The King's Achievement, Robert Hugh Benson [beginner reading books for adults txt] 📗

looking with a kind of steady fury at his father. But Mary thought she saw indecision too in his eye-lids, which were quivering almost imperceptibly.

"You have offered me a bribe and a threat, sir. Two insults. Have you a third ready?"

Mary heard a swift-drawn breath from her father, but he spoke quietly.

"I have no more to say on that point," he said.

"Then I must refuse," said Ralph instantly. "I see no reason to give up my work. I have very hearty sympathy with it."

The old man's hand twitched uncontrollably on his chair-arm for a moment; he half lifted his hand, but he dropped it again.

"Then as to Margaret," he went on in a moment. "I understand you had intended to dismiss her from the convent?"

Ralph bowed.

"And where do you suggest that she should go?"

"She must go home," said Ralph.

"To Overfield?"

Ralph assented.

"Then I will not receive her," said Sir James.

Mary started up.

"Nor will Mary receive her," he added, half turning towards her.

Mary Maxwell sat back at once. She thought she understood what he meant now.

Ralph stared at his father a moment before he too understood. Then he saw the point, and riposted deftly. He shrugged his shoulders ostentatiously as if to shake off responsibility.

"Well, then, that is not my business; I shall give her a gown and five shillings to-morrow, with the other one."

The extraordinary brutality of the words struck Mary like a whip, but Sir James met it.

"That is for you to settle then," he said. "Only you need not send her to Overfield or Great Keynes, for she will be sent back here at once."

Ralph smiled with an air of tolerant incredulity. Sir James rose briskly.

"Come, Mary," he said, and turned his back abruptly on Ralph, "we must find lodgings for to-night. The good nuns will not have room."

As Mary looked at his face in the candlelight she was astonished by its decision; there was not the smallest hint of yielding. It was very pale but absolutely determined, and for the fast time in her life she noticed how like it was to Ralph's. The line of the lips was identical, and his eyelids drooped now like his son's.

Ralph too rose and then on a sudden she saw the resolute obstinacy fade from his eyes and mouth. It was as if the spirit of one man had passed into the other.

"Father--" he said.

She expected a rush of emotion into the old man's face, but there was not a ripple. He paused a moment, but Ralph was silent.

"I have no more to say to you, sir. And I beg that you will not come home again."

As they passed out into the entrance passage she turned again and saw Ralph dazed and trembling at the table. Then they were out in the road through the open gate and a long moan broke from her father.

"Oh! God forgive me," he said, "have I failed?"


CHAPTER VI


A NUN'S DEFIANCE

It was a very strange evening that Mary and her father passed in the little upstairs room looking on to the street at Rusper.

Sir James had hardly spoken, and after supper had sat near the window, with a curious alertness in his face. Mary knew that Chris was expected, and that Mr. Morris had ridden on to fetch him after he had called at Overfield, but from her short interview with Margaret she had seen that his presence would not be required. The young nun, though bewildered and stunned by the news that she must go, had not wavered for a moment as regards her intention to follow out her Religious vocation in some manner; and it was to confirm her in it, in case she hesitated, that Sir James had sent on the servant to fetch Chris.

It was all like a dreadful dream to Mary.

She had gone out from dinner at her own house into the pleasant October sunshine with her cheerful husband beside her, when her father had come out through the house with his riding-whip in his hand; and in a few seconds she had found herself plunged into new and passionate relations, first with him, for she had never seen him so stirred, and then with her brothers and sister. Ralph, that dignified man of affairs, suddenly stepped into her mind as a formidable enemy of God and man; Chris appeared as a spiritual power, and the quiet Margaret as the very centre of the sudden storm.

She sat here now by the fire, shading her face with her hand and watching that familiar face set in hard and undreamed lines of passion and resolution and expectancy.

Once as footsteps came up the street he had started up and sat down trembling.

She waited till the steps went past, and then spoke.

"Chris will be riding, father."

He nodded abruptly, and she saw by his manner that it was not Chris he was expecting. She understood then that he still had hopes of his other son, but they sat on into the night in the deep stillness, till the fire burned low and red, and the stars she had seen at the horizon wheeled up and out of sight above the window-frame.

Then he suddenly turned to her.

"You must go to bed, Mary," he said. "I will wait for Chris."

She lay long awake in the tiny cupboard-room that the labourer and his wife had given up to her, hearing the horses stamp in the cold shed at the back of the house, and the faces moved and turned like the colours of a kaleidoscope. Now her father's eyes and mouth hung like a mask before her, with that terrible look that had been on them as he faced Ralph at the end; now Ralph's own face, defiant, icy, melting in turns; now Margaret's with wide terrified eyes, as she had seen it in the parlour that afternoon; now her own husband's. And the sweet autumn woods and meadows lay before her as she had seen them during that silent ride; the convent, the village, her own home with its square windows and yew hedge--a hundred images.

* * * * *


There was a talking when she awoke for the last time and through the crazy door glimmered a crack of grey dawn, and as she listened she knew that Chris was come.

It was a strange meeting when she came out a few minutes later. There was the monk, unshaven and pale under the eyes, with his thinned face that gave no smile as she came in; her father desperately white and resolved; Mr. Morris, spruce and grave as usual sitting with his hat between his knees behind the others;--he rose deferentially as she came in and remained standing.

Her father began abruptly as she appeared.

"He can do nothing," he said, "he can but turn her on to the road. And I do not think he will dare."

"Ah! Beatrice Atherton?" questioned Mary, who had a clearer view of the situation now.

"Yes--Beatrice Atherton. He fears that we shall tell her. He cannot send Margaret to Overfield or Great Keynes now."

"And if he turns her out after all?"

Sir James looked at her keenly.

"We must leave the rest to God," he said.

The village was well awake by the time that they had finished their talk and had had something to eat. The drama at the convent had leaked out through the boy who served the altar there, and a little group was assembled opposite the windows of the cottage to which the monk had been seen to ride up an hour or two before. It seemed strange that no priest had been near them, but it was fairly evident that the terror was too great.

As the four came out on to the road, a clerical cap peeped for a moment from the churchyard wall and disappeared again.

They went down towards the convent along the grey road, in the pale autumn morning air. Mary still seemed to herself to walk in a dream, with her father and brother on either side masquerading in strange character; the familiar atmosphere had been swept from them, the background of association was gone, and they moved now in a new scene with new parts to play that were bringing out powers which she had never suspected in them. It seemed as if their essential souls had been laid bare by a catastrophe, and that she had never known them before.

For herself, she felt helpless and dazed; her own independence seemed gone, and she was aware that her soul was leaning on those of the two who walked beside her, and who were masculine and capable beyond all her previous knowledge of them.

Behind she heard a murmur of voices and footsteps of three or four villagers who followed to see what would happen.

She had no idea of what her father meant to do; it was incredible that he should leave Margaret in the road with her gown and five shillings; but it was yet more incredible that all his threats should be idle. Only one thing emerged clearly, that he had thrown a heavier responsibility upon Ralph than the latter had foreseen. Perhaps the rest must indeed be left to God. She did not even know what he meant to do now, whether to make one last effort with Ralph, or to leave him to himself; and she had not dared to ask.

They passed straight down together in silence to the convent-gate; and were admitted immediately by the portress whose face was convulsed and swollen.

"They are to go," she sobbed.

Sir James made a gesture, and passed in to the tiny lodge on the left where the portress usually sat; Chris and Mary followed him in, and Mr. Morris went across to the guest-house.

The bell sounded out overhead for mass as they sat there in the dim morning light, twenty or thirty strokes, and ceased; but there was no movement from the little door of the guest-house across the court. The portress had disappeared through the second door that led from the tiny room in which they sat, into the precincts of the convent itself.

Mary looked distractedly round her; at the little hatch that gave on to the entrance gate, and the chain hanging by it that communicated with one of the bolts, at the little crucifix that hung beside it, the devotional book that lay on the shelf, the door into the convent with the title "Clausura" inscribed above it. She glanced at her father and brother.

Sir James was sitting with his grey head in his hands, motionless and soundless; Chris was standing upright and rigid, staring steadily out through the window into the court.

Then through the window she too saw Mr. Morris come out from the guest-house and pass along to the stable.

Again there was silence.

The minutes went by, and the Saunce bell sounded three strokes from the turret. Chris sank on to his knees, and a moment later Mary and her father followed his example, and so the three remained in the dark silent lodge, with no sound but