Chapter II

(i)

TT was a serious business, and Dick hurried along -*- with very little prelatical dignity and with a great deal of perturbation. It seemed to him that something must be done, and he had not an idea what.

First, there was Algy. That young man was unhappy, and there was a plot against him. He was certainly unhappy. There was none of that extraordinary buoyancy about him that there ought to have been. Dick had seen him a dozen times, and saw plainly that he had not really got his confidence.

Secondly, there was Miss Maple, and, in spite of Lady Brasted's atmosphere, he had become interested in her. There was something rather pathetic about her, and he did not know what it was. She had not said much, nor had Lady Brasted, in so many words; but Lady Brasted had supplied a suggestive prelude in the few minutes before the other arrived; and Mary herself had had a curious air about her. She had not sulked as people usually did under Lady Brasted's attentions. She had eyed Dick as if she were appraising him; she had had an odd tone in her voice once or twice.

However, Algy was his first business.

At the corner of Trafalgar Square he stopped and began to bite his nails. (It is a bad habit he has in moments of great anxiety.)

He reflected that there was one single ray of light in the situation, and that was that Algy was coming down to Amplefield in the following week. But this ray was at least discoloured, if not obliterated, by Dick's consciousness that he had not an idea what he should say to him when he got him there.

The upshot was that he stepped into a telegraph office and sent two telegrams. One of them was addressed to me. I received it when I came in for tea. It ran as follows: —

" Come Tuesday instead of Wednesday. Most important. Hope Chris there. Yolland."

Then he went on his way.

I, too, was a little uncomfortable about Algy; but, though it was not in the least to my credit, I happened to understand a little better than Dick what was the matter. But, on the other hand, I knew nothing about the Miss Maple incident. However, when I read the wire, I guessed that it concerned that young man, and, after making an arrangement or two, wired an acceptance.

It was not that I was at all afraid as to Algy's constancy in the Faith. About that I was supremely satisfied. But he had not given me his confidence any more than he had to Dick, and I knew that there minutes had our heads together like pictures of Guy Fawkes and his companions.

We learned the following facts. First, that Algy was to arrive in time for lunch next day, and was to stay at least a week. Second, that Dick had seen him on the Sunday, and had extricated from him the remark that he was to go down to Esher in November, and that he knew Miss Maple was to be there. Third, we received a full account of the interview with Lady Brasted, and all her observations, expressed and unexpressed. Chris said very little. I did all the necessary questioning. He nodded his head three or four times, and finally sat back as if rather bored.

" Well? " cried Dick.

Chris said nothing; and I looked at him.

" Look here, you know," said Dick, " this is really rather serious. You must tell me what to say. I can't do these things, you know. If he marries Miss Maple — and, you know, I quite think he might in his present mood — well — don't you think so? "

He looked at me; and I nodded. And I did not in the least want him to marry Miss Maple.

" She's eight years older than he is, at least. Besides, I... I don't think I trust her. I'm beastly sorry for her. There's something the matter, I don't know what. Chris, say something."

" Dick," said Chris, " you must give me time to think. I don't see my way out yet."

He said this very seriously, and Dick fell back a little.

" Well, so long as you tell me..." he grumbled. " Look, there's Mrs. Stirling."

We took off our hats to the Vicar's wife, and presently turned into the lodge gates in silence.

Amplefield is a large, comfortable, unbeautiful Georgian house. It was Dick's by inheritance, but a priest cannot do much with a country estate, so he had installed a penniless cousin and his wife here to their great satisfaction, and only came down occasionally himself. At present the cousin and his wife were away. No doubt in time they or their children would inherit it.

We had tea on the lawn; and once more we talked about Algy. We dined on the terrace, looking out upon the darkening meadows, between large stone vases that dripped with nasturtiums, with an electric lamp on the table, against which moths blundered in vain, and still we talked of Algy. Chris did not say a great deal; but he seemed to listen with attention and put shrewd questions now and again. When coffee had gone, and smoking had begun, for the first

• time he opened his mouth in oracles. " Now, look here," he said. " You've asked us down here to consult about Algy Banister. We all know him pretty well, in different ways; and we're all interested in him. Now Dick has said his say, and you " — he nodded to me — " you haven't said half of what you think. Will you finish first, or shall I? "

" You," I said; and sat back to listen. 243

Chris crossed one knee over the other, put his hands behind his head and began.

" First of all, I think we've gossipped too much — myself included. We mustn't get fussy and managing. We aren't running this affair — it's Algy. At the same time, I don't know what's the good of us if we don't do what we can. You can't let a man drift.

" But there's this to be considered. Are we first perfectly sure that a marriage with Miss Maple isn't the best possible thing for him, and her too? (Of course I don't know her.) Well, I'm not. But, on the other hand, we are all perfectly sure, I take it, that he ought not to marry her simply in order to escape from his Vocation; still less ought he to be jockeyed into it, But that, if I understand rightly, is precisely what Dick thinks Lady Brasted is going to try to do. Now we all know that Algy once thought himself in love with Miss Maple. Now that's a dangerous state to be in. I know it from experience." (He paused for an instant.) "It was here, in fact, that I made such an ass of myself. Remember, Dick? "

Dick nodded gravely, his chin on his hand, on the opposite side of the table.

"Well, then," continued Chris slowly, "all this being so, it seems to me probable that unless we do something Algy may be made to marry Miss Maple, always supposing that she will have him...."

" Oh I she'll have him," I said.

"... Always supposing that she will have him,"

continued Chris imperturbably. " You see, he can't go home; that makes a man feel lonely. He once was, or thought he was, in love with her. Then there's the possibility that she may become a Catholic; and, finally, there are Lady Brasted's tolerably clear hints that she thinks it would be an excellent thing; and Dick's statement that Algy is going to Esher knowing that Miss Maple's to be there. Have I summed it up so far? "

" Perfectly," said Dick.

:' Well," went on Chris tranquilly, " I'm not going to lift a finger to push this boy towards what we all have thought might be his Vocation. If a mistaken marriage can be purgatory, mistaken Celibacy is Hell. Personally I believe that it is his Vocation, but very possibly I'm wrong; and it's literally playing with fire — the hottest and the most real fire in existence — to meddle in these affairs. It burns cruelly — I know that by experience. But what I am prepared to do is to counteract, so far as I can, Lady Brasted's plans. It seems to me that that's only fair to Algy. He must be really free."

He paused again.

" Yes? " cried Dick and I simultaneously.

" Well, what? " said Chris coolly, still staring at the stars.

" What are we to do? "

" I haven't the slightest idea yet," said Chris.

(n)

At a quarter to one on the following day we three were sitting once more on the terrace, waiting for the sound of the wheels. Dick looked nervous; I felt it. Chris alone was serene.

He had refused to talk any more about Algy the night before. He had repeated that he had not the faintest idea how to proceed; that it was enough that we were agreed upon what was to be done; that all else must wait until there were further data. For the collection of these data we had both arranged to remain at Amplefield for one more night.

" How'll you find out? " asked Dick for the fourth time that morning.

" I have no idea," said Chris.

Then there was the hiss of wheels beyond the house; Dick got up and hurried indoors; and two minutes later they came out together.

I had not seen Algy since his reception into the Church; and I looked at him carefully. There was no kind of doubt that the boy was undergoing a strain of some sort. He was a little pale under the eyes; a line came and went over them too easily; and his lips were apt to compress themselves suddenly. His manner was subdued and undefinably grown-up.

He nodded pleasantly to us, with rather a detached air, and sat down in a long chair. It was plain enough that even if we wished to manage him, we should find some difficulty. He crossed one leg over the other, tilted his hat forward, and was silent.

The absurd side of it all struck me forcibly as we sat there waiting for the gong. Here were we, three grown men, all intensely interested in the career of a rather uninteresting boy, all gravely concerned as to his future. For, in all outward matters, even in matters of heart and head, Algy was uninteresting. He was not particularly clever; he was not attractively impulsive; his manners were not especially anything. He had done nothing great; he never would; nothing particularly important turned upon him. Yet there was something in him that mattered. I cannot express it better than that. I knew that I for one, and Dick and Chris for two others, cared tremendously what became of him. He had the sort of significance that, let us say, a delicate child possesses that, unknown to himself, is heir to a dukedom. Everything matters — his health, his moods, his instincts, his faults, his virtues — far more than they seem to matter in the son of a coachman. To us three Algy had that sort of interest; we felt that huge things depended on him. It was disconcerting, too, to notice his rather peevish air. And there we sat in the hot August day, shaded by the great ugly house, staring out at the flowers and the rolling park and the plantations, pretending to be sleepy or lazy, and all thinking hard of one thing.

Algy seemed a little astonished to see us all. He had not expected us both, he said; and Dick's assertion that he had warned him of it, did not remove that air of slight suspicion.

Then we talked of this and that and the other — of the train service between Marlesdon and London; of the extreme warmth of the day; of the comparative advantages in such weather of grey flannel and brown holland. You were cooler in the one, and felt cooler in the other, we decided.

It was not until lunch was half over that we made any advance at all. Dick made his first step.

" Look here," he said, " what's to be done this afternoon? "

We were silent.

" I'll tell you the possibilities," he said. " There's a lake in which bathing can be done. There's a terrace which can be sat upon. There's a motor of my cousin's in the stable; there's a waggonette and a pair of horses. There's a group of pine trees in which pigeons live; but I don't expect they'll be home till late. That's the lot."

We were still silent.

:c You," he said, nodding at me.

" Lake," I said instantly.

"Algy?"

" I wish I could," he said, " but I get cramp. What about the motor? "

" All right. That's two. Chris? "

" I think motor. What'll you do? "

Dick paused an infinitesimal moment, as Algy glanced sideways at Chris.

" I think lake too," he said. " Then the motor at three? Where'll you go? "

" How about seeing Foxhurst? " said Chris.

Now a certain scene in Chris's not very reputable past life had been enacted at Foxhurst; and for an instant Dick sat dumb. Then he recovered himself.

" Very good," he said. " It's worth seeing, Algy. Such a place; a moat, a courtyard, a king's room...."

" Are they away? " interrupted Chris.

" Every blessed soul except the chaplain. It's an old Catholic house, Algy. It'll just give you an idea.... Well, then, three o'clock."

Chris nodded.

Now, upon my word, this had not been rehearsed. Chris had refused to rehearse anything, He is the most consistent believer in Providence I have ever met. He had said two or three times with great emphasis that he was not going to fuss and arrange. Matters were not brought to satisfactory conclusions by such methods. He had refused to make any plans as to how the day was to be spent. If it was intended by the Authorities that we were to accomplish anything, circumstances would arrange themselves. And they I, with a vengeance.

I sat through the rest of lunch in a daze. It was lot that I at all understood how things would work out; but at least I saw a very pretty train of powder laid. First, there was the fact that Algy and Chris were to spend the afternoon together, and next, there was the fact that Foxhurst, which had occurred to none of us, was to be the scene of their journey. Now Foxhurst had also been the scene of the stupendously important crisis of Chris's life. It was there that his real conversion had taken place; he had worked as a gardener there; he had had his pride and his posing knocked out of him there, in spite of Dick's meddling; be had actually attempted suicide there; and had been saved from it at the last possible moment by that amazing man John Rolls, whose mantle had fallen so strangely upon him.

Now I did not see how Chris would use all this, particularly as Algy's mood did not seem promising; but I knew him well enough to know that he would use it. So I sat and drank my coffee in silence.

We went out on to the terrace presently again; and Algy heard a good deal more of the glories that he was to behold. Dick, in a rather feverish manner, I thought, and certainly at great length, described pretty nearly every room in the house; while Chris sat by smiling gently to himself.

At five minutes to three we heard the panting of the engine. Dick went through the house with them to see them off.

Three minutes later he burst back again, and shook me violently by the shoulder.

" Good Lord," he said, " don't you see? "

Two minutes later I said that I saw.

(m)

Dick and I went down to bathe that afternoon, but I have no distinct recollection of the experience. We talked spasmodically, when we were not otherwise engaged; and more than once I was again stricken into silence by the absurdity of the whole affair. I can only repeat that I was more excited than I had been by anything for a long time; and yet when the thing was put into words it was so entirely inadequate. All that I can say is that I felt as I suppose a stableboy must feel when the pride of the stable is on his trial. I knew, in a manner I cannot describe at all, that underneath that uninteresting Algy there was something unique in my own small experience. It was genius that I perceived there, and genius in a plane of which not one in a thousand people takes any account at all. I perceived, I say, and later events are beginning to show whether I was right or no, that here was a soul endowed with certain faculties which, to my mind, are sublimely the highest in existence. And the excitement turned on the point as to whether these would be allowed to exercise themselves or no. That was all.

We came up with our towels about five o'clock; but there was no sign of the motor. We sent for tea and drank it, and talked and waited. At six the Angelus rang: at half -past six we heard the panting come up the drive. We waited. Then a man came out to say that the motor had returned with the message that the two gentlemen would walk back. Then we waited again.

We hardly said anything at all. Dick went and got his office-book presently, but I could see that he was all alert for any sound. His eyes rolled round occasionally, as do a dog's who is resting and yet is absorbed in his master's movements. For myself I sat staring and thinking. I would finish my office after dinner, I said to myself.

Then suddenly, without warning, Chris came up the steps from the kitchen-garden and, without a word, sat down abruptly.

" WeU? " whispered Dick.

" He's gone for a walk alone," said Chris without moving. " He'll be back for dinner. He's given me some messages for you. He wants no sort of reference to be made to his affairs, either to-night or at any future time, until things are settled."

We nodded together.

" Now listen," he said. " He's given me leave to tell you the whole thing."

Chris leaned forward, joining his fingers.

" We went to Foxhurst. We saw all over it. Then we inquired for the chaplain and found he was out. Then we asked to see his house. We went in; and I pointed out to Algy various things, the room I slept in, the hook over the window, the staircase where you and Rolls stood when I was preparing to hang myself. I didn't explain it; I only asked him to notice all these things. He hardly said anything at all. I could see he was beginning to be uncomfortable. He was also rather suspicious. You noticed that, of course.

" When we came out, I asked him if he'd mind walking home as I'd rather a long story to tell him. He said all right, though I could see he didn't want to. We sent the motor off, and we started to walk by the fields.

" Well, you can guess. I started by saying that I knew quite well what he thought; he thought it was a plan to manage him. I asked him if that wasn't so. He looked rather taken aback, but confessed it was so. I acknowledged the fact, and then went ahead. I told him the whole thing from beginning to end; about my own beastly pride, my self-indulgence — pretty well everything that I decently could. I told him all about Annie; all about my posing; and at last I told him every single detail of that last night — all I felt as I was getting the rope ready: all about the interruption — the whole thing. Finally, I told him what Rolls said to me. I must confess that I got more moved than I have been for a long time when I told him that: I could see him getting paler and paler as I rubbed it in about self-deception, and all the damnable nonsense there is in people who fight against the Will of God. I just said it as plainly as I knew how. Then at the end I turned on him.

" I said I was only a layman— that I didn't want to pry into secrets, that nobody did; but that it seemed to me, and you two — oh! yes, I gave you both away — that he was resisting light. I said I wouldn't, for the sake of my own soul, let alone his, urge him for one single second to do what his conscience didn't wholly and entirely tell him to do; but that I was sick of seeing people — Catholics, too — just chuck away their life out of cowardice or pride or stupidity. Then I told him plainly that the only thing that mattered in this world or the next was to do the Will of God.

" Well, he began by being conventional. He warded me off, saying that it was extremely difficult, wasn't it? to know what was best to do; that, of course, he wished to do the right thing, but that it was beginning to seem to him that it was perhaps better just to be normal and to live an ordinary life — oh! you know: all the things that we are always palming off on one another. When he'd quite done I said just that."

" What did you say exactly? " interrupted Dick.

Chris smiled.

"To be accurate, I said, ' Just so. Now let's have what you really think.' Well — I got home at last — we were sitting on the grass by now, and he was chewing a long piece of grass. Then, quite suddenly, after a particularly offensive remark of mine, he caved in altogether and rolled round on to his face without another word. (Oh! by the way, he had called me a — a damned bully, two minutes before.) I told him not to behave like a woman. He got up at last; and as soon as he could speak he told me that we were all perfectly right, that he was a cur, and a fool, and that he would go off and be a Carthusian to-morrow."

" Good Lord! " ejaculated Dick. " Wait. I pulled him up at that. I said that that wasn't at all the point. I asked him how he dared think that he had just got to go and that he'd be taken. I said there were a dozen things to consider first; his people; his duty to his estate — all kinds of things. Then I taxed him with Miss Maple; and, I must say, he was straightforward enough there. Oh! he's straight all through. He said that he had been in love with her in a sort of way; and that he was fooling with the thought of it even now... that he had practically made up his mind to marry her if she'd have him, simply in order to get away from the hell he's had in his heart at the thought of what his real vocation was. (We were right, you see.) I tell you, he's had a terrible time since his reception. He's as sensitive to God as a flower to the sun. It's been torment.... Oh! he shirked it for all the usual reasons — terror of the loneliness, the mortifications,

1 the rest. Well, I began to encourage him then.

said that that was all the merest moonshine, that if he had a vocation and corresponded with it, there was such happiness waiting for him as the rest of us can't t till we get to heaven.... Well; so we went on.

e got quiet at last, about a mile from here, out there across the fields. But he said he couldn't face you et. Mind, not one word when he comes back. We'd tter have some bridge this evening, Dick."

" That was clever of you — about acknowledging that it was partly true we wanted to manage him," I mused aloud.

" Clever! " snapped Chris. " It was simply honest."

" But, but what next?..."I ejaculated, suddenly remembering myself.

"Ah I yes. I'd forgotten. Well, the next thing is his people."

Dick shook his head dolefully.

" Look here," said Chris; " it's no good being despondent. It's got to be done."

" Will he go there? " I asked breathlessly.

" Why, of course not," snapped Chris almost rudely; V and he won't write either. No: I'll tell you what we've settled,"

" Well? "

Chris smiled at our anxious faces,

" Don't be alarmed. We three have got to go, Not yet. I'll let you know when*"

There was an awe-struck pause.

" What about Miss Maple? " asked Dick presently.

" One thing at a time," said Chris.