch the 'arp lightly, my dear," he replied, "no need to get your
feathers up."

"Well, Pa," she answered, "I'm sure I'm ready to spank the beastly
machine for you all the week, you know I am. But Sundays is different."

Hamlyn made no reply. Both he and his son were thinking deeply, and as
yet no reference had escaped them as to the doings of the morning.
Although the girl knew there was something special afoot, she was not
much interested in the details, being at all times a person much
occupied with her own affairs.

During the pudding, she had a short and slangy conversation with her
brother, and directly the meal was over she went up-stairs to "dress."

The servant removed the plates and dishes, and Hamlyn and his son sat
down at the table. The father drew a large portfolio of papers towards
him. The son lighted a cheap cigarette.

Both of the Hamlyns spoke fairly correctly in public, though with the
usual cockney twang. In the seclusion of Balmoral, neither of them
thought it necessary to be very particular about the aspirates which
they emphasised so carefully elsewhere.

"When will Mr. Herbert pay up?" said Sam.

"To-morrow. I shall see him in the committee room during the afternoon,
and it's five and twenty pound earned as easy as I ever earned anything
in my life. It'll come in very 'andy too. There's the rent on the
linotype machine just due."

"The money's all right," answered the younger man, "and, of course,
we're guaranteed against fines and anything of that sort. But do you
think the game's worth the candle? How will opinion in the parish go?"

"Like a house on fire. Wait till you see my leader in Wednesday's issue.
Mr. Herbert has put me up to the whole thing. We're carrying out a
patriotic Henglish duty. Public sympathy will all be with us. Rome is
creeping in among us!"

Sam grinned. "Well, you know best, Father, of course. And we're bound to
support Mr. Herbert."

"I've been thinking a great deal," Hamlyn answered slowly. "I've always
been an ambitious man and I've always meant to come out on top somehow
or other. But I've never had a big chance yet. I think,--I'm not
sure,--but I _think_ I see that chance waiting now."

His shrewd face was lighted up with a curious excitement. The eyes
glowed and the impudent merriment on the lips became more pronounced
than before.

"What is it then?"

"Listen quietly to me for a few minutes. The idea came gradual to me. I
got on the track six months ago. First of all, it was the ten gross of
religious books I had down in the shop. They were of all sorts. Which
was the one that went best? Why, it was _The Adventures of Susan
Lefever, the Captive Nun_. I sold 'em all out in no time. The next best
seller was _The Revelations of Pastor Coucherrousset, the Converted
Catholic Priest_. Anything against Rome! Mr. Leatherbarrow, of the New
Connection Methodists, preached three times on those books. He had all
the congregation fair shaking with indignation against the Scarlet
Woman. You see it's like this. People want a cock-shy. They don't much
care about what it is, as long as they've got it--see the way they're
down on the Sheenies in France. Now a religious cock-shy is the best of
all. It gives people a feeling that they're in real earnest, and they
can kid themselves and other people that it's more disinterested than
politics, for instance. They've nothing to get by it--except the fun of
doing it--and that flatters 'em because they're always on the grab in
every other way. See?"

Sam nodded. He was not one of those youths who despise the words of
parental wisdom. He was not himself a fool, and so he did not fall into
the mistake of underrating his father's capacity and knowledge of life.
The small and vulgar triumphs of Hamlyn's career were all appreciated
and noted by his son, who had a sincere respect for him.

"Very well, then," Hamlyn continued. "It's a sure draw, all over
England, to raise the anti-popery cry. The wholesale trade tell me that
the business done in Fox's _Book of Martyrs_ is a perfect knock-out year
by year, and there's a sure sale for the smaller books about the priests
larking with the girls in the confessional and so forth. Anything with
'Secret History' or 'Jesuit' on the title-page 'll sell like the
_Evening News_ on Derby Day. Now, I've been reading all the publications
of the regular Protestant societies during the last few weeks. Plenty of
cuts at the Ritualists, lots of little sixpennies bound in cloth to
prove as there isn't no such thing as apostolic succession, that wafers
is illegal, and the Eastern position rather worse than arson. They're
all very well in their way, but they're written by D.D.'s and M.A.'s and
such like, who don't care to go too far. I have a list in my portfolio
here of the regular Protestant writers--nearly all _class_, my boy.
Listen here:

"_Transubstantiation and the Invocation of Saints._ Rev. J. Cummer,
Canon Residentiary of Ironpool.

"_Popery the Work of 'the Adversary,'--the Roman Clergy under Satanic
Influence._ Rev. R. S. Blanken, LL.D., incumbent of Christ Church,
Oxton.

"_Ritualism in the English Church: A Word of Warning._ Rev. Joshua Cafe,
D.D., prebendary of Bath and Wells.

"There's dozens of others like this. They're all very well in their way,
but they don't strike the really _popular_ note. They've broken the
ground and sowed the seed, but they're not going to reap the harvest."

"Who is, then, Father? And what'll it be worth when it is reaped?"

"Us, my boy. As to the worth of it, go on listening to me and you'll see
things gradually getting clearer. I want you to see how I've worked it
all out. If we _do_ strike oil, all I'm telling you now will be
valuable. During my local work for the Protestant cause down here, I've
been brought in touch with members of the old-established societies and
I've taken the length of their foot. They're too dignified altogether.
Real live methods don't appeal to them. Financially they don't do badly,
but nothing like what they _might_ do if they adopted the right methods.
All their subscriptions come from the upper classes, and there's a whole
goldmine lying at their doors which is quite untouched! _abso-lute-ly_
unworked, Sam! The middle classes and the lower classes haven't _begun_
to give to the Protestant cause. Why? Because it hasn't been put
prominently before them in the way they'll understand. Bang the
field-piece! twang the lyre! thump the tub! rattle the tambourine!
That's the way. Look at the Salvation Army! The time is ripe for new
methods and for a new man who isn't a canon residentiary or a D.D. I've
got all the ritualistic statistics. Day by day the Ritualists are trying
it on, getting nearer and nearer to Rome. Everything is ready."

"I see all that, Father. All you say is clear enough. What I _don't_ see
yet is what you mean to do."

"I'm coming to that. For several years now, I've been prominent in
Hornham affairs. I'm known as a platform speaker in all the
denominations. What do you suppose I did this for six months ago?" he
touched the lapel of his coat, looking down on it as he did so.

"Oh!" he said, "I forgot I'd changed into my old jacket. I was alluding
to the temperance non-smoking ribbon. It's in my frock-coat. Well, I
mentioned it just to point out that I'm known as a man associated with
all good causes."

"But only locally, Pa."

"Exactly. That is all I need to start with. Now, to-day I began: 'Mr.
Hamlyn, a prominent resident in Hornham and a staunch supporter of the
Henglish Protestant Church, has at last felt it his duty to protest
against the illegal practices at St. Elwyn's in as public a manner as
possible.' I've struck a new note, see? What I've done to-day has hardly
ever been done before. Now, why shouldn't this inaugurate a big public
movement all over the country? Why shouldn't offices be taken in the
Strand and a new League started, 'Hamlyn's Protestant Crusade' or
something of that sort? To begin with, subscriptions are invited for
the circulation of real fighting Protestant literature, hot stuff,
giving accounts of the illegal and Romish doings all over the country. I
know where to get the pamphlets written for a mere song, and startlers,
too. Of course, we have all the printing done at the works here in
Hornham,--that'll be worth something considerable. Meanwhile, mark what
happens. The 'silly season' comes on and the newspapers haven't got much
to write about. Our little London concern is established and then we
begin touring round to all the Ritualistic churches and protesting
against their aims. If I know what I'm talking about, in a fortnight or
three weeks one of the biggest booms of the century will begin!
Everything we do will be in the papers, rows in the churches,
police-court proceedings--everything. Whenever I write a letter of
protest to the Bishop of London or the Archbishop of Canterbury it will
appear in all the papers. It don't matter what they say as long as they
mention the Crusade! Then'll come the moment when we really launch out
and become a national Institution. We'll get half a dozen parsons and
fifth-rate M.P.'s to form a committee, and some one to be a treasurer:
he's easy found. Then I become secretary and you assistant-secretary:
we are _salaried_ officials, of course, and we start a little magazine
as the Society's official organ--to be printed at the works. I've many
more ideas for the extension of the plan,--brilliant ideas some of them,
too. But I won't go into them now. I've only given you the roughest
outline of the scheme as yet. Meanwhile, as a preliminary, I'm going to
flimsy out a dozen short reports of to-day's proceedings at St. Elwyn's,
and I want you to run up to Fleet Street with them, about five this
evening. All the dailies will print it."

He chuckled. "That's the chief beauty of the scheme," he continued; "you
get the majority of your advertisements free, and in the best papers,
too! It's about the only scheme I ever heard of that could."

He stopped at last and sank back in his chair, exhausted. He had spoken
long and with great animation, with all the tricks and mannerisms of
rough-and-tumble platform oratory, in which he was a master. The
pantomime of his expressive gestures, the indescribable impudence of the
smile as he sought to prove some depth of folly in the public, the quick
inflections of the voice, gave great force to his words. They sounded
convincing to the younger Hamlyn, into whose muddy pallor a deep red
flush had gradually come.

"It's a big thing, Pa," he said at length, "a very big thing. I see
that, and you're the one to make it go. But there's a lot to be done
first. 'Ave we the ready money to start it? Even in a small way, to get
it once before the public will cost four or five hundred pounds."

"That's the difficulty, Sam, I admit it. We are pretty low down at
present. The business just keeps its head above water, that's all. The
money from Mr. Herbert is a help, but it's all gone as soon as we get
it. I was thinking that if to-day's little protest makes a stir and we
can do ditto round-abouts during the next week or two, we could get
Moffatt and Burgoyne to advance a hundred each, p'r'aps. As a personal
loan. Mr. Herbert would be good for fifty now, but as soon as he's
elected you'll see he won't bother any more. When we've made the whole
thing hum, he'll come to us and offer to be our Parliamentary
representative. I'm reserving him for that. He'll be useful to ask
questions and help the fizz-up generally. It'll suit him because he'll
have a chance of getting his name in the papers, and it's about the
only chance he will have of getting prominent in the House. But, as far
as the preliminary stages are concerned, my opinion is that he's N.G.
The worst of it is that with a scheme of this sort one can't very well
put it on the market. That's the one drawback of a religious scheme.
There's lots of men who'd see the money in it, but who'd see that if
they joined they couldn't touch a cent. There can't be more than one or
two salaried officials. No, we must depend upon ourselves entirely. I'm
not afraid. It's what Napoleon did, and I'm going to be the Protestant
Napoleon! There's a lot in catchwords--speaking on a side issue--'The
Luther League!' 'Smithfield Soldiers!' or Bunyan's 'Holy War' might be
revived."

"No, Pa, that wouldn't do now. 'Holy' is a regular Ritualistic word."

"Well, so it is, Sam. I hadn't thought of it. I'm glad to see that
you've got a good grip of the thing."

There was a silence in the mean little room. In the adjacent kitchen,
the servant could be heard singing, "Ower lod geris anoice yeng men, ow
dear, ow dear naow!" A big green-bellied fly sung and drummed on the
window-pane in the afternoon sunlight. Hamlyn, replete with enthusiasm
and beef, had taken off his alpaca coat and unloosed his collar. The air
was heavy with the odour of food and the acrid smell of Sam's
"ten-for-threepence" cigarettes, while a penetrating smell of new
calico, proceeding from some of Maud's dressmaking operations, dominated
it all.

A church bell, ringing for afternoon service, was heard not far away.

Suddenly Hamlyn struck the table a sounding blow with his fist.

"It _is_ a good thing," he shouted in a wild burst of enthusiasm.

The voice was so full, and confident, that it rang out in the place like
a trumpet.

It had the true accent of an enthusiast, of a leader. There was
mesmerism in it. Hearing it, one would have said that this man would
succeed.

He could influence others, he had energy, resource, and temperamental
force. It was true. The man was gifted. He had power, and to whatever
end that might be directed it would not lose its efficacy. The
conviction of success, its trumpet note, was to become familiar in vast
hysterical assemblies. It was to be mistaken for a deep and earnest
wish to purify the Church, to scatter the wolves from the environs of
the fold. Greed can be sonorous. Tartuffe can always find his Orgon, and
to hawk a battle-cry among the ignorant and dull has ever been a
profitable game.

"I've a word to say, Pa," the son echoed; "I've an idea where the first
cash is to come from."

"Good, my boy. Let's have it."

"What about Miss Pritchett?"

Hamlyn looked reproachfully at his son. "What about the monument!" he
answered with a sneer. "She's got the cash, she's got tons of it. But
she's a red-hot Ritualist and Romaniser. Ask me another, Sam."

Samuel smiled slyly. "Wait a mo, Pa," he said. "I know a good deal more
about Miss Pritchett than you do. I've been walkin' out with Augusta
Davis lately. She's a friend of Maud's."

"The companion, you mean? Miss Pritchett's companion? Oh, you've been
smelling round in that quarter, have you?"

"And I've learnt a bit. I know all that goes on. Gussie tells me and
Maud everything. Miss Pritchett's getting tired of St. Elwyn's. She
can't boss the new vicar like she used the old one. As for the Roman
business, she doesn't really care for it. She's nothing to amuse herself
with except that and her ailments. It's the old cat's vanity, that's
all. She likes to be a patroness."

"That's the sort of woman we want," answered Mr. Hamlyn, obviously
struck by the the word. "There are a lot of rich, single old judies only
fit to be patronesses. They're cut out for it. Do you really think
anything could be done."

"I do most certainly, Pa. I 'appen to know that Miss Pritchett is
getting on very bad terms with Blantyre. He won't stand her meddling.
I've one or two ideas in my head to help it along. Gussie'll do anything
I tell her."

"Well, Sam, you do all you can. We won't talk about the matter any more
now. I've got a lot of strings to pull, and I've got a lot of matters in
my mind. We shall get a summons for brawling to-morrow, I expect. I'm
done up now, and I'm going to have a nap. Wake me up in an hour if I'm
asleep, and I'll get out the flimsies for to-morrow's papers."

Hamlyn possessed that faculty of sleeping at any moment, and of waking
when it suited him, that so often goes with any marked executive
capacity.

He stretched himself upon the little horsehair sofa and covered his face
with his handkerchief.

Samuel picked up one of the "Heartsease" novelettes and tried to read in
it. But his brain was alight with the splendour of the new project, and
he could not concentrate his thought upon _Joyce Heathcote's Lover_.

It was thus that the seeds of the new movement were sown, in the back
parlour at Balmoral, Beatrice Villas, Alexandra Road. Historians tell us
that even greater and more epoch-making movements than Mr. Hamlyn's was
destined to be, have originated in even less pretentious dwellings.

Many of us have seen the little house in the Brede Kirk Street of the
old Dutch town, on which is written, _Haec est parva domus natus qua
magnus Erasmus_.

Mr. Hamlyn, Junior, had never heard of Erasmus, but he saw visions of
greatness on that afternoon.




CHAPTER III

LORD HUDDERSFIELD AND THE GUESTS AT SCARNING COURT


From April until the beginning of August, Lord Huddersfield generally
lived at his house at Scarning, the famous old Tudor mansion on the
river, below Pangbourne.

Peers who are something more than merely "in society" are generally
known to the public at large by reason of some cause which they benefit,
defend, or are associated with. When it is not a cause, it is a business
that gives such an one his label for the man in the street.

Lord _So-and-so_ is, of course, the great banker or brewer; Lord _This_
is the famous picture collector, who has all the Holbeins; Lord _That_
is known to be the best amateur actor, billiard player, or breeder of
bloodhounds in England. In an age when all celebrities are easily
distinguished thus, Lord Huddersfield, was perfectly familiar to
everyone as the great organising churchman. The ordinary person would
say, "Lord Huddersfield? Oh, yes, the great Ritualistic Johnny,"
imagining that he had summed up his man with completeness. Yet, saving
only to churchmen and their antagonists--a very small proportion of the
public to-day--Lord Huddersfield was personally quite unknown. He was
hardly ever caricatured in the comic papers or pictured in the more
serious illustrated journals. His face was wholly unfamiliar; the
details of his private life formed no portion of the gossip papers. To
the vast army of English folk, who are utterly indifferent to religious
questions, he was nothing more than a name.

He had only once excited a really general flicker of interest. On the
occasion of a visit to Italy, like many other distinguished visitors to
the capital, he had been received in audience by the Bishop of Rome. As
usual, the evening papers had published "rumours."

    "LORD HUDDERSFIELD AND THE POPE.
      WILL HE BECOME A CATHOLIC?"

had appeared as a scare head-line in one enterprising sheet, and the
peer's telegram, stating that he had been one for many years had been
hastily printed as a startling revelation--until some charitable person
had stepped round to the office and explained the joke to a bewildered
Scotch editor, and the paragraph was excised from later editions.

This much for the figure he cut to the outside world. In the English
Church, he was looked upon as one of the leading laymen, if not the
chief of all of them. He was the proprietor of the great weekly paper
known as the _Church Standard_. He was the chairman of many church
societies, the friend and patron of all Anglican movements and
institutions, and a man whose word carried enormous weight and power.

In private life, his two children and his intimate friends found him
true, devout, diligent, winning all hearts by opening his own, where one
found a singular freshness and simplicity. He went as little into
general society as he could, for all his thoughts and aims were occupied
in one endeavour.

On the Monday after the events in Hornham, Agatha Poyntz and her brother
James were in the lovely private backwater of Scarning. Their punt was
moored to the side of a tiny island, set like a gem in the clear brown
water, the red silk cushions of the boat making a vivid splash of colour
on the bank. With these two was Miss Poyntz's great friend and
confidante, Lucy Blantyre, the only sister of the vicar of St. Elwyn's.

Lucy was a girl of medium height, not at all the willowy modern heroine
of pictures and romance. Her hair was of a deep, dead black, coiled on a
small Greek head. Her complexion was dark, like that of her brother, the
priest, but quite without a certain sallowness that was noticeable in
him. It had the dusky paleness, the pearl-like _morbidezza_ of some
southern types, and, despite the lack of colour, showed a perfect and
happy health. The mouth was rather large. Mockery lurked there, and in
the dark eyes a lambent and somewhat scornful humour was wont to play.

Agatha Poyntz was a tall and merry girl--"a nut-brown maid" her father
called her. Her round, plump face showed a sheer light-heartedness and
joy in life that was always refreshing to people who found this life
rather a drab and ordinary affair. The care-worn priests and churchmen
who were her father's friends, men who were always too painfully aware
of the great stream of human tears which is for ever falling through the
shadows of the world, were all fond of her freshness and sparkle. And,
so the wisest of them thought that since she took nothing seriously, and
was quite untouched by the vexing problems in which they were
submerged, it was perhaps a good thing that so gay and bright a creature
should come into their lives for a space, realising that, after all, God
made the butterflies which hovered so daintily over the Scarning
water-flowers upon their painted fans.

James Poyntz, Lord Huddersfield's only son, was a very different type.
He resembled his dead mother, a daughter of the Duke of St. Just. He was
tall, slender, and muscular. His face was clean-shaved, lean, and with a
heavy jaw, not the heaviness that signals sensuality and dulness, but
purpose and resolution. His eyes were grey, and glittered when he became
animated, and his clear, cold voice grew emphatic.

Not long before, he had come down from Oxford, where he had
distinguished himself in the history schools, and also by availing
himself of the little-used permission to absent himself from chapel and
the examination known as "Divinity Moderations," granted to men who have
come of age, and who sign a declaration of their absolute and sincere
disbelief in the supernatural. It had been a piquant spectacle to the
sceptic undergraduates and younger dons, to see the son and heir of
Lord Huddersfield openly scornful and protesting against all that his
father held so dear, and quietly taking the much severer tests that the
University statutes impose upon those who would dispense with the
puerile divinity examination.

James Poyntz was on rather bad terms with his father. There was no
confidence between them, and perhaps but little love--though that had
never been tested. The young man had a sufficient fortune from his
mother, and his father was prepared to supplement his income in any way
he might wish, being far too sensible and just a man to endeavour to
make his son suffer financially for his opinions. But James Poyntz
refused money which, as he said, would have been purely superfluous to
him, and was occupied in carving a career for himself at the common-law
bar, where he was already a not inconspicuous figure among the junior
men.

His knowledge of ecclesiastical law was good, and in the wrangles
between diocesan chancellors and recalcitrant clergy which were becoming
more and more frequent, he was frequently retained. He was a very
familiar figure in Dr. Tristram's Consistory Court, and his familiarity
with ecclesiastical litigation only increased a contempt for those who
professed and called themselves Christians, which was as profound as it
was sincere, and as fundamentally the result of ignorance as it was
both.

For, brilliant as he was, the young man had not the slightest
acquaintance with modern religious thought. He saw everything through
the spectacles of temperamental distaste, and still believed that
Professor Huxley had dealt the final blow to Christianity in 1876! Lord
Huddersfield had often pressed his son to read the question as it at
present stood, to see what Gore and the philosophic apologists were
saying, or even to note the cautious but inevitable conclusions that
prominent scientists like Lord Kelvin and Sir Oliver Lodge were arriving
at. But the young man always refused. The ancient indictment of the
Gadarene swine represented the last word in the controversy for him, and
a brain keen and finely furnished with facts on all other questions, on
this was not only content to be forty years behind the conclusions of
theological science, but imagined that it was in the van of contemporary
thought.

Of late, Lord Huddersfield had given up the attempt to influence his
son's opinions. "It is impossible," he had said, "to explain that the
sky is blue to a man who has blindfolded himself all his life, and one
cannot build a basis in a vacuum." So, while both men respected each
other's attainments on all subjects but religious ones, on these James
thought his father a fool, and Lord Huddersfield knew that his son was.

Despite all this difference, the younger man was a frequent and welcome
visitor at his father's various houses, and between him and his sister
Agatha there was a real and deep affection. Agatha was conventionally
indifferent to religious things, James was profoundly antagonistic to
them, and thus, if they did not meet quite on common ground, they were
never likely to disagree.

And Lucy Blantyre, the third member of that gay young trio on the summer
morning, was a combination of both of them. She was very well off in the
affairs of this world, as indeed was her brother, Bernard Blantyre of
St. Elwyn's. But, while he had early devoted his life and money to the
service of God, Lucy had refused to identify herself with his interests.
She lived with her aunt, Lady Linquest, a gay old dame of Mayfair, and
it was only at rare intervals that she paid a duty visit to her
brother. Yet, though she was, from a surface point of view, purely a
society girl, popular, and happy in a bright and vivid life, there were
temperamental depths in her, unsounded as yet, which showed her
sometimes--to her own wonder and discomfort--that she was a true
blood-sister to the priest in north-east London. At times, a wave of
scorn for the Church possessed her. She saw the worst side of religious
externals and poured bitter fun upon their anomalies. This is, of
course, a very easy thing to do. Any one can ridicule the unseen and its
ministers: it requires no special talent to be rude to God! At other
times, the girl saw this very clearly and was ashamed. She had a good
brain and despised all that was cheap and vulgar at the bottom; and when
her moods of wilfulness had passed, she stood upon the brink of devotion
and belief.

Nothing serious animated any of the three. The day was wonderful. In a
sky like a hard, hollow sapphire the sun burned like a white-hot disc of
platinum. The island was deliciously cool; the murmur of a near river
mingled with the bourdon of the bees. The smooth turf on which they lay
was starred with chaste and simple flowers.

"Isn't it _perfect_ to-day!" Agatha said. "Bee, go away from my face!
'Pleasant it is when the woods are green and the winds are soft and low,
to lie amid some sylvan scene'--Lucy, dear, what are you thinking
about?"

"I was wondering if we were really reclining in what the poets of last
century called 'bosky shade.' Is this bosky, Mr. Poyntz?"

"Decidedly bosky, I should say. But surely both of you can put the
island to a better use than merely to illustrate quotations from the
poets? It's far too fine for that."

"Oh, do let me have 'bosky'," Lucy replied. "It's such a dear, comic
word. I've always loved it. It always seems a fat word to me. I'm sure
it's fat and it waddles--in the word world!"

"Then what does Agatha's 'sylvan' do?"

"Oh, sylvan?--well, I should think it was a slim, graceful, and very
young-ladyish kind of word. It wears a neat grey tailor-made coat and
skirt, and says, 'Papa is of opinion that,' or, 'Mamma has frequently
told me.'"

They all laughed, pleased with themselves, the hour, and the charm that
perfectly absurd talk has for young and happy people.

"Oh, don't talk of words, Miss Blantyre," Poyntz said, "I'm tired of
them. The long vacation draws near, when I want to forget all about
them. My words, the words I live by, or for, are beasts."

"Quote, dearest," Agatha said.

"Well, this is the sort of thing I see more often than anything else at
present," he replied: "'The humble petition of the vicar and
churchwardens of St. Somebody sheweth that, it being considered
desirable to make certain alterations and improvements in the church of
the said Parish, a meeting in Vestry duly convened for considering the
same, was held on the first of June, at which it was resolved that the
alterations shown in the plan annexed hereto and there produced, should
be carried out, a copy of which resolution is also hereto annexed.'"

Both the girls cried out to him to stop.

"What musty words, dry and rusty words!" Lucy said. "And, please, what
are they all about, and what do they mean?"

"They mean this--some worthy parson has badgered his congregation for
money. It is the desire of his soul to have a rood-screen in his
chancel, with a gilt and splendid crucifix upon the top. So, armed with
a mouthful of words like that, he gets him to a sort of cellar near St.
Paul's, where a dear old gentleman, named the Right Worshipful T. H.
Tristram, K. C., D.C.L., sits, in a big wig and a red robe. The parson
eloquently explains his wishes, and the Right Worshipful tells him to go
and be hanged--or polite words to that effect. Then I and other young
legal 'gents' get up and talk and argue, and the Right Worshipful
listens until he's tired, and then says no again. The parson goes back
to his roodless temple and preaches against Erastianism, and I and the
other young legal 'gents' pouch a few guineas, and go and play pool at
the Oxford and Cambridge Club."

"And then," Agatha went on,--"then father makes a speech and writes a
letter to the _Times_ and gets fearfully excited and worried for about a
week, neglects his meals, passes sleepless nights, and behaves in a
perfectly foolish manner generally. Then he goes down to the parish and
has a convivial meat tea with the poor parson, and before he goes gives
him a cheque for fifty pounds to go and have a holiday with after all
the strain!"

"Exactly," said Lucy, "I will take up the parable. I have seen our
friend, the parson, in the unutterable north London slum, where my poor
dear brother Bernard spends all his time and money. He goes, as you
say, for a holiday, to recover from the scene in the cellar near St.
Paul's. He goes to Dieppe or Boulogne, where he attends the cathedral
three times a day, and tries to fraternise with the priests, who regard
him as a layman masquerading in borrowed plumes. In revenge, he goes and
makes things uncomfortable for the local English chaplain, who, in most
continental towns, is an undersized person with a red nose and an
enormous red moustache and a strong flavour of Chadband at home. So
'all's well that ends well.' But, really, what fearful nonsense it all
is! Isn't it wonderful that people should waste their energies so!"

"If it amuses them it doesn't matter in the least," Agatha said. "Look
how happy it makes poor dear father. And I daresay he does good in his
way, don't you know. It's far better than racing or anything like that.
Poor dear Hermione Blackbourne was staying here not long ago, and she
was telling me what a wretched time they have at home. Lord Saltire
hardly ever pays the girls' allowances unless he's won a race, and the
poor dears have to study the sporting papers to know if they'll be able
to afford new frocks for Goodwood. Father's fads are at least harmless,
or, at any rate, no one has to suffer for what he gives away."

"The old type of clergyman seems to have quite died out," Lucy said.
"When I was a little girl, the rector at home was a dear old man, who
dressed just like an ordinary person, and went otter-hunting three days
a week. Yet I'm sure he was just as earnest as any of these new faddy
people. We had a delightful old pew, with a fireplace and chairs, and
poor dear father used to get his nap. And as for altar lights and copes
and incense, I don't suppose dear old Mr. Jenkyns had ever heard of such
things. The amount of money that Bernard spends on his church in that
way is ridiculous."

"The only good I can see in it," James Poyntz said, "is that it brings a
certain colour element into drab and dull lives. The people in your
brother's parish, who never see any thing artistic, must gain in that
way, I suppose. After all, Miss Blantyre, 'it's an ill wind that blows
nobody any good.' All this Church nonsense gives pleasure, however much
we may laugh at it. Take myself, for example. I'm intensely amused at
all the squabbles that go on between Christians. More evil passions are
stirred up and let loose over half a yard of green silk or the precise
manner in which half an ounce of flour and water is baked than the
politics of a century excite! It's perfectly true. There's a spirit of
bitter hatred in it all that is intensely interesting to the student of
character. There are hundreds of thousands of people in England who
would burn my poor father in front of St. Paul's to-morrow if they
could--good, respectable, honest British folk!"

"Well," Lucy said, with affected gloom, "all this only reminds me of my
coming penance. In a day or so now, I must dive into Hornham for my
yearly stay with Bernard. I shall emerge quite thin and crushed. I
always do. The 'clergy-house,' as they call the vicarage, is a
lugubrious place that suggests a rather superior workhouse. When I go,
the drawing-room is solemnly opened by the housekeeper. Bernard gives a
couple of dinner parties and a garden party to a set of the most
extraordinary people you ever saw in your life. I have to be hostess and
chatter to weird people, with whom I haven't a single idea in common.
Lady Linquest drove down from Park Lane to the garden party last year. I
shall never forget it. She gave Bernard such a talking to, told him to
'dress like a gentleman,' and exchange to a nice country parish with
some county people close by, and marry. I wish he would, too! He's
wasting his life, his money, and his health in that awful place. I don't
wonder at aunt's being angry. Why can't he do as she says? He could have
high jinks in a nice little country church in one of the home counties
just as well as where he is now."

"Beastly life, I should think," James Poyntz said. "Does he live all
alone?"

"Oh, the two curates live with him, Father Stephens and Father
King--they're all 'fathers,' it seems. These are two intense youths, who
dress in cassocks and tippets all day long, and wear their berrettas
everywhere. I think it's positively indecent to sit down to a meal
dressed like that. But the worst of it is, that there's always some fast
day or other, and I feel an awful pig to be having chicken and claret
while the other three have oatmeal and apples. But I insisted on proper
meals last year, much to the disgust of a gaunt old cat of a
housekeeper, whom Bernard thinks the whole world of."

She stopped, laughing at her own volubility, and lay back upon the
cushions, staring up at the green-leaf canopy above her head. All these
questions seemed very trivial and unreal at that moment, in that
pleasant place of sunshine, soft breezes, and the murmur of falling
water. She thought of the long, mean, suburban streets of Hornham with
humorous dismay. Thank goodness that she was only going to spend a
fortnight there, and then would be away in a gay continental
watering-place with Lady Linquest. But the few days were imperative. She
was fond of her brother and knew how bitterly disappointed he would be
if she were to withdraw from her promise to stay at St. Elwyn's. It was
a duty which must be done, and it was an unkind fate indeed that had
placed her brother in surroundings which were so uncongenial to her, and
endowed him with opinions so alien to her own.

James Poyntz had lighted a cigarette. The smoke curled upwards in
delicate grey spirals, and he could see his sister's friend through
them, surrounded by a shifting frame which cut off the striking and
clever face from its immediate surroundings, giving it a vivid and
independent individuality. He could survey it more completely so. There
was something in Lucy Blantyre that had begun to appeal to the young
man with great and greater strength as the days went on. She was close
upon beauty, and she had all the charm of a high-spirited and well-bred
girl in perfect health, and knowing no trouble in life. But in the life
to which he had been born, girls like her were not uncommon. Despite the
fiction-mongers who fulminate against the vices of "society," and would
have their readers believe that the flower of English girlhood is to be
found in the middle class alone, Poyntz knew many gracious girls who
were worthy to stand by any man's side throughout life. But in Lucy
Blantyre he was beginning to discern something deeper and stronger. He
thought that he saw in her a wonderful capacity for companionship, a
real talent for wifehood. He could imagine that she would be more to her
husband than an ordinary wife, identified with his hopes and career with
all her soul's power, one for whom Milton's epithalamium itself would
not be unworthy, with its splendid "Hail, wedded love!"

But, though such thoughts had been in and out of his mind for some time,
he was hardly in love with her as yet. His temperament was honest and
sincere, but cool and judicial also. He was the last man to take any
definite step without a full weighing of the chances and results.

But the two had become great friends. Agatha Poyntz had her own thoughts
about the matter, and they were very pleasant ones. Nothing would have
pleased her more than the marriage of her brother and her friend, and
she had made _tête-à-têtes_ for them in the adroit, unobtrusive manner
that girls know.

In all his conversations with Lucy, Poyntz had found a keen, resilient
brain that answered to his thoughts in precisely the way he wished. The
tinge of cynicism in her corresponded to the flavour of it in him, and
there was sometimes real wit and understanding in her mockery.

She "suited" him--that is how he would have put it--and he was now
beginning to ask and examine himself if love were not being born, a love
which might make their union a perfect and lasting thing upon his way
through life. Of her sentiments towards him he knew no more than that
she sincerely liked him and that they were friends.

The regular throbbing pant of a steam launch on the silver Thames
outside was heard, and Lucy turned suddenly in Poyntz's direction. She
saw that he was looking at her gravely and steadily. A very faint flush
came into her cheeks, almost imperceptible indeed, and then she smiled
frankly at him.

He smiled also, pleased with himself and her, and with a sense that a
new intimacy was suddenly established between them, an odd sense of
which he was quite certain.

Agatha looked at the little watch in a leather bracelet on her wrist.
"It's nearly lunch time!" she said; "I don't know how you people feel,
but the word has a very welcome sound to me. Jim, get up and punt us
home. You'll be able to argue with Father Saltus; I've asked him to
lunch with us to-day. I didn't know you were coming down."

She spoke of Lord Huddersfield's domestic chaplain, a wise and courtly
elderly man, whom they all liked, without in the least realising the
part he played in Church affairs, regarding him, indeed, as a harmless
student and a pleasant companion, but no more.

In fact, as the light and careless conversation of all of them showed,
not one of the three young people had the remotest idea of what they
were discussing. And though each one of them had a sense of humour, they
were not able to see the humorous side of their airy patronage of the
Catholic Church! This Mr. Saltus was known as one of the most profound
metaphysicians of the day. The greatest modern brains were influenced by
his writings in Christian apologetics; bishops, statesmen, great
scientists knew of him as one to whom it was given to show how all
thought and all philosophy were daily proving the truth of the
Incarnation. His work in the life of the Church was this, and he was
Lord Huddersfield's chaplain because that position gave him leisure and
freedom for his work, and kept him in touch with the very centre of
things.

James Poyntz had arrived from London by an early train, and had joined
the girls at once.

In a moment or two, the young man was propelling the long mahogany punt
with easy strokes towards the artificial cutting which led to the
Seaming boathouse. Then, laughing and talking together, the three
strolled over the wonderful lawns, pneumatic to the tread, brilliant as
emerald to the eye, towards the old house with its encircling oaks and
elms.

The tall red chimneys rose up between the leaves, that triumph of the
Tudor style, which alone of all architectural systems has shown how
chimneys may aid and complete the beauty of a building. The house rested
upon the lawns as if it might float away at any moment, as they passed
round an ancient grey dove-cot and some formal box-trees, and came in
sight of the beautiful place. James Poyntz gave a quick breath of
pleasure as he saw it, the old riverside palace of his ancestors. There
were other houses which would one day be his--a great, grim Yorkshire
fortress, the gay villa at Nice by the old citadel of Mont-Albano, where
the Paglion sings its song of the mountain torrent, the decorous London
mansion in Berkeley Square. But of all, he loved the old Tudor house by
the river best.

How well Lucy walked! her carriage was a pleasure to watch. Yes! she
harmonised with her background, she was in correspondence with her
environment, she would be a fit mistress of Scarning in some dim future
day.

They sat down to lunch in an ancient, mellow room, panelled in oak, with
Tudor roses everywhere. It was beautifully cool and fresh after the
glare outside. Father Saltus was a tall and very portly elderly man. His
head was large, formed on a grand scale, and his mouth powerful but
good-humoured. His eyebrows were very bushy and extremely white, and
they overhung eyes which were of a dark grey, deep but not sombre, with
much that was latent there.

The meal was progressing merrily when the butler entered and spoke to
the footman who had been waiting on them. Then he went up to Agatha.
"His Lordship has returned, Miss," he said, "and will be down to lunch
in a moment."

Lord Huddersfield had been away for several days. The family house in
London was let, as the Baron did not entertain largely since his wife's
death. Agatha's season was spent under the wing of the St. Justs, her
mother's people. But Lord Huddersfield had chambers in Piccadilly, and
no one ever quite knew whether or not he would be at Scarning at any
given time.

He entered in a moment, a slim, spectacled man, with a short beard, very
quietly dressed, a man who did not, at first glance, in any way suggest
the power he wielded or the strenuous personality he was.

He kissed his daughter, shook hands with his son, Lucy, and the
chaplain, and sat down. They noticed that he was pale and worried.

"Have any of you seen the papers?" he said in a strong, resonant voice,
which came oddly from a man so ordinary and undistinguished in
appearance.

"I saw the _Times_ this morning, Father," Poyntz said, "but that is
all." The girls confessed that they had not touched the pile of journals
in the library, and Mr. Saltus said he had been writing letters all the
morning and so had not yet been able to see the news.

"I am sorry," said Lord Huddersfield sadly. "I had hoped that you would
have seen the thing that has happened. I had hoped that I should not
have had to tell you, Miss Blantyre."

His voice was so charged with meaning that Lucy shivered. Her eyes
became full of apprehension. "Why me, Lord Huddersfield?" she said,
"what has happened?"

Agatha, who was thoroughly frightened, laid a sympathetic hand upon her
friend's arm. James, who was gazing anxiously at the girl, suddenly
turned to his father.

"I think you had better tell your news right out," he said quietly.
"Don't keep Miss Blantyre in suspense, Father; it is mistaken kindness.
I am sure that she will be brave."

Every one looked at Lord Huddersfield; the air was tense with
expectation. "Your good brother, Miss Blantyre," the peer began--Lucy
gave a quick gasp and the colour faded from her lips--"your good
brother, yesterday in church, was saying Mass when suddenly some local
residents rose in their places and made an open protest, shouting and
brawling at the very moment of the Prayer of Consecration!"

Lucy gazed steadfastly at him, waiting. He said nothing more. "Go on,
please," she managed to whisper at last.

"They were at once ejected, of course," Lord Huddersfield said.

"And Bernard?"

"Although his state of mind must have been terrible, despite his pain, I
learn from a private telegram that he continued the service to the end."

The three young people stared incredulously; only Father Saltus suddenly
looked very grave.

"But--why--is that all, Lord Huddersfield?" Lucy said with a gasp of
half-relief. "I thought you meant that something dreadful had happened
to Bernard."

"Yes," he said, very surprised, "I have told you."

James picked up his knife and fork, and continued his lunch without a
word. He was very angry with his father.

Agatha shrugged her shoulders slightly.

"Oh, that wasn't quite fair, Lord Huddersfield," Lucy said tremulously.
"You really made me think some awful thing had happened. Only a brawl in
church?"

"I am very sorry, my dear," he answered quickly; "I fear I have shown a
great want of tact. I did not know. I forgot, that is, that you don't
quite see these things as we do. You don't realise what it means."

"Shall I give you some chicken, Father?" Agatha said, looking at a dish
of mayonnaise before her. She thought that there had been quite a fuss
made about nothing.

Lord Huddersfield sighed. He felt that he was in a thoroughly
uncongenial atmosphere, though he was sorry for the alarm he had caused.
Once his eye fell in mild wonder upon his guest. How unlike her brother
she was, he thought.

There was an awkward silence, which James broke at length.

"I always thought," he said, "that there would be trouble soon. The days
for locking clergymen up have passed by, but Protestant feeling is bound
to have its outlet."

His quick brain had seized upon the main point at once.

"Well, there will be more work for the lawyers," he continued.

Lord Huddersfield frowned a little. "Of course, I can't expect you to
see the thing as I do, James," he said. "To me such a public insult to
our Lord is terrible. It almost frightens one. What poor Blantyre must
have felt, what every Catholic there must have felt, is most painful to
imagine."

"I'm sure Mr. Poyntz has sympathy with any body of people whose most
sacred moment has been roughly disturbed," the chaplain said. "Whatever
a man's convictions may be, he must feel that. But the thing is over and
nothing can put it right. What I fear is, that this is only the
beginning of a series of sacrilegious acts which may do the Church
incalculable harm."

"The newspaper report, which appeared everywhere but in the _Times_,"
Lord Huddersfield replied, "stated that it was only the beginning of a
campaign. All the reports were identical and apparently supplied to the
papers by the same person, probably the brawlers themselves--who appear
to be people of no consequence whatever."

"There will be a service of reparation?" asked the chaplain.

"Yes, to-morrow," answered Lord Huddersfield. "I am going down to
Hornham and shall be present. We must discuss everything with Blantyre
and settle exactly what lines the _Church Standard_ will take up."

"Of course, Mr. Blantyre will prosecute?" James said.

"Oh, yes. My telegram told me that the summons had already been issued.
The law is quite clear, I suppose, on the point, James?"

"Quite. Brawling in church is a grave offence. But these people will, of
course, pose as martyrs. Public opinion will be with them, a nominal
fine will be inflicted, and they'll find themselves heroes. I'm afraid
the Ritualists are going to have a bad time. In '68, the Martin _v._
Mackonochie judgment was very plain, and in '71 the judicial committee
of the Privy Council was plainer still in the case of Herbert _v._
Punchas. Then, after the Public Worship Regulation Act, the Risdale
judgment clinched the whole thing. That was at the beginning of it all.
Now, though prosecutions have been almost discontinued, the few cases
that have been heard before the ecclesiastical courts are all the same.
So far as I can see, if this pleasant little habit of getting up and
brawling protests in church becomes popular, a big fire will be lighted
and the advanced men will have to draw in their horns."

Lord Huddersfield smiled. He attempted no argument or explanation. He
had thrashed out these questions with his son long ago. Father Saltus
spoke instead.

"If this really spreads into a movement, as it may," he said, "ignorant
public opinion will be with the protestors for a month or two. But that
is all. The man in the street will say that every one has a right to
hold whatever religious opinions he pleases, and to convert others to
his views--if he can--by the ordinary methods of propagandism. But he
will also say that no one has a right to air his opinions by disturbing
the devotions of those who don't happen to agree with him. And what is
more, no religious cause was ever advanced by these means. I have no
doubt that these people will boast and brag that they are vindicating
the cause of law in the Church of England. But if they knew anything of
the history of that Protestantism they champion--which, of course, they
_don't_, for they know nothing whatever--they would know that the law is
the most impotent of all weapons to crush a religious movement."

James nodded. "It is a truism of history," he agreed.

"Exactly. To call in the aid of the law to counteract the spread of any
religious doctrine or ceremonial is to adopt the precise means that sent
the Oxford martyrs to the stake and lighted the Smithfield fires. From
the days when the High Priests called in the law's aid to nip
Christianity in the bud, the appeal to the law has never been anything
but an appeal to the spirit of intolerance and persecution against the
freedom of religious belief and worship."

Agatha rose from the table. "Come along, Lucy dear," she said; "'all's
well that ends well,' and your brother's not going to have a bomb thrown
at him just yet. You will be in the thick of the disturbance in a few
days; meanwhile, make the most of the river and the sunshine! Jim, come
and punt us to the Eyot."

She kissed her father and fluttered away singing happily a snatch of an
old song, _Green Grow the Rushes O!_

The others followed her. The two elder men were left alone, and for a
minute or two neither spoke.

Then Saltus said: "They are all young, they have made no contact with
real life yet. God does not always call in early life. To some people,
the cross that is set so high over the world is like a great star,--it
is not seen until the surrounding sky is darkened and the sun grows
dim."

"I am going into the chapel," Lord Huddersfield said, "to be alone for
an hour. There must be many prayers going up to-day to God for the wrong
these poor ignorant men have done."

"Pray that they may be forgiven. And then, my dear Lord," he continued,
"suppose we have a talk over the situation that has been created--if any
situation beyond the purely local one _has_ been created." A fighting
look came into his face. "We shall be wise to be prepared, to have our
guns loaded."

"Yes, Father," Lord Huddersfield said rather grimly, "we are not without
power and influence, I am happy to think."




CHAPTER IV

LUCY BLANTYRE AT THE CLERGY-HOUSE


Lucy Blantyre left Scarning Court on Thursday morning. James Poyntz
travelled up to town with her. She was to go home to Park Lane for an
hour or two, make one of the guests at a lunch party with Lady Linquest,
and then, in the afternoon, drive down to Hornham.

She was alone in a first-class carriage with James during the whole of
the journey to London. The last three days had marked a stage in their
intercourse. Both of them were perfectly aware of that. Intimacy between
a young man and a girl is very rarely a stationary thing. It progresses
in one direction or another. James began to talk much of his ambitions.
He told her how he meant to carve his way in the world, the place he
meant to take. The Poyntz family was a long-lived one; Lord Huddersfield
himself was only middle-aged, and might live another thirty years. James
hoped that it would be so.

"I want to win my own way by myself," he said. "I hope the title will
not come for many years. It would mean extinction if it came now. You
sympathise with that, don't you?"

She was very kind to him. Her answers showed a real interest in his
confidences, but more than that. There was acumen and shrewdness in
them.

"You know," he said, "I do hate and detest the way the ordinary young
man in my position lives. It is so futile and silly. I recognised it
even at Oxford. Because of one's father, one was expected to be a silly
fool and do no work. Of course, there were some decent fellows,--Dover,
the Duke of Dover, was quiet and thought about things. But all my
friends were drawn from the social class which people suppose to be just
below our own, the upper middle class. It's the backbone of England. Men
in it take life seriously."

He stopped after a time, and gazed out of the window at the flying
landscape. Suddenly he turned to her. "I'm so glad you are my sister's
great friend, Lucy," he said.

It was the first time that he had spoken her first name to her. His tone
was charged with meaning.

She looked up quickly, and saw that his eyes were fixed upon her.

"You are all very kind to me," she said.

"Every one would be kind to you. I have been very happy since you have
let me be your friend. Do you know that my work and my hopes seem dearer
than ever to me now that I have told you so much of them. We have got to
know each other very well, haven't we?"

"Very well."

"We shall know each other better. It is my hope. I wonder if I might
write to you now and then, and tell you some of my thoughts and how
things are with me? Would such letters bore you?"

"I should value them, and think them a privilege. A woman is always
gratified when a man confides his thoughts to her. So many men never
allow a woman friend to see below the surface, and so many men--at any
rate, men that I am in the way of meeting--have no thoughts to tell one
even if they would."

The train began to go more slowly as it rumbled through the dingy
environs, and shook over the myriad points of Waterloo Station. Neither
of them spoke again. There was no doubt in the mind of either as to the
meaning of the situation.

The girl had gathered all his thoughts from his tone. It was very
pleasant to be with him, this sane and brilliant young man with a great
name and such powers. It made her happy to know how he regarded
her--that out of all the girls he knew he had chosen her for a friend.
He would some day ask her to be something more; that also she knew, and
knew that he was conveying it to her. She did not love him, love was a
word not very real to her as yet. Her mental eyes had never visualised
it, it was an abstraction. But she liked and admired him more than any
other man of her set: he was a _man_. Well, there was time enough yet to
think of all that. Meanwhile his deference was sweet; her heart warmed
to him as his, she knew, was warm to her at that moment.

He saw her to the door of the waiting victoria, and stood chatting for a
moment in the hurry of the station, making the footman mount his box
again.

Then he gave the signal to start, and stood upon the platform by his
hansom as she was driven rapidly away. Once she turned and waved a hand
to him.

Lucy lay back in the carriage, pleased with herself and all the world.
She had come on to Victoria, instead of getting out at Vauxhall,
specially to enjoy the longer drive. It was a brilliant day, and as the
carriage came upon Waterloo Bridge, the wonderful panorama of riverside
London was uplifting. Away to her right, the purple dome of St. Paul's
shone white-grey in the sun. The great river glittered in the morning
air, and busy craft moved up and down the tide. The mammoth buildings of
the embankment, Somerset House with its noble façade, the Savoy, the
monster Cecil, the tiled roofs of Scotland Yard all came to the eye in
one majestic sweep of form and colour. And far away to the left, dim in
a haze of light, the towers of Westminster rose like a fairy palace,
tipped with flame as the sun caught the gold upon the vanes and spires.

London! yes! it was, after all, the most beautiful city in the world,
seen thus, at this hour, from this place. How the heart quickened and
warmed to it.

Suddenly the thought of Hornham came to her. She made a little
involuntary movement of disgust. For a whole fortnight she would be
there. It would be intolerable. Why could not Bernard come to Park Lane
for a fortnight? How much more sensible that would be.

Well, it was no good thinking of it. The thing must be done. Yet, from
one point of view how curious it was. How strange that a drive of two
hours would plunge her into a world entirely foreign and alien in every
way to her world.

She was driving up Grosvenor Place now, by the long walls of the King's
Palace Garden, over which the trees showed fresh and green. The stately
street, with the Park gates at the end of its vista, only accentuated
the contrast. She utterly failed to understand how any one could do what
her brother did. There was not the slightest reason for the endurance of
these horrors. His personal income was large, his family connections
were influential. He could obtain a fashionable West End living without
any trouble. She was still scornfully wondering as the carriage stopped
at Lady Linquest's house in Park Lane.

Lucy found her aunt in a little room of china-blue and canary-yellow
which looked out over the Park.

She was a tall woman, of full figure. The face was bright and animated,
though somewhat sensual, inasmuch as it showed that its owner
appreciated the good material things that life has to offer. At
sixty-two, when dames of the middle classes have silver hair and are
beginning to assume the gentle manners of age, Lady Linquest wore the
high curled fringe of the fashion, a mass of dark red hair that had
started life upon the head of a Bréton peasant girl. Art had been at
work upon her face and she was pleasant to look on, an artificial
product indeed, but with all the charm that a perfect work of art has.

She made no secret of it to her intimate friends, and no one thought any
the worse of her in a society where nearly every one who has need of
aids to good looks buys them in Bond Street. Indeed, she was quite
unable to understand what she called "the middle class horror of paint."
"Why on earth," she would say, "any one can possibly object to an old
woman making herself look as pleasant as possible for the last few years
of her life, I can't make out. It's a duty one owes to one's friends. It
sweetens life. At any rate, _I_ don't intend to go about like old Mother
Hubbard or the witch in whatshername."

"Lucy, my dear," said this vivacious dame as her niece entered, "you're
looking your best this morning. And when you look your best my
experience generally tells me that you've been up to some wickedness or
other! How's Agatha, and has James Poyntz been at Scarning, and how's
that poor dear man, Huddersfield, who always reminds me of a
churchwarden? He is the king of all the churchwardens in England, I
think."

Lucy sat down and endeavoured to answer the flood of questions as
satisfactorily as might be, while Lady Linquest took her mid-morning
pick-me-up of Liebig and cognac.

The good lady gave her niece a rapid _précis_ of the news of their set
during the few days she had been away. "So that you'll know," she said,
"what to talk about at General Pompe's lunch--your last decent meal, by
the way, for a fortnight! I shall give orders to the cook to put a
hamper in the carriage for you to take with you to Bernard's. All those
poor young men starve themselves."

She rattled away thus while Lucy went to her own room to dress. For some
reason or other, why she could not exactly divine, she was dissatisfied
and ill at ease. The exhilaration of the railway journey, of the
wonderful drive through sunlit London, had gone. Her aunt, kind
creature as she was, jarred upon her this morning. How terribly shallow
the good lady seemed, after all! She was like some gaudy fly dancing
over a sunlit brook--or even circling round malodorous farmyard
stuff--brilliant, useless, and with nothing inside but the mere muscles
of its activity. James Poyntz's words recurred to her, his deep scorn of
a purely frivolous, pleasure-loving life was present in her brain.

Lucy was genuinely fond of Lady Linquest, but somehow on this bright
morning to hear a woman with one foot in the grave talking nothing but
scandal and empty catchwords of Vanity Fair, struck with a certain chill
to her heart.

To see her sitting there, curled, painted, scented, sipping her tonic
drink, ready for a smart party of people as empty and useless as
herself, was to see a thing that hurt, after the experiences of the
morning.

Lucy had not taken her maid to Scarning. She had wanted to live as
simply as possible there, to live the outdoors riverside life. And she
was not going to take Angelique to Hornham either--where the girl would
be miserable and a nuisance to the grave little community there. She
felt very glad, as the chattering little French woman helped her to
dress, that she was not coming with her. The maid's voluble boulevard
French got on her nerves; the powder on her face, which showed violet in
the sunlight, the strong scent of verbena she wore, the expression of
being abnormally "aware"--all these were foreign to Lucy's mood, and she
noticed them with an almost physical sense of disapproval that she had
never before felt so strongly.

The drive to the smart hotel near Piccadilly only took five or six
minutes, and the two ladies were soon shaking hands with old General
Pompe, their host. General the Hon. Reginald Pompe was an old creature
who was only kept from senile decay by his stays. He was unmarried,
extremely wealthy, and the fashion. In his younger days, his life had
been abominable; now, his age allowed him to do nothing but lick the
chops of vicious memories and prick his ears for scandals in which he
could not share. People said, "Old General Pompe is really _too_ bad,
but where one sees the Duke of ---- and the Prince of ---- we may be
sure that people like ourselves cannot be far wrong."

The other guests comprised Lord Rollington, of whom there was nothing to
be said save that he was twenty-four and a fool; Gerald Duveen, who was
a fat man of good family, and more or less of a success upon the stage;
and his beautiful, bold-looking wife, a judge's daughter, who played
under the name of Miss Mary Horne, and of whom much scandal was
whispered.

After a moment or two in the palm room, waiting for the Duveens, who
were a minute or two late, the six people went in to lunch. The special
table General Pompe always used was reserved for them, decorated with a
triumphant scheme of orchids and violets. Lumps of ice were hidden among
the masses of flowers, diffusing an admirable coolness round the table.

The host drew attention to the menu, which he had composed. He mumbled
over it, and as he bent his head Lucy saw that his ears were quite
pointed, and that the skin upon his neck lay in pachydermatous folds,
dry and yellowish.

"Baked red snapper, red wine sauce," said Mr. Duveen, with the purring
and very distinct voice of high comedy. "Hm--turtle steaks
_miroton_--sweetbreads--_Tadema_, quite the best way to do sweetbreads."

Mrs. Duveen was talking in a low, rapid voice to Lady Linquest. Her
eyes were very bright, and malice lurked in the curves of a lovely mouth
as she retailed some story of iniquity in high places, one of these
private and intimate scandals in which the half-life of the stage is so
rich--actors and actresses more than most people being able to see
humanity with the mask off. How greedy the three men looked, Lucy
thought, as they devoured the lunch in prospect. "Pigs!" she said to
herself with a little inward shudder.

Why was this? She had been at dozens of these functions before now and
had thought none of these thoughts. To-day a veil seemed removed from
her eyes: she saw things as they really were. And as they really were,
these people were abominable.

Any of them would

    "Buy a minute's mirth to wail a week,
    And sell eternity to gain a toy."

They had the manners of organ-grinders and the morals of monkeys. She
caught some words of what Mrs. Duveen was saying now and again. Lord
Rollington began to tell her, with affected disgust, how he had been at
a burlesque theatre the night before, and the musical-comedy heroine of
the hour had been so intoxicated that she could hardly sing her song.

"Too bad, you know, Miss Blantyre. I spotted it at once. It's always
disgustin' to see a girl take too much to drink, but when she's caperin'
about the stage like that one really has a right to complain. Don't you
think so? Now, if it had been a poor little chorus girl, she'd have been
fired out of the theatre in a second. For my part, I--" and so on for an
interminable five minutes.

General Pompe began to flirt with Lucy in that elderly
"you-are-only-a-little-girl" sort of manner, that is so difficult to
repel and which is so offensive. She saw his horny eyes roving over her
person with appreciation.

A great many of Lady Linquest's particular set were like this. Not all
of them, thank goodness, but so very many! And the worst of it was that
society mingled and overlapped so strangely. The sheep and the goats
were not separated in any way. People like the Huddersfields stood
almost alone, and even Agatha, when she was with the St. Justs--her
mother's family--constantly met this sort of people. But, then, Agatha
didn't seem to care, she didn't realise. She laughed at everything and
thought it "awfully good fun." In fact, Lucy realised Agatha was
exactly the same as she herself had always been--with the very slightest
intervals--until this moment. It was startling to think that the words
of Lord Huddersfield's son had worked this revolution in her point of
view. For she was quite persuaded that they were the reason of it. She
could find no other reason.

She did not realise then, as she was to realise with humble thankfulness
and awe in the future, the august influence that was at work within her.

She was not gay at lunch. Usually she was a most welcome member of any
such gathering as this. Her sayings were pointed, she entered fully into
the spirit of the hour, her wit adorned the charm of her personality,
and she was universally popular and voted "good fun" in the
comprehensive epitome of her associates. This was the highest praise
they knew, and they gave it her without stint.

To-day the party fell flat--there was no doubt about it. The radiance of
the early morning had given place to a heat which became terribly
oppressive, and the sky was overclouded. Thunder was in the air, and
London awaited a storm.

The electric lights began to glow in the restaurant.

Lady Linquest did her best to rouse her niece to gaiety, but her efforts
were futile. The old man who was entertaining them grew sulky, and Lord
Rollington drank glass after glass of champagne. The beautiful actress
was frankly bored, and became more cynical and bitter with every
scandalous story she told.

Only Mr. Duveen preserved his equanimity. He ate and drank and purred
with secure complaisance. It was his rôle in life. Ever since he had
been a little lick-trencher fag at Eton he had been thus. It was said by
his friends in society--after his back was turned--that on one occasion,
having discovered the Earl of ---- kissing his wife, he had murmured an
apology, saying that he had come to find his cigarette case, and
hurriedly retired from the room. This, no doubt, was scandal and untrue,
but it showed the estimation in which he was generally held.

Lucy knew this unpleasant story--Lady Linquest had told her. She thought
of it as she watched the man pouring _mandarin_ into his coffee. Once
more she felt the shrinking and repulsion that had come over her more
than three hours ago.

She knew, or once had known, her Dante. She had had but little time for
anything but frothy reading during the last year or two, but once she
had kept up her Italian. A passage from the _Inferno_ came into her
brain now,--a long-forgotten passage:

    "Quest i non hanno speranza di morte,
      E la lor cicca vita è tanto bassa
    Che invidiosi son d'ogni altra sorte."

She saw the people of whom the Florentine spoke before her now, the
people for whom the bitterest fate of all had been reserved,--these who
"have no hope of death, and whose blind life so meanly drags that they
are envious of every other fate."

Before she left Park Lane, it had been arranged that the small brougham
should call for her at the restaurant, and take her on to Hornham. Her
luggage was small. This smart society girl was going to take her plunge
into the great London _Hinterland_ with a single trunk, like any little
governess driving to her new situation, where she would learn how bitter
the bread of another may taste, and how steep are the stairs in the
house of a stranger.

The carriage arrived just as lunch was over, and she left all of them
with immeasurable relief.

Driving up Shaftesbury Avenue to find her northward route was like
driving into a black curtain. It was terribly hot and dark, the horses
were uneasy, and the people moving on the pavements seemed like phantoms
in some city of dreadful night.

London began to grip and hold her then as it had never done before. Seen
under this pall, its immensity and the dignity it gained by that was
revealed in a new aspect. _Her_ London, her corner of the town, the mere
pleasure-city, became of no consequence, its luxury, its parks and
palaces, shrank and dwindled to nothing in her consciousness.

She was attuned to thoughts more solemn than were wont to have their way
with her. Her eyes and ears were opened to the reality of life.

She had lost her dislike for the visit she was going to pay. Below her
frequent irritation at her brother's way of life there had always been a
strong affection for him. And more than that, she had always respected
him, though often enough she would not admit it even to herself. As the
brougham turned into the surging arcana at Islington her curiosity
about the next few days was quickened: the thought of personal
discomfort--discomfort of a physical kind--had quite gone. She felt that
she was about to have experience of something new, her pulses quickened
to it.

The vicarage of St. Elwyn's was one of those stately old red-brick
houses, enclosed in a walled garden of not inconsiderable extent, that
are still to be found here and there in north London. They date from the
florid Georgian times, when that part was a spacious countryside where
wealthy merchants withdrew from commerce in the evening of their days
and lived a decorous life among the fields and trees. Here and there, in
the vast overgrown and congested districts, one or another of these old
freeholds has been preserved inviolate--as may be seen in the ride from
Hackney to Edmonton--and becomes an alien in a wilderness of mean little
houses and vulgar streets.

Father Blantyre had bought one of these few remaining mansions in
Hornham, at a high price, and had presented it to the parish of St.
Elwyn's as its vicarage. Here he lived with his two curates and a staff
of four servants,--a housekeeper, two maids, and a man-of-all-work. The
personal wants of the three clergymen were very simple, but the servants
were useful in many parochial affairs. In times when work was scarce,
the vicarage staff boiled soup, like any cheap restaurant-keeper. The
house was open at all times of the day or night to people who wanted to
be quiet and alone for a time; social clubs and guilds had their
headquarters there.

Indeed, the place was the centre of a diversified and complex life--how
complex, neither Lucy, nor any outsider, had the least conception.

The carriage stopped at the heavy square porch with its flight of steps,
and the footman ran up them and rang the bell.

Lucy noticed with amusement that the man's face expressed a mild wonder
at the neighbourhood in which he found himself, and that he winked
solemnly at the coachman on his box.

Lucy stood on the steps for a moment. The sky was quite dark, and the
little side street in which she was, showed in a dim and sulphurous
half-light--like the light round the House of Usher. A piano-organ close
by was beating out its vibrant mechanical music with an incongruous and
almost vulgar disregard of the menace of the heavens.

The housekeeper opened the front door, and Lucy entered a big panelled
hall, now in a gloom that was almost profound, and with a tiled floor
that clicked and echoed as the high heels of her shoes struck upon it.

"The vicar is in his study, Miss," the housekeeper said. She was a tall,
gaunt, elderly woman, with a face that always reminded Lucy of a horse,
and her voice was dry and hesitating.

Lucy crossed the hall, opened a door of oak and another of green baize,
and entered her brother's room.

It was a large, lofty place. The walls were covered with books in sober
bindings,--there must have been several thousands there. A soft carpet
covered the floor, in the centre of which stood an enormous
writing-table crowded with books and papers.

Hardly any light came into the place through the long window, and two
candles in massive silver holders stood upon the writing-table, throwing
a soft radiance around.

The light fell upon a tall crucifix of silver that stood upon the table,
a beautiful specimen of English Pre-Reformation work. A small couch had
been drawn up close to the table, and on it the priest lay asleep. The
face was lined and drawn with worry and with work, and all its secrets
were told as the man slept. One hand lay hanging from the side of the
sofa--a lean, strong hand, with a coil of muscle upon the back. Seen
thus in an abandonment of repose, Lucy's brother showed as a man worn
and weary with battle, scarred and battered, bruised, but how
irrevocably rich!

A rush of tenderness came over the girl as she looked at him. Here was
the man who had not winced or cried aloud, whose spirit was unbowed
beneath the bludgeonings of life.

A high serenity lay over the pain upon the face. It was a face vowed, a
saint's face, and even as he slept the great soul which shone like a
monstrance within him, irradiated the mask that hid it.

Lucy saw all this, received some such impressions as those in two or
three moments. Some attraction drew her eyes from the sleeper to the
shining symbol of God's pain upon the table. Then they went back to
Bernard Blantyre. To her excited fancy there seemed some subtle sympathy
between them, an invisible shuttle that was flying to and fro.

Then Blantyre awoke and saw her. He did not come from the kingdom of
sleep gradually, as most people do, loath to leave those silent halls.
He sprang suddenly into full consciousness, as soldiers upon fields of
battle, as old veterans used to sudden drums and tramplings are known to
do.

His eyes lighted up with merriment and triumph, his mobile face was one
great smile. He caught her by the arms and kissed her repeatedly. "It's
splendid to have you again, me darling," he said, with a slight Irish
accent that came to both of them when they were excited. "Ye little
wretch, staying away so long! Why, ye're prettier than ever! Ye'll have
all the Hornham boys waiting for ye outside the church door after Mass,
for we don't see your sort down our humble way--the rale West End
product!"

Laughing and chattering, putting on the most exaggerated brogue, the
brother and sister moved out into the hall. Father Blantyre called
loudly, "King! Stephens! where are ye? she's come!--I don't know where
my boys are at all, mavourneen--We'll dress um down for not being in to
welcome the new clergywoman. Now, come up to your room, sweetheart, and
Bob'll bring your box up. Bob! bring me sister's trunk up-stairs."

The little man ran up the wide stairway, an odd, active figure in his
black cassock, laughing and shouting in an ecstasy of pleasure and
excitement. No schoolboy could have been more merry, more full of simple
joy.

Lucy followed him, half laughing, half inclined to sob at this happy
welcome. She was carried off her feet by it all, by this strange arrival
under lurid skies at the dingy old house which suddenly seemed so
home-like.

Reproach filled her heart at her long neglect as she heard her brother's
joy. Simplicity!--yes, that was it. He was utterly simple. The thought
of the people she had left so short a time ago was more odious than
ever.

She found herself alone in her bedroom, a big, gloomy place with solid
mahogany furniture in the old style. There was nothing modern there save
a little _prie-dieu_ of oak by the bedside. But the sober colours and
outmoded massiveness of it all no longer troubled her. She did not give
a single thought to her own luxurious nest in Park Lane--as she had done
so often during her first visit to St. Elwyn's a year ago.

When she went down-stairs once more, both the assistant priests had come
in and were waiting with the vicar in the study, where some tea was
presently brought.

Stephens was a tall, youthful-looking man, rather slangy perhaps, with a
good deal of the undergraduate about him still, but obviously in
earnest. King was square-faced; the clean-shaved jaw showed powerful and
had a flavour of the prize-fighter about it, while his general
expression was grim and somewhat forbidding. He was much the elder of
the two. His expression, the outward shell, was no index to the man
within. A tenderer heart never beat in a man; a person more
temperamentally kind never lived. But he had more capacity for anger,
righteous anger, than either the vicar or Stephens. There were moments
when he could be terrible, and some savage strain in him leaped to the
surface and was only curbed by a will which had long been sanctified to
good.

The two men seemed glad to see Lucy again. She had seen little of them
on her first visit; neither of them had made any impression on her. Now
they interested her at once.

"Now, then, Bernard," Lucy said as she began to pour out the tea, "what
is all this I hear about a scene in church? Lord Huddersfield was full
of it. He was most distressed."

"He has been awfully good about it," Blantyre said. "He was down here on
Tuesday morning going into the matter. A man named Hamlyn, the editor of
a little local paper, threw the church into a miserable state of
confusion during Mass last Sunday, just after I had said the Prayer of
Consecration. He read a document protesting against the Blessed
Sacrament. We had him ejected, and yesterday he was fined ten shillings
in the local police court. The magistrate, who is a pronounced
Protestant in his sympathies, said that though the defendant had
doubtless acted with the best intentions, one must not combat one
illegality with another, and that the law provided methods for the
regulation of worship other than protests during its process!"

"Pompous old ass!" said Stephens.

"Well, I'm glad they fined him," Lucy said.

"'All's well that ends well!' You won't have the services disturbed
again."

"On the contrary, dear, we are all very much afraid that this is the
first spark of a big fire. We hear rumours of an organised movement
which may be widely taken up by the enemies of the Church. All through
the ranks there's a feeling of uneasiness. Lord Huddersfield is working
night and day to warn the clergy and prepare them. We cannot say how it
will end."

He spoke with gravity and seriousness. Lucy, who privately thought the
whole thing a ridiculous storm in a teacup, and was utterly ignorant of
the points at issue, looked sympathetic, but said nothing. She was not
in a flippant mood; she realised she was quite an outsider in the
matter, which seemed so momentous to the three intelligent men she was
with, and, unwilling to betray her lack of comprehension or to say
anything that would jar, she kept a discreet silence.

"We all get shouted after already, when we go into the worst parts of
the parish," said Stephens cheerfully. "They've been rousing the
hooligan element. It's an old trick. Lazy bounders, who don't know a
Christian from a Jew and have never been in a church in their lives,
shout 'papist' after us as we go into the houses. Just before I came in,
I was walking up the street when a small and very filthy urchin put his
head round the corner of a house and squeaked out, 'Oo kissed ve Pope's
toe?' Then he turned and ran for dear life. As yet, I haven't been
assaulted, but King has! Haven't you, King?"

Mr. King looked rather like a bashful bulldog, and endeavoured to change
the subject.

"Do you mean any one actually struck you, Mr. King?" Lucy said,
absolutely bewildered. "How awful! But why should any one want to do
that?"

The vicar broke in with a broad grin that made his likeness to a
comedian more apparent than ever.

"Oh, King was splendid!" he said with a chuckle. "That ended very well.
A big navvy chap was coming out of a public-house just as King was
passing. He looked round at his friends and called out something to the
effect that here was another monkey in petticoats--we wear our cassocks
in the streets--and see how he'd do for um! So he gave poor King a clout
on the side of the head."

"Oh, I _am_ sorry," Lucy said, looking with interest upon the priest,
and realising dimly that to be a clergyman in Hornham apparently ranked
as one of the dangerous trades. "What did you do, Mr. King?"

King flushed a little and looked singularly foolish. He was a bashful
man with ladies,--they did not come much into his pastoral way.

Lucy thought that the poor fellow had probably run away and wished that
she had not asked such an awkward question.

"Oh, he won't tell ye, my dear!" Blantyre said, "but I will. When the
gentleman smacked um on the cheek, he turned the other to him and kept's
hands behind's back. Then the hero smacked that cheek too. 'Hurroo!'
says King, or words to that effect, 'now I've fulfilled me duty to me
religion and kept to the words of Scripture. And now, me friend, I'm
going to do me duty to me neighbour and thrash ye till ye can't see out
of your eyes.' With that he stepped up to um and knocked um down, and
when he got up, he knocked um down again!"

Mr. King fidgeted uneasily in his seat. "I thought it was the wisest
thing to do," he said, apologetically. "You see, it would stop anything
of the sort for the future!"

"And the fun of the whole thing, Miss Blantyre," Stephens broke in, "was
that I came along soon after and found the poor wretch senseless--King's
got a fist like a hammer. So we got him up and refused to charge him to
the policeman who turned up after it was all over, and we brought him
here. We sponged him and mended him and fed him, and he turned out no
end of a good sort when the drink was out of him. Poor chap gets work
when he can, hasn't a friend in the world; hadn't any clothes or
possessions but what he stood up in, and was utterly a waster and
uncared for. We asked him if he knew what a papist was, and found he
hadn't an idea, only he thought that they made love to workingmen's
wives when their husbands were at work! He'd been listening to our
friend, Mr. Hamlyn, who called a mass-meeting after the police-court
proceedings and lectured on the three men of sin at the vicarage!"

A flood of strange and startling ideas poured into the girl's brain. A
new side of life, a fourth dimension, was beginning to be revealed to
her. She looked wonderingly at the three men in their long cassocks; she
felt she was in the presence of power. She had felt that when James
Poyntz was talking to her in the train, in the fresh, sunlit morning,
which seemed a thing of the remotest past now. Yet this afternoon she
felt it more poignantly than before. Things were going on down here, in
this odd corner of London, that were startling in their newness.

"And what happened to the poor man?" she said at length.

"Oh," answered the vicar, "very fortunately we are without a man of all
work just now, so we took him on. He carried your trunk up-stairs. He's
wearing Stephen's trousers, which are much too tight for um! and an old
flannel tennis coat of King's--till we can get his new clothes made. He
was in rags!"

"But surely that's rather risky," Lucy said in some alarm. "And what
about the other servants? I shouldn't think Miss Cass liked it much!"

Miss Cass was the housekeeper, the woman with the face like a horse. She
always repelled Lucy, who, for no reason than the old, stupid "Dr. Fell"
reason, disliked her heartily.

To her great surprise, she saw three faces turned towards her suddenly.
On each was an expression of blank surprise, exactly the same
expression. Lucy wanted to laugh; the three men were as alike as
children are when a conjuror has just made the pudding in the hat or
triumphantly demonstrated the disappearing egg.

The taciturn King spoke first. "I forgot," he said; "of course you don't
know anything about Miss Cass. How should you, indeed! Miss Cass is a
saint."

He said it quite simply, with a little pride, possibly, that the
vicarage which housed him housed a saint, too, but that was all.

"Yes," the vicar said, his brogue dropping away from him, as it always
did when he was serious, "Miss Cass is a saint. I'll tell you her story
some time while you're here, dear. It is a noble story. But don't you be
alarmed about our new importation. Bob will be all right. We know what
we are doing here."

"It's wonderful, Miss Blantyre," Stephens broke out, his boyish face all
lighted up with enthusiasm. "You know, Bob'd actually never been in
church before yesterday morning, when he came to Mass."

He stopped for a moment, out of breath in his eagerness. Lucy saw that
he--indeed, all of them--took it quite for granted that these things
they spoke of had supreme interest for her as for them. There was such
absolute _conviction_ that these things were the only important things,
that no excuse or apology was necessary in speaking of them. She found
she liked that, she liked it already. There was a magnetism in these
men that drew her within their circle. She saw that, whatever else they
were, they were absolutely consistent. They did not have one eye on
convention and the world, like the West End clergymen she knew,--some of
them at least. These men lived for one aim, one end, with tremendous
force and purpose. They simply disregarded everything else. Nothing else
occurred! Yes, this was a fourth dimension indeed. She bent herself to
listen to the boy's story, marking, with a pleasure that had something
maternal in it, the vividness and reality of his interest and hopes.

"Before he went," the young man said, "I explained the Church's teaching
exactly to him. Don't forget that the poor chap hadn't the slightest
idea of anything of the sort. He was astounded. A mystery that I could
not explain to him, a mystery for which there were no _material_
evidences at all, came home to him at once. _I saw faith born._ And they
say this is not an age of miracles! Think of the tremendous revolution
in the man's mind. He talked to me after the service. It was all
wonderfully real to him. He was absolutely convinced of the coming of
our Lord. There isn't a rationalist in London that could shake the
man's belief. I asked him why he was so sure--was it merely because I
had told him, because I believed in it? His answer was singularly
touching. 'Nah,' he said, scratching his head,--they all do when they
try to think,--'It wasn't wot you said, guvnor, it was wot I _felt_. I
_knowed_ as 'E wos there. Why, I ses to myself, _It's true!_'"

"It is very wonderful," Lucy said. "It's more wonderful by far than a
man at a Salvation Army meeting or a revival. One can understand that
the sudden shouts and the trumpets and banners and things would
influence any one. But that a service which is inexplicable even to the
people who conduct it should influence this poor uneducated man is
strange."

"Now, I don't think it strange, Lucy, dear," the vicar said; "it's far
more natural to me than the other. The wonderful power of the Church
lies in this, _that her mysteries appeal to quite simple people whose
minds are a blank on religious questions. They appeal to the simple
instantly and triumphantly._ They feel the power of the Blessed
Sacrament. And _only_ Catholicism can do this in full and satisfying
measure. We find that over and over again. The jam-and-glory teas, the
kiss-in-the-ring revivals, have a momentary and hysterical influence
with the irreligious. But it doesn't last, there is no system or
discipline, and above all, _there is no dignity_. Only priests realise
thoroughly how the poorer and less-educated classes crave for the proper
dignity and beauty of worship. It has always been so. It is the secret
of the power that the Roman Church has over the minds of men."

"Then why are there so many Salvationists and Dissenters?" Lucy asked.

"For a multitude of reasons. A dislike to discipline chiefly. People
don't go to church because the novelties of thirty or forty years ago
have filtered down into the omnibuses and people who are naturally
irreligious prefer to make a comfortable little code for themselves. The
Church says you _must not_ do this or that; its rules are thoroughly
well defined. Folk are afraid to come as near to God as the Church
brings them. Their cry is always that the Church comes between them and
God. Often that is a malevolent cry, and more often still it's pure
ignorance. The silly people haven't an idea what they're talking about.
It would be just as reasonable for me to say, 'I hate and abominate
Nicaragua, which is a pernicious and soul-destroying place,' when I've
never been nearer to Nicaragua than Penzance."

"There is one thing that we do see," King continued in his slow,
powerful way. "Whenever we have open-minded men or women come to church
to pray and find help, they find it. Dozens and dozens of people have
come to me after they have become members of the Church and said that
they could not understand the anti-Church nonsense they themselves had
joined in before. '_We never knew_,' that is the cry always."

"The thunder's beginning!" Father Blantyre said suddenly, realising
apparently that the talk was straying into channels somewhat alien to a
young society lady presiding at afternoon tea.

"Lucy, me dear, it's tired you'll be of sitting with three blathering
old priests talking shop in a thunderstorm--there's a flash for ye!"

A sheet of brilliant steel-blue had flashed into the room as he spoke,
showing every detail of it clear and distinct as in some lurid day of
the underworld. The books, the writing table, the faces of the three
clergymen, and the tall silver crucifix between the candles, which had
momentarily faded to a dull and muddy yellow, all made a sudden tableau
which burned itself upon the retina. Then came darkness once more and
the giant stammer of the thunder far overhead.

The thunder ceased and they waited, expectant of the next explosion,
when the penetrating and regular beating of an adjacent bell was heard.

"There's the bell for evensong!" Blantyre said; "I did not know it was
so late." He put on his berretta and left the room, the other men
following him. Lucy rose also. She felt that she would make one of them,
and going up-stairs to get a hat, she presently found herself in the
long, covered passage that connected the vicarage with the church.

The idea of a house which was but an appanage of the church was new to
her. The passage had been built since her last visit. And as she entered
the huge, dim building, she saw clearly how powerful in the minds of her
brother and his friends its nearness must be. All their life, their
whole life, centred in this church. Its services were as frequent and
natural as their daily food. How strangely different it all was to the
life of the outside world! She herself had not been to church for six
weeks or more. Even people who "called themselves Christians" only
entered a pew and enjoyed a hebdomadal siesta in church. But these men
could not get on without it. Every thought and action was in communion
with the Unseen. And she was forced to acknowledge it to herself,--if
one actually did believe in a future life, in eternity, then this was
the only logical way in which to prepare for it. If life was really like
a sojourn of one night in an inn, then the traveller who made no
preparation for the journey, and spent the night in careless disregard
of the day, was an utter fool. But no one called worldly people
fools!--it was all very puzzling and worrying, and common-sense did not
seem like common-sense in Hornham.

And was James Poyntz a fool?

It was the last question she asked herself as she turned into the side
chapel where evensong was to be said. Some twenty kneeling figures were
there. The place was dimly lighted save for the tall gas standards by
the priests' seats in front of the altar.

High up before the painted reredos hung a single lamp that burned with a
dull red glow. There were many sick folk in the parish of St. Elwyn's:
at all hours of the day and night, the clergy were sent for to help a
departing soul upon its way hence, and the Blessed Sacrament was
reserved upon this altar in the side chapel.

       *       *       *       *       *

The simple and stately service was nearly over. The girl had listened to
the sonorous words as if she heard them now for the first time. As she
knelt, her heart seemed empty of the hopes, fears, and interests of
daily life. It seemed as a vessel into which something was steadily
flowing. And the fancy came to her that all she experienced was flowing
to her from the dim tabernacle upon the altar. It was almost a
_physical_ sense, it was full of awe and sweetness. She trembled
exceedingly as the service ended and her brother prayed for the
fellowship of the Holy Ghost.

For a time after the echoing footsteps of the clergy had died away, she
remained upon her knees. She was praying, but without words; all her
thoughts were caught up into one voiceless, wordless, passionate
ejaculation.

When at length she bowed low,--it was the first time she had ever done
such a thing,--before the altar, and left the church, it was by the west
door.

She had a fancy for the street, and she found that the thunder had all
passed away and that a painted summer's evening sky hung over the garish
town.

As she finally turned into the vicarage, she cast one look back at the
church. It rose among the houses high into the air. The sunset fired the
wet tiles of the roof and gilded the cross upon the lantern. She thought
of That which was within.




CHAPTER V

WEALTHY MISS PRITCHETT AND POOR GUSSIE DAVIES ENTER THE VICARAGE GARDEN


"Todgers," Mr. Stephens remarked to Lucy, as they went down into the
garden after lunch on Saturday, "could do it when it chose."

The last preparations for the garden party were being made. The big
marquee was erected, the tennis lawns were newly marked, there was a
small stand for the string band.

Waiters, looking oddly out of their element in the brilliant sunshine,
which showed dress-coats, serviceable enough at night, tinged with a
metallic green like a magpie's wing, were moving about with baskets of
strawberries and zinc boxes of ice.

The old-fashioned garden, an oasis in the wilderness of brick all
around, was brilliant with sunflowers, stocks, and geraniums; the lawns
were fresh and green. The curate was in tennis flannels and an Oxford
blazer, and Lucy meditated upon the influence of clothes, as her
betters had done before her. Stephens seemed to have put off his
priesthood with his tippet and cassock, and the jaunty cap covered a
head which seemed as if it had never worn a berretta. Lucy found, to her
own surprise, that she liked the man less so. It was a total inversion
of her ordinary ideas. She began to think that a priest should be robed
always.

Miss Cass, the housekeeper, in a new cap, came up to them. Lucy had
talked to the woman for more than an hour on Friday afternoon, and the
prejudice caused by her appearance was removed.

"I hope everything is satisfactory, Miss," she said. "It all seems to be
going on well. The men from Whiteley's know their business."

"It all seems splendid, Miss Cass," Lucy said. "I'm sure it couldn't be
better. Have the band people come?"

"Yes, Miss, and the piano-entertainer too. They're having some
refreshment in the library. His Reverence is telling them funny stories,
Miss."

She hurried away to superintend further arrangements.

"The vicar is always so fine," the young man said, with a delighted
enthusiasm in his chief that was always pleasant for Lucy to hear. "He
gets on with men so well; such a lot of parsons don't. There's nothing
effeminate about the vicar. He's a man's man. I'll bet every one of
those fellows in there will go away feeling they've made a friend, and
that parsons aren't such scalawags after all."

A burst of laughter came from the door leading into the garden, as if to
confirm his words, and Father Blantyre descended the steps with a little
knot of men dressed in something between livery and uniform, carrying
oddly shaped cases of black waterproof in their hands.

Laughing and joking, the men made their way towards the music stands.

The vicar came up to Lucy. "How will it do?" he said. "It seems all
right. Just walk round with me, my dear, and I'll give ye a few tips how
to play hostess in Hornham."

They strolled away together. "Now, ye'll be careful, won't ye,
mavourneen?" he said rather anxiously. "The folk coming this afternoon
require more management and tact than any I've ever met. They'll all
have what they think is the high society manner--and ye mustn't laugh at
um, poor dears. I love 'em all, and I won't have you making fun of
them. I like them better in church than in society, I'm quite free to
admit to you, and their souls are more interesting than their bodies!
Perhaps half a dozen people here this afternoon will be what you'd call
gentlefolk--the doctor, Dr. Hibbert, and a few others. The rest of them
will be fearfully genteel. The young gentlemen will be back early from
the city, and they'll come in flannels and wear public-school ribbons
round their hats, roses in their button-holes and crimson silk
cummerbunds!"

"Good heavens!" Lucy said.

"Yes, and they'll all want to flirt with ye, in a very superfine, polite
sort of way, and mind ye let um! They'll ask if they might 'assist you
to a little claret cup,' and say all sorts of strange things. But
they're good enough at heart, only they will be so polite!"

"And the women?"

Father Blantyre shrugged his shoulders. "You'll find them rather
difficult," he said. "You bet they see your name in the papers--they all
read the 'Fashionable Intelligence'--confound um!--and the attitude will
be a little hostile. But be civil for my sake, dear. I hate all this
just as much as you do. I can get in touch with them spiritually, but
socially I find it hard. But I think it's the right thing to do, to
entertain them all once or twice a year, and they do enjoy themselves!
And I owe them a deep, deep debt of gratitude for their loyalty during
this trying week. I have had dozens and dozens of letters and calls.
Every one has rallied to the church in a wonderful and touching way
since the Sunday affair. God bless them all!"

Lucy squeezed his arm with sympathy. In an hour, the guests began to
arrive.

Lucy and her brother met them by the garden door of the house. It was a
gay scene enough. A brilliant flood of afternoon sunshine irradiated
everything; the women were well and fashionably dressed, the band
played, and every one seemed happy.

Lucy found it much easier than she expected. The guests were suburban,
of course, and not of the "classic suburbs" at that. But, she reflected,
there was hardly a man there who had not better manners than Lord
Rollington or General Pompe. And if they wore Carthusian or Zingari
ribbons, that meant no more than that they were blessed with a
colour-sense; while a slight admixture of "i" in the pronunciation of
the first vowel was certainly preferable to the admixture of looseness
and innuendo that she was sometimes forced to hear in much more exalted
circles. So she received tea and strawberries at the hands of gallant
and debonair young gentlemen engaged in the minor walks of commerce; she
chatted merrily with fluffy young ladies who, when they had gotten over
their first distrust of a girl who went to the drawing-room and stayed
with lords, finding that she wasn't the "nasty, stuck-up thing" they
expected, were somewhat effusively affectionate. She talked gravely
about the "dear vicar and those dreadful men" to ample matrons who for a
moment had forgotten the cares of a small suburban villa and a smaller
income, in the luxury of fashion, the latest waltz tunes, the champagne
cup, and a real social event. Indeed, everything went "with a snap," as
one young gentleman remarked to Lucy. She became popular almost at once,
and was surrounded by assiduous young bloods of the city "meccas."

Father Blantyre, as he went about from group to group, was in a state of
extreme happiness, despite his somewhat gloomy anticipations. It was an
hour of triumph for him. His people, for whom he prayed and laboured and
gave his life and fortune, were one and all engaged to show him how
they would stand by him in the anticipated trouble. Everywhere he was
greeted with real warmth and affection, and before long the quick Celtic
temperament was bringing a mist before the merry grey eyes and a riot
and tumult of thankfulness within.

On all sides, he heard praises of his sister. "The pretty dear," one
good lady, the wife of a cashier in a small Mincing Lane firm, said to
him. "I had quite a long talk with her, Father Blantyre. And a sweet
girl she is. We're not in the way of meeting with society folk, though
we read of all the gay goings-on in the _Mail_; but I said to Pa, 'Pa,'
I said, 'if all the society girls are like that, then there's nothing
much the matter with the aristocracy, and _Modern Society_ is a
catchpenny rag.' And Pa quite agreed. He was as much struck by her as I
was."

And so on. Every one seemed pleased with Lucy. The guests began to
arrive less and less frequently, until at length the gardens were
crowded and no one else appeared to be coming. All the various games and
entertainments were in full swing, and Lucy was about to accept the
invitation of a tall boy in a frock coat and a silk hat to sit down and
watch a set of tennis with him, when there was a slight stir and
commotion at the garden door of the house.

Miss Cass came hurriedly down the steps, as a sort of advance guard for
two ladies who were ushered into the garden by a waiter. The housekeeper
dived into the crowd and found the vicar, who turned and went with her
at once to meet the late-comers.

"There's Miss Pritchett and Gussie Davies," said the young man to Lucy
in rather an awed voice, and then, as if to banish some unwelcome
impression, relieved his feelings by the enigmatic remark of "Pip, pip,"
which made Lucy stare at him, wondering what on earth he meant.

She noticed that nearly every one at this end of the garden was
watching, more or less openly, the meeting between the vicar and his
guests. She did not quite understand why, but guessed that some local
magnate had arrived, and looked with the rest.

The elder of the two women was expensively dressed in mauve silk, and
wore a small bonnet with a white aigrette over a coffee-coloured fringe
of hair that suggested art. Her face was plump and pompous, a
parrot-like nose curved over pursy lips that wore an expression of
arrogant ill-temper, and the small eyes glanced rapidly hither and
thither. In one white-gloved hand, the lady held a long-handled
lorgnette of tortoise-shell and gold. Every now and then she raised
these glasses and surveyed the scene before her, in exactly the manner
in which countesses and duchesses do upon the stage.

Her companion was young, a large, blonde girl, not ill-looking, but
without character or decision in her face or walk. She was dressed very
simply.

Lucy turned to her companion. "Do you know them, then?" she said.

"Rather," he replied. "I should think I did. That's Miss Pritchett, old
Joseph Pritchett's daughter, old Joseph, the brewer. He left her all his
money, she's tons of stuff--awfully wealthy, I mean, Miss Blantyre."

"Does she live here, then?"

"Oh, yes. In spite of all her money she's always been an unappropriated
blessing. She's part of Hornham, drives a pair in a landau. The girl is
Gussie Davies, her companion. She's not half a bad sort. All the Hornham
boys know Gussie. Nothing the matter with Gussie Davis! The old cat sits
on her fearfully, though. She can't call her soul her own. It's bally
awful, sometimes, Gussie says."

Lucy gasped. These revelations were startling indeed. She was moving in
the queerest possible set of people. She hadn't realised that such folk
existed. It took her breath away, like the first plunge into a bath of
cold water.

The artless youth prattled on, and Lucy gathered that the lady with
the false front was a sort of female _arbiter elegantarium_
to Hornham, indubitably the richest person there, a leading light.
She saw her brother talking to the woman in an eager way. He seemed
afraid of her,--as, indeed, the poor man was, under the present
circumstances,--and Lucy resented it. With a quick feminine eye, she saw
that Miss Pritchett was assuming an air of tolerance, of patronage even,
to the vicar.

At last, Bernard caught sight of her. His face became relieved at once
and he led the spinster to the place where she was sitting.

Every instinct of the girl rose up in dislike and rebellion as the woman
drew near. She had felt nothing of the sort with the other people. In
this case, it was quite different. She prepared to repel cavalry, to use
the language of the military text-books.

On the surface, the incident was simple and commonplace enough. A
well-bred girl felt a repulsion for an obviously unpleasant and
patronising woman of inferior social rank. That was all. It is a trite
and well-worn aphorism that no event is trivial, yet it is
extraordinarily true. Who could have said that this casual meeting was
to be fraught with storm and danger for the Church in England; that out
of a hostile handshake between two women a mighty scandal and tumult was
to rise?

Miss Pritchett came up to Lucy, and Father Blantyre introduced her.
Then, with an apologetic murmur, he hurried away to another part of the
garden.

"Won't you sit down?" Lucy said, looking at the chair that had been left
vacant by her late companion.

"Thank you, Miss Blantyre, but I've been sitting in my carriage. I
should prefer to stand, if it's the same to you," said Miss Pritchett.

Lucy rose. "Perhaps you would like to walk round the grounds?" she
asked.

"Probably I know the grounds better than you," the elder woman answered
with a patronage which was bordering on the purely ludicrous. "This
residence was one of my dear father's houses, as were many of the
Hornham houses. When the vicar acquired the property, the brewery
trustees sold it to him, though I think it far from suitable for a
parish clergyman."

"Well, yes," Lucy answered. "It certainly is a dingy, gloomy old place,
but what else can you expect down here?"

Miss Pritchett flushed and tossed her head till the aigrette in her
smart little bonnet shook like a leaf.

"One is liable to be misunderstood," she said. "Your brother's small
private means enable him to live in a house which the next vicar or any
ordinary clergyman could hardly hope for."

"It _is_ very good of Bernard to come down here and spend his life in
such an impossible place," Lucy said. She was thoroughly angry now and
quite determined to give the woman a lesson. Her impertinence was
insufferable. To hear this creature speak of Bernard's income of three
thousand a year--every penny of which he gave away or spent for good--in
this way was unendurable.

Miss Pritchett grew redder than ever. She was utterly incapable of
bearing rebuff or contradiction. Her local eminence was unquestioned.
She had never moved from Hornham, where her wealth and large interests
secured for her that slavish subserviency that a vain and petty spirit
loves. For months past, she had been gradually gathering up cause for
quarrel and bitterness with the clergy of St. Elwyn's. She had found
that once within the portals of the church she was just as anyone else.
She could not lord it over the priests as she wished to do. For once,
she was beginning to find that her money was powerless, there was no
"high seat in the synagogue" that it could buy.

"The place has been good enough for _me_," she said angrily, never
doubting that this was final.

"Ah, yes," Lucy answered. "That, Miss Pritchett, I can quite
understand." The Hornham celebrity was a stupid woman. Her brain was as
empty as a hen's, and she was not adroit enough to seize upon the real
meaning of this remark. She had an uneasy suspicion that it was
offensive, and that was all.

"What you may mean by 'impossible' I am not aware," she continued. "I
speak plain English myself. But those that don't know of a place didn't
ought to speak unfavourable of it. As for your brother, I've always said
that he was a worthy person and acted as well as he might, until late
months, when I've felt it my duty to say a word or two in season as to
some of the church matters."

"I hope he profited, Miss Pritchett."

"I fear that he did not receive my words as he should, coming from a
lady of standing in the place--and him only here three years. I'm
beginning to think that there's something in the popular agitation. Upon
my word! Priests do take a good deal on themselves nowadays. It wouldn't
have been allowed when I was a girl."

"Things have altered very much for the better during the last fifty
years," Lucy said pointedly.

This the lady did immediately apprehend. She lifted the lorgnette and
stared at her companion in speechless anger. The movement was meant to
be crushing. It was thus, Miss Pritchett knew from her reading, that
women of the aristocracy crushed inferiors.

It was too much for Lucy. She endeavoured to control her feelings, but
they were irresistible. She had not seen anything so funny as this
vulgar and pompous old thing for years. A smile broadened out upon her
face, and then, without further ado, she burst out into peal after peal
of laughter.

The flush on Miss Pritchett's face died away. It grew perfectly white
with passion.

She turned round. Her companion had been walking some three yards behind
them in a listless and dejected fashion, looking with greedy eyes at the
allurements on every side, and answering the furtive greetings of
various male friends with a pantomime, expressive of contempt,
irritation, and hopeless bondage in equal parts.

Miss Pritchett stepped up to her, and caught hold of her arm. Her
fingers went so deep into the flesh that the girl gasped and gave a
half-smothered cry.

"Take me to the carriage," Miss Pritchett said. "Let me leave this place
of Popery and light women!"

The obedient Gussie Davies turned and, in a moment or two, both women
had disappeared.

Lucy sought her brother. She found him eating a large pink ice in
company with a florid, good-humoured matron in maroon, with an avalanche
of lace falling from the edges of her parasol. "Hallo, dear!" he said.
"Let me introduce you to Mrs. Stiffe, Dr. Hibbert's sister. And where's
Miss Pritchett?"

"She's gone," Lucy answered. "And, I'm very much afraid, in a towering
rage. But really she was so insolent that I could _not_ stand it. I
would do most things for you, Ber, but, really, that woman!"

"Well, it can't be helped, I suppose," the vicar said with humorous
resignation. "It was bound to come sooner or later, and I'm selfish
enough to be glad it's you've given me lady the _congé_ and not me. Mrs.
Stiffe here knows her, don't you, Mrs. Stiffe?"

"I do, Mr. Blantyre," the stout lady said. "I've met the woman several
times when I've been staying down here with my brother. A fearful old
cat _I_ call her! I wonder that you put up with her so long!"

"Policy, Mrs. Stiffe--ye know we're all Jesuits here, the local paper
says so in yesterday's issue--policy! You see, when I first came here
Miss Pritchett came to church. She's a leading person here and I made no
doubt others would follow her. Indeed, they did, too! and when they saw
what the Catholic Church really was they stayed with us. And then,
again, Miss Pritchett was always ready to give us a cheque for any good
work, and we want all the money we can get! Oh, there's a lot of good in
Miss Pritchett!"

"I fail to see it on a short acquaintance," Lucy remarked; "if she gave
generously, it was only to flatter her vanity. I'm sure of that."

"It's a great mistake to attribute unworthy motives to worthy deeds,"
the vicar said. "We've no right to do it, and it's only giving ourselves
away when we do, after all!"

"Oh, it's all very well, Vicar," said good Mrs. Stiffe; "we know you
never say anything against any one. But if Miss Pritchett is such an
angel, what's the reason of her behaviour now? My brother told me that
things were getting very strained."

"Ah, that's a different matter entirely," Blantyre said. "She began to
interfere in important things. And, of course, we couldn't have that.
I'd have let her manage the soup-kitchens and boss the ladies' guilds
till the sky fell. But she wanted to do more than that. Poor dear King
offended her in some way--he's not what ye'd call a ladies' man--and she
wrote to me to send him away at once! And there were other incidents.
I've been doing my best to meet her views and to keep in with her, but
it's been very difficult and I felt the storm would burst soon. I wanted
to keep her in the Faith for her own silly sake! She's not a very
strong-minded person beneath her manner, and she's just the sort of
woman some spiritualistic quack or Christian Science gentleman would get
hold of and ruin her health and happiness. I did hope she'd find peace
in the Church. Well, it can't be helped," he ended with a rather sad
smile, for his heart was tender for all his flock and he saw far down
into the human soul and loved it. Then he changed suddenly. "What am I
doing!" he cried, "talking parochial politics at a garden party! Shame
on me! Come on, Mrs. Stiffe, come on, Lucy, Mr. Chaff, the
piano-entertainer, is going to give his happy half-hour at Earl's
Court."

They went merrily away with him. As they approached the rows of chairs
in front of the piano, he turned suddenly to his sister.

"Why didn't ye knock her down?" he said suddenly, with an exaggerated
brogue and real comic force. Both ladies burst out laughing.

"You ought to have been on the music-hall stage, Vicar," Mrs. Stiffe
said, "you're wasted in Hornham."

"So I've been told," he said. "I shall think seriously of it. It's a
pity to waste a talent."




CHAPTER VI

BOADICEA, JOAN OF ARC, CHARLOTTE CORDAY, JAEL, AND MISS PRITCHETT OF
HORNHAM


People of taste are never without wonder at the extraordinary lack of it
that many well-to-do folk display. It was but rarely that a person of
taste entered Malakoff Lodge, where Miss Pritchett dwelt, but when such
an event did happen, the impression was simply that of enormous
surprise. The drawing-room into which visitors were shown was an immense
place and full of furniture. In each of the corners stood a life-sized
piece of statuary painted in "natural colours." Here one saw an immense
negro, some six feet high, with coffee-coloured skin, gleaming red lips,
and a gaudy robe of blue and yellow. This monster supported a large
earthenware basket on his back, painted, of course, in correct
straw-colour, from which sprang a tall palm that reached to the ceiling.
In other corners of the room were an Egyptian dancing-girl, a Turk, and
an Indian fakir, all of which supported ferns, which it was part of
Miss Gussie Davies' duty to water every morning.

The many tables, chiefly of circular or octagonal form, which stood
about the room, bore a multitude of costly and hideous articles which
should have been relegated to a museum, to illustrate the deplorable
taste of the middle classes during the early and mid-Victorian era.
Here, for example, was a model of the leaning tower of Pisa done in
white alabaster, some two feet in height, and shielded from harm by a
thick glass case. There, the eye fell upon a bunch of very purple grapes
and a nectarine or two, made of wax, with a waxen bee settling upon
them, all covered with glass also. Literary tastes were not forgotten.
Immense volumes of Moore's poems, the works of Southey or Robert
Montgomery lay about on the tables. These were bound in heavy leather
boards, elaborately tooled in gold representations of Greek lyres and
golden laurel crowns. The shining gilt edges were preserved from the
profanation of a casual opening by two or three immense brass clasps
which imprisoned the poet's thoughts within.

The time in which these things were made was a sentimental age, and it
was well reflected in its _bijouterie_. Innumerable nymphs and
shepherdesses stood about offering each other hearts, madrigals, and
other dainties. But they had none of the piquant grace that Watteau
would have given them, or the charm the white-hot fires of Dresden might
have burnt into them. They were solid, very British nymphs, whose
drapery was most decorously arranged that one thick ankle might be
visible, but no more;--nymphs and shepherdesses who, one might imagine,
sat happily by the bank of some canal, singing the pious ditties of Dr.
Watts as the sun went down,--nymphs, in short, with a moral purpose. The
hangings of Miss Pritchett's room, the heavy window curtains that
descended from baldachinos of gleaming gold, were all of a rich crimson,
an extraordinary colour that is not made now, and the wall-paper was a
heavy pattern in dark ultramarine and gold. Indeed, there was enough
gold in this mausoleum to have satisfied Miss Killmansegg herself.

One merit the place had in summer, it was cool, and when the barouche
that was the envy of Hornham drove up at Malakoff gates, Miss Pritchett
rushed into the drawing-room, and, sinking into an arm-chair of purple
plush, fanned a red and angry face with her handkerchief.

The companion followed her meekly.

"Wait there, Miss Davies," said the spinster sharply; "stand there for a
moment, please, till I can get my breath."

Miss Davies remained standing before her patroness in meek obedience.
After a minute or two, Miss Pritchett motioned with her hand towards an
adjacent chair. Gussie Davies sat down.

It was part of the spinster's life to subject her companion to a kind of
drill in this way. The unfortunate girl's movements were regulated
mathematically, and in her more genial and expansive moments Miss
Pritchett would explain that her "nerves" required that this should be
so--that she should have absolute control over the movements of any one
who was in the room with her.

There had been spirited contests between Miss Pritchett and a long
succession of girls who had refused to play the part of automaton, but
in Gussie Davies, the lady had found a willing slave. She paid her well,
and in return was served with diligence and thorough obsequiousness.
Gussie was adroit, more adroit than her somewhat lymphatic appearance
would have led the casual observer to suppose. Properly trained, she
might almost have made a psychologist, but her opportunities had been
limited. However, for several years, she had directed a sharp brain to
the study of one person, and she knew Miss Pritchett as Mr. Sponge knew
his Mogg. Her influence with that lady was enormous, the more so in that
it was not at all suspected by the object, who imagined that the girl
was hers, body and soul. But, nevertheless, Miss Davies, who hailed from
Wales and had a large share of the true Cymric cunning, could play upon
her mistress with sure fingers, and, while submitting to every form of
petty tyranny, and occasionally open insult, she ruled the foolish woman
she was with.

Gussie sat down. Miss Pritchett did not speak at once, and the girl
judged, correctly enough, that she was meant to open the ball.

"O Miss Pritchett!" she said with a little shudder, "what a relief it
must be to you to be back in your own mansion!"

Nothing pleased the spinster more than the word mansion as applied to
her house. Gussie used the term with discretion, employing it only on
special occasions, unwilling to be prodigal of so sure a card.

"You may well say that, child," Miss Pritchett answered faintly.

"Now you must let me ring for a glass of port for you," the young lady
continued. "You need it, indeed you do. I'll take the responsibility on
myself."

She rose and rang the bell. "Two glasses," said Miss Pritchett when the
answering maid had received her order. "You shall have a glass, Gussie,
for I feel I am to blame in taking you to such a place. I have seen the
world, and I have met women of that class before, I am sorry to say. But
hitherto I have managed to shield you from such contamination."

Gussie sighed the sigh of innocence, a sigh which the young men with
whom she larked about in Alexandra Gardens never heard.

"I wish I had your knowledge of the world," she said. "But, of course,
I've never mixed in society, not like you."

The port arrived and in a minute or two the experienced damsel saw that
her patroness was settling down for a long and confidential chat. The
moment promised a golden opportunity, of which she meant to take
advantage if she possibly could. She had a big scheme in hand; she was
primed with it by minds more subtle than her own. The image of Sam
Hamlyn was before her and she burned to deserve that gentleman's
commendation.

"Yes," said Miss Pritchett, "as a girl, when I used to go to the Lord
Mayor's balls at the Mansion House with papa and mamma, I saw what
society really was. And it's worse now! That abandoned hussy at the
vicarage is an example of what I mean. I must not go into details before
you, child, but I know what I know!"

"How _awful_, Miss Pritchett! I saw her making eyes at all the gentlemen
before you went up to her."

"All's fish that comes to the net of such," replied Miss Pritchett. "An
earl's toy, the giddy bubble floating on the open sewer of a London
season, or the sly allurer of an honest young city gentleman. Anything
in trousers, child, is like herrings to a cat!"

"How _awful_! Miss Pritchett," repeated Gussie, wondering what it would
be like to be an earl's toy, and rather thinking she would enjoy it. "I
suppose you'll go to the vicarage just as usual, though,--on parish
business, I mean."

This, as the girl expected, provoked a storm, which she patiently
endured, certain that she was in a way to gain her ends. At length, the
flow of voluble and angry words grew less. Miss Pritchett was enjoying
herself too much to risk the girl's non-compliance with her mood.

"There, there," she said eventually, "it's only your ignorance I know,
Gussie, but you do aggravate me. You don't understand society. Never
shall I set foot in that man's house again!"

Gussie gasped. Her face expressed fervent admiration at such a daring
resolve, but slight incredulity as well.

The bait took again. "Never, as I'm a living lady!" said Miss Pritchett,
"and I don't know as I shall ever drive up to the church doors in my
carriage on a Sunday morning more! Opinions may change. I _may_ have
been--I don't say I _have_ been, yet, mind you--I _may_ have been led
away by the false glitter of Roman doctrine and goings on."

The idea seemed to please the lady. She saw herself picturesque in such
a situation.

Gussie started suddenly.

"What's the matter, child?" she was asked tartly; "do you think no
one's got any nerves? Keep still, do!"

"I'm very sorry, Miss Pritchett, but when you said that, I remembered
something I was reading last night in the _Hornham Observer_."

"I was keeping it for Sunday afternoon," said Miss Pritchett. "I did
mean to go to morning service and then read Mr. Hamlyn's side of last
Sunday's proceedings at home, comfortable like. But what's in the
paper?"

"A great deal that will interest you, dear Miss Pritchett, though I do
not know if you will be pleased."

"Pleased? What do you mean?"

"Your name is mentioned several times."

"Is it, indeed! We'll soon see about that! Fetch the paper at once and
read what it says. If Mr. Hamlyn's been foolish enough to talk about his
betters, I'll very soon have him turned neck and crop out of the place.
He's a man I've never spoken to more than twice, and he must be taught
his place in Hornham."

Gussie went out to fetch the paper. She smiled triumphantly as she came
into the hall. All was going well and, moreover, her quick ear had
caught the slight trace of wavering and alarm in the concluding words
of her mistress. Miss Pritchett, like many other people, was never able
to rid herself of a superstitious reverence for print. She devoutly
believed the cheap romances that formed her literary food, and even a
small local newspaper was not without a strong influence on one whose
whole sympathies and interests were local.

Gussie came back with the paper. "There's two whole pages about the St.
Elwyn's business," she said, "column after column, with great big
letters at the top. Shall I begin at the beginning?"

"No, no; read the bits about me, of course. Read what it was that made
you jump like a cat in an oven just now."

"That particular bit did not mention your name, Miss Pritchett, but it
chimed in so with what you said just now. I wonder if I can find
it?--ah, here it is--

"'And so I think I have accounted for the reason of the popularity of
such services as go on at St. Elwyn's among the poorer classes. A
wealthy clergyman can buy attendance at any idolatry, and who would
blame a starving brother, desperate for food, perhaps, for attendance at
a mummery which is nothing to him but the price of a much-needed meal?
Not I. Tolerance has ever been the watch-word of the _Observer_, and,
however much I may regret that even the poorest man may be forced to
witness the blasphemous and hideous mockery of Truth that takes place at
St. Elwyn's, I blame not the man, but the cunning of a priesthood that
buys his attendance and then points to him as a convert to thinly veiled
Romanism.'"

Gussie stopped for a moment to take breath. Miss Pritchett's face was
composed to pleasure. This was hot and strong indeed! She wondered how
Father Blantyre liked this!

Worthy Mr. Hamlyn, indeed, had heard of the little incident of the navvy
and Father King, and knew that the erstwhile antagonist was now housed
in the vicarage. Hence the preceding paragraph. Gussie went on:

"'But what shall we say when we find rank and fashion, acute
intelligence and honoured names bowing down in the House of Rimmon? How
shall we in Hornham regard such a strange and--so it seems to
us--unnatural state of affairs?

"'The Scarlet Woman is powerful indeed! It would be idle to attempt to
deny it. The drowsy magic of Rome has permeated with its subtle
influence homes where we should have hoped it would never enter. And why
is this? I think we can understand the reason in some measure. Let us
take an imaginary case. Let us suppose that there is among us a woman of
high station, of intellect, wealth, and charm. She sees a struggling
priesthood establish itself in a Protestant neighbourhood. The sympathy
that woman will ever have for the weak is enlisted; she visits a church,
not realising what its sham and ceremony leads to, under what Malign
Influence it is carried on. And then a gracious nature is attracted by
the cunning amenities of worship. The music, the lights, the flowers,
the gorgeous robes, appeal to a high and delicate nature. For a time, it
passes under the sway of an arrogant priesthood, and, with that sweet
submission which is one of the most alluring of feminine charms, bows
before a Baal which it does not realise, a golden calf that it would
abhor and repudiate were it not blinded by its own charity and
unsuspicious trust! Have I drawn a picture that is too strong? I think
not. It is only by analogy that we can best present the Truth.

"'Nevertheless we do not hesitate to assert, and assert with absolute
conviction, that, if such a clouding of a fine nature were temporarily
possible, it would be but transient. Truth will prevail. In the end, we
shall see all those who are now the puppets and subjects of a Romanising
attempt come back to the clear sunlight of Protestantism, away from the
stink-pots and candles, the toys of ritual, the poison of a painted
lie.'"

Gussie read the paragraphs with unction. She read them rather well. As
she made an end, her guilty conscience gave her a fear that the unusual
emphasis might have awakened some suspicion in Miss Pritchett's mind.
But with great relief she saw that it was not so. That lady was
manifestly excited. Her eyes were bright and there was a high flush on
the cheek-bones. Truth to tell, Miss Pritchett had always suspected that
there were depths of hidden gold in her nature. But they had never been
so vividly revealed to her before.

"Give me the paper," she said in a tremulous voice; "let me read it for
myself!"

Her unguarded words showed Miss Davies how completely the fortress was
undermined. The spinster read the words through her glasses and then
handed the paper back to her companion.

"The man that wrote that," she said, "is a good and sincere man. He
knows how the kind heart can be imposed upon and deceived! I shall take
an early opportunity of meeting Mr. Hamlyn. He will be a great man some
day, if I am any judge."

"He must have had his eye on the Malakoff," Gussie said. "Why, dear Miss
Pritchett, he has described you to a T. There is no one else in Hornham
to whom it could apply."

"Hush, child! It may be as you say. This worthy man may have been
casting his eye over the parish and thought that he saw in me something
of which he writes. It is not for me to deny it. I can only say that in
his zeal he has much exaggerated the humble merits of one who, whatever
her faults, has merely tried to do her duty in the station to which she
has been called. And if Providence has placed that station high, it is
Providence's will, and we must not complain!"

"How beautifully you put it, Miss Pritchett!"

The chatelaine of Malakoff wiped a tear from her eye. The excitement of
the afternoon, the glass of port, the periods of Mr. Hamlyn's prose,
had all acted upon nerves pampered by indulgence and tightened with
self-irritation.

"I believe you care for me, child," said Miss Pritchett with a sob.

"How it rejoices me to hear you say so, Miss Pritchett," Gussie replied,
seeing that her opportunity had now come. "But your generous nature
gives way too easily. You are unstrung by the wanton insults of that
woman! Let me read you the concluding portion of Mr. Hamlyn's article.
It may soothe you."

"Read it," murmured the spinster, now lost in an ecstasy of luxurious
grief, though she would have been puzzled to give a reason for it.

Gussie took up the paper once more. Now that her battle was so nearly
won, she allowed herself more freedom in the reading. The Celtic love of
drama stirred within her and she gave the pompous balderdash _ore
rotundo_.

"'And in conclusion, what is our crying need in England to-day? It is
this: It is the establishment of a great crusade for the crushing of the
disguised Popery in our midst. One protest has been made in Hornham,
protests should be made all over England. A mighty organisation should
be called into existence which should make every "priest" tremble in his
cope and cassock, tremble for the avalanche of public reprobation which
will descend upon him and his.

"'I may be a visionary and no such idea as I have in my mind may be
possible. But I think not. Who can say that our borough of Hornham may
not become famous in history as the spot in which the second Reformation
was born!

"'Much needs to be done before such a glorious movement can be
inaugurated; that it will be inaugurated a band of earnest and
determined men and women live in the liveliest hope.

"'I am confident that a movement having its seed in the borough, if
widely published and made known to patriotic English people, would be
supported with swift and overwhelming generosity by the country at
large. The public response would appal the Ritualists and even astonish
loyal sons of the Church of England. But, in order to start this
crusade, help is required. Some noble soul must come forward to start
the machine, to raise the Protestant Flag.

"'Where shall we find him or her? Is there no one in our midst willing
to become the patron of Truth and to earn the praise of thousands and a
place in history?

"'Once Joan of Arc led the forces of her country to victory. A Charlotte
Corday slew the monster Marat, a Boadicea hurled herself against the
legions of Rome! Who will be our Boadicea to-day, who will come forward
to crush the tyranny of Rome in our own England? For such a noble lady,
who will revive in her own person the undying deeds of antiquity, I can
promise a fame worth more than all the laurels of the old British queen,
the heartfelt thanks and love of her countrymen, and above all of her
country-women--over whose more kindly and unsuspicious natures the
deadly Upas-tree of Romanism has cast its poisonous shade. Where is the
Jael who will destroy this Sisera?'"

Miss Davies ceased. Her voice sank. No sound was heard but the snuffle
that came from the plush arm-chair opposite, where Miss Pritchett was
audibly weeping. Mr. Hamlyn's purple prose had been skilfully introduced
at the psychological moment. The woman's ill-balanced temperament was
awry and smarting. Her egregious vanity was wounded as it had rarely
been wounded before. She had been treated as of no account, and she was
burning with spite and the longing for revenge.

Gussie said nothing more. She let the words of the newspaper do their
work without assistance.

Presently Miss Pritchett looked up. She wiped her eyes and a grim
expression of determination came out upon her face.

"I see it all!" she said suddenly. "My trusting nature has been terribly
deceived; I have been led into error by evil counsellors; the power of
the Jesuits has been secretly brought to bear upon one who, whatever her
failings, has scorned suspicion!"

"Oh, Miss Pritchett, how _awful_!" said Gussie.

"Yes," continued the lady with a delighted shudder, "the net has been
thrown over me and I was nigh to perish. But Providence intervenes! I
see how I am to be the 'umble instrument of crushing error in the
Church. I shall step into the breach!"

"Oh, Miss Pritchett, how _noble_!"

"Miss Davies, you will kindly put on your jacket and walk round to Mr.
Hamlyn's house. See Mr. Hamlyn and tell him that Miss Pritchett is too
agitated by recent events to write personally, but she begs he will
favour her with his company at supper to discuss matters of great public
importance. Tell Jones to send up some sweetbreads at once, and inform
cook as a gentleman will be here to supper, and to serve the cold
salmon."

Gussie rose quickly. "Oh, Miss Pritchett," she cried, "what a great day
for England this will be!"




CHAPTER VII

THE OFFICES OF THE "LUTHER LEAGUE"--AN INTERIOR


On the first floor of a building in the Strand, wedged in between a
little theatre and a famous restaurant, the offices of the "Luther
League" were established, and by late autumn were in the full swing of
their activity.

Visitors to this stronghold of Protestantism mounted a short flight of
stairs and arrived in a wide passage. Four or five doors opening into it
all bore the name of the association in large letters of white enamel.
The first door bore the legend:

     "PUBLISHING AND GENERAL OFFICE INQUIRIES"

This room, the one by which the general public were admitted to the
inner sanctuaries, was a large place fitted up with desks and glass
compartments in much the same way as the ordinary clerks' office of a
business house. A long counter divided the room, and upon it were
stacked piles of the newly published pamphlet literature of the League.
Here could be seen that stirring narrative, _Cowed by the Confessional;
or, The Story of an English Girl in the Power of the "Priests."_ This
publication, probably the cheapest piece of pornography in print at the
moment, was published, with an illustration, at three pence. Upon the
cover a priest--for some unexplained reason in full eucharistic
vestments--was pointing sternly to the armour-plated door of a grim
confessional, while a trembling lady in a large picture hat shrunk
within.

This little book was flanked by what appeared to be a semi-jocular work
called _Who Said Reredos?_ and bore upon its cover the already
distinguished name of Samuel Hamlyn, Jr. The eye fell upon that popular
pamphlet in a wrapper of vivid scarlet--now in its sixtieth
thousand--known as _Bow to the "Altar" and Light Bloody Mary's Torture
Fires Again_.

_As Soon Pay the Devil as the Priest_ lay by the side of a more
elaborately bound volume on which was the portrait of a lady. Beneath
the picture appeared the words of the title, _My Escape; or, How I
Became a Protestant_, by Jane Pritchett.

Two clerks wrote in the ledgers on the desks, attended to visitors, and
looked after what was known in the office as the "counter trade"--to
distinguish it from the sale of Protestant literature in bulk, which was
managed direct from the "Luther League Printing Works, Hornham, N."

A second room opening into the general office was tenanted by the
assistant secretary of the League, Mr. Samuel Hamlyn, Junior. Here the
walls were decorated with scourges, horribly knotted and thonged;
"Disciplines," which were belts and armlets of sharp iron prickles,
designed to wear the skin of the toughest Ritualist into an open sore
after three days' wear. There were also two hair shirts, apparently the
worse for wear, and a locked bookcase of Ritualistic literature with a
little _index expurgatorius_ in the neat, clerkly writing of Sam Hamlyn,
and compiled by that gentleman himself.

In this chamber of horrors, the assistant secretary delighted to move
and have his being, and three or four times a day it was his pleasing
duty to show friends of the League and its yearly subscribers, the
penitential machinery by which the priest-ridden public was secretly
invited to hoist itself to heaven.

The innermost room of all was where Mr. Hamlyn, Senior, himself
transacted the multifarious and growing business of his organisation.
The secretary sat at a large roll-top desk, and a substantial safe stood
at his right hand. An air of brisk business pervaded this sanctum. The
directories, almanacs, and account-books all contributed to it, and the
end of a speaking-tube, which led to the outer office, was clipped to
the arm of the revolving chair.

Three portraits adorned the wall. From a massive gold frame the features
of that fiery Protestant virgin, Miss Pritchett, stared blandly down
into the room. Opposite it was a large photograph of Mr. Hamlyn himself,
with upraised hand and parted lips--in the very act and attitude of
making one of his now familiar protests. The third in this trio of
Protestant champions was a drawing of Martin Luther himself,
"representing the Reformer," as Mr. Hamlyn was wont to say, "singing for
joy at the waning power of Rome." The artist of this picture, however,
being a young gentleman of convivial tastes, had portrayed the
"Nightingale of Wittemberg" in a merry mood, remembering, perhaps,
Carlyle's remark, "there is laughter in this Luther," or perhaps--as is
indeed most probable--remembering little of the great man but his
authorship of the ditty that concludes:

    Who loves not women, wine, and song
    Will be a fool his whole life long.

Fortunately, Mr. Hamlyn, whose historical studies had been extremely
restricted, did not know of this effort--just as he did not know that to
the end of his life the student of Erfurt steadily proclaimed his belief
in the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

About ten o'clock on a grey, cold November morning, the two Hamlyns
arrived at the offices of the Luther League together, walked briskly up
the stairs, and, with a curt "good morning" to the clerks, entered the
innermost room together.

People who had known the father and son six months ago, seeing them now,
would have found a marked, though subtle, difference in both of them.

They were much better dressed, for one thing. The frock-coats were not
made in Hornham, the silk hats were glossy and with the curly brims of
the fashion. Both still suggested a more than nodding acquaintance with
religious affairs in their costume, some forms of Christianity always
preferring to evince themselves by the style of a cravat or the texture
of a cloth.

Confidence had never been lacking in either of the two, but now the
sense of power and success had increased it, and had also imposed a
certain quietness and gravity which impressed people. Here, at any rate,
were two men of affairs, men whose names were beginning to be known
throughout the land, and Mr. Hamlyn's manner of preoccupation and
thought was only natural after all in one who (as his son would remark
to Protestant visitors) "practically held the fortunes of the Church in
his hands, and was destroying the Catholic wolves with the sword of
Protestant Truth."

The two men took off their overcoats and hung them up. Then Mr. Hamlyn,
from mere force of old habit, pulled at his cuffs--in order to lay them
aside during business hours. Finding that he could not withdraw them,
for increasing position and emolument had seemed to necessitate the
wearing of a white shirt, he sat down with a half sigh for the freedom
and comfort of an earlier day and began to open the large pile of
correspondence on the table before him.

"We'll take the cash first, Sam," he said, pulling a small paper-knife
from a drawer.

Sam opened a note-book in which the first rough draughts of matter
relating to this most important subject were entered, preparatory to
being copied out into one of the ledgers in the outer office.

Hamlyn began to slit up the letters with a practised hand. Those that
contained the sinews of war he read with a running comment, others were
placed in a basket for further consideration.

"'Well-wisher,' five shillings; 'Well-wisher,' £2 0 0, by cheque, Sam.
'Ethel and her sisters,' ten and six--small family that, I should think!
'Protestant,' five pounds--a note, Sam, take the number. It's curious
that 'Protestant' always gives most. Yesterday seven 'Protestants'
totalled up to fourteen, twelve, six, while five 'Well-wishers' worked
out at slightly under three shillings a head. What's this? Ah! cheque
for a guinea and a letter on crested paper! Enter up the address and
make a note to send half a dozen _Bloody Marys_, one Miss Pritchett's
_Escape_, and a few _Pay the Devils_. During the last week or two, the
upper classes have been rallying to the flag. They're the people. I'll
send this woman the ten-guinea subscription form and ask her to be one
of the vice-presidents. Listen here:


     MARGRAVINE HOUSE,
     LEICESTER

     Lady Johnson begs to enclose a cheque for one guinea to aid Mr.
     Hamlyn in his splendid Crusade against the Ritualists. She would be
     glad to hear full details of the "Luther League" and its objects.
     She wonders why Mr. Hamlyn has confined his protests against
     _Romanism_ in the guise of _English Churchmanship_ to the London
     district, and would point out that in her own neighbourhood there
     is a hot-bed of Ritualism which should be exposed."

Sam went to the book shelf and took down a Peerage. "She's the wife of a
knight," he said, "one of the city knights."

"Probably very well off," said Mr. Hamlyn. "We'll nail her for the
Cause! See that the books go off at once, and I'll write her a personal
letter during the day."

He rubbed his hands together with a movement of inexpressible
satisfaction. His keen face was lighted up with the pleasures of power
and success.

"She's got her own axe to grind," remarked Sam. "Had a flare-up with the
local parson, I expect."

"Shouldn't wonder," replied his father indifferently. "Here's two
p.o.'s, one for seven bob and one for three. From a Wesleyan minister at
Camborne in Cornwall. I'll put him down to be written to under the local
helpers' scheme. His prayers'll be with us, he says!" Mr. Sam sniffed
impatiently as he wrote down the sum in his book.

In a few more minutes, the contributions were all booked up and the
Church of England--as represented by these two eminent laymen--was
bulwarked against the enemies to the extent of some seventeen pounds.

"Now," said Mr. Hamlyn, "let's take the press-cuttings next." He opened
a large envelope.

A day or two before Mr. Hamlyn had varied his pleasant little habit of
turning up during the most solemn moments of a church service and
brawling until he was ejected with more or less force, being brought up
at a police-court a day or two afterwards and paying the fine imposed
upon him with a cheque from Miss Pritchett. During the blessing of a new
peal of bells in a provincial cathedral, he had risen and read a paper
of protest. He had read the paper in a low, hurried voice, and the
disturbance had been purely local and attracted but little attention in
the huge building. In a moment, almost, the secretary of the Luther
League had been conducted to the door of the building by vigilant
vergers.

But the commotion in the press next morning had been enormous. Lurid
reports of this great protest appeared in leaded type, comment of every
kind filled the papers, and their editors were inundated with letters on
the subject. As an editor himself, Mr. Hamlyn well understood the
interior machinery of a newspaper office, and was perfectly well
acquainted with the various methods by which things get into print. He
began to examine the cuttings from the weekly papers that Durrant's had
sent him.

"All goes on well," he said at length. "It really is astonishing the
space they give us! Who'd have thought it six months ago! Don't they go
for the League in some of them! Just listen to this, it's the finish of
a column in _Vigilance_:

"'... and I shall therefore await the publication of the promised
balance-sheet of this precious "League" with more than usual interest.
Such an indecent and futile campaign as this deserves to be thoroughly
scrutinised.'"

"That's nasty, Pa," said Sam.

"It don't matter in the least. Our League is perfectly honest and
above-board, thank goodness! We shall publish the balance-sheet, of
course. We are doing a great and glorious work for Hengland, and the
labourer is worthy of his hire. We are perfectly justified in taking our
salaries. What does a parson do? And, besides no one reads _Vigilance_
that's likely to give Protestant campaigns a penny. It's a society
paper. Religious people don't see it."

"Quite so. And all the Protestant papers are with us; that's the great
thing."

"Exactly, even the old established evangelical papers like the _Church
Recorder_ daren't say anything against us. You see our advertisements
are worth such a lot to 'em! Half the Low Church papers can't pay their
way, the big advertisers won't look at them. All the money goes to the
_Church Standard_ and the other Ritualistic rags. The _Standard's_ one
of the best paying properties in London. So the Low Church papers
_can't_ do without us. Wait a year, Sam, and we'll have our own paper,
put in some Fleet Street hack as editor, publish at a separate office,
and charge the account what we like for our own articles."

"Our position is practically unassailable, as far as I can see."

"It's just that, my boy--as long as people send in the money. But
gradually we shall find London getting dry. It's all right now that the
boom's on, but the novelty of the thing will wear off after a bit. And
what we want is to get ourselves so strong that the League will go on
_for ever_! Now, I look on it in this way: Much as I 'ate the Ritualists
and love true Henglish Protestantism"--Mr. Hamlyn's face grew full of
fervour as he said this--"much as I 'ate Romanising tricks and such, I'm
jolly well certain that neither we nor any one else is going to make
much difference to them! They're too strong, Sam. You'll find a red-hot
Ritualist would give up his arms and legs for his carryings-on.
Ritualism's getting stronger and stronger. _They've got the best men for
parsons_, and you see those chaps aren't in it for their own game, as a
rule. They live like paupers and give all they've got away. Well, that
gives 'em grip."

"Silly fools," said Sam contemptuously.

"Poor deluded tools of Rome," said Mr. Hamlyn, who, now that his great
mission was an accomplished fact, was really beginning to believe in it
himself. "Well, my point is this: Ritualism will never stop. It's too
well organised, and the clergy are too well educated. And most of 'em
are 'class' too. It all tells."

"Well, then, if our efforts aren't going to do any good, in a year or so
the public will notice that, and the public will stop subscribing."

"Not a bit of it, Sam, you don't see as deep as I do. As long as we keep
the question prominent, it will be all right. First of all, we shall
always get the Nonconformist contribution. In every town, the
Nonconformist minister can be trusted to stir up people against a
Ritualistic 'priest,' especially if he's vowed to celibacy. Married ones
get on better. But what I'm coming to is this: All over Hengland there
are parishes where the vicar is more or less of a Romaniser. But he's
personally liked, perhaps, or no one makes the protest. But in every
parish, experience shows there's two or three prominent folk who hate
the vicar. Now, where there's a spark a flame can be got. It's all very
well to go and protest in a parish where there's a strong feeling
against Ritualism--like St. Elwyn's, for example. But think of the
hundreds of parishes where people jog along quite content, not knowing
the darkness in which they're groping! Now, we'll stir these places up,
we'll raise the flag of the League in places which have been going along
quiet and peaceable for years. There won't be a church from which we
can't get some people away. The Luther League shall become a household
word from John o' Groat's to Land's End."

"Good scheme, Father, if you can do it. But think of the work, and think
of the risks of letting any one else into the League. We might find
ourselves in the second place some day."

"Not at all, Sam. Not as I've worked it out. You ought to know that I
never start anything without going careful into the details."

"Sorry, Father. Let's have the plan."

"I'm going to start a band of 'Luther Lecturers' to carry Protestant
Truth into the 'idden places. I'm beginning with six young fellows I've
got. They'll travel all over the country, holding open-air meetings of
agitation, with a collection for the League--making public protests in
such churches as I give the order to be gone for, and lecturing on what
Ritualism really is. Now, these chaps will have two lectures. I've had
'em written already. One's on the Mass, another's on the
confessional,--hot Protestant stuff. They'll go like wild fire. The
young men'll learn these lectures off by heart and deliver 'em with
local allusions to the vicars of the parishes as they come to. I've got
a supply of the illegal wafers as the Ritualists use for the Lord's
Supper. Each lecture'll have one or two to show in the meetings. He'll
pull it out and show the poor deluded people the god of flour and water
their priests tell 'em to worship. There's lots of real humour in the
lectures. They'll fire the popular imagination. Every crowd likes to
hear a parson abused. I got the idea of humour and fun in the lectures
from the Salvation Army. You see, we want to reach the class of folk as
don't mind standing round a street-corner meeting and listening. The
Army makes it pay wonderfully! But they only attack sin. They don't
bother what a man does as long as he's good. We're attacking Rome in the
Henglish Church, and it's remarkable what a lot of ridiculous things and
points I've got into these lectures. There's one thing, for instance,
that'll keep all a crowd on the grin--I mean the directions to a
'priest' if an insect gets into the 'consecrated' wine. It has to be
burnt. Can't you see the lecturer with his 'Now, my friends, I ask you
what a poor little spider's done to be used like that?' It's all an
unworked mine! And you see there's no answer to it! A Ritualist 'priest'
who comes to argue--of course, discussion will be invited--is bound to
get left. He'll be so solemn and that, that the ordinary man in the
street won't understand a word he's driving at. My men'll win every
time. You'll see."

"As usual, Pa," said Sam, "you've hit on a good thing. It'll extend the
League wonderful. But what about your men--where'll you get 'em? and
what guarantee will you have that they won't rob the League?"

"Oh, that's all thought out. I shall have quite young chaps and pay them
about eighteen shillings a week and travelling expenses. Each two or
three days they'll have to send in reports as to the work, and each week
forward the collection. I shall try, eventually, to get real earnest
young men who believe in our glorious Henglish Protestant 'eritage.
_They_ won't rob us. I shall get smart young chaps with plenty of bounce
and go, but not much education. It's not _wanted_ for popular
street-corner work. You get a Ritualist parson coming to try and answer
one of my chaps--take the crucifix question, now. My man will talk about
Popish idols and that--it's all in the lecture--and all the parson will
say is that a crucifix is legal in the Church of Hengland--I believe, as
a strict matter of fact, it _is_. Then my man turns round and tells the
crowd that a crucifix is nothing but a dolly on a stick--he gets the
laugh, see? The 'priest' can't explain all his humbugging reverence and
that in an open-air meeting, with one of my chaps ready with a joke
every time he speaks. I've got four out of my six men already, and if
the thing hums as I expect, I'll put twenty or thirty in the field at
once. They're easy found! There's lots of young chaps connected with
chapels that would far rather tour the country attracting attention
wherever they go, and do nothing but agitate, than work hard! There's
young Moffatt, Peter Moffatt's son. He's a plumber, but he 'ates work.
He's got cheek for twenty, and he'll do no end of good. As for the cost,
why, the men will pay for themselves over and over again. They'll be
well supplied from the central office--extracts from the papers and so
on--they'll take local halls and advertise in local papers. I shall
expect that each man, if he's any good _at all_, will pay all his own
expenses each week and forward a clear two pounds to me! A man that
can't do that, at least, with such backing as we can give him and such a
splendid war-cry--well, I wouldn't give twopence for him."

"I see it all clear now," answered Sam, a flush of excitement coming
into his face. "And besides the money and extension of the League there
will be splendid opportunities for you and me to run down now and then
to support our men and get an 'oliday--take Brighton, for instance! It's
full of Ritualists. A couple of men could spend a month there."

"And take from two to three hundred pounds, I should think," said the
secretary, thoughtfully, "besides dealing an 'orrid blow to the wolves
in the fold of the Protestant Henglish Church. We'll have some good
protests in Brighton! Then, when our lecturers are fined for brawling,
we'll instruct them _not to pay the fine_, but to go to prison for a
fortnight instead! Of course, it'll be considered 'andsomely in their
salaries. Then we'll send them round the country with a magic lantern
and a rousing lecture. 'Imprisoned by the Romanisers,' 'In Gaol for the
Protestant Faith!' or something like that."

"That's _fine_," said Sam, in an ecstasy of enjoyment. "Why, Father, the
whole thing grows like a snowball! It _must_ grow."

"Didn't I tell you, six months ago?" said Mr. Hamlyn. "Look at us then
and now! What were we then? Nothing, 'ardly. What are we now? Directors
of a big concern, becoming known all over Hengland, drawing good
salaries, and with all the pleasure of bossing a big show. Look at the
printing account the works have against the League, look at our expenses
when we've got thirty or more Luther lecturers all over the country! And
yet there's nothing risky in it. Nothing at all. No bogus-company
promoting, no snide article to sell. We've no limited-liability company
act to fear, no treasury investigations. We stand upon solid rock and
nobody can't touch us! And why? Because we are championing the freedom
of the people's religion, we are fighting for glorious Protestantism!"

"Fancy no one thinking of it before!" said Sam.

Mr. Hamlyn's shrewd, able face beamed with merriment. "Providence," he
said, "chooses its own instruments. Now, then, send me in the shorthand
clerk; I shall be at work all day. To-night I address a public meeting
in the 'Olborn Town Hall, and before ten I'm due to sup with Miss
Pritchett. She wants something definite done in St. Elwyn's, and I must
think out a slap in the face for Blantyre."

"I'll run round to the bank," said Sam, "and pay this morning's little
lot into the general fund, and post the statement to the treasurer."

"Right, my son. What was it?"

"Seventeen pounds odd, Pa."

"Protestants are waking up," said Mr. Hamlyn, "our work for the Cause
has a blessing upon it."




CHAPTER VIII

A PRIVATE CONFERENCE AT MIDNIGHT A YEAR LATER


It was late at night in Father Blantyre's study at Hornham. King and
Stephens had gone to bed, but the vicar sat with Dr. Hibbert, his
churchwarden.

Both men were smoking. By the side of the doctor stood a modest peg of
whiskey; the priest contented himself with a glass of soda-water. The
candles by which the room was lighted showed that Mr. Blantyre's face
was very worn and weary. He seemed a man who was passing through a time
of stress and storm. The bronzed countenance of the doctor wore its
usual aspect of serenity and strength. Both men had been talking
together earnestly for a great part of the night. A true and intimate
friendship obtained between them, and it was a plan that fortnightly
they should meet thus and make confidences to each other about that
which they held so dear.

"It is just a year," Blantyre said, "since Hamlyn committed his first
sacrilege in our own church."

"The time goes very fast," Hibbert answered, "yet look at the changes!
The man has become almost a power in the land, or at least he seems to
be. It is his talent for organisation. It's supreme. Look how this
wretched 'League' has grown. It has its spies and agents everywhere, its
committee has names of importance among its members, the amount of money
that rolls into Hamlyn's coffers must be very large."

"I'm afraid so. But think of the turmoil and unrest one man can
create--the misery and pain churchmen feel every day now as they see the
jocose blasphemies of these people and see the holiest things held up to
an utterly vulgar and soulless ridicule. It's a wrong thought, Hibbert,
perhaps, but I do sometimes long to be out of it all, to start afresh on
such new work as God may give one in another life!"

"Such a thought comes to all of us at times, of course. But it's
physical mainly. It's merely a languor of overstrain and a weak nervous
state. You know yourself how such thoughts come chiefly at night, and
how after your tub, in the morning light and air they all go."

"Materialist! But you're right, Hibbert, quite right."

"You go on taking the physic I've sent you and you'll pick up soon. But,
of course, this _is_ a very trying time. The parish is in a constant
turmoil. These Sunday evening Protestant meetings when folk are coming
out of church are a bad nuisance. That's a new move, too."

"Yes. They found that the hooligan riot-provoking business was very
simply dealt with, and so they are trying this. It is that poor, silly
old creature, Miss Pritchett. The Hamlyns are hand and glove with her. I
suppose she is sincere, poor old lady! I hope so. She was an ardent
Catholic, and I hope she does honestly believe in the new substitute for
the Faith. I am very sorry for her."

"I'm less charitable, Blantyre; she's a spiteful old cat. I am not
violating any professional confidence in telling _you_ that she won't
live long if she goes on living in the thick of this noisy Protestant
agitation. I do my best for her, of course, but she won't do as she's
told."

"She's a nuisance," the vicar said, "but I hope she won't go yet. I
should like to make friends with her before she dies. And I should like
her to die in the Faith."

"She won't do that, I'm afraid, Blantyre. She has gone too far away from
the Church. But, now, what do you honestly think the effect of this
Luther crusading business has been on the Church."

"Well, I think there can be no doubt of that. I was talking it over with
Lord Huddersfield last week and we both agreed. The _Church_ has gained
enormously. People who were simply attracted by ceremonial and what was
novel to them have gone out, in a restless endeavour to find some new
thing. But that is all. Our congregations here, our communicants, have
grown very much. There is a deeper spiritual fervour among us, I am sure
of it. No churchman has taken Hamlyn seriously for a moment. He has
failed in every attempt he has made to interfere with our teaching or
our ceremonial, failed absolutely. All his legal cases have fallen
through, or proved abortive, or are dragging on towards extinction. The
days of ritual prosecutions are utterly dead. All the harm Hamlyn has
done the Church itself is to weary our ears and hearts with a great
noise and tumult, with floods of empty talk. He has stung our nerves,
he hasn't penetrated to any vital part."

"Yes, that is so. It needs more than the bellowings of such a man, more
than the hostility of people who are not members of the Church, to hurt
her in any serious degree. The man and his friends have a large rabble
behind them, but they can only parade through the streets of England
beating their drums and rattling their collecting boxes. The Church is
safe."

"It is. And yet in another way, all this business is doing fearful harm
to the _morale_ of the country, limited though it may be. The mass of
non-Christian people who might be gathered into the Church are looking
down upon these unseemly contests with a sneer. They feel that there can
be little good or truth in a system of philosophy which seems to them to
be nothing but an arena of brawling fools. Therein comes the harm.
Hamlyn isn't injuring church people, he is giving contraband of war to
infidelity. And just at this particular moment in the world's history
this is extremely dangerous. In thirty years, the danger will have
passed away; to-day, it is great."

"And why particularly at this moment?"

"Why, because the world is utterly changing with extraordinary rapidity.
That world which once adjusted itself so sweetly to our faith is
vanishing, is gone. The new world which is arriving is unassimilated,
unsorted, unexplained. The light hasn't entered it yet, it doesn't know
how to correspond. The trouble lies in that. The new politics, science,
philosophy, art, are only social habits. And these will not talk our
language yet, or confess Christ. And this squabble and turmoil will
retard the new adjustment for years, because outsiders won't even
trouble to examine our claims or make experience of our system. _And
people are glad of any excuse to ignore or at least avoid Christianity._
You see, a new religion has sprung up."

"Yes--go on."

"It is the religion of pleasure, excitement, nervous thrill bought at
any cost. Renan, who had eyes and used them, saw that. He has given us
the hint in his _Abbess of Jouarre_. 'Were the human race quite
certain,' he says, 'that in two or three days the world would come to an
end, the instinct of pleasure'--_l'amour_ is his word--'would break out
into a sort of frenzy; in the presence of death, sure and sudden,
nature alone would speak, and very strange scenes would follow. The
social order is preserved by restraint; but restraint depends upon a
belief in a hereafter.' And already, 'If a man dies, shall he live
again?' is the burden of a new soliloquy on the lips of a new Hamlet.
Faith is becoming more and more an act, a habit, of heroism. So you see
the harm Hamlyn and his gang are indirectly doing. But do you know where
it seems to me the great counteracting influence to his work lies at the
moment?"

"Where?"

"You will wonder to hear me say so, but I firmly think for the moment it
lies in the ranks, and true love of our Lord, of the pious Evangelical
Party in the Church! They are Catholic without knowing it. They think,
and think sincerely, that the forms the Church has appointed, some of
her Sacraments even, obscure the soul's direct communion with God. They
are not in line with us yet. But there is a sterling and vivid
Christianity among them. There is a personal adoration of Jesus which is
strong and sweet, a living, wonderful thing. And, you see, all this
section of the Church is exempt from the attacks of the _extreme_
Protestants--who seem themselves to have hardly any Christianity at all.
Nor do the really pious Evangelicals approve of this civil war. They
won't be mixed up in it. They are far too busy doing good works and
preparing themselves for the next world to join in these rowdy
processions of the shallow, the ill-informed, or the malevolent. They
don't approve of _us_, of course, but they have no public quarrel with
what they see is substantially powerful for good. Since Hamlyn's brigade
has been throwing mud at us, and we, of course, have defended ourselves
to the best of our ability, the minds of those who are eager to justify
their adhesion to the religion of pleasure cannot, at least if they have
any logic or sincerity, avoid a consideration of the quiet
Evangelicals."

"It is a new idea to me," said the doctor, refilling his pipe, "but I
suppose you are right. They despise the whole business of agitation, and
yet don't make it a pretext as the rationalists are glad to do. The
whole thing is a miserable business! What annoys _me_, Vicar, is the
facility with which a rowdy, ignorant man of the lower classes has been
able to make himself a force."

"It is hard. But one must remember that however sincere he is--and I
know nothing against his personal character--he only appeals to the
ignorant and rowdy. Have you seen his new leaflet?"

"No, I think not. What is it?"

"It came by post last night; apparently the whole district is being
circularised. Really, the thing is quite a curiosity. I will read you a
few paragraphs."

He opened a drawer and took a small pamphlet from it, which was headed
"THE HORNHAM 

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