He sighed delicately. Through the girl"s stormy sense there ran a dumb rush of thoughts--"Insolent! ungrateful! He wounds the heart that loved him--and then dares to discuss--to blame!"
But before she could find something to say aloud, her companion resumed.
"But I must not complain. I was honoured by a superior man"s friendship.
He has withdrawn it. He has the right.--Now I must look to the future.
You will, I think, be glad to hear that I am not in that dest.i.tute condition which generally awaits the Catholic deserter. My prospects indeed seem to be secured."
And with a vanity which did not escape her, he described the overtures that had been made to him by the editor of a periodical which was to represent "the new mystical school"--he spoke familiarly of great artists, and especially French ones, murdering the French names in a way that at once hurt the girl"s ears, and pleased her secret spite against him--he threw in a critic or two without the Mr.--and he casually mentioned a few lords as persons on whom genius and necessity could rely.
All this in a confidential and appealing tone, which he no doubt imagined to be most suitable to women, especially young women. Laura thought it impertinent and unbecoming, and longed to be rid of him. At last the turning to the Friedlands" house appeared. She stood still, and stiffly wished him good-bye.
But he retained her hand and pressed it ardently.
"Oh! Miss Fountain--we have both suffered!"
The girl could hardly pacify herself enough to go in. Again and again she found a pleasure in those words of her French novel that she had repeated to Helbeck long ago: "_Imagination faussee et troublee--faussee et troublee_."
No delicacy--no modesty--no compunction! Her own poor heart flew to Bannisdale. She thought of all that the Squire had suffered in this man"s cause. Outrage--popular hatred--her own protests and petulances,--all met with so unbending a dignity, so inviolable a fidelity, both to his friend and to his Church! She recalled that scarred brow--that kind and brotherly affection--that pa.s.sionate sympathy which had made the heir of one of the most ancient names in England the intimate counsellor and protector of the wheelwright"s son.
Popinjay!--renegade!--to come to her talking of "bigotry"--without a breath of true tenderness or natural remorse. Williams had done that which she had angrily maintained in that bygone debate with Helbeck he had every right to do. And she had nothing but condemnation. She walked up and down the shady road, her eyes blinded with tears. One more blow upon the heart that she herself had smitten so hard! Sympathy for this new pain took her back to every incident of the old--to every detail of that hideous week which had followed upon her flight.
How had she lived through it? Those letters--that distant voice in Dr.
Friedland"s study--her own piteous craving----
For the thousandth time, with the old dreary conviction, she said to herself that she had done right--terribly, incredibly right.
But all the while, she seemed to be sitting beside him in his study--laying her cheek upon his hand--eagerly comforting him for this last sorrow. His inexorable breach with Williams--well! it was part of his character--she would not have it otherwise. All that had angered her as imagination, was now natural and dignified as reality. Her thoughts proudly defended it. Let him be rigorous towards others if he pleased--he had been first king and master of himself.
Next day Molly Friedland and Laura went to London for the day. Laura was taking music lessons, as one means of driving time a little quicker; and there was shopping to be done both for the household and for themselves.
In the afternoon, as the girls were in Sloane Street together, Laura suddenly asked Molly to meet her in an hour at a friend"s house, where they were to have tea. "I have something I want to do by myself." Molly asked no questions, and they parted.
A few minutes later, Laura stepped into the church of the Brompton Oratory. It was a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and Benediction was about to begin.
She drew down her thick veil, and took a seat near the door. The great heavy church was still nearly dark, save for a dim light in the sanctuary. But it was slowly filling with people, and she watched the congregation.
In front of her was a stout and fashionably dressed young man with an eyegla.s.s and stick--evidently a stranger. He sat stolid and motionless, one knee crossed over the other, scrutinising everything that went on as though he had been at the play. Presently, a great many men began to stream in, most of them bald and grey, but some young fellows, who dropped eagerly on their knees as they entered, and rose reluctantly.
Nuns in black hoods and habits would come briskly up, kneel and say a prayer, then go out again. Or sometimes they brought schools--girls, two and two--and ranged them decorously for the service. An elderly man, of the workman cla.s.s, appeared with his small son, and sat in front of Laura. The child played tricks; the man drew it tenderly within his arm, and kept it quiet, while he himself told his beads. Then a girl with wild eyes and touzled hair, probably Irish, with her baby in her arms, sat down at the end of Laura"s seat, stared round her for a few minutes, dropped to the altar, and went away. And all the time smartly dressed ladies came and went incessantly, knelt at side altars, crossed themselves, said a few rapid prayers, or disappeared into the mysteries of side aisles behind screens and barriers--going no doubt to confession.
There was an extraordinary life in it all. Here was no languid acceptance of a respectable habit. Something was eagerly wanted--diligently sought.
Laura looked round her, with a sigh from her inmost heart. But the vast church seemed to her ugly and inhuman. She remembered a saying of her father"s as to its "vicious Roman style"--the "tomb of the Italian mind."
What matter?
Ah!--Suddenly a dim surpliced figure in the distance, and lights springing like stars in the apse. Presently the high altar, in a soft glow, shone out upon the dark church. All was still silent; the sanctuary spoke in light.
For a few minutes. Then this exquisite and magical effect broke up. The lighting spread through the church, became commonplace, showed the pompous lines of capital and cornice, the bad sculpture in the niches. A procession entered, and the service began.
Laura dropped on her knees. But she was no longer in London, in the Oratory church. She was far away, in the chapel of an old northern house, where the walls glowed with strange figures, and a dark crucifix hovered austerely above the altar. She saw the small scattered congregation; Father Bowles"s grey head and blanched, weak face; Augustina in her long widow"s veil; the Squire in his corner. The same words were being said there now, at this same hour. She looked at her watch, then hid her eyes again, tortured with a sick yearning.
But when she came out, twenty minutes later, her step was more alert. For a little while, she had been almost happy.
That night, after the returned travellers had finished their supper, the doctor was in a talking mood. He had an old friend with him a thinker and historian like himself. Both of them had lately come across "Leadham of Trinity"--the convert and Jesuit, who was now engaged upon an important Catholic memoir, and was settled for a time, within reach of Cambridge libraries.
"You knew Father Leadham in the north, Miss Laura?" asked the doctor, as the girls came into the drawing-room.
Laura started.
"I saw him two or three times," she said, as she made her way to the warm but dark corner near the fire. "Is he in Cambridge?"
The doctor nodded.
"Come to embrace us all--breathing benediction on learning and on science! There has been a Catholic Congress somewhere."--He looked at his friend. "That will show us the way!"
The friend--a small, lively-eyed, black-bearded man, just returned from some theological work in a German university--threw back his head and laughed good-humouredly.
The talk turned on Catholic learning old and new; on the a.s.sumptions and limitations of it; on the forms taken by the most recent Catholic Apologetic; and so, like a vessel descending a great river, pa.s.sed out at last, steered by Friedland, among the breakers of first principles.
As a rule the doctor talked in paradox and ellipse. He threw his sentences into air, and let them find their feet as they could.
But to-day, unconsciously, his talk took a tone that was rare with him--became prophetical, pontifical--a.s.sumed a note of unction. And often, as Molly noticed, with a slight instinctive gesture--a fatherly turning towards that golden spot made by Laura"s hair among the shadows.
His friend fell silent after a while--watching Friedland with small sharp eyes. He had come there to discuss a new edition of Sidonius Apollinaris,--was himself one of the driest and acutest of investigators.
All this talk for babes seemed to him the merest waste of time.
Friedland, however, with a curious feeling, let himself be carried away by it.
A little Catholic manual of Church history had fallen into his hands that morning. His fingers played with it as it lay on the table, and with the pages of a magazine beside it that contained an article by Father Leadham.
No doubt some common element in the two had roused him.----
"The Catholic war with history," he said, "is perennial! History, in fact, is the great rationalist; and the Catholic conscience is scandalised by her. And so we have these pitiful little books--" he laid his hand on the volume beside him--"which simply expunge history, or make it afresh. And we have a piece of Jesuit _apologia_, like this paper of Leadham"s--so charming, in a sense, so scholarly! And yet one feels through it a cry of the soul--the Catholic arraignment of history, that she is what she is!"
"You"ll find it in Newman--often," said the black-bearded man suddenly--and he ran through a list of pa.s.sages, rapidly, in the student"s way.
"Ah! Newman!" said Friedland with vivacity. "This morning I read over that sermon of his he delivered to the Oscott Synod, after the re-establishment of the Hierarchy--you remember it, Dalton?--What a flow and thunder in the sentences!--what an elevation in the thought! Who would not rather lament with Newman, than exult with Froude?--But here again, it is history that is the rationalist--not we poor historians!
"... Why was England lost to the Church? Because Henry was a villain?--because the Tudor bishops were slaves and poltroons? Does Leadham, or any other rational man really think so?"
The little black man nodded. He did not think it worth while to speak.
But Friedland went on enlarging, with his hand on his Molly"s head--looking into her quiet eyes.