Chapter VII

It was on the following day that Mr. Main, carrying out his great resolve, arrived at Marston Station by the morning train. He had destroyed his first letter. It seemed to him that he could not plead his cause adequately with a pen; and he had, of course, hesitated a good deal from pleading it in person. Besides he had written that letter in a burst of misery; and he thought it too bitter. But the days had gone by; his little fund was running low, and no answer came to his other applications. He was becoming desperate. He must risk everything, he said; risk even meeting his old friends; but he would do his best to avoid this. He would send up a note somehow, and ask Percy to come out and see him. He had the note already written in his pocket, signed, " Yours faithfully."

He was a desolate shabby figure as he trudged up the lane towards the lodge-gate. He was in the same ready-made suit in which he resembled a man-servant; the same boots, with a crease across the toes; the same overcoat, turned up at the collar, as the skies were drizzling a little; the same soft hat. It would have been too violent a change for him — so to speak — to have been attired in a more glaringly lay costume.

Marion was in full-blast once more. She was writing desperately, eagerly, almost hungrily; and her drawn face showed the strain of it. She had even read little bits to her husband, and he had submitted drearily. The story, so far as ^e had any coherent idea of it, concerned a priest

Digitized by Google who left the Church and lived happily ever afterwards. It was written really rather well, and was almost perfectly calculated to give a convert extreme and poignant pain.

He was thinking about it as he strode up the lane: he was wondering painfully and conscientiously whether or not he was justified in allowing her to make one or two minute slips in Catholic technicalities.

Then, as he pondered, he looked up and observed what from his inquiries he identified as the lodge of Marston Park. A woman was cleaning the door-step of the Corinthian porch.

" Er — can you tell me, please," began Mr. Main in his clerical voice, " whether this is Marston Park? "

The woman turned quickly and straightened herself; but her manner changed as she saw the shabby nondescript figure.

" Yes, it is," she said.

" Er... and would you be good enough to tell me if Mr. Percy Brandreth-Smith is at home? "

She looked him up and down. (She was the same woman that had bobbed so charmingly to Percy upon his first arrival.)

"That's not my affair," she said. "The Park's the proper place to ask."

A small stout boy of nine or ten years old appeared at the door of the lodge, and eyed the stranger. Mr. Main had an inspiration.

" Do you think," he said pleasantly, " that if I gave your little boy sixpence he would run up to the Park for me with a note: and bring back the answer, if there is one?"

The woman looked at him again; then she relieved her feelings on her son.

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" Where's your manners, Tommie," she said. " Take the gentleman's note, d'yer hear? "

Mr. Main beamed as the boy advanced down the steps to the gate.

" There! my little man," he said, in the full clerical way. "And there's your sixpence. And tell Mr. Percy if he's in and asks, that I'll be walking up and down outside the lodge."

He patted the boy's head with his lean fingers.

Bitterness came down on him again tenfold, yet not one spark of resentment, as he walked up and down in the drizzle. From the top of the slope above the lodge he could catch a glimpse beyond the trees of the church-spire and the Rectory roof where his old chief, he knew, was now established.

But it was his relations with Tommie that had struck the first note. He had spoken to him and patted him on the head, quite in the old manner — that old manner that had caused him, not so very long ago, after all, to answer Mr. Bennett's advertisement for a " Curate in priest's orders; good with men and boys. No extremes. E.P. Coloured stoles. Staunch churchman. Apply, &c." He had picked that out carefully, from the columns of the Church Times, thinking that it might just suit him, and that a little hard work in congenial surroundings "with men and boys," might silence the anxieties that had begun to trouble him with regard to the whole position of the Church of which he was a minister.

Well; that was over. He must not pat little boys' heads any more like that, nor call them " my little man." That was a clergyman's way. The woman had looked at

Digitized by Google him quite oddly when he had done that; and had even called him "Sir." But he had refused her offer to wait in the lodge. It seemed to him that it would be on false pretences. So he walked up and down in the drizzle; and at his third turn refrained from looking again at the church-spire....

The first he knew of Percy's coming was the woman's head thrust out from the gate. She nodded violently to him from thirty yards away; and he made haste towards her as she vanished.

He was just in time to see her bob to Percy as he slipped off his bicycle and ran it up the steps of the portico.

" I'll... I'll just leave it here, Mrs.— er," he said vaguely.

She bobbed again, with an anxious side glance at the muddy track the wheel left on her newly cleaned step. Then Percy turned.

" Why —! " he said, and came forward smiling and hearty. (The woman at the lodge determined to err in future on the side of politeness towards doubtful strangers.)

Ill

" You see," said Mr. Main, when they were well out of hearing, when the first few obvious questions had been asked and answered, and the main object of his visit revealed — " You see, I thought I might venture to ask just the favour of a letter from you to your old firm. I... er... I am not finding life very easy."

" But I don't understand, really," said Percy, in a perfect fever of friendliness. " Of course I'll give you a letter or any mortal thing I can. But do you really mean

Digitized by Google you'd consent to be a clerk or, as you say, a... a traveller for a cocoa-firm. Why, your education "

Mr. Main smiled bleakly.

" I fear that does not qualify me as a clerk," he said. " I very nearly obtained a position as a private tutor with an old Catholic family, but " (He hesitated.)

"Well, why not? That's just the very thing, isn't it?"

"The fact is that I am too old; and... and too much of a parson still, I fear. I... er... unfortunately overheard part of a conversation that was not intended for my ears. I... I gathered that those were the principal objections."

" What a vile shame! " snarled Percy. " And have you tried other things? "

" I may say that I have — unsuccessfully. So I thought "

Percy seized his arm; and poor Mr. Main's heart glowed within him at the kindness.

" But my... my dear Mr. Main; you really must come up to the house: and see the Rector too, and lunch with us. We'd be delighted "

Mr. Main shook his head solemnly.

" Your own kindness, my dear Percy — (if I may say that once again) — is far more than I had hoped. I am sure I had better not risk "

His voice broke suddenly, horribly and grotesquely. Percy, shocked beyond measure, could not resist one glance at him; and saw how that large lean face was working as if in a dreadful parody of a laugh.... He shivered and set his teeth....

" Well, look here," he said. " If you won't, you won't. And of course I'll write the letter, and do anything in the world that I can. I'm... I'm very much touched that

Digitized by Google you've come to me. I... I wish that I could do more.

Won't you let me " (He bit his lip suddenly.)

There was a sound of a noisy swallowing in the lean throat beside him. Then the solemn clerical voice answered.

" My dear Percy... I am ashamed... you have done me good. And... and will you send the letter to the address I will give you? No, nothing else; nothing else upon my word."

" But " began Percy, who had visions of writing him a small cheque.

" No, my dear boy — No. I'm... I'm very fortunate in finding such a good friend. I may say that it is with Father Hilary's full approval that I came to see you."

Percy nodded.

" Have you seen him lately? I hear you're still under instruction."

" I saw him yesterday," said Percy. " I... I hope to be received soon after Easter perhaps: or the early summer. I'm not able to get up to town much, you know."

Percy went back again as soon as the stable-bell begun to ring for luncheon, still unable to persuade Mr. Main to come with him; and indeed he wondered at his own daring in having asked him. And Mr. Main had set off downhill again to the station, saying that he would get something to eat at the railway-inn, and once more repeating his gratitude.

Percy had leapt at the opportunity of doing something to serve his old acquaintance, with an ardour which he scarcely understood himself.

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With the cold light of morning had come something of a reaction against the emotions of last night. He had been awake by seven, and had listened, palpitating, for James' arrival at his door, and his departure again with the telegram and the letter. He had even sprung out of bed, half intending to call him back. But he had hesitated; and a quarter of an hour later had seen the postman go down the back-drive.

His uneasiness had increased with the morning. Certainly he had committed himself now, and the particular set of motives with which he had acted still insisted to him that he had done the only right and sensible thing. But something stirred within him that would not let him rest. Whenever he faced it, it fled before him like flying specks before the eyes: it could not answer for one instant the plain argument that he had to choose between Gladys and his Faith, and that no man with any conscience could hesitate. Yet it recurred, so soon as he had done his emphatic self -answering.

Helen had been with him in the smoking-room when the thumbed note had come up from the lodge.

" By George! " said Percy, as he opened it. " Old Main!"

" What?"

" Er — tell him I'll come directly," continued Percy to the butler. "No; wait; I'll go myself. My bicycle's in the yard, isn't it? "

" What is it? " asked Helen.

" Tell you when I come back."

Percy's haste to be of service, and his zeal when he met the ex-curate, was wholly instinctive then, and (so to say) reactionary. Down in that sphere of himself of

Digitized by Google which he knew nothing, there was forming a strong conviction that he was behaving like a cad. As has been said, this, when it showed its head and he tackled it by logic, fled down again and vanished. Yet it was there — this uneasy sense that he was not really choosing at all between Gladys and his religion, but simply between Gladys and his own comfort. He fortified himself with words, reassured himself by argument, but in the light of morning his emotions did not help him; and he leapt, therefore, at this opportunity of helping Mr. Main as a kind of additional reassurance to himself that he was really a good fellow and nothing but conscientious.

At lunch, of course, Helen did precisely the wrong thing. She was indignant at being left in the smoking-room uninformed, and hastened to revenge herself. She waited until everyone was seated; and then began.

" Did you see Mr. Main? " she said.

Percy looked up abruptly and angrily; and his parents with him.

u Yes, I did," he said, in rather a loud voice. " I was going to tell you, mother. I had a note just now from Mr. Main, and went out to see him. He wouldn't come in."

"Mr. Who?" asked his mother icily, who had caught the name quite distinctly; and who had also read by now, with indescribable indignation, Mrs. Main's portraiture of her in " A New Arcadia."

" Mr. Main, you know," said Percy, " from Hanstead. He's become a Catholic, you know."

Mrs. Brandreth-Smith closed her eyes an instant.

" I think we had better discuss Mr. Main at some other time," she said. " But I am not surprised at his coming in such a furtive way; and I am extremely glad that at

Digitized by Google least he had the good taste not to present himself at this house."

Then silence fell. It was evident that Mrs. Brandreth-Smith had read the book of which Helen still had a concealed copy in a locked drawer.

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