He paused, looking intently into the lines of blanched faces before him.
Then he added:
"You may wish to discuss this matter. I recognize it as natural you should wish to discuss it. But I shall not discuss it with you. I shall withdraw. Mr. Dawes--will you take the chair?"
He beckoned to the colliery manager, who automatically obeyed him. The room broke into a hubbub, men and women pressing round Meynell as he made his way to the door. But he put them aside, gently and cheerfully.
"Decide it for yourselves!" he said with his familiar smile. "It is your right."
And in another moment, the door had opened and shut, and he was gone.
He had no sooner disappeared than a tumultuous scene developed in the Church room.
Beswick, the sub-agent and local preacher, a sandy-haired, spectacled, and powerfully built man, sprang on to the platform, to the right hand of Dawes, and at last secured silence by a pa.s.sionate speech in defence of Meynell and in denunciation of the men who in order to ruin him ecclesiastically were spreading these vile tales about him "and a poor lady that has done many a good turn to the folk of this village, and nothing said about it too!"
"Don"t you, sir"--he said, addressing Barron with a threatening finger--"don"t you come here, telling us what to think about the man we"ve known for twenty years in this parish! The people that don"t know Richard Meynell may believe these things if they please--it"ll be the worse for them! But we"ve seen this man comforting and uplifting our old people in their last hours--we"ve seen him teaching our children--and giving just a kind funny word now an" again to keep a boy or a girl straight--aye, an" he did it too--they knew he had his eye on "em! We"ve seen him go down these pits, when only a handful would risk their lives with him, to help them as was perhaps past hope. We"ve seen him skin himself to the bone that other men might have plenty--we"ve heard him Sunday after Sunday. We _know_ him!" The speaker brought one ma.s.sive hand down on the other with an emphasis that shook the room. "Don"t you go talking to us! If Richard Meynell won"t go to law with you and the likes of you, sir, he"s got his reasons, and his good ones, I"ll be bound. And don"t you, my friends"--he turned to the room--"don"t you be turned back from this furrow you"ve begun to plough. You stick to your man! If you don"t, you"re fools, aye, and ungrateful fools too! You know well enough that Albert Beswick isn"t a parson"s man! You know that I don"t hold with Mr. Meynell in many of his views. There"s his views about "election," and the like o" that--quite wrong, in my "umble opinion. But what does that matter? You know that I never set foot in Upcote Church till three years ago--that bishops and ceremonies are nought to me--that I came to G.o.d, as many of you did, by the Bible cla.s.s and the penitent form. But I declare to you that Richard Meynell, and the men with him, are _out for a big thing!_ They"re out for breaking down barriers and letting in light.
They"re out for bringing Christian men together and letting them worship freely in the old churches that our fathers built. They"re out for giving men and women new thoughts about G.o.d and Christ, and for letting them put them into new words, if they want to. Well, I say again, it"s _a big thing_! And Satan"s out, too, for stopping it! Don"t you make any mistake about it! This bad business--of these libels that are about--is one of the obstacles in our race he"ll trip us up on, if he can. Now I put it to you--let us clear it out o" the way this very night, as far as we"re concerned! Let us send the Rector such a vote of confidence from this meeting as"ll show him fast enough where he stands in Upcote--aye, and show others too! And as for these vile letters that are going round--I"d give my right hand to know the man who wrote them!--and the story that you, sir"--he pointed again to Barron--"say you took from poor Judith Sabin when her mind was clouded and she near her end--why, it"s base minds that harbour base thoughts about their betters! He shall be no friend of mine--that I know--that spreads these tales. Friends and neighbours, let us keep our tongues from them--and our children"s tongues! Let us show that we can trust a man that deserves our trust. Let us stand by a good man that"s stood by us; and let us pray G.o.d to show the right!"
The greater part of the audience, sincerely moved, rose to their feet and cheered. Barron endeavoured to reply, but was scarcely listened to. The publican East sat twirling his hat in his hands, sarcastic smiles going out and in upon his fat cheeks, his furtive eyes every now and then consulting the tall spinster who sat beside him, grimly immovable, her spectacled eyes fixed apparently on the lamp above the platform.
Flaxman wished to speak, but was deterred by the reflection that as a newcomer in the district he had scarcely a valid right to interfere. He and Rose stayed till the vote of confidence had been pa.s.sed by a large majority--though not so large as that which had accepted the new Liturgy--after which they drove home rather depressed and ill at ease.
For in truth the plague of anonymous letters was rather increasing than abating. Flaxman had had news that day of the arrival of two more among their own country-house acquaintance of the neighbourhood. He sat down, in obedience to a letter from Dornal, to write a doleful report of the meeting to the Bishop.
Meynell received the vote of confidence very calmly, and wrote a short note of thanks to Beswick. Then for some weeks, while the discussion of his case in its various aspects, old and new, ran raging through England, he went about his work as usual, calm in the centre of the whirlwind, though the earth he trod seemed to him very often a strange one. He prepared his defence for the Court of Arches; he wrote for the _Modernist_; and he gave as much mind as he could possibly spare to the unravelling of Philip Meryon"s history.
In this matter, however, he made but very slow and disappointing progress. He became more and more convinced, and his solicitor with him, that there had been a Scotch marriage some eighteen months before this date between Meryon and the sister of a farmer in the Lothians, with whom he had come in contact during a fishing tenancy. But what appeared in the course of investigation was that the woman concerned and all her kindred were now just as anxious--aided by the ambiguities of the Scotch marriage law--to cover up and conceal the affair as was Meryon himself. She could not be got to put forward any claim; her family would say nothing; and the few witnesses. .h.i.therto available were tending to disappear. No doubt Philip was at work corrupting them; and the supposed wife was evidently quite willing, if not eager, to abet him.
Every week he heard from Mary, letters which, written within bounds fully understood by them both and never transgressed, revealed to him the tremulous tenderness and purity of the heart he knew--though he would not confess it to himself--he had conquered. These letters became to him the stay of life, the manna which fed him, the water of healing and strength.
It was evident that, according to his wish, she did not know and was determined not to know the details of his struggle; and nothing helped him more than the absolute trust of her ignorance.
He heard also constantly from Alice Puttenham. She, too, poor soul--but how differently!--was protecting herself as best she could from an odious knowledge.
"Edith writes to me, full of terrible things that are being said in England; but as I can do nothing, and must do nothing according to you, I do not read her letters. She sends me a local newspaper sometimes, scored with her marks and signs that are like shrieks of horror, and I put it in the fire. What I suffer I will keep to myself. Perhaps the worst part of every day comes when I take Hester out and amuse her in this gay Paris.
She is so pa.s.sionately vital herself, and one dreads to fail her in spirits or buoyancy.
"She is very well and wonderfully beautiful; at present she is having lessons in dancing and elocution, and turning the heads of her teachers.
It is amusing--or would be amusing, to any one else than me--to see how the quiet family she is with clucks after her in perpetual anxiety, and how cavalierly she treats them. I think she is fairly happy; she never mentions Meryon"s name; but I often have a strange sense that she is looking for some one--expects some one. When we turn into a new street, or a new alley of the Bois, I have sometimes seemed to catch a wild _listening_ in her face. I live only for her--and I cannot feel that it matters to her in the least whether I do or not. Perhaps, some day.
Meanwhile you may be sure I think of nothing else. She knows nothing of what is going on in England--and she says she adores Paris."
One night in December Meynell came in late from a carpentering cla.s.s of village boys. The usual pile of letters and books awaited him, and he began upon them reluctantly. As he read them, and put them aside, one by one, his face gradually changed and darkened. He recalled a saying of Amiel"s about the French word "consideration"--what it means to a man to have enjoyed unvarying and growing "consideration" from his world; and then, suddenly, to be threatened with the loss of it. Life and consciousness drop, all in a moment, to a lower and a meaner plane.
Finally, he lit on a letter from one of his colleagues on the Central Modernist Committee. For some months it had been a settled thing that Meynell should preach the sermon in Dunchester Cathedral on the great occasion in January when the new Liturgy of the Reform was to be inaugurated with all possible solemnity in one of England"s most famous churches.
His correspondent wrote to suggest that after all the sermon would be more fitly entrusted to the Modernist Bishop of Dunchester himself. "He has worked hard, and risked much for us. I may say that inquiries have been thrown out, and we find he is willing."
No apology--perfunctory regrets--and very little explanation! Meynell understood.
He put the letter away, conscious of a keenly smarting mind. It was now clear to him that he had made a grave misreckoning; humiliating, perhaps irreparable. He had counted, with a certain confident simplicity, on the power of his mere word, backed by his character and reputation, to put the thing down; and they were not strong enough. Barron"s influence seemed to him immense and increasing. A proud and sensitive man forced himself to envisage the possibility of an eventual overthrow.
He opened a drawer in order to put away the letter. The drawer was very full, and in the difficulty of getting it out he pulled it too far and its contents fell to the floor. He stooped to pick them up--perceived first the anonymous letter that Barron had handed to him, the letter addressed to Dawes; and then, beneath it, a long envelope deep in dust--labelled "M.B.--Keep for three years." He took up both letter and envelope with no distinct intention. But he opened the anonymous letter, and once more looked searchingly at the handwriting.
Suddenly an idea struck him. With a hasty movement, he lifted the long envelope and broke the seal. Inside was a doc.u.ment headed, "A Confession." And at the foot of it appeared a signature--"Maurice Barron."
Meynell put the two things together--the "confession" and the anonymous letter. Very soon he began to compare word with word and stroke with stroke, gradually penetrating the disguise of the later handwriting.
At the end of the process he understood the vague recollection which had disturbed him when he first saw the letter.
He stood motionless a little, expressions chasing each other across his face. Then he locked up both letters, reached a hand for his pipe, called a good night to Anne, who was going upstairs to bed, and with his dogs about him fell into a long meditation, while the night wore on.
CHAPTER XIX
It was in the week before Christmas that Professor Vetch--the same Professor who had been one of the Bishop"s Commission of Inquiry in Richard Meynell"s case--knocked one afternoon at Canon France"s door to ask for a cup of tea. He had come down to give a lecture to the Church Club which had been recently started in Markborough in opposition to the Reformers" Club; but his acceptance of the invitation had been a good deal determined by his very keen desire to probe the later extraordinary developments of the Meynell affair on the spot.
France was in his low-ceiled study, occupied as usual with drawers full of doc.u.ments of various kinds; most of them mediaeval deeds and charters which he was calendaring for the Cathedral Library. His table and the floor were littered by them; a stack of the Rolls publications was on his right hand; a Dugdale"s "Monasticon" lay open at a little distance; and curled upon a newspaper beside it lay a gray kitten. The kitten had that morning upset an inkstand over three sheets of the Canon"s laborious handwriting. At the time he had indeed dropped her angrily by the scruff of the neck into a wastepaper basket to repent of her sins; but here she was again, and the Canon had patiently rewritten the sheets.
There were not many softnesses in the Canon"s life. The kitten was one; of the other perhaps only his sister, nearly as old as himself, who lived with him, was aware. Twenty years before--just after his appointment to the canonry--he had married a young and--in the opinion of his family--flighty wife, who had lived a year and then died. She had pa.s.sed like a spring flower; and after a year or two all that was remembered about her was that she had chosen the drawing-room paper, which was rather garishly pink, like her own cheeks. In the course of time the paper had become so discoloured and patchy that Miss France was ashamed of it. For years her brother turned a deaf ear to her remarks on the subject. At last he allowed her to repaper the room. But she presently discovered that close to the seat he generally occupied in the drawing-room of an evening there was a large hole in the new paper made by the rubbing and sc.r.a.ping of the Canon"s fingers as he sat at tea.
Through it the original pink reappeared. More than once Miss France caught her brother looking contentedly at his work of mischief. But she dared not speak of it to him, nor do anything to repair the damage.
As France perceived the ident.i.ty of the visitor whom his old manservant was showing into the study, a slight shade of annoyance pa.s.sed over his face. But he received the Professor civilly, cleared a chair of books in order that he might sit down, and gave a vigorous poke to the fire.
The Professor did not wish to appear too inquisitive on the subject of Meynell, and he therefore dallied a little with matters of Biblical criticism. France, however, took no interest whatever in them; and even an adroit description of a paper recently read by the speaker himself at an Oxford meeting failed to kindle a spark. Vetch found himself driven upon the real object of his visit.
He desired to know--understanding that the Canon was an old friend of Henry Barron--where the Meynell affair exactly was.
"Am I an old friend of Henry Barron?" said France slowly.
"He says you are," laughed the Professor. "I happened to go up to town in the same carriage with him a fortnight ago."
"He comes here a good deal--but he never takes my advice," said France.
The Professor inquired what the advice had been.
"To let it alone!" France looked round suddenly at his companion. "I have come to the conclusion," he added dryly, "that Barron is not a person of delicacy."
The Professor, rather taken aback, argued on Barron"s behalf. Would it have been seemly or right for a man--a Churchman of Barron"s prominence--to keep such a thing to himself at such a critical moment?
Surely it had an important bearing on the controversy.
"I see none," said France, a spark of impatience in the small black eyes that shone so vividly above his large hanging cheeks. "Meynell says the story is untrue."
"Ah! but let him prove it!" cried the Professor, his young-old face flushing. "He has made a wanton attack upon the Church; he cannot possibly expect any quarter from us. We are not in the least bound to hold him immaculate--quite the contrary. Men of that impulsive, undisciplined type are, as we all know, very susceptible to woman."