There was a something in her voice and in her manner which said even more than her lips had done. Something which not only struck him dumb for the time being, but which also drove home into his soul a conviction that this girl, outcast and social pariah as she was, not only held his fate in her hands, but that she possessed some unknown power over his destiny, that she knew something which, if spoken, might blast the bright promise of his life and overwhelm him in irretrievable ruin.
She had called him a cad, and as his thoughts flew back to that morning in Vane Maxwell"s rooms at Oxford, a pang of self-conviction told him that she had spoken justly. He felt, too, that he was hopelessly in the wrong, that by his suggestion he had sorely insulted her, and that in exchange for his insult she had given him mercy. He would have given anything to know the real meaning of her words, and yet he dare not even ask her.
He looked round at her once and saw her, standing rigid and impa.s.sive waiting to be relieved of his presence. His thoughts went back a few months to the times when those little dinners of four had been so pleasant, and when this girl, who was now looking at him like an accusing angel, had matched even Carol herself in the gaiety of her conversation and the careless use she made of her mother-wit, and he tried hard to say something which should in some way cover his retreat, but the words wouldn"t come, and so he just opened the door and walked out.
Dora heard the street door bang behind him, and then her tensely-strung nerves relaxed. She dropped into an easy chair, clasped her hands over her temples, and whispered:
"Oh dear, oh dear, how is all this going to end, and what would happen if they only knew! And now I"ve got to see Sir Arthur. Shall I tell him everything or not? No, I daren"t, I daren"t. It"s too awful. Was there ever anything like it in the world before?"
And then her body swayed forward, her elbows dropped on to her knees, her hands clasped her temples tighter, and the next moment she had burst into a pa.s.sion of tears.
Tears are a torture to men and a relief to women, so in a few minutes she lifted her head again, the storm was over and she began to look the situation over calmly. The more she thought of it the more certain it seemed that she could do nothing but irretrievable mischief by even hinting to Sir Arthur anything of what she knew. At any rate she decided that until Carol came back she would keep her knowledge absolutely to herself.
Then the train of her thoughts was suddenly broken by the postman"s knock at the door. There was a London letter addressed to herself in the familiar handwriting of Mr. Bernard Falcon. As she opened it she experienced a singular mixture of relief and vexation, tinged by a suggestion of shame.
The letter began with an inquiry as to when she was coming back to Town, and ended with an invitation to spend a week end in the round trip from London to Dover, Calais, Boulogne and Folkestone.
She had been nearly a fortnight in Worcester, and, truth to tell, she was getting a little tired of it. Falcon"s letter offered her a double relief. It would save her from the ordeal of meeting Sir Arthur, and, combined with the visit of "Mr. Johnson," it would give her a good excuse to her parents for going back to Town at once; so she sat down and wrote two letters, one to Falcon telling him that he could meet her at Paddington the next evening, and the other to Sir Arthur telling him all she knew about Carol, saving only the name of her companion, and regretting that she would not be able to meet him, as she was starting for the Continent that day. For obvious reasons she, of course, said nothing of Garthorne"s visit to her.
Sir Arthur was as much disappointed with his letter as Mr. Falcon was pleased by his. Dora left Worcester the day that he received it, and while she was dining with Mr. Falcon at the Globe Restaurant, Sir Arthur was telling Vane and Mark Ernshaw, who had come over to dine and sleep at the Abbey, all that he knew of Miss Carol"s latest escapade.
"I"m very, very sorry," said Ernshaw when he had finished. "We"ve never told you before, Sir Arthur, but I may as well tell you now that, if Miss Vane had not disappeared as mysteriously as she did, Vane was to have introduced me to her, and I was going to marry her if she would have me."
Sir Arthur looked at him in silence for a few moments, and then he took his hand and said:
"I know that is true, Ernshaw, because you have said it; though I would not have believed it from anyone else except Vane. I would willingly give everything that I possess and go back to work to make such a thing possible, but I"m afraid it isn"t, and now, of course, it is more impossible than ever. Frankly, I don"t believe she"d have you. It sounds a very curious thing to say, but from what I have seen of her, granted even that she fell in love with you, the more she loved you the more absolutely she would refuse to marry you. You know we offered her everything we could. Vane and I both agreed to acknowledge her and have her to live with us, but it was no use. She refused in such a way that she made me long all the more to take her for my own daughter before the world; but there was no mistaking the refusal, and the day after our last interview she clinched it by vanishing, I suppose with this young millionaire who is with her now. It"s very terrible, of course, but there it is. It"s done, and I"m afraid there"s no mending it. Perhaps, after all, it is better for you that it should be so."
"Yes, Ernshaw," said Vane. "It"s not a nice thing to say under the circ.u.mstances, but I think the governor"s right."
"Possibly, but I don"t agree with you," he replied. "You know I am what a good many people would call an enthusiast on the subject of this so-called social evil, for which, as I believe, Society itself is almost entirely to blame, and I am quite prepared to put my views into practice."
"Then," said Sir Arthur, smiling gravely, "I think when we get back to Town I"d better introduce you to Miss Murray, who was living with Carol in Melville Gardens, where I first saw her. She was in the Cathedral on Sunday. Her parents live in Worcester, and they believe, poor people, that she has a little millinery business in London. She says she"s going on the Continent, I suppose with this friend of hers. But she has given me an address in London where she can be found.
"Now there, Ernshaw," he went on, "there I believe you would find a far better subject for your social experiment, if you are determined to make it, than poor Carol could ever be. I don"t know her history, but she is evidently a lady born and educated. She is quite as good-looking as Carol, only an entirely different type, taller, darker, and with deep, mysterious brown eyes which evidently have a soul behind them. At any rate, I"m quite convinced that she would make a much better social missionary"s wife than poor Carol would.
"She, I sadly fear, is "a daughter of delight," as the French call them, pure and simple. She told me point blank that she preferred her present mode of life to respectability, and that she considered that taking even my money or Vane"s, when she had no real claim upon us, was more degrading and would hurt her self-respect a great deal more than doing what she is doing. In other respects she"s as good a girl as ever walked, and as honest as the daylight, but I"m afraid there is no hope of social regeneration for her."
"Hope was once found for one a thousand times worse than she!" said Ernshaw quietly. "But as I have seen neither of them yet, no harm can be done by my making the acquaintance of Miss Murray to begin with."
"Very well," said Sir Arthur, not at all sorry to change the subject.
"And now, talking about social missionaries, Vane, have you quite made up your mind to carry out this scheme of yours, this crusade against money-making and the pomps and vanities of Society? Do you really mean to show that your own father has been living in sin all these years; that he is not, in fact, a Christian at all, because it is impossible for anyone to be decently well off and a Christian at the same time? A nice sort of thing that, Ernshaw, isn"t it?"
"If Vane honestly believes, as he does, that his is the only true definition of a Christian, it is not only his right but his duty to preach it," was the young priest"s reply.
"It is my belief," said Vane quietly, "and, G.o.d helping me, I will do what I believe to be my duty."
The party at the Abbey broke up a few days after this, and in another week or so Enid and her husband were in the full swing of the great merry-go-round which is called the London season. She was unquestionably the most beautiful of the brides of the year, and she was the undisputed belle of the Drawing Room at which she was presented.
Garthorne was, of course, very proud of her, and received plenty of that second-hand sort of admiration which is accorded alike to the owner of a distinguished race-horse, a prize bull-dog, or a pretty wife.
Under the circ.u.mstances, therefore, it was perfectly natural that they should enjoy themselves very thoroughly, and though towards the end Garthorne began to get a little bored, and to think rather longingly of his yacht on the Solent and his grouse moor in Scotland, Enid, with her youth and beauty and perfect const.i.tution, enjoyed every hour and every minute of her waking life. Society had no very distinguished lion to fall down and worship that season, and so, towards the end, things were getting a little slow, and people were thinking seriously of escaping from the heat and dust of London, when the world of wealth and fashion was suddenly thrilled into fresh life by an absolutely new sensation.
CHAPTER XVI.
One Sunday morning, about the middle of June, the large and fashionable congregation which filled the church of St. Chrysostom, South Kensington, a church which will be recognised as one of the very "highest" in London, and which, to use a not altogether unsuitable term, "draws" all the year round by reason of the splendour of its ritual, as well as the simple earnest eloquence of its clergy, was startled by the preaching of such a sermon as no member of it had ever heard before.
The preacher for the morning was announced to be the Rev. Father Vane, a name which meant nothing to more than about half a dozen members of the congregation, but which every man and woman in the church had some cause to remember by the time the service was over.
Father Baldwin, as the vicar of St. Chrysostom"s was familiarly known, was a very old friend of Father Philip"s, and Vane"s appearance as preacher that morning was the result of certain correspondence which had taken place between them, and of several long and earnest conversations which he had had with Vane himself.
The moment that Vane appeared in the pulpit, that strange rustling sound which always betokens an access of sensation in a church, became distinctly audible from the side where the women sat. As he stood there in ca.s.sock, cotta and white, gold-embroidered stole, he looked, as many a maid, and matron too, said afterwards, almost too beautiful to be human. Both as boy and man he had always been strikingly handsome, but the long weeks and months of prayer and fasting, and the constant struggle of the soul against the flesh, had refined and spiritualised him. To speak of an everyday man of the world, however good-looking he may be, as beautiful is rather to ridicule him than otherwise, but when such a man as Vane pa.s.ses through such an ordeal as his had been, the word beauty may be justly used in the sense in which the feminine portion of the congregation of St. Chrysostom"s unanimously used it that morning.
There was a hush of expectation as he opened a small Bible lying on the desk in front of him. Then he raised his right hand and made the sign of the Cross.
"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen!"
The words were not hastily and inaudibly muttered as they too often are by the clergy of the High Anglican persuasion. They rang out as clearly as the notes of a bell through the silence of the crowded church, and the congregation recognised instantly that he possessed, at least, the first qualification of a great preacher.
Then he took up his Bible, and said in a quite ordinary conversational tone:
"It will be well if those who wish to follow what I am about to say will take their Bibles and turn to the fifth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew."
The opening was as unpromising as it was unconventional, but more than half the congregation obeyed, and when the rustling of leaves had subsided, he began to read the Sermon on the Mount.
When the first thrill of astonishment had pa.s.sed, it was noticed that, after the first few verses, he ceased to look at the Bible. Every member of the congregation had heard the words over and over again, but they had never heard them as they heard them now. It was nothing like the formal reading of the lessons to which they had been accustomed, and as the clear, pure tones of his voice rang through the church, and, as his eyes and face lighted up with the radiance of an almost divine enthusiasm, there were some in his audience who began to think that he might well have been a re-incarnation of one of those disciples of the Master who heard the words as they came from His lips that day on the Judean hillside.
He went on verse after verse, never missing a word, and unconsciously emphasising each pa.s.sage with gestures, slight in themselves, but eloquent and forcible in their exact suitability to the words, and very soon every man and woman in the church was listening to him, not only with rapt attention, but with a growing feeling of uneasiness and apprehension as to what was to follow.
At length he came to the twenty-third verse of the seventh chapter:
"And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
There was an emphasis upon the last few words which sent a thrill of emotion, and, in many cases, one of angry expectation, through the crowded congregation. It was one of the wealthiest, and most fashionable in London, but, saving a comparatively few really earnest souls, it was composed for the most part of idlers and loungers, who came to St. Chrysostom"s partly because it was one of the most fashionable churches in the West End, partly because it was the proper thing to attend Church on Sunday, and partly because the music, and singing and preaching were all so good, and the elaborate ceremonial was so perfectly performed, that it afforded the means of spending a few hours on Sunday in a very pleasant way.
The young preacher looked at the crowd of well-dressed men and women for a few moments in silence, as though he would give them time to realise the tremendous solemnity of the words they had just heard. There was dead, breathless silence at first, and then came a rustling sound, mingled with one of deep breathing. Then he began again in the same direct, conversational tone in which he had asked them to take their Bibles.
"I am addressing," he said, in a low, clear tone which could be heard as distinctly at the church doors as it could by those immediately under the pulpit, "an audience which is composed of men and women who are, nominally, at least, Christians, and now I am going to ask you, every man and woman of you, to ask your own souls the simple question, whether you really are Christians, or not.
"A good many of you, I daresay, will be a little startled, perhaps some of you may even be offended by the suggestion of such a question. With every regard for your feelings as brother men and sister women, I sincerely hope you will be. My reason for hoping that is very simple.
The vast majority of people in Christian countries are Christians simply because they have been born of Christian parents, just as they are Protestants or Catholics because their parents were such before them, and their early training has strongly predisposed their minds to the acceptance--too often the blind acceptance--of a certain set of doctrines which, with all reverence, are by themselves of no more use for the purpose of saving a human soul from eternal d.a.m.nation than the multiplication table would be. These doctrines, these creeds, are aids to salvation, most potent aids, but they are not essentials, since of themselves they cannot save.
"It is far too often taken for granted that, because a man has been brought up in a Christian family, has been baptised into the Church of Christ, and has later on been admitted into the communion of that Church, that, therefore, he is justified in believing himself to be a Christian. He has, as we of the Church Catholic and Universal fervently believe, been placed in the path which leads to salvation. His vision has been cleared from the mists of error. The Church, in the fulfilment of her holy mission, has caused the white light of heaven to shine upon his eyes. His feet have been set in the strait gate and on the narrow way which leads to eternal life, but not all the priests from Abraham down to our own day, nor all the Churches that ever were founded can do any more. The way must be travelled by the man himself, his own eyes must see the light, his own feet must tread the way, no matter how steep or difficult it may be--or that man has no more right to call himself a Christian than any worshipper of any of the false G.o.ds whose reign has vanished from the earth.
"It was for the purpose of bringing this most solemn truth, this most solemn and momentous of all truth home to you that I began by repeating the words which the Greatest of all Preachers p.r.o.nounced for the guidance of those who should come after Him."