A soft step was coming up behind him.
"It will be quickly over," he said to himself. "Wait. Don"t look round."
He stood motionless. His silver cigarette-case dropped from his hand. He looked at it for a second, forgetting to pick it up. A dirty hand suddenly pounced upon it, and a miserable ragged figure flew past him up the street. Hugh stared after it, bewildered, and then looked round. The street was quite empty. He drew a long breath, and something between relief and despair took hold of him.
"Then he does not want to, after all. He has not even followed me. Why was he there? He was waiting for me. What horrible revenge is he planning against me. Is he laying a second trap for me?"
The following night Hugh read in the evening papers that Lord Newhaven had been accidently killed on the line. The revulsion of feeling was too sudden, too overwhelming. He could not bear it. He could not live through it. He flung himself on his face upon the floor, and sobbed as if his heart would break.
The cyclone of pa.s.sion which had swept Hugh into its vortex spent itself and him, and flung him down at last. How long a time elapsed he never knew between the moment when he, read the news of the accident and the moment when shattered, exhausted, disfigured by emotion, he raised himself to his feet. He opened the window, and the night air laid its cool mother-touch upon his face and hands. The streets were silent. The house was silent. He leaned with closed eyes against the window-post.
Time pa.s.sed by on the other side.
And after a while angels came and ministered to him. Thankfulness came softly, gently, to take his shaking hand in hers. The awful past was over. A false step, a momentary giddiness on the part of his enemy, and the hideous strangling meshes of the past had fallen from him at a touch, as if they had never wrapped him round. Lord Newhaven was gone to return no more. The past went with him. Dead men tell no tales. No one knew of the G.o.dless compact between them, and of how he, Hugh, had failed to keep to it, save they two alone. He and one other. And that other was dead--was dead.
Hope came next, shyly, silently, still pale from the embrace of her sister Despair, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g anew her little lamp, which the laboring breath of Despair had wellnigh blown out. She held the light before Hugh, shading it with her veil, for his eyes were dazed with long gazing into darkness. She turned it faintly upon the future, and he looked where the light fell. And the light grew.
He had a future once more. He had been given that second chance for which he had so yearned. His life was his own once more: not the shamed life in death--worse than death of the last two days--but his own to take up again, to keep, to enjoy, best of all, to use worthily. No horrible constraint was upon him to lay it down, or to live in torment because he still held it. He was free, free to marry Rachel whom he loved, and who loved him. He saw his life with her. Hope smiled, and turned up her light. It was too bright. Hugh hid his face in his hands.
And, last of all, dwarfing Hope, came a divine constraining presence who ever stretches out strong hands to them that fall, who alone sets the stumbling feet upon the upward path. Repentance came to Hugh at last. In all this long time she had not come while he was suffering, while smouldering Remorse had darkened his soul with smoke. But in this quiet hour she came and stood beside him.
Hugh had in the past leaned heavily on extenuating circ.u.mstances. He had made many excuses for himself. But now he made none. Perhaps, for the first time in his life, under the pressure of that merciful, that benign hand, he was sincere with himself. He saw his conduct--that easily condoned conduct--as it was. Love and Repentance, are not these the great teachers? Some of us so frame our lives that we never come face to face with either, or with ourselves. Hugh came to himself at last. He saw how, whether detected or not, his sin had sapped his manhood, spread like a leaven of evil through his whole life, laid its hideous touch of desecration and disillusion even on his love for Rachel. It had tarnished his mind; his belief in others; his belief in good. These ideals, these beliefs had been his possession once, his birthright. He had sold his birthright for red pottage. Until now he had scorned the red pottage. Now he saw that his sin lay deeper, even in his original scorn of his birthright, his disbelief in the Divine Spirit who dwells with man.
Nevertheless his just punishment had been remitted. Hitherto he had looked solely at that punishment, feeling that it was too great. He had prayed many times that he might escape it. Now for the first time he prayed that he might be forgiven.
Repentance took his hands and locked them together.
"G.o.d helping me," he said, "I will lead a new life."
CHAPTER x.x.xIX
"Les sots sont plus a craindre que les mechants."
Mr. Gresley had often remarked to persons in affliction that when things are at their worst they generally take a turn for the better. This profound truth was proving itself equal to the occasion at Warpington Vicarage.
Mrs. Gresley was well again, after a fortnight at the seaside with Regie. The sea air had blown back a faint color into Regie"s cheeks. The new baby"s vaccination was ceasing to cast a vocal gloom over the thin-walled house. The old baby"s whole attention was mercifully diverted from his wrongs to the investigation of that connection between a chair and himself, which he perceived the other children could a.s.sume at pleasure. He stood for hours looking at his own little chair, solemnly seating himself at long intervals where no chair was. But his mind was working, and work, as we know, is the panacea for mental anguish.
Mr. Gresley had recovered that buoyancy of spirits which was the theme of Mrs. Gresley"s increasing admiration.
On this particular evening, when his wife had asked him if the beef were tender, he had replied, as he always did if in a humorous vein: "Douglas, Douglas, tender and true." The arrival of the pot of marmalade (that integral part of the mysterious meal which begins with meat and is crowned with buns) had been hailed by the exclamation, "What! More family jars." In short, Mr. Gresley was himself again.
The jocund Vicar, with his arm round Mrs. Gresley, proceeded to the drawing-room.
On the hall table was a large parcel insured for two hundred pounds. It had evidently just arrived by rail.
"Ah! ha!" said Mr. Gresley. "My pamphlets at last. Very methodical of Smithers insuring them for such a large sum," and, without looking at the address, he cut the string.
"Well packed," he remarked. "Water-proof sheeting, I do declare.
Smithers is certainly a cautious man. Ha! at last!"
The inmost wrapping sh.e.l.led off, and Mr. Gresley"s jaw dropped. Where were the little green and gold pamphlets ent.i.tled "Modern Dissent," for which his parental soul was yearning? He gazed down frowning at a solid ma.s.s of ma.n.u.script, written in a small, clear hand.
"This is Hester"s writing," he said. "There is some mistake."
He turned to the direction on the outer cover.
"Miss Hester Gresley, care of Rev. James Gresley." He had only seen his own name.
"I do believe," he said, "that this is Hester"s book, refused by the publisher. Poor Hester! I am afraid she will feel that."
His turning over of the parcel dislodged an unfolded sheet of note-paper, which made a parachute expedition to the floor. Mr. Gresley picked it up and laid it on the parcel.
"Oh! it"s not refused, after all," he said, his eye catching the sense of the few words before him. "Hester seems to have sent for it back to make some alterations, and Mr. Bentham--I suppose that is the publisher--asks for it back with as little delay as possible. Then she has sold it to him. I wonder what she got for it. She got a hundred for _The Idyll_. It is wonderful to think of, when Bishop Heavysides got nothing at all for his Diocesan sermons, and had to make up thirty pounds out of his own pocket as well. But as long as the public is willing to pay through the nose for trashy fiction to amuse its idleness, so long will novelists reap in these large harvests. If I had Hester"s talent--"
"You have. Mrs. Loftus was saying so only yesterday."
"If I had time to work it out, I should not pander to the depraved public taste as Hester does. I should use my talent, as I have often told her, for the highest ends, not for the lowest. It would be my aim,"
Mr. Gresley"s voice rose sonorously, "to raise my readers, to educate them, to place a high ideal before them, to enn.o.ble them."
"You could do it," said Mrs. Gresley, with conviction. And it is probable that the conviction both felt was a true one; that Mr. Gresley could write a book which would, from their point of view, fulfil these vast requirements.
Mr. Gresley shook his head, and put the parcel on a table in his study.
"Hester will be back the day after to-morrow," he said, "and then she can take charge of it herself." And he filled in the railway form of its receipt.
Mrs. Gresley, who had been to tea with the Pratts for the first time since her convalescence, was tired, and went early to bed; or, as Mr.
Gresley termed it, "Bedfordshire"; and Mr. Gresley retired to his study to put a few finishing touches to a paper he was writing on St.
Augustine--not by request--for that receptacle of clerical genius, the parish magazine.
Will the contents of parish magazines always be written by the clergy?
Is it Utopian to hope that a day will dawn when it will be perceived even by clerical editors that Apostolic Succession does not invariably confer literary talent? What can an intelligent artisan think when he reads--what he reads--in his parish magazine? A serial story by a Rector unknown to fame, who, if he possesses talent, conceals it in some other napkin than the parish magazine; a short paper on "Bees," by an Archdeacon; "An Easter Hymn," by a Bishop, and such a good bishop, too--but what a hymn! "Poultry-Keeping," by Alice Brown. We draw breath, but the relief is only momentary. "Side Lights on the Reformation," by a Canon. "Half-hours with the Young," by a Rural Dean.
But as an invalid will rebel against a long course of milk puddings, and will crave for the jam roll which is for others, so Mr. Gresley"s mind revolted from St. Augustine, and craved for something different.
His wandering eye fell on Hester"s book.
"I can"t attend to graver things to-night," he said, "I will take a look at Hester"s story. I showed her my paper on "Dissent," so, of course, I can dip into her book. I hate lopsided confidences, and I dare say I could give her a few hints, as she did me. Two heads are better than one. The Pratts and Thursbys all think that bit in _The Idyll_ where the two men quarrelled was dictated by me. Strictly speaking, it wasn"t, but no doubt she picked up her knowledge of men, which surprises people so much, from things she has heard me say. She certainly did not want me to read her book. She said I should not like it. But I shall have to read it some time, so I may as well skim it before it goes to the printers. I have always told her I did not feel free from responsibility in the matter after _The Idyll_ appeared with things in it which I should have made a point of cutting out, if she had only consulted me before she rushed into print."
Mr. Gresley lifted the heavy ma.s.s of ma.n.u.script to his writing-table, turned up his reading-lamp, and sat down before it.
The church clock struck nine. It was always wrong, but it set the time at Warpington.