OLD COUNTRY 
 
 HENRY NEWBOLT
 
 /f/S
 
 THE OLD COUNTEY
 
 FIRST EDITION . . . October 23, 190G 
 SECOND IMPRESSION . November, 1906 
 THIRD IMPRESSION , . January, 1907
 
 THE 
 
 OLD COUNTRY 
 
 A ROMANCE 
 
 BY 
 
 HENEY NEWBOLT 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'TAKEN FROM THE ENEMY," "THE YEAH OF TRAFALGAR, 
 " ADMIRALS ALL," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STBEET 
 1907
 
 PRINTED BT 
 
 WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND BECCLE8. 
 
 * <*
 
 STACK 
 ANNEX 
 
 ft? 
 
 5/03 
 
 \{01 
 
 "In Eternity there is no distinction of Tenses. 
 
 " And in this sense, I say, the World was before the Creation, 
 and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I dead 
 before I was alive : though my grave be England, my dying-place 
 was Paradise. 
 
 " He who hath thus considered the World, as also how therein 
 things long past have been answered by things present, how matters 
 in one Age have been acted over in another, and how there is 
 nothing new under the sun, may conceive himself in some manner 
 to have lived from the beginning and to be as old as the World : 
 and if he should still live on, 'twould be but the same thing." 
 
 SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
 
 TO THE 
 
 RIGHT REV. COSMO GORDON LANG, D.D., 
 LORD BISHOP OF STEPNEY 
 
 MY DEAR LANG, 
 
 You kindly promised, when we last parted, to 
 give me your criticism and advice upon certain portions 
 of this story before it went to Press. I have very re- 
 luctantly denied myself these great advantages, because I 
 saw upon reflection that my subject is one about which 
 I could hardly consult you without involving you more 
 deeply than I had any right to do. Still, though the 
 author alone must be responsible for his book, he may, 
 I hope, dedicate it to you ; not with any intention of 
 seeking the support of your name for his own theories, 
 but in grateful commemoration of an old and valued 
 friendship. 
 
 It falls short, I fear, of modern standards ; burdened 
 as it is with something like a purpose, and enlivened by 
 no portraits drawn from life. It is true that all the 
 fourteenth-century characters in the book once played 
 their parts in England, and were perhaps not very unlike 
 
 vii
 
 viii DEDICATORY LETTER 
 
 the picture I have given of them ; but I can offer my 
 readers no hope of discovering among the rest, with or 
 without a key, the face or personality of a single living 
 contemporary. Gardenleigh alone has some resemblance 
 to a sketch from nature, and there I put my trust in 
 the generosity of its possessors, remembering that they 
 have before now forgiven me a far costlier theft. 
 
 The purpose is a more serious fault ; but even that 
 you will view with less severity because you are yourself 
 a lover of History, and must often have regretted that the 
 life and motives of our ancestors should be so travestied 
 as they have generally been. It would seem to be the 
 common belief and pride of the gentlemen of England 
 that they are descended from forefathers who were utterly 
 different from them not only in their choice of clothes 
 and oaths, but in habitually pursuing a behaviour which 
 would qualify in any civilised country for solitary confine- 
 ment of one sort or the other. 
 
 My hero comes upon the stage afflicted with these 
 curious delusions. Happily he is not too old to learn ; 
 besides, long travel has familiarized him with many varieties 
 of speech and costume, and being a student of ideas rather 
 than appearances, he is more struck, when he reaches the 
 England of 1356, by the points of similarity between the 
 thought of the fourteenth and twentieth centuries, than 
 by the external and trivial differences which counted for 
 so much in the books from which his knowledge of the 
 past was derived. To accord with this bent of his mind,
 
 DEDICATORY LETTER ix 
 
 as well as with the convenience of the reader, I have 
 translated the dialogue of my characters out of the Latin 
 and Anglo-French of the original authorities into language 
 which aims at being a faithful transposition, and is, in 
 fact, often a word-for-word rendering. This is Sir Walter's 
 method you remember the Dedicatory Epistle to Ivanhoe 
 and, as in Sir Walter's case, the effect is sometimes 
 startlingly modern. But nothing could be more modern 
 than the letters of John de Grandison or the war-reporting 
 of Geoffrey le Baker ; and even in the less-authenticated 
 passages I believe that I have used no expression which 
 is not justified by documents or which would be absurd or 
 unintelligible to an Englishman of the fourteenth century 
 if it could be literally retranslated to him. The heroine's 
 name, Aubrey, inherited from her ancestresses Aubrey 
 Marmion and Albreda de Warrenne, I have ventured to 
 retain, though it is now unfamiliar as a feminine name. 
 
 Harry Marland's account of the battle of Poitiers is, 
 I hope, the true one. It contains, at any rate, all that 
 it is possible to incorporate of the narratives of the four 
 authorities whom I have consulted. The most valuable 
 and probably the least-known of these is the Chronicon 
 Gctlfridi le Baker de Swynbrolce, which I have closely 
 followed throughout, supplementing it, where I could 
 consistently do so, from the " Chronique Normande " and 
 from Froissart's anecdotes and the contemporary poem 
 of the Chandos Herald. In one or other of these four 
 will be found every detail of the battle contained in my
 
 X DEDICATORY LETTER 
 
 39th and 40th chapters ; but I confess that I alone have 
 made Devon men of the archers who charged up the 
 waggon side of the hill and drove the French off down 
 the other slope. It is merely a matter of inference : if 
 Lord Bryan was there, and they were his men, Devon 
 men they must have been. 
 
 About the sense of Time I do not remember that we 
 have ever had any talk together ; but I have only to 
 think of you to realize the paradoxical nature of our 
 common system of measurement. It was but yesterday 
 that I first saw and heard you at the Union, speaking 
 eloquently in defence of the Church, though by the Uni- 
 versity Calendar it is nearly a quarter of a century ago. 
 On the other hand, it is many a lifetime is it not ? 
 since we said good-bye in the Library after our last paper 
 in the Old Schools : though one-and-twenty little years are 
 said to cover all those mortal changes and rebirths. I 
 offer no solution of this mystery of Tune ; but I have 
 ventured to suggest that it is one worth thinking about, 
 if only that we may be less prone to forget the sympathy 
 we owe to the brave and ardent spirits who hoped our 
 hopes before us, and who belong to a past which can 
 never be truly spoken of as dead. So much, at least, you 
 can accept of my book : with the rest you will deal gently, 
 as the offering of your sincere friend and admirer, 
 
 HENRY NEWBOLT.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 MM 
 
 I. TIME AND GA.BDENLEIGH .,. ... ... 1 
 
 II. AUBREY ... ... ... ... 6 
 
 III. FATHER AND DAUGHTER ... ... ... 13 
 
 IV. THE WHITE CUFFS ... ... ... 19 
 
 V. IN THE TRAIN ... ... ... ... 27 
 
 VI. A RIDDLE OF MEMORY ... ... ... 35 
 
 VII. THE PAINTER'S ARGUMENT ... ... ... 41 
 
 VIII. THE SONG OF A BIRD ... ... ... 50 
 
 IX. IN THE CHURCH ... ... ... ... 55 
 
 X. AMONG THE CHURCHES ... ... ... CO 
 
 XI. TERMS OF SURRENDER ... ... ... 71 
 
 XII. A CHILD'S DESIRE ... ... ... 76 
 
 XIIL THE POLITICIAN'S ARGUMENT ... ... 83 
 
 XIV. "OoiEK THE DANE" ... ... ... 93 
 
 XV. "EARNSHAW'S SELECT CHARTERS " ... ... 101 
 
 XVI. " GARDENLEIGH, VOL. II." ... ... 106 
 
 XVII. THE CAP OF DARKNESS ... ... ... 113 
 
 XVIII. THE JOURNEY ... ... ... ... 119 
 
 XIX. THE ARRIVAL ... ... ... ... 123 
 
 XX. THE MARLANDS ... ... 126 
 
 XXI. GRANDISON v. TREMUJI ... ... ... 132 
 
 XXII. THE BISHOP ARRIVES ... ... ... 146 
 
 zi
 
 Xll CONTENTS 
 
 MM 
 
 XXIII. STORIES BY THE FIRE ... ... ... 152 
 
 XXIV. MISSA CORAM EPISCOPO 
 XXV. STEPHEN IK EXILE 
 
 XXVI. THE BISHOP'S MOVE ... 
 
 XXVII. THE BISHOP'S DEPARTURE 
 
 XXVIII. RALPH TREMUR 
 
 XXIX. STEPHEN'S MONEY 
 
 XXX. SIR HENRY'S BOUNDARY 
 
 XXXI. Six PROPOSITIONS 
 
 XXXII. A HERETIC'S THEOLOGY 
 
 XXXIII. RALPH DEPARTS ... 
 
 XXXIV. EDMUND RETURNS 
 
 XXXV. EDEN VALE ... ... 
 
 XXXVI. STEPHEN'S DREAM 
 
 XXXVII. AUBREY'S DREAM 
 
 XXXVIII. THE BELLS 
 
 XXXIX. THE TACTICS OF POITIERS 
 
 XL. THE ETHICS OF POITIERS 
 
 XLI. LORD BRYAN'S VIEW 
 
 XLII. STEPHEN DOUBTS 
 
 XLIII. REQUIEM ETERNAM 
 
 XLIV. AN OLD MAN'S THOUGHTS 
 
 XLV. THE NEW LORD 
 
 XLVI. THE SAND IN THE GLASS 
 
 XL VII. THE HUNT is UP ... 
 
 XLVIII. THE OUTER DARKNESS 
 
 XLIX. RALPH'S FAREWELL 
 
 L. THE SHADOW ON THE DIAL ...
 
 THE OLD COUNTEY 
 
 GARDENLEIGH, says the Post Office Directory, is a 
 parish partly bounded by the Sel river, two miles north 
 from Selwood station on the Baymouth branch of the 
 London and Somerset Kailway, in the Selwood division 
 of the county, Selwood hundred, Selwood petty 
 sessional division, union, county court district, and 
 rural deanery ; archdeaconry of Wells and diocese of 
 Bath and Wells. The Church of St. Mary stands on 
 an island in a lake in the park, and is a small edifice 
 of stone in the Early English style, consisting of 
 chancel, nave, transept, south porch, and a small 
 western turret containing one bell ; in the church are 
 monuments to the family of Silvayne, former owners 
 of Gardenleigh, and several windows containing fif- 
 teenth-century glass, besides much interesting carved 
 stone-work. The building was restored in 1879 from 
 plans by the late Sir Gilbert Scott, E.A., and has 
 sittings for eighty persons. The register dates from
 
 2 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 1623. The living is a rectory, with the vicarage of 
 Croonington annexed, joint net yearly value 215, in 
 the gift of Walter Earnshaw, Esq., and held since 1886 
 by the Eev. Dr. Simpson, of Magdalen College, Oxford, 
 who resides at Croonington. 
 
 This leaves no room for doubt as to the place of 
 Gardenleigh in the scheme of local government and 
 its ecclesiastical advantages; the remainder of the 
 description is an equally terse combination of the 
 picturesque and the practical. Gardenleigh Park, it 
 continues, once the property of the Silvayne family, 
 who were in possession for about three centuries, is 
 the seat of Walter Earnshaw, Esq., lord of the manor 
 and sole landowner. The present mansion occupies an 
 elevated position in the centre of an undulating park 
 of about eight hundred acres, which comprises nearly 
 the whole of Gardenleigh parish, and is a building of 
 stately appearance, in the modern style, erected by the 
 late Joseph Earnshaw, Esq., and commands fine views 
 of the surrounding country. The park is adorned with 
 numerous groups of elms and forest trees, and contains 
 a lake of twenty-four acres and two smaller ones ; the 
 soil is loam and marl, and the subsoil marl. The 
 land is chiefly in pasturage ; the area is seven hundred 
 and sixty acres of land, and thirty of water. The 
 population at the last census was thirty-eight. Letters 
 through Selwood arrive at eight and four.
 
 TIME AND GARDENLEIGH 3 
 
 Such, to the sane eye of the Directory, is Garden- 
 leigh no great seigneiirial demesne, no historic lord- 
 ship, no legendary scene of romance. It does not 
 figure among the coloured photographs which adorn 
 the newer carriages of the Somerset railway ; it is not 
 even, like some of its neighbours, to be viewed by 
 ticket, on Wednesdays only. It is merely, what it 
 has been for eight centuries, an English home, now, as 
 always, the possession, not of a noble house, but of 
 one among the thousands of families which supply 
 the common needs of the country without profit and 
 without ambition. It is, in short, private property, 
 and its history is as private as its ownership. 
 
 The words are no sooner written than the ink turns 
 black with doubt. Is it possible to say with truth that 
 the parks of England are private property, and the 
 record of their owners merely private history ? Is this 
 island so full of beauty, and her forty million folk so 
 careless of it, that the immemorial loveliness of Garden- 
 leigh, its high down and far horizon, its deep woods, 
 and the stillness of its shimmering lake, are all allotted 
 to be the portion of one man, shared only by the 
 population of thirty-eight, who are, for the most part, 
 members of his single household ? Here, as elsewhere, 
 the squire's courtesy and his half-open gates belie his 
 legal title: he is a guardian of the national land, 
 as seven and twenty squires have been before him ;
 
 4 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 holders of an office as old as any in England. For 
 change has passed lightly over Gardenleigh since the 
 day when William the Norman's fighting bishop, 
 Geoffrey of Coutances, died at enmity with Kufus, and 
 his seventy Somerset manors passed to the Honour of 
 Gloucester, to be parcelled out among the tenants of 
 FitzHamon and De Clare. What it was then, such 
 in all essentials it has been ever since. Five Colthursts, 
 five Marlands, three Romseys, twelve Silvaynes, and 
 three of these new Earnshaws from the North, have 
 all in turn become, by descent, by marriage, or by 
 purchase, the stewards of the commonwealth for 
 Gardenleigh; all in turn have lived here, planted, 
 drained and sown, hunted, and administered the king's 
 most rustic peace, and handed on the place to their 
 successors unimpaired in beauty. It is true that none 
 of them have attained high rank or lasting fame in 
 politics, in war, or in the arts; but they have filled 
 a definite place in English life, and a still more definite 
 place in the history of the land of England. 
 
 And what of that land itself? What of the few 
 hundred acres of it which the child-like Saxon in some 
 dim century named Gardenleigh ? Is it not a dream ? 
 Even as we know it, is it not the dream of seven and 
 twenty generations ? Year after year, life after life, 
 century after century, to all who have seen it, whether 
 as squires or serfs, natives or settlers, it has been the
 
 TIME AND GARDENLEIGH 5 
 
 fabric upon which the pattern of their days was woven 
 the perfect setting of high dawns and tender sunsets, 
 of birth, and toil, and passion, and pursuit ; of all joys, 
 and many partings and inevitable death. Now they 
 themselves are dust, or less than dust ; nothing is left 
 of them but the shrines they built, the woods they 
 planted, the mounds in the churchyard, and a few 
 stones, for the most part long since broken and 
 illegible. But Gardenleigh is still as green as ever. 
 Can it be that the dream has indeed outlasted the 
 dreamers so utterly ? Has the slow stream of human 
 life had no effect upon these meadows that it has 
 so long watered ? Are they no richer for all this love, 
 no more fertile to the spirit than the raw clearings of 
 yesterday in new-discovered countries ? Are there no 
 voices but ours in these old mossy woods and sunlit 
 gardens, no steps but ours by this lake where the 
 stars are mirrored in silence ? What, then, is Time, 
 that he should have power to make away with the 
 dearest memories of seven and twenty generations ?
 
 II 
 
 THE long June day was drawing towards a close, but the 
 last hour of sunlight rested so broad and still upon 
 Gardenleigh that every moment seemed an eternity of 
 perfection. In the park the giant elins were slumber- 
 ing, each one wrapped in its own luminous mist; in 
 the gardens and the two grassy avenues, which run 
 through them to east and west of the house, not a 
 eound was heard but the cooing of wood-pigeons, across 
 which came at last the seven strokes of the stable 
 clock, cutting the heavy murmur like a thin, sharp 
 blade. As the last beat ceased to vibrate, and seemed 
 to leave the air still listening for it, the door in the 
 verandah opened, and Aubrey Earnshaw came out upon 
 the terrace. She stepped into such a flood of light that 
 she hesitated for a moment, like a bather on the shore 
 of a wide sea, then went slowly down the broad flight 
 of stone steps, with head still bent to avoid the glare, 
 passed between the squat round shadows of the clipped 
 laurels, and on to the bay in which the sundial stands, 
 at the lower edge of the terrace. Before her, down the 
 southern slope, lay the lake, a sheet of smoothest gold 
 among gold-green trees, the western end of it enamelled 
 
 i
 
 AUBREY 7 
 
 all over with a million water-lilies, white with golden 
 hearts. On the further side rose the steep face of the 
 down, streaked with long deep shadows of elms and 
 chestnuts. To the right, beyond the water-lilies and 
 beneath the sunset, lay the two smaller lakes, the 
 nearer one with the tiny gray church on its solitary 
 island; and opposite the church, on the far shore under 
 the hill, was the empty green shelf on which the old 
 house once stood, at the foot of an avenue that marched 
 right up the slope and crossed the down towards 
 Selwood. 
 
 Not that Aubrey could see quite all this from where 
 she now stood. In summer, indeed, the smaller lakes 
 are hardly visible through the leaves of the trees that 
 overhang them ; the church, too, is deeply embowered, 
 and the old house itself, if it were still standing, would 
 but just peep out here and there, where its highest 
 windows looked eastward down the valley. But she 
 knew the place by heart: winter or summer, near or 
 far, she saw it all saw even that which was no longer 
 there, that which in her lifetime had never been there. 
 She had always regretted the fate of the old house : of 
 course, it had become impossible ; it was ruinous and 
 costly a patchwork of inconveniences, with its narrow 
 fourteenth-century yard, low Tudor kitchens, and great 
 Queen Anne front out of all proportion. Low-lying, 
 too, and damp, no doubt, close by the water, from which
 
 8 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 the frogs were traditionally reported to have coine at 
 times in troops to serenade the drawing-rooin windows. 
 Jammed against the hill it certainly was, on a platform 
 so much too small for pleasure ground that the gardens 
 had always been far off, on the southern-sloping hill 
 opposite, where Aubrey's grandfather, with mid-Vic- 
 torian wisdom, had placed his commodious or stately 
 mansion in the modern style. 
 
 All this was undeniable, and she had no inclination 
 to dispute it ; but the regret was there, and she often 
 felt sorry that among her few memories of her grand- 
 father the most vivid was that of the tone in which he 
 would say to a guest or visitor, " It was time to make 
 an entirely fresh start, and I made it." But here her 
 memory served her well ; she could have kept no say- 
 ing more characteristic of old Joseph Earnshaw, a 
 north-country lawyer's son, rock-jawed and iron-handed, 
 who had made a creditable fortune at the Bar in time 
 to retire at fifty, when he inherited the property 
 recently purchased by his father from the creditors of 
 the twelfth and last Silvayne of Gardenleigh. Happily, 
 his rough ultra-masculine power was well matched by 
 the tenderness and serene dignity of his wife, a gentle 
 and beautiful lady upon whom the traditions of long 
 descent seemed to lie in soft and stately folds, like 
 ermine on the young shoulders of a queen. Her only 
 son Walter, Aubrey's father, had the good fortune to
 
 AUBREY 
 
 inherit equally from both his parents ; he had a clear, 
 direct outlook upon the world, and an irresistible cour- 
 tesy of manner, a combination which made it as diffi- 
 cult for an inferior to deceive him as for an equal to 
 press him too far with argument or with hospitality. 
 In this Aubrey, of all his children, resembled him most; 
 and now that the others had married and gone away, 
 she easily took over the government of the house, 
 reigning at twenty-five with more success and surety of 
 touch than either of the sisters who had filled the place 
 in turn during the fifteen years since their mother's 
 death. By disposition, as well as by ability, she was 
 well fitted to be her father's companion ; she loved the 
 historical and philosophical studies, which, with a 
 weekly attendance at the Bench, were all that stood 
 between him and idleness ; and she succeeded, having a 
 decided bent of her own as well, in keeping alight in 
 him that glow of the imagination which dies down in 
 most men at twenty-five, and is almost always dead 
 cold by thirty the age at which the majority, if they 
 must go on reading, make their final choice between 
 literature and the Press. 
 
 It was for her father that Aubrey was waiting now, 
 as she shaded her eyes with one hand and looked down 
 from the stone parapet towards the path that led up 
 from the church to the garden. A crisis not unfore- 
 seen, but not to be avoided, had come upon her that
 
 10 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 morning. Called down to prayers as usual by the crash 
 of the gong, and passing as usual on her way by the black 
 oak table in the hall, she had seen fate aiming at her, 
 as the soldier sees instinctively from far off the one 
 rifle-barrel in the row of trenches that is pointing 
 directly at his own heart. From that table she had, in 
 the past ten years, lifted thousands of harmless letters, 
 with none but slight and pleasant emotions. To-day 
 there were many lying there three or four for her; 
 but she had no sooner turned at the foot of the stair- 
 case than she knew that the mortal challenge had come 
 at last, heralded by a sober, grayish envelope with a 
 foreign stamp, and addressed to her in a handwriting 
 that she had never seen before. 
 
 There was no sign of disturbance in her looks as she 
 took the letter in her hand with the rest, and walked to 
 the other end of the long hall, where the servants were 
 already assembling. She knew what it contained: 
 simply the acceptance of an invitation given a few weeks 
 before, and the proposal of a near date for the visit. 
 Aubrey and her father had been travelling home from 
 Venice by way of the lakes and Switzerland. The 
 merest chance a trifling accident to the steamer 
 which was bringing them from Como delayed them 
 at Varenna, and the charm of the hotel garden 
 overhanging the water kept them there for the rest of 
 their holiday. Chance again, in the form of a common
 
 AUBREY 11 
 
 friend, introduced to them Stephen Bulmer, a young 
 man of English birth and Colonial upbringing, now 
 on his way home to settle in England after years of 
 wandering at the heels of an eccentric father, whose 
 death had but lately left him very much alone in the 
 world. His name was already familiar to the Earnshaws, 
 for they, like everybody else, had just read his last 
 book, and had discussed it with keen if rather hostile 
 admiration. But though neither of them inclined 
 towards accepting his view of " The Uplands of the 
 Future," both were quickly attracted by his personality : 
 the father found him at once scientific and rarely 
 sensitive ; the daughter was caught by his enthusiasm, 
 which flew colours as gallant as her own, though from 
 an alien masthead. Secretly she likened this fearless 
 spirit-venturer to Shelley, and might have ended by 
 sailing far in his company if he had not unmistakably 
 begun to clear for action, and betrayed a mind, after an 
 acquaintance of only ten days, to leave her no choice 
 but to fight or surrender. The obvious third course 
 flight was forbidden her by pride, and by a less 
 familiar feeling, which she did not attempt to define. 
 But time she must have, and it was gained by an invi- 
 tation to Gardenleigh. Mr. Bulmer was to suggest his 
 own visit as soon as his plans should be settled ; and they 
 were settled accordingly, in the shortest time that could 
 be considered a reasonable interval after the parting.
 
 12 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 This was the crisis which was now in Aubrey's 
 thoughts : the course of it not yet understood, the end 
 of it hardly even thought of. But there was nothing 
 strained or anxious in her appearance as she sat upon 
 the lichened balustrade and looked from under her 
 arched hand; a figure for a sculptor, to symbolize 
 perhaps the wisdom of the human soul, waiting in 
 tranquillity.
 
 Ill 
 
 AUBREY'S expectation was misdirected. Her father, 
 when he came at last, came not from the sunset, but 
 from the east avenue, and it was not until he had 
 descended the grassy bank on to the terrace and 
 advanced some way along the gravel path that his step 
 broke in upon her meditation. She turned suddenly at 
 the sound, and went to meet him with a smile full of 
 meaning and little appearance of embarrassment. It 
 was not to a cross-examination that she was going, but 
 to a consultation ; one of her own seeking too, and not 
 the first of its kind. It is true that on this occasion 
 the allies were not so well informed of each other's 
 views as they had sometimes been; each had a sense 
 that the affair was less purely humorous, less completely 
 a matter of manoeuvring, than ever before. Mr. Earn- 
 shaw understood his daughter, so far as such under- 
 standing is ever possible to a father, and could not quiet 
 a dread lest this time the conflict should prove to be 
 not between two individual wills, but between opposing 
 forces in one nature, possibly too antagonistic for any 
 lasting compromise. Aubrey's mood was still more 
 
 13
 
 14 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 complex ; she had a campaign to plan, and needed, as 
 she had before needed, her father's sympathy and help ; 
 but she was secretly embarrassed by a new element in 
 the problem, conscious that this time it was security 
 for which she was really contending, and not necessarily 
 the defeat of the invader. How was she to confess at 
 the council table that, certain guarantees once gained, 
 her defence might end with open gates ? how confess 
 it to an ally whom this defence also involved, more 
 deeply than she cared to remember ? Yet hers was the 
 paramount interest ; and here, as in all things, she was 
 absolutely free from the need or the desire to conceal her 
 thoughts from him. They met as those who know that 
 in each other's presence difficulties will be lightened and 
 wits spurred to unforeseen success. 
 
 " Well, my daughter ? " 
 
 " Well, my father," she echoed, " I have written." 
 
 " And what did you say? " 
 
 " I said Friday." 
 
 He took her arm and they walked slowly round the 
 terrace towards the garden. " This next Friday ? " he 
 asked. " Isn't that rather a crowded time ? " 
 
 " I wish it to be a crowded time." She had evidently 
 thought the matter out. 
 
 Mr. Earnshaw was in no way old at sixty-two ; his 
 mind worked quickly. Was the danger then over, he 
 wondered, and what remained only another comedy ?
 
 FATHER AND DAUGHTER 15 
 
 It was odd that the idea brought something nearer 
 disappointment than relief ; he became aware that this 
 young man compared favourably with some he had 
 known. But perhaps he was hasty; this was to be 
 only a first visit, and a lengthening of the campaign 
 would be an ominous step. He was silent for a moment, 
 uncertain what to do next. 
 
 Aubrey seemed unconscious of his hesitation. She 
 moved a little forward, slipping her arm from his, and 
 stepped with one foot on to the flower-bed at her 
 side, reaching over to pluck one of the Homer roses that 
 hung down from the upper terrace wall. As she stood 
 there, half hidden among the tall monkshood and young 
 hollyhocks of the border, with her face turned a little 
 upwards in pure profile, and her slender hand and 
 wrist lifted to the cluster of flowers, the setting sunlight 
 covered her with a soft glow that seemed rather to be 
 called forth by her beauty than to be in any degree the 
 cause or the ornament of it. Her father, as he waited 
 and looked at her, felt a sharp pang ; he was seized by 
 the ancient, irresistible, hopeless longing of those who 
 watch their children at certain moments the longing 
 for some power like that of the evening sunlight, to 
 irradiate, to enrich, to cover with silent and infinite 
 beneficence ; an affection that, like a still deep spring, 
 long known and drawn upon, after many quiet days 
 suddenly wells up as if to overflow all customary
 
 16 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 bounds, and as suddenly sinks back again within its 
 stone circle. 
 
 Aubrey plucked her rose, and sprang lightly back 
 on to the path to find him blinking. 
 
 "Father," she cried, with a rush of answering 
 tenderness, " what is it ? " 
 
 He smiled. The pain was gone; but, instead of 
 replying, he put his arm round her shoulders and drew 
 her along the path. 
 
 " Nothing that / can understand ? " she asked, 
 looking playfully round at him ; it was an old saying of 
 his, and to quote it was one of many fond jests between 
 them. 
 
 " Nothing that you can understand," he answered in 
 the same tone. 
 
 " Dear aged man ! " she said. " But what an egotist ! 
 I hoped you would talk of my feelings, not your own." 
 
 He laughed with delight, and a little pride, at her 
 frankness. 
 
 " So I will," he cried gaily, " if you have any 
 feelings worth talking about." 
 
 "Of course," she said; "there are my feelings 
 towards you, and my feelings towards my country." 
 
 " Oh ! " he said, suspecting an evasion ; " and what 
 have those feelings to do with our Whitsuntide party ? " 
 
 Aubrey was silent a moment, and looked down as if 
 in reflection.
 
 FATHER AND DAUGHTER 17 
 
 " The people who are coining here," she said, and 
 paused, turning to look straight at him. 
 
 "Yes, the people who are coming " said he, 
 
 nodding intelligence. 
 
 " They may be expecting some kind of sympathy," 
 she went on, " and real sympathy cannot be all on one 
 side, can it ? I like my friends to understand me ; 
 I don't care about being liked without understanding." 
 
 " Dear child," he said gently, " I know what you 
 mean ; but the time may come, for all that." 
 
 " What time ? " Her challenge trembled imper- 
 ceptibly. 
 
 " The time when you may have friends who will 
 not stay to go very deeply into your feelings towards 
 me." 
 
 She turned quickly and flung herself into his arms. 
 " Father ! " she cried with indignant fondness, " I have 
 told you so often I have sung it to you you know 
 I have ' Thy people shall be my people.' " 
 
 He did remember the song, and how passionately 
 she used to sing it ; but he realized now, for the first 
 time, that it had been truth to her while it was only 
 sound to him : a strange failure of insight, but the 
 commonest of all divisions between youth and age, 
 wronging now one and now the other. 
 
 "My daughter," he said, kissing her, "it is not 
 I that will ever entreat thee to leave me." 
 
 c
 
 18 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 She lifted her head, and answered with a fierceness 
 of resolve that seemed to look past him at an un- 
 reasonable world 
 
 " As I mean it," she said, " I will never leave you. 
 I love what we have loved together, and I hate those 
 who do not." She turned towards the valley and flung 
 out her hand unconsciously towards it. 
 
 He smiled at her vehemence. " Oh ! oh ! " he said, 
 " but didn't some one say, ' The brave man's fatherland 
 is all the earth ' ? Gardenleigh is home to you and me, 
 but not to every one." 
 
 " England/' she cried, " is the home of my country- 
 men ; and the past is all men's fatherland ; he shall not 
 deny that ! " She stopped suddenly, with a little laugh 
 to herself at the word which had escaped after all. 
 "Come!" she said, drawing her father along, "let us 
 go through the rose-walk and back." 
 
 At that moment a great bell began to sound 
 vigorously in the servants' quarters. 
 
 " Oh ! I must dress and do the table," cried Aubrey ; 
 and she was gone in a moment through the open door 
 of the conservatory. Her father followed slowly, 
 looking at his watch without seeing it.
 
 IV 
 
 " THERE are the white cliffs ! " cried a voice. 
 
 Stephen Bulmer turned sharply, and was half 
 amused, and more than half annoyed, to find himself 
 guilty of this instinctive movement. The chance 
 fellow-traveller with whom he was walking the deck 
 had turned too, and in slow American tones pressed 
 home the point which was already pricking him. 
 
 "You'll be feeling a little sentimental," he said. 
 "I guess those are the white cliffs of Old England." 
 He spaced his words carefully, and spoke as one who 
 knew that he was uttering a commonplace and enjoyed 
 doing it. 
 
 Stephen hesitated; he wished to avoid the point, 
 but he was not quite quick enough, and his tone was 
 a very little too loud. 
 
 "Hullo!" he said. "I had no idea we were 
 travelling so fast; these turbines are really an im- 
 provement." 
 
 "We'll soon whip you at turbines," said the 
 American, in the same quiet, monotonous voice ; " but 
 we'll still admire your island home. I expect you find 
 it a real quaint old place to live in ? " 
 
 19
 
 20 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 Stephen grasped the opportunity to explain, since 
 he could not evade. 
 
 " I know it very little," he said. " I've been away, 
 off and on, for twenty years ever since I was a boy. 
 But the quainter it is, the less I shall like it. What 
 you call quaint I call obsolete." 
 
 The American, too, seemed to have found an oppor- 
 tunity. He stretched an arm and looked down upon 
 Stephen as if from a senatorial platform. 
 
 "Sir," he said, "I understand you. This little 
 island is what we call your country of origin ; it is not 
 your home ; it is your domicile, but not your place of 
 abode. But " and here his voice rose in the rhetorical 
 scale "for all that, you may take it from me that 
 you are English from your sombrero to your Broadway 
 boots. You are bursting with insular pride, and you 
 are too proud to show it. You are worrying all the 
 time about your little country; your anxiety is posi- 
 tively ma-ternal. You want to have John Bull wake 
 up; you want to have him hustle no end. Yes, sir, 
 you want to have him turn his back on yesterday and 
 spend all of to-day running after to-morrow." 
 
 Stephen frowned. He had been talking to this 
 stranger for a quarter of an hour ; he had gone some 
 way forward with him, confided to him his watchword, 
 invited him confidently seeing his nationality to 
 share his standpoint while he sketched a new plan and
 
 THE WHITE CLIFFS 21 
 
 elevation for the universe, and the epitome of his own 
 conversation with which this dry voice repaid him was 
 too like the crude nasal travesty of the gramophone 
 to be endurable. Besides, the man was lecturing him, 
 and there were people looking on; another moment, 
 and there would be an audience. 
 
 " Let us sit down," he said, " if you don't mind." 
 The American followed him to a seat with a 
 humorous, imperturbable smile. 
 
 " We shall lose the view of your country," he said. 
 Stephen smiled too. "It's not my country I'm 
 thinking of when I talk about to-morrow : it's the 
 world, the race, Man himself, one and indivisible. If 
 I spoke of any single nation, it would be yours rather 
 than my own." 
 "Why so?" 
 
 "Because obviously yours is the country of the 
 future ; you are far ahead of us already." 
 
 " I guess not," said the other, seriously. " We can 
 whip you nearly all the week, because we are better 
 men ; but we are not ahead of you." 
 
 " Then what is ' being ahead ' ? " asked Stephen. 
 " It is a term which implies time." 
 " But what has time to do with progress ? " Stephen 
 began to argue. 
 
 "Time," said the American, calmly interrupting, 
 " is just the order in which events eventuate."
 
 22 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " I see your point," replied Stephen, smiling in spite 
 of his earnestness, " and I agree ; but you assume that 
 all men must pass through the same stages." 
 
 " I do," said the other, gravely, preparing to count 
 on his fingers. " See here : babies, children, boys, dudes, 
 men, and philosophers. Some," he added, "put on 
 their ticket philosophers first, and men after ; but that 
 is not part of your theory, is it ? " 
 
 " Not just now," said Stephen, laughing outright ; 
 " I was speaking of nations : nations do not all need to 
 go through the same phases." 
 
 " A phase," said the American, " is nothing but your 
 present size in hats. When you are full grown I guess 
 you'll have worn most sizes, and the biggest last, all 
 the way through." 
 
 " Half of them misfits," Stephen broke in eagerly ; 
 " that's my complaint. If we are to progress there 
 must be no misfits, no clinging to cumbrous fashions, 
 among the nations of the future." 
 
 His antagonist greeted the phrase with a twinkle. 
 "Your kind of talk," he said, "was the fashion in 
 Premier City before I went to New York." He noted 
 Stephen's frown with satisfaction, and went on in 
 the same slow voice, " You are right to feel insulted, 
 and I apologize profusely. They are raw lads in 
 Premier City ; they do not know that you must have 
 a past before you can have a future."
 
 THE WHITE CLIFFS 23 
 
 Stephen was silent; the frown left his face, but 
 he wandered away so far into a maze of thought that 
 his companion's next remark failed to call him back. 
 The arrival of the Customs' officer roused him for 
 a moment; then, while the American in his turn 
 argued over a hoard of cigars, he slipped away and 
 began a solitary walk on the deserted space abaft the 
 funnels. 
 
 Past and Future. To Stephen they were no light 
 words, no hollow abstractions, but Ahriman and 
 Ormuzd, the black and white spirits of the world. 
 He had long seen them standing one on each side of 
 this small Present, which is all the foothold that we 
 have : standing at the ear of men and nations, the one 
 offering the easy life of imitation, the futile luxury 
 of improvidence ; the other urging an austere courage 
 and icy voyages in search of the untrodden pole. He 
 had spent his life since boyhood in new countries, and 
 had never found them new enough for him ; they were 
 still too full of selfishness, of dull folk serving the 
 need or the greed of a passing day. But at least, he 
 had thought, they were more free from the deadwood of 
 the past ; at least they did not worship decay, or endow 
 all effete things with divine right and a perpetual pension. 
 He was returning to England eager to take his place 
 among the ardent, the advanced, the adventurous : no 
 politician, but a student, as he loved to say, of the history
 
 24 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 of the Future. His books had already cleared the way 
 for him with the reading public ; they had the singular 
 merit of being readable, and never less humorous than 
 earnest. In other ways he was well fitted for his 
 chosen part: he was young for his thirty-two years, 
 he had good health and a sufficient fortune, keen 
 observation, a wide and miscellaneous experience, few 
 prejudices, and unusually few encumbering ties, for he 
 had been to none of the ordinary places of education, 
 and of his few near relations not one was known to 
 him by sight. On him, at least, the past had no hold. 
 He saw himself possessed of the rarest of all opportuni- 
 ties, to come as a stranger to his native country, to see 
 her with affection but without blindness, to judge her 
 life and ideas as one who sees results but not processes, 
 which are, he would say, the explanation perhaps, but 
 not the excuse, of failure. 
 
 To Stephen, then, this American, upon whom he 
 had chanced at the very threshold of his new life, 
 was an unwelcome paradox. " Denaturalized " was the 
 word for him : no doubt some aesthetic weakness had 
 betrayed him to the last enchantment of the Middle 
 Ages. Born in the New World, a possible Ulysses of the 
 untravelled future, he had fallen before Europe, the 
 Circe of our day, who turns the eyes of men from 
 starry spaces above them to earthward views, earth- 
 digging, and low contentment with husks, So ran the
 
 THE WHITE CLIFFS 25 
 
 peroration which, half humorously and half in earnest, 
 he had once played off in Eome upon a co-operative 
 travelling party of schoolmasters who had called upon 
 him for a speech. 
 
 The ship was now in harbour ; he saw his an- 
 tagonist only for one more moment. When the two 
 men sighted one another they were some little way 
 apart, wedged in the shore-going crowd at the gangway, 
 and moving slowly with the stream. 
 
 " A pleasant journey," said the American, with his 
 calm, faintly mocking voice. " I am going to Canterbury 
 for awhile." 
 
 " Down among the dead men," Stephen called back 
 genially. 
 
 " Not so dead, I reckon some of them," replied the 
 other, as he nodded again and turned away. 
 
 He was a handsome, pleasant fellow, but Stephen 
 felt somehow quite content to see him go. 
 
 "We don't even know each other's names," he 
 reflected; "and we should never agree, so that is 
 over." 
 
 It was over for the American, who probably never 
 spent another thought upon his companion of an hour ; 
 but for Stephen it was far from being over. When 
 he had taken his place in the London train, 
 settled comfortably down in his corner, and tossed the 
 Canterbury pilgrim, as it were, headlong from the
 
 26 - THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 window, he became aware that it was only the man, 
 and not the idea, that he had flung away. The one he 
 would never see again ; the other he knew would meet 
 him only too soon in a far more embarrassing 
 antagonism.
 
 FRIDAY afternoon had come, and Stephen was once 
 more in the train. His three days in London had been 
 too busy for much consecutive thought ; and the imme- 
 diate future remained wrapped in a vague but rather 
 luminous haze. He was certain of his own wishes, and 
 not much troubled by the fact that he was quite uncer- 
 tain of everything else. Instinct told him rightly that 
 plans would be worse than useless. The only way for a 
 man to make love is to make himself loved ; and there 
 is no system of tactics for that. Inspiration is the one 
 counsellor ; and if the hour has struck, inspiration will 
 not be wanting. So he dreamed rather of what he was 
 going to see than of what he was going to do. 
 
 Still, the needle must swing to the pole ; and of all 
 that lay before him, his thought came continually back 
 to one point. He was to meet again the woman he 
 loved ; but he realized that it would be a woman he 
 had never seen. In Italy, Aubrey and he had been on 
 common ground ; far from home and friends, set down 
 in the most cosmopolitan region in Europe, they had all 
 but forgotten the existence of centuries, nations, and 
 newspapers. Mundane affairs had become as distant as 
 
 27
 
 28 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 the hills around them, and more immaterial than the 
 poetry which supplied the greater part of their conver- 
 sation. It was a time that could surely never be for- 
 gotten, he thought, by either of them ; but neither could 
 it be repeated or resumed. In her own country, in her 
 own home, among her own people, he would find a dif- 
 ferent Aubrey, with whom his friendship must be built 
 up afresh almost from the beginning. He must adven- 
 ture not merely in a foreign land, with unknown cus- 
 toms, politics, and tongue, but in a region as wholly 
 undiscovered as the moon's other face, where the con- 
 tours are beyond imagination, and the lights and values 
 are not those visible from earth. He did not doubt his 
 own feeling ; he loved her for that which was herself, 
 and not an aspect of her. But he doubted whether the 
 favour he had enjoyed was not more accidental. He 
 had been tolerated, perhaps welcomed, as an unrelated 
 fact. How would he now appear when he became a 
 figure in the familiar landscape ? A contrast he knew 
 he must present. Would the colour-scheme cry out 
 against him as a discord ? 
 
 He did not spare himself an even more anxious 
 thought. Hitherto he had been unopposed, possibly 
 because, after all, he had made but little advance, pos- 
 sibly because Mr. Earnshaw had not honoured him with 
 any kind of apprehension. But he was now to face a 
 whole firing-party, and it was unlikely that every one
 
 IN THE TRAIN 29 
 
 of them would load with blank. He would, in any 
 event, be often at a disadvantage, often conspicuous as 
 an outsider, often involved in a conflict of opinion with 
 the majority. Against his own sex he was armed. He 
 who is not at least as sure of his own wits and manners 
 as of any other's he may meet, has not the breeding for 
 the lists. But against a woman's whisper a man may 
 easily be helpless, especially when that whisper has 
 what he cannot hope for the right of private audience 
 and of unrestrained expression. He dreaded a power of 
 which he knew nothing a power behind the throne. 
 
 The course of these reflections, briefly indicated here 
 on a scale of about one inch to the mile, occupied 
 Stephen for some time, and ended very abruptly. His 
 eyes, which had been looking through the open window, 
 and past the suburban landscape into so perplexed a 
 future, came back for a moment to the interior of the 
 carriage, and rested idly upon the fellow-traveller who 
 sat opposite to him. His thoughts were still far away, 
 and he was at first less than half conscious of the im- 
 pressions which his brain had already been registering. 
 A lady dark, handsome, intellectual probably eight 
 and twenty years of age dressed with unusual distinc- 
 tion. His eyes dropped again, but in so doing they fell 
 upon her hand. It was a singularly nervous and deli- 
 cate hand almost too delicate for its load of rings ; and 
 it lay idly upon a silvery dust-cloak, holding an open
 
 30 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 letter, which had apparently brought a deep reverie 
 upon the reader. 
 
 Stephen had, of course, no intention of prying 
 indeed, the letter was for him upside down ; but even 
 in that position the handwriting could not be mistaken, 
 and the mere sight of it affected him like the passage of 
 an electric shock. His face flushed suddenly, and he 
 must have made some instinctive movement, for the 
 lady's deep-brown eyes awoke from their study, crossed 
 his own glance and followed it downwards to the letter. 
 She smiled, and Stephen felt himself at once in presence 
 of a knowledge of the world before which his superiority 
 of age completely disappeared. She spoke, and the 
 impression was deepened; for her voice and manner 
 were the most finished combination of sensitive cour- 
 tesy, conscious humour, and armour-plated convention- 
 ality that he had ever encountered in his life. He 
 dwindled from the stature of the thirties to the attitude 
 of the child who has been brought down for the first 
 time to dessert, and stands by the long dinner-table, 
 dazzled by the lights and dresses, and abashed by the 
 formalities of a society which is entirely beyond his 
 experience of life. 
 
 "May I ask," said the lady, "if you are by any 
 chance on your way to Gardenleigh ? " 
 
 " I am," Stephen replied, trying hard to recover him- 
 self, but failing to achieve more than a defensive position,
 
 IN THE TRAIN 31 
 
 " So am I," said the lady, " so let us save time by 
 introducing ourselves." Her little laugh was the per- 
 fection of diplomatic art. Stephen felt himself gently, 
 but irresistibly, shepherded in the intended direction. 
 " My name," she continued, " is Eleanor Eyder, and 
 you, I think, must be Mr. Bulmer." 
 
 "Yes," he said, and wondered at the lamb-like 
 sound of his own utterance. 
 
 Miss Kyder, however, was apparently not relying 
 on him for conversation : she was busy collecting her 
 letters, sorting them, destroying some, and replacing the 
 rest in the dressing-case on the seat beside her. 
 
 When she came to the last letter it was the one 
 she had been reading she looked quickly up at 
 Stephen. 
 
 " I ought to have added," she said, " that I am a 
 very intimate friend of Miss Earnshaw, and that I 
 heard from her this morning that you and I were to 
 travel down by the same train to-day." 
 
 The change in her manner was almost imper- 
 ceptible ; but he understood that he was being treated 
 with frankness and even with friendliness. The 
 moment was not one to be let slip. 
 
 " I wish you would tell me something about her," 
 he said. 
 
 Miss Ryder received the remark as if she expected 
 and approved it.
 
 32 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " I wonder what I could tell you. You know what 
 she looks like, you know what she reads, and a good 
 deal of what she thinks, I expect." 
 
 "I know what she is," he replied quietly, "and 
 something of what she looks forward to, but nothing of 
 what she remembers. I want to know where she comes 
 from mentally, I mean." 
 
 "England." 
 
 "Yes; she is thoroughly English I suppose," he 
 added, remembering his own long exile. 
 
 " She has the national character at its best exactly 
 the right mixture of thought and feeling. You may not 
 agree with me there." She spoke significantly, and 
 waited for him to reply ; but he was lost in a half-guess 
 at her meaning, and not without apprehension. " One 
 of the things we did not so much care about in your 
 book," Miss Eyder continued, " was a passage in which 
 you spoke contemptuously of people who think in order 
 to feel, instead of feeling in order to think. In England 
 we know that we do not think enough ; but we have no 
 doubt that we err on the right side." 
 
 " I remember the sentence," he said, " and I am in- 
 clined to stand by it. My prayer for the coming race is 
 George Meredith's ' More brain, Lord, more brain.' " 
 
 Her eyes lit up at the quotation. "I agree," she 
 said. " But that does not save you, does it ? if feeling 
 is still the end, and thought the means to right feeling."
 
 IN THE TRAIN 33 
 
 " Feeling," he replied, " always seems to me a rather 
 selfish end to set before ourselves; thought is more 
 likely to be concerned with the good of others." 
 
 " That," she said instantly, " is another point in 
 your book which did not find favour: you are so 
 ready to sacrifice the individual to the community; 
 you would make men no better than bees." 
 
 " I am not the first to take the hive for the ideal 
 commonwealth." 
 
 "No; and, if I may say so, I think your ideal 
 would not succeed much better than the rest in 
 producing happiness." 
 
 " Surely self-sacrifice may be happiness ? " 
 
 "But it is only a fool's happiness if it makes no 
 one else happy. We owe service to the State only 
 because the State serves the individual. More brain 
 would teach your bees that ; and what would become 
 of the hive then ? " 
 
 " I gather," he said, laughing, " that Miss Earnshaw 
 does not keep bees." 
 
 " No," she replied, laughing too, but insistent ; " no, 
 and she never will. She could not live with bees ; she 
 is too human more intensely human than any one I 
 know." 
 
 Stephen would gladly have pursued the inquiry 
 further, but at this moment the train stopped, and 
 several new passengers made their way into the 
 
 D
 
 34 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 compartment. Miss Ryder sat back in her corner, and 
 took out a book. Evidently the time for conversation 
 was over, but during the remainder of the journey she 
 spoke to him now and again, explaining landmarks 
 and commenting on the beauty of the June meadows 
 through which they were passing. Stephen, though a 
 little grieved for his book, which he felt deserved a 
 better defence, was full of admiration for his com- 
 panion's readiness, and flattered by the interest which 
 she had shown in him. Perhaps she had only been 
 trying him, perhaps she had not gone beyond a 
 benevolent neutrality; but, then, her neutrality might 
 so very naturally have been hostile. In any case, he 
 was only at the beginning with her, and she had 
 made the beginning very pleasant. He was in every 
 way content when the name of Selwood came in sight, 
 upon a somewhat narrow and dingy platform.
 
 VI 
 
 THE train had scarcely ceased to move when Stephen, 
 turning to the door, found himself face to face with 
 a cockaded footman. The man addressed himself to 
 Miss Ryder, whom he evidently knew by sight. She 
 turned to Stephen 
 
 " Miss Earnshaw and her father are in the town," 
 she repeated, "and we are to pick them up on our 
 way; but there is another guest to be found first 
 Mr. Laverock, the painter. There he goes," she added, 
 as a short, sturdy figure encumbered with an armful 
 of hand-baggage made its way towards the bridge by 
 which the line was crossed. "If we follow him the 
 luggage will be put over afterwards ; the cart is sure 
 to be here." 
 
 Outside the station they found Mr. Laverock stand- 
 ing by the door of a waggonette, introduced themselves, 
 and were quickly driving into the town, which lies, 
 for the most part, on the steep sides of a small natural 
 amphitheatre. As they descended into the market- 
 place, which forms, as it were, the bottom of the cup, 
 Stephen looked round with a beating heart. This was 
 the stage on which he was to see Aubrey upon her 
 
 35
 
 36 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 second appearance; but there was scarcely a living 
 creature in sight, and he was disappointed to find the 
 scene so ill-provided with picturesque elements. It 
 was with no regret that he saw the footman, who had 
 entered a stationer's shop in search of his mistress, 
 return alone and remount the box-seat with some fresh 
 instruction to the coachman. The horses started again, 
 and dashed with a spurt up the opposite slope to that 
 by which they had entered, turning sharply to the left 
 at the top of the hill into a shady road which skirted 
 a long bank above the winding river. It was here that 
 they overtook the walkers. The two men dismounted, 
 and Stephen, without any feeling of real life, found 
 himself shaking hands with a lady who, on her part, 
 made not the faintest shade of difference between her 
 greetings to him and -to her other guest. Her eyes 
 looked past them both at Miss Eyder, by whose side 
 she was the next moment seated, while Stephen heard 
 his own voice assenting with unmeaning readiness to 
 Mr. Earnshaw's proposal that the three men of the 
 party should continue the journey up to the house by 
 " the walking way." 
 
 A wave of the hand, and the carriage disappeared 
 round a bend. Mr. Earnshaw and his two companions 
 left the road by a stile, crossed two small streams, and 
 passed through a half-open farm gate into a footpath 
 green with moss and overhung with small trees. It led
 
 A RIDDLE OP MEMORY 37 
 
 them towards the face of a steep southern slope, blazing 
 with buttercups and edged with hanging woods; but 
 before they reached the ascent they passed the entrance 
 of a glade on the left, where the ground fell from a 
 long spinney to the stream they had just crossed, in 
 a curve so unexpected and so beautiful that the painter 
 stopped short with an exclamation of pleasure. Stephen 
 was at the moment a few steps behind the other two ; 
 he joined them, immediately, but made no comment, 
 nor did he reply to any of the enthusiastic appeals of 
 his fellow-guest. It was not the beauty of the place 
 which struck him into puzzled silence; it was its 
 absolute familiarity. This part of England was un- 
 known to him before to-day; but somehow, in a far 
 country, in a picture, in a dream, he had seen this 
 spot not once, but many times. Yes, many times he 
 had looked with the same sense of repeated pleasure 
 from the sunny meadow to the deep shadow of the 
 hanging beechwood, under the edge of whose long 
 sweep he had passed and repassed in a hundred summer 
 hours of forgotten delight. 
 
 He gave up the puzzle at last, and remembered the 
 claim of good manners. 
 
 " It is very beautiful," he said to his host. " I was 
 wondering why I felt as if I had been here before." 
 
 "I know the feeling well," said Mr. Earnshaw, 
 pleasantly. " It is a very vivid and curious one."
 
 38 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 "I have heard of it," said Stephen, "but it has 
 never come to me before to-day ; " and he lapsed into 
 thought again. 
 
 From time to time snatches of the conversation 
 beside him crossed his consciousness, like clouds cross- 
 ing an April sky and bringing each its faintly 
 stirring breeze. 
 
 "This path," he heard Mr. Earnshaw saying, as 
 they breasted the steepest of the hill, "was once, 
 though you will find it hard to believe, the principal 
 approach to Gardenleigh. Under the turf is the 
 metalling of the Norman road. It had the merit of 
 directness : the modern carriage road is nearly twice 
 as long." 
 
 At the top Laverock exclaimed again. They were 
 at the entrance of a great avenue running across a 
 wide green table-land which seemed to be shut in on 
 every side by woods that dipped down unseen slopes. 
 
 " How old are these trees ? " he asked admiringly. 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Earnshaw, " they are not Norman, 
 I'm afraid ; but they are fairly old, and no doubt they 
 are the successors of much older avenues in the same 
 place." 
 
 The painter's eye roamed over the level of rough 
 grass. 
 
 " What a place for a gallop ! " he said. "It is like a 
 natural Circus Maximus"
 
 A BIDDLE OF MEMORY 39 
 
 " Yes," said his host, " or a tiltyard. Aubrey likes 
 to imagine that it was here John de Marland trained 
 his horses before he entered for the jousts at St. 
 Inglevere." 
 
 " Ha ! " exclaimed Laverock, " is there a John de 
 Marland in Froissart ? " 
 
 " He was the last Marland of the five who lived 
 here." 
 
 " What happened to him at St. Inglevere ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing out of the ordinary," replied his host. 
 " He was a young squire then, and no doubt a mere 
 child to the great French champions. But he ran his 
 three courses with the best of them, and was only 
 knocked over at the third." 
 
 " Good man," said Laverock. " I remember what 
 Froissart says of some of them: 'they were noble 
 jousters, and feared neither pain nor death.' " 
 
 They had now crossed the down and were de- 
 scending the reverse slope among groups of great trees. 
 Beneath them lay the lakes and the church on its 
 island, and far away, from the opposite side of the 
 valley, Gardenleigh looked across to them, its gray 
 stone gables and mullions all yellow in the light of 
 the westering sun. 
 
 "There is the house," said Mr. Earnshaw, "and 
 here was the old house which my father pulled down 
 fifty years ago."
 
 40 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 He pointed to a grassy shelf at their feet, where 
 a stone monument stood not far from the water-side : 
 a plain block of squared stone from the old mansion, 
 raised on small moss-grown steps. 
 
 Stephen, from where he stood on the steep path, 
 looked over it down the placid level of the lake, and 
 felt once more, with a trouble he could not understand, 
 the haunting certainty that he had passed that way 
 before, upon what errand and in what company he 
 could not for his life remember. 
 
 Ten minutes afterwards they reached the house, 
 and the feeling had passed from his recollection.
 
 VII 
 
 STEPHEN dressed that evening more quickly than was 
 necessary, and, entering the drawing-room at five 
 minutes to eight, found himself the first to appear 
 there. Laverock followed shortly after, and in answer 
 to a question from him, described the party which was 
 about to sit down to dinner. 
 
 " Our host and hostess, and our two selves four ; 
 Miss Eyder five ; Hillary, Captain Earnshaw, the only 
 son of the house, and his wife, Lady Alice ; and the 
 eighth is one of the married daughters, Mrs. Oldham. 
 She is the wife of John Oldham, the sculptor, a friend 
 of mine, and I'm down here to paint her portrait for 
 him. He is away on business in Paris. They make 
 more of his work over there than our stupid old public 
 lias ever done yet ; but his day is coming, and mean- 
 time he is uncommonly lucky to have been allowed 
 to marry one of these girls." 
 
 " Allowed ! " said Stephen. " Why do you say that ? " 
 "Well, in England the daughters of deputy- 
 lieutenants are not usually allowed to marry artists, 
 are they ? I remember when I told the news of this 
 engagement to old Lady Wallow, who is a distant
 
 42 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 connection of the Earnshaws, she said to me, 'A 
 sculptor! How very odd; but he doesn't sell his 
 carvings, I hope ? ' ' Never ! ' I shouted. She couldn't 
 think why I laughed so much, but she was quite 
 reassured." 
 
 Stephen smiled, but the subject of Mrs. Oldham's 
 marriage opened up more than one uncomfortable line 
 of thought. 
 
 " So we are only eight," he said. " I thought we 
 should be more ; there are only three, then, for me to 
 make acquaintance with." 
 
 " There'll be half a dozen more to-morrow," said 
 Laverock, lowering his voice suddenly, as the four 
 ladies came in with a brisk rustle, and were followed 
 by their host and his son. Introductions were made, 
 and the procession formed. 
 
 "There are no places to-night," said Aubrey, as 
 they reached the dining-room ; " but if Mr. Bulmer will 
 go round to the other side and Mr. Laverock come 
 here, we shall be right." 
 
 Stephen thought otherwise. Not only was he on 
 " the other side " to Aubrey, but he was not even 
 opposite to her ; the table being a large one and almost 
 round, he was so far removed that although she would 
 probably overhear much of what he said to others, he 
 could hardly address a word to her directly. He 
 thought of the little tables in their Italian hotel, and
 
 THE PAINTER'S ARGUMENT 43 
 
 felt that circumstances were against him. Having 
 brought Miss Kyder in to dinner, he duly began a 
 conversation with her, but it was one with no prin- 
 ciple of motion in it, and stopped almost immediately. 
 Laverock on the other side engaged Aubrey, and drew 
 the attention of all the party with an enthusiastic de- 
 scription of the walk they had enjoyed that afternoon. 
 When he paused for a moment, Lady Alice turned to 
 Stephen. 
 
 " What did you think of it, Mr. Bulmer ? Which 
 way did you come ? " 
 
 " Over the down." 
 
 " And past the old house ? what is left of it." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Earnshaw, "we came straight 
 from the old to the new, which I thought would be 
 the most congenial way for him." 
 
 Stephen smiled. "Yes," he said, "I liked that 
 way of coming." 
 
 " All good historians do," said Mr. Earnshaw, with 
 a twinkle. " It is the scientific way." 
 
 "And what did you think of the old?" asked 
 Lady Alice. "Not the house, of course, but the 
 church." 
 
 " I'm afraid," said Stephen, " I did not see much of 
 the church." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Anne from the other side. 
 
 There was really nothing more than disappointment
 
 44 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 or remonstrance in her voice, but to Stephen it 
 seemed to match with a very faintly disdainful 
 expression which he had already noticed on her face. 
 
 "/ saw it," said Laverock, in a voice of cheerful 
 self-commendation ; " it has been tidied up a good deal, 
 but I saw a north door as I looked back from this side 
 a really perfect door, like a private entrance to the 
 Middle Ages." 
 
 " Mr. Bulmer will have plenty of time to see the 
 church," said Eleanor, turning to Stephen as she spoke. 
 " Did you like the down ? You know the top of it is 
 called Aubrey's tilting-yard ? " 
 
 " Yes," he replied, with an inward blessing on her 
 for helping him out. " Mr. Earnshaw told us about the 
 gentleman in Froissart. I wish I knew the book." 
 
 Laverock was still with them. "When I have 
 time," he said, " I'll paint it : the green background of 
 well-articulated trees, the silken pavilion in front, the 
 heralds in cloth of gold and armorial tabards, the 
 champions with vizors down, the squires in scarlet with 
 striped legs, the ladies all in samite and cramoisy, and 
 the horses in long sweeping caparisons." 
 
 " No, no ! " cried Aubrey ; " you've got it all quite 
 wrong. No one supposes that kind of thing ever went 
 on there ; it was only Johnny Marland's training- 
 ground. You must imagine just a few stable-lads with 
 the horses, and the squire trying to get them to gallop
 
 THE PAINTER'S ARGUMENT 45 
 
 towards each other full tilt without swerving ; no 
 armour or pageantry, but just what you might see 
 to-morrow if Hillary took his horses up there for a 
 breathing." 
 
 " Thank you, no," said Hillary. " If I must take a 
 toss, I prefer the fox ; " and every one laughed. 
 
 Mr. Earnshaw was waiting for a word more with 
 Laverock. 
 
 " Aubrey and you," he said, " will never agree 
 about that kind of thing; she is always laughing 
 at what the old-furniture dealers call ' ye quaint 
 medaevial style.' " 
 
 "But surely," pleaded Laverock, "in the Middle 
 Ages they were mediaeval ? " 
 
 " They were not medcevial," said Aubrey, " they 
 were alive." 
 
 " But quaint ? " he persisted. 
 
 " No, alive ; and a man's life does not reside in his 
 clothes, except in the studio, perhaps," she added in a 
 mischievous and audible aside to her brother. 
 
 " I say," murmured Hillary, while the rest 
 laughed, " what price the lay figures now ? " 
 
 " A hit ! " cried I^averock, laughing too ; " but what 
 price the Eifle Brigade without their green jackets? 
 and they are quaint enough." 
 
 Aubrey dashed to the relief of her brother's regi- 
 ment.
 
 46 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " Not a bit," she said ; " they are business-like 
 now. When they have long been discarded, they may 
 come to be called quaint by the inhabitants of the 
 future. Ask Mr. Buhner." 
 
 "I don't know," said Stephen, brightening at the 
 challenge. " If the inhabitants of the future take my 
 advice they will look forward and not back; then 
 nothing will appear quaint." 
 
 " Nothing will appear at all, I should say," rejoined 
 Laverock. 
 
 " How so ? " asked Stephen very quietly, in the 
 manner of one who is anxious not to miss a chance of 
 a fight. 
 
 " Apart from your book," said Laverock, " which I 
 have not yet read, looking forward in this world is a 
 mistake. You can never see the future till it's the 
 present, and you can't see it well till it's the past ; and 
 it seldom is either." 
 
 " What he means," explained Hillary, " is that you 
 are like the man who spends his time in a dark room, 
 looking for what isn't there." 
 
 " Misquotation ! " cried Eleanor. 
 
 " As you observe," said Hillary, with composure, " it 
 is an original remark." 
 
 "It's very good, anyhow," said Laverock, "and I 
 should like to take the vote of the company upon it. 
 Lady Alice, would you rather that I painted you a
 
 THE PAINTER'S ARGUMENT 47 
 
 picture of those who have lived at Gardenleigh long ago, 
 or those -who are some day going to live there ? Which 
 would be the most worth having ? " 
 
 " That depends on your imagination, doesn't it ? " 
 
 " It does ; and my imagination will only work on the 
 concrete, it can do nothing with the abstract ; no art can." 
 
 " I am not an artist in your sense," said Stephen ; 
 " my art is the art of government, of ordering mankind 
 in a reasonable society. The future is the only possible 
 canvas for that ; and the whole point of my pictures is 
 that they are definite, and deal with the concrete." 
 
 " Well," said Laverock, laughing, " I don't think / 
 should make much of a living if I painted only portraits 
 of the unborn." 
 
 " I give up that profession, then, and turn architect. 
 You won't deny that a man may build for the future ? " 
 
 " But he can't build the future: he has no bricks." 
 
 Stephen was now on his own territory ; the attack 
 was one which he was ready to meet ; but he hesitated, 
 for the argument might easily be too long and serious 
 for a dinner-table. Eleanor saw his difficulty in a flash, 
 and swept in to carry him forward. 
 
 " Before you say that," she replied to Laverock, 
 " you must read Mr. Bulmer's book ; it has a preface 
 specially intended for you. I think I can put the 
 argument," she continued, turning to Stephen, " and if I 
 go wrong you can correct me. Mr, Laverock says we
 
 48 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 know something of the past because we have evidence, 
 and nothing of the future because there can be no 
 evidence of what does not yet exist. Mr. Buhner's 
 point is that the building which we call the past is no 
 longer standing or visible ; it is only from small frag- 
 ments, or from indications and inferences, that we 
 reconstruct it. The new building is not yet visible 
 either, but there are plenty of indications and inferences 
 by which it may, he thinks, be constructed in imagi- 
 nation." She looked towards Stephen. 
 
 " Exactly," he said, " and with the same scientific 
 certainty ; when you know the causes you know the 
 consequences." 
 
 'You ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer," 
 remarked Hillary ; " you would know what a new duty 
 would produce to a penny and who would pay it." 
 
 " Thank you," said Stephen, in the same tone ; " but 
 no politics for me." 
 
 " Still," said Mr. Earnshaw, " Hillary's argument is 
 worth something. When you speak of 'knowing the 
 causes,' you must mean knowing all the causes. Can 
 you possibly do that ? " 
 
 " No more possibly," said Laverock, " than you can 
 guess all the people who are to be at a party ; that is 
 why you generally don't go yourself." 
 
 " Do you always refuse a dinner invitation ? " asked 
 Hillary, quietly.
 
 THE PAINTER'S ARGUMENT 49 
 
 Every one laughed ; Laverock had a reputation as a 
 diner out. But he was not disconcerted. 
 
 " I should certainly refuse," he said, " if there was 
 a chance of finding no dinner when I got there. Mr. 
 Bulmer can't guarantee that there will ever be any 
 future at all." 
 
 "A painter," replied Stephen, "cannot guarantee 
 that there will ever be any picture at all ; but he gets 
 commissions." 
 
 " He doesn't get paid in advance not this painter," 
 said Laverock; "and I don't see why we should pay 
 for a posterity which may never adorn our mansions 
 after all." 
 
 "You must have a working hypothesis," said 
 Stephen, " for any kind of life ; there is reason in sacri- 
 ficing yourself for even a hypothetical posterity, but 
 there can be none in sacrificing anything for the past. 
 What can you do for the generations of the dead ; what 
 can you be to them, or they to you ? Nothing." 
 
 " Nothing ? " said Aubrey, in a low tone that asked 
 for no comment or reply. 
 
 The ladies rose and left the room, and Stephen felt 
 that he had never known a conversation begin so well 
 and end so badly.
 
 VIII 
 
 AT eleven o'clock on the following morning Stephen 
 was pacing slowly up and down in front of the house. 
 Across the sunny path of the terrace drifted warm 
 floods of heavy perfume ; they came from the huge 
 wistaria, whose thick twisted stems seemed to have 
 completely supplanted the pillars of the verandah, 
 while its pale purple clusters hung like a living screen 
 between them. The sky was cloudless overhead; the 
 air was exquisitely fresh, and rang in every direction 
 with the sweet small songs of birds. Far down the 
 slope the lake sparkled beneath an imperceptible breeze 
 with innumerable ripples of golden laughter. Stephen 
 wandered to the sundial, and stood for some time idly 
 looking down upon it. The morning was so filled with 
 the sense of dreamy contentment that he felt a kind 
 of sympathy for this silent recorder of sunny hours, 
 and forgot to pass criticism upon so primitive a method 
 of ascertaining the time of day. As he leaned there, 
 with half-closed eyes, he distinguished among the 
 thousand trills and chirrups with which the place was 
 echoing one song more strenuous and passionate than 
 all the rest. It came from the hillside below him, 
 
 50
 
 THE SONG OP A BIRD 51 
 
 where a titlark was soaring and falling above a haw- 
 thorn bush with the ceaseless motion of a fountain. 
 Again and again, as he watched, it sprang into the 
 air from the topmost spray, fluttered straight upwards 
 with quick, eager notes until it reached the height 
 of its desire ; and then, spreading its wings like a tiny 
 parachute, floated down with long, piercing cries of 
 ecstasy to the very branch from which it had started. 
 
 " What are you looking at ? " said Mr. Earnshaw's 
 voice behind him. 
 
 Stephen pointed to the hawthorn, from which the 
 bird was once more fluttering up as if driven by the 
 desperate joy of some forlorn hope. 
 
 " How long do you suppose it has been doing that," 
 he asked, " in exactly the same spot ? " 
 
 " Oh," said his host, with a smile, " from father to 
 son, for a thousand years, I dare say ; custom dies hard 
 in an out-of-the-way place like this." 
 
 " You are laughing at me," replied Stephen, laughing 
 himself ; " there are some customs which will never 
 die." 
 
 " Song and prayer," said Mr. Earnshaw, " if those 
 can be called customs." 
 
 " I think we agree ; they will never die themselves, 
 but surely their customary forms will change." 
 
 " Very gradually," replied Mr. Earnshaw ; " so 
 gradually as to escape the feeling of change. Association
 
 52 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 is a large part of their essence; for their full beauty 
 they need long time and a fixed place." 
 
 " There have been exiles," said Stephen, " who have 
 changed their sky, but not their hearts." 
 
 " They have thought so, and they were right to lay 
 stress upon the idea ; but it was rather like consoling 
 one's self for loss of food by reflecting that the appetite 
 remains." 
 
 " They satisfied the appetite in other ways." 
 
 "No," said Mr. Earnshaw, "I think not; they 
 lived on what they had, but were not satisfied. I 
 suppose we both had the Americans in mind ; would 
 you say they had lost nothing by their departure from 
 their ancestral home ? They have made a nation, but 
 they made it in the wilderness ; many of them, when 
 they enter an English cathedral, recognize that they 
 have instincts which nothing in their own country can 
 satisfy." 
 
 Stephen would have questioned this, but he was 
 hampered by the recollection of his American friend 
 on pilgrimage to Canterbury. He changed ground 
 accordingly. 
 
 " I have heard a Scottish shepherd say that no 
 service was so grand as that on the open hillside." 
 
 " The hillside where his people had worshipped for 
 centuries." 
 
 " Yes ; but he spoke particularly of the solemn
 
 THE SONG OF A BIRD 53 
 
 grandeur of nature ; he thought more of that than of 
 any church." 
 
 " His experience of churches was probably very 
 limited," replied Mr. Earnshaw. "I once heard a 
 famous preacher courageously tell a kirk full of High- 
 landers that they were wrong on this very point; he 
 described the solemnity and beauty of a great ritual 
 as incomparable with anything they had known, and 
 he ended, I remember, with these words : ' It is true 
 that God dwells not only in temples made with hands ; 
 but in these our ancient churches there is that which 
 no hand can make or unmake : they are builded less 
 of stones than of memories, and man's highest hope 
 can be nothing if it be not itself a memory.' " 
 
 " Eobert Bridges must have suggested that to him," 
 said Stephen ; " but he says it of Adam and Eve, and 
 I have always thought he took a rather too historical 
 view of Eden." 
 
 "He would be the last to do that," said Mr. 
 Earnshaw. " But come," he added, " why should we 
 stand still to talk ? If you have nothing better to do, 
 let me take you dewn to the church yonder; it will 
 illustrate what I have been trying to say." 
 
 They walked down through the garden to a wicket 
 gate in the fence which separated it from the park, 
 and as they paused for a moment to remove the chain 
 by which it was secured Stephen saw, to his surprise,
 
 54 THE OLD COUNTEY 
 
 that the church and the small lake which surrounded 
 it had disappeared ; only the tops of the neighbouring 
 elms were visible above a sudden rise in the undulating 
 slope. As they advanced up the narrow path it came 
 in sight again, and he saw for the first time the 
 beautiful north door of which Laverock had spoken 
 with such enthusiasm. It was very narrow, with 
 a pointed head in the form of a trefoil, and led directly 
 into the chancel, being intended, as Mr. Earnshaw 
 explained, for the sole use of the priest. At this 
 moment it was wide open, and through it could be 
 heard the sound of the organ, played by a skilled hand.
 
 IX 
 
 THEY passed between the two small lakes and over the 
 little bridge by which the island is now united with 
 the western shore. Mr. Earnshaw lifted the string 
 netting which hung before the open porch, and Stephen 
 found himself inside the smallest church he had ever 
 seen. The cool, dim interior was refreshing by contrast 
 with the noonday glare outside, and a breath of faint 
 perfume came from the font, which stood close to the 
 door, and had been newly filled with flowers. Near it, 
 and quite at the back of the church, sat Eleanor Eyder, 
 listening to Aubrey's chants, which, now that the 
 practice was over and the little choir departed, rolled 
 uninterruptedly from the chancel in a full, deep current 
 that seemed like a reverie made audible. 
 
 The two men sat down silently, and Stephen fixed 
 his eyes upon the organ chamber ; but the spell of the 
 music gained upon him imperceptibly, and in a very 
 short time, though he was quite unconscious of the fact, 
 his own outward existence and that of Aubrey herself 
 had passed entirely from his thoughts. It was as 
 though the life within him no longer looked out 
 through the windows of sense, but withdrew into an 
 inner and more real world, where he was led from depth 
 
 55
 
 56 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 to depth of emotion, and brought from remorse to hope, 
 from endurance to passionate joy, with an ever-growing 
 sense of strength and purification. Things and events 
 had become meaningless, action was one with feeling, 
 and every feeling was intensified beyond measure, for it 
 was no longer the emotion of an individual, but the 
 consciousness of a vast unison a unison so infinite that 
 it seemed to gather into the beating of one heart the 
 agony and the aspiration of all the generations of men 
 "Wave after wave, the music rose and fell, and rose and 
 fell again, with the same long, rolling cadence, as 
 though it had begun before memory and would continue 
 beyond time. 
 
 But at last it ceased, and Stephen came back to the 
 material world. As his outward consciousness returned, 
 he found that his eyes were fixed on a mysterious, long- 
 robed figure, which seemed to be receding from his 
 sight along a stately chamber, in which the tracery of a 
 golden canopy stood out against a background of deep 
 ruby colour. The face, which was still turned towards 
 him, was already too dim for the features to be dis- 
 tinguishable, but everything else about it, from the out- 
 ward curves of the crozier in its hand to the chequered 
 floor at its feet, had a clear and gem-like brightness. 
 
 " The windows are the best thing in the church," he 
 heard Mr. Earnshaw saying. "There is no older or 
 finer glass in Somerset."
 
 IN THE CHURCH 57 
 
 " Who is that ? " asked Stephen, with his eyes still 
 riveted on the robed figure. 
 
 " Unknown. An English bishop and saint, as you 
 see by the halo and crozier. It is a pity the face has 
 perished." 
 
 Stephen was silent ; he had still the curious feeling 
 that the face had only become invisible a moment ago. 
 He seemed very nearly to remember what it had been 
 like before it faded. 
 
 " The abbot and the king behind you have suffered 
 in the same way," said Mr. Earnshaw. 
 
 They turned to the west, and Stephen saw, without 
 surprise, that the figures in that window too had not 
 only the same faded faces, but the same strange look of 
 life, in spite of their stiff and antiquated garments. 
 
 The rest had little interest for him, for he knew 
 nothing of ecclesiastical antiquity. He was shown the 
 little aumbry with its oaken door, the figures of the 
 monk and nun on the chancel walls, whose clasped 
 hands once supported the Lenten Veil, the Jacobean 
 pulpit a hexagon of brown oak carved in tiny classical 
 arcades and the chantry, with its broad arch and 
 slender crockets. These things were but curiosities; 
 they had for him no touch of reality. But he looked 
 once more at the figure in the east window, and was 
 glad to find that the pleasure it gave had remained with 
 him.
 
 58 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 He followed his host towards the door, where 
 Aubrey and Eleanor were waiting for them. 
 
 " Has Mr. Bulmer seen the brass ? " asked Aubrey. 
 
 She moved forward as she spoke, and Stephen fol- 
 lowed her across to the north side of the church, where 
 a single brass tablet broke the bare white space of the 
 wall. The metal was bright, and the red and black of 
 the lettering fresh and clear. He looked at it with a 
 confused eye, and in the first moment perceived only 
 that it was not a memorial of any recent event. From 
 the centre of it an unfamiliar date stared out at him. 
 
 " But it looks quite new," he said. 
 
 " It is," replied Aubrey. " We put it up last year." 
 
 She stood reading it in silence, and Stephen knew 
 that he was following her word for word. 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 SIR HENRY DE MAR LAND 
 
 OF GARDENLEIGH, KNIGHT, 
 
 WHO FOUNDED THIS CHURCH 
 
 TO THE HONOUR OF ST. MARY THE VIROIX 
 
 IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 
 
 MCCCII 
 THE RECTOR OF GARDENLEIGH 
 
 COVENANTING THEREUPON 
 FOR HIMSELF AND HIS SUCCESSORS 
 
 THAT THE SAID SIR HENRY 
 HIS ANCESTORS AND POSTERITY 
 SHOULD RECEIVE THE BENEFIT 
 OF ALL PRAYERS AND ORISONS 
 TO BE SAID OR SUNG HEREIN 
 FOB EVER.
 
 IN THE CHURCH 59 
 
 It is probable that at another time Stephen would 
 have passed this inscription by, or numbered it among 
 the curiosities which had so little interest for him. 
 But no such indifference was possible now; he could 
 not doubt that there was something here which was 
 near to Aubrey's heart, and, simple though the words 
 were, he perceived as he read them for the second time 
 that they had been composed not only with care, but 
 with insight, and had sprung of the very mood into 
 which the deep, unending roll of the chant had so lately 
 thrown him. He seemed to hear the music again in 
 the final words the very cadence of the prayers and 
 orisons " to be said or sung herein for ever." 
 
 "I am sure you wrote that," he said quietly to 
 Aubrey; and he saw as he turned to speak that she 
 was holding Eleanor's hand in hers. 
 
 "No," she said; "the words are the words of the 
 original deed. We don't write like that now." 
 
 "After six hundred years " he began, and 
 
 stopped. 
 
 Aubrey turned away, and they all left the church. 
 For once she had done him an injustice.
 
 OUTSIDE, they parted company : the ladies returned 
 by the direct path to the house, while Mr. Earnshaw 
 invited Stephen to continue the walk with him and 
 make the circuit of the lake. 
 
 " I hope I have not tired you," he began ; " but we 
 have so little to show our guests here, that every one 
 has to see the church." 
 
 " I enjoyed the music more than I can say," replied 
 Stephen, " and I thought the church beautiful ; but I 
 did not venture to praise it, because I know absolutely 
 nothing about these things." 
 
 " You have had no opportunities ; but you will have 
 to study churches now, I suppose ? They come into 
 your period." 
 
 " Into my period ? " said Stephen, smiling. "Do they ? " 
 
 " You have not abolished religion in the future at 
 least so far as you have gone at present ? " 
 
 " Oh no ; but these churches are the embodiment of 
 a Church with a capital C and I am not sure about 
 Churches of that kind." 
 
 " I noticed that in your book you treated the subject 
 with what I must call a masterly inactivity." 
 
 60
 
 AMONG THE CHURCHES 61 
 
 Stephen looked up ; the glance he met was humorous, 
 but none the less kindly. 
 
 " To be frank," he said, " I do not know what to do 
 about the Church." 
 
 Mr. Earnshaw smiled insistently. " But you are 
 bound to know," he said; "it is your business to 
 know." 
 
 Stephen's heart quickened ; he had all but reached 
 this point a dozen times before, both with Mr. Earnshaw 
 and with Aubrey herself; he had felt it to be dangerous 
 ground, and had extricated himself every time with 
 painful and not very successful efforts. But he realized 
 that the difficulty was not one which could be perma- 
 nently avoided ; it formed part of the crisis which he 
 had come here to face ; his quest led him directly 
 through it, and there could be no way round. He 
 stopped short in the path. 
 
 " This is not a bad place for a rest," said his host, 
 pointing to the stump of a fallen poplar by the water- 
 side, and stepping across the grass to take his seat 
 upon it. 
 
 Stephen followed, but remained standing by him, 
 and mechanically driving the ferrule of his stick into 
 the ground at his feet. 
 
 "The truth is," he began tentatively, "I am so 
 uncertain of my audience." 
 
 " Afraid, do you mean, of offending the public ? "
 
 62 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " No, not quite that. I can face a prejudice, or 1 
 should never write at all. But on this point there are 
 so many prejudices to face at once ; it is like arguing 
 with the hydra in a hundred languages at the same 
 time." 
 
 " Argue with me, then ; I have only one head." 
 
 " But in what language ? " 
 
 "In any language, so long as it is serious," said 
 Mr. Earushaw. " I am a Churchman, but you need 
 not fear that my orthodoxy will be shocked by any 
 reasonable argument." 
 
 Stephen drew a long breath and plunged. " Well," 
 he said, " I try to see everything in as generalized a 
 form as possible before admitting it to my new world. 
 Religion I can place there, because it is a universal, an 
 inclusive element; but a Church is particularist and 
 exclusive by its very nature. A reasonable, scientifically 
 ordered community, if it were given anything like a fail- 
 start, would never allow such an influence to get a hold 
 at all." 
 
 " I follow you," said Mr. Earnshaw : " the Churches, 
 taken all together, are a terrible satire on the idea of the 
 Church. But all Christendom has belonged to one or 
 another of them. Why is this, do you think ? and why 
 should this be not the case in the future ? " 
 
 " Men have always desired incorporation ; it is in 
 their nature to wish to have something larger behind
 
 AMONG THE CHURCHES 63 
 
 them some great body to which they can refer them- 
 selves." 
 
 " Why should that natural feeling cease ? " 
 
 " Because it is in reality, like patriotism, not 
 essential." 
 
 " Patriotism has certainly changed," said Mr. Earn- 
 shaw; "it is less concentrated now than it probably 
 was in more tribal days, and I, for one, rather regret the 
 fact. But supposing that patriotism must widen until 
 it ultimately disappears, I think you are overlooking a 
 real difference in using it as an analogy here. Patriot- 
 ism is essentially defensive. It will be impossible, you 
 say, in a world-state, because a world-state can have 
 no enemies. But a spiritual communion among men 
 can never be useless, for in the spiritual world man will 
 always be at war." 
 
 " I should not myself use the word ' war,' " replied 
 Stephen; "it seems to imply personal opponents 
 Powers and Spirits of the nethermost abyss." 
 
 "I had no such intention," said Mr. Earnshaw; " I 
 was thinking of the strenue militantes of Thomas a 
 Kempis the warriors who have overcome the world. 
 You don't deny that life is a conflict, in which man 
 needs all the help he can find ? " 
 
 " No. But surely, if it is to be a force stronger than 
 his own, he must seek it from a higher power, not from 
 his fellow-man."
 
 64 THE OLD COUNTKY 
 
 " Then we are all to live entirely separate lives 
 each in his narrow cell for ever laid ? " 
 
 "No, no," said Stephen, earnestly; "that is the 
 opposite of my belief. I look to see men helping one 
 another as they have never helped before ; but it will 
 be mainly in the ways of science in clearing away 
 obstacles and tangles and dangers, and giving a fair 
 field to ' original goodness/ which is, at least, as natural 
 and as visible as original sin. I do not say that good- 
 ness may not be fostered, too, by fellowship ; but I do 
 say that the fellowships which at present exist for that 
 object seem to have done far more harm than good." 
 
 " It is difficult to think without enthusiasm," said 
 Mr. Earnshaw, " of the cause of science and the service 
 by which it has been forwarded. But hitherto it has 
 done but little for the clearing of man's spiritual path, 
 because it has hardly yet recognized the existence of 
 spiritual phenomena at all. It recognizes flowers," he 
 continued, pointing to the water-lilies which covered the 
 bay at their feet, " because they are substantial ; they 
 appeal to the common senses of all men ; they float on 
 water, grow on stalks, and are rooted in mud. But it 
 turns away from our mental experiences, as incon- 
 sistently, it seems to me, as though it should refuse to 
 recognize those slender bars of turquoise that you see 
 coming and going upon the water-lilies mere flashes of 
 momentary light from nowhere."
 
 AMONG THE CHUKCHES 65 
 
 " Yes," said Stephen, " dragon-flies and dreams 
 should all come in. But the scientific people have 
 developed a dogmatism of their own ; they have founded 
 the Materialistic Church, and it is showing the charac- 
 teristic faults of all Churches." 
 
 Mr. Earnshaw was silent for some time, looking out 
 across the lower expanse of the lake. Stephen sat 
 quietly down by his side, and wondered what was the 
 train of thought which he had set in motion. If he 
 had only known it, he had been fortunate beyond his 
 best hopes. His chief wish had been that he might not 
 say anything that would jar fatally upon his host, or 
 reveal an impassable gulf between his own feelings and 
 those which were probably Aubrey's as well as her 
 father's. His success had been greater than this ; he 
 had touched Mr. Earnshaw's memory, and set in motion 
 one of those currents of vivid feeling which bring to the 
 old so quick a sympathy with anything spoken in the 
 language of their own youth. 
 
 " My dear boy," he said and Stephen was startled 
 by the unexpected change in his voice " thirty-five or 
 forty years ago I too had my quarrel with the Churches. 
 My father was a Protestant of the Protestants, and the 
 set in which I was brought up seemed to me, when at 
 last I came to think of religion apart from discipline, 
 to have no conception of religion at all. Their views 
 were historical, rational, practical, and moral ; they 
 
 F
 
 66 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 treated life as one prolonged meeting of an ethical 
 society. Their proceedings bored me as a boy, and as 
 an undergraduate I came to find them guilty of some- 
 thing like a fraud. They had enthusiasm, or at least 
 fervour, and they professed to worship a superhuman 
 will ; but their creed was an arid one : it offered no 
 mitigation of the sandiness of life, no wells for the 
 spirit in the desert of material facts. At the moment 
 of my revolt I fell in love with a very young girl, 
 whose father, while he lived, had been the head 
 of an old Eoman Catholic family. Her mother 
 evidently liked me, and encouraged my visits, in 
 the plainly expressed hope that I might become 
 a convert to the true faith. For a time I was 
 extremely happy; I read the mystics, and felt that 
 I had found the inheritance which had been concealed 
 from me." 
 
 " And then ? " said Stephen, after a pause. 
 
 " There was no ' then ' ; the crisis which would 
 have confirmed me never came. My father, who was 
 the shrewdest man I have ever known, and had an 
 iron nerve, not only made no opposition to my wishes, 
 but of his own accord offered me an adequate provision 
 for marriage. There was, consequently, no haste upon 
 the other side; my instruction proceeded, and for a 
 whole year I saw the Eoman Church mirrored in the 
 life of a household, and especially in the unconscious
 
 AMONG THE CHURCHES 67 
 
 mind and conversation of a girl of seventeen. No 
 doubt the view presented to me was a crude one, 
 but it was a view from the practical side ; and when 
 my mind had had time to recover its analytical powers, 
 I felt as if I had been deceived by a mirage. That 
 is not my opinion now. I do not doubt that in the 
 Roman communion, as in any other, the living water 
 may be found; but I still see the practical dangers 
 involved in the system as clearly as when they first 
 astonished and repelled me. The first principle of 
 Romanism is surrender : readily accepted by the 
 feminine temperament, and welcome even to the 
 masculine when presented under the aspect of service ; 
 but I found that the surrender demanded is, in practice, 
 surrender to a human, not a Divine, will, and the 
 service is primarily the service of a human power. 
 Then the mystery, the perpetual remembrance of the 
 unseen world, which attracted me so strongly at first, 
 seems, in the Roman mind, to pass downwards into a 
 still more fatal perversion. The centre of the system 
 is not the thing itself, the Life upon which all spiritual 
 life must feed, but the symbol through which that Life 
 is to be attained ; and this symbol cannot be used except 
 by the hand of a miraculously gifted priesthood. The 
 Presence of the Universal is not only localized, but 
 controlled ; and the desire for it is made a lever for 
 subjecting the whole life of mankind to the direction
 
 68 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 of a caste with what results may be seeii in the 
 history of nations and of science." 
 
 " Ah ! " exclaimed Stephen ; " but surely we have 
 done with the Middle Ages ? " 
 
 "When you say that I know what you mean 
 you are putting a part for the whole. Our forefathers 
 were no more unanimous than we are, and no more 
 submissive. The claim of the true Churchman was 
 the same then as now : equally strong in logic, equally 
 fatal in practice ; and contested, at any rate in England, 
 in much the same way as it is contested now. The 
 struggle must go on ; the elements of conflict are the 
 diverse characters of men. There will always be these 
 types the purely secular mind, which looks only to 
 the practice of life in an obviously material world ; the 
 nature which desires above all to unite itself with 
 the Divine, and accepts a Church as a means to that 
 end; and that fanatic character, in which religious 
 feeling is overlaid by a disproportioned devotion to the 
 Church herself. You remember it was said of the 
 Emperor Ferdinand, that if a priest and an angel were 
 to visit him at the same moment, he would make 
 obeisance to the priest first, and to the messenger of 
 Heaven afterwards; and Ferdinandism is not dead 
 yet, even in the English Church. No, the Middle 
 Ages are not past ; but they were never present in the 
 way you imagine. The church you have just seen
 
 AMONG THE CHURCHES G9 
 
 this little church of Gardenleigh is a proof of it. The 
 founder, Sir Henry de Marland, may have been a 
 religious man, but he was certainly a stout anti-clerical, 
 and I don't suppose the parson stood up to him out 
 of church any better than a poor modern rector does 
 to the man to whom he owes his living, especially 
 when the patron is a county magnate and a distinguished 
 soldier, as Marland was." 
 
 "I have not yet got used," said Stephen, "to 
 your way of speaking of these ancient inhabitants. 
 To me their names suggest stiff stone figures on 
 dilapidated tombs; to you they seem to be in no 
 way different from the people in this year's red 
 book." 
 
 " Oh yes," said Mr. Earnshaw, standing up, " very 
 different ; I know so much more about them. People 
 in the red book are mostly names to me; I cannot 
 bring them before my eyes as human beings. But 
 these Marlands, for instance they lived here where 
 I live, and faced all my problems before me; their 
 records are a little condensed, but quite as informing 
 as any that I shall leave behind me. I will show you 
 the book of the manor if you like : my notebook of 
 dates and documents." 
 
 " It will be a new line for me," replied Stephen, 
 politely ; " I have not dealt much in dates or documents 
 hitherto."
 
 70 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 "No," said Mr. Earnshaw, as they walked on; 
 " the Future is not strong in dates." 
 
 He laughed, Stephen thought, with an easier manner 
 than usual, and the rest of the walk passed pleasantly 
 in more trivial conversation.
 
 XI 
 
 IN the mean time Aubrey and Eleanor had returned to 
 the garden. 
 
 " Let us not go indoors yet," said Aubrey, as they 
 reached the gate; "the hour before lunch is all we 
 have left. When the others arrive we shall never get 
 a moment to ourselves." 
 
 Eleanor was an expert in all the diplomatic arts : 
 she could, without the least hesitation, read off a cipher 
 message, or translate her own thoughts into the form 
 of language most suited to her hearer's mood. As they 
 turned into the rose-garden and walked slowly beneath 
 the long alley, she carried on both these processes at 
 once. She began by opening the conversation directly 
 upon Stephen, for this was obviously the topic for 
 which an opportunity was desired. 
 
 " Mr. Bulmer enjoyed your music, I think ; it was 
 lucky they happened to come in just then." 
 
 Aubrey sighed. 
 
 " Why do you sigh, dearest ? " 
 
 " Life is such a tangle." 
 
 " There's only one way of unravelling a tangle, is 
 there ? You must lay out the threads as clearly as you 
 
 71
 
 72 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 can, and see which way they go, before you try to 
 pull them." 
 
 " I've done it," said Aubrey, with a face of humorous 
 despair ; " and the clearer they came out the worse I 
 felt." 
 
 Eleanor knew exactly what this meant. " I don't 
 understand," she said gently. 
 
 " You will very soon," replied Aubrey, leaning 
 heavily upon her arm. " Eleanor," she said, with 
 sudden emphasis, " what do you think of him not in 
 detail, but what do you feel ? " 
 
 "I like him." 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 " I like him a good deal now, and I can imagine 
 liking him a good deal more when I have known him 
 longer." 
 
 Aubrey was silent. " The worst of it is," she said 
 reflectively, after a pause, " that I have known him so 
 much longer than you have." 
 
 Again Eleanor played the simpleton. "Then you 
 don't agree with me ? " she asked. 
 
 Aubrey shook her arm. " You old serpent," she 
 said ; " you know what I mean, and I know what you 
 mean. You want me to tell you the difference between 
 his feelings and mine, if there is any. It is a horrible 
 thing to explain, and this is just the time for it half- 
 past twelve in glaring daylight."
 
 TERMS OF SURRENDER 73 
 
 " Let us wait do let us wait there will be time 
 this evening." 
 
 " No, I must say it while I see it. It is all there 
 before my eyes," said Aubrey, raising her left hand and 
 clutching the air. " Here is a man who likes me ; and 
 I like him, at any rate, better than I did. He thinks 
 that enough ; I do not." 
 
 " It is enough for most people." 
 
 " You know it cannot be enough for me ; I am not 
 ' most people.' I have had you for all these years, and 
 I am not to be bought with less than you have given 
 me." 
 
 Eleanor laid her hand on Aubrey's. " Dearest," she 
 said, rather sadly, " you must not forget that he is 
 offering you what is out of my power to give." 
 
 " I forget nothing ; but I cannot balance the account 
 between you two like that. The bargain is between 
 him and me, and you must see how unequal it is ; he 
 claims to have the best of it both ways. He has the 
 stronger feeling to begin with, and then he expects to 
 get twice as much sympathy as he gives." 
 
 " Well," replied Eleanor, in a tone of concession, 
 as if yielding to argument, " I certainly do think 
 he might be a little more of a supplicant under the 
 circumstances. It is his attitude that is rather un- 
 reasonable." 
 
 " That is hardly fair," said Aubrey, quickly ; " he is
 
 74 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 quite unconscious, at any rate. A man does not 
 think of his attitude ; he simply knows what he wants, 
 and goes the shortest way to get it." 
 
 Eleanor smiled to herself. " He may be uncon- 
 scious," she said. "I hope he is; but that does not 
 make his demands any less exacting. You seem to 
 have entered into his interests thoroughly ; he does not 
 even try to appreciate yours." 
 
 " But I cannot give him that for an answer." 
 
 " Certainly not ! " thought Eleanor, with a nod to 
 her own confidential reflection. " I cannot see why 
 you should not," she said aloud. 
 
 " Eleanor ! you know there is only one reason that a 
 woman can possibly give." 
 
 Eleanor looked her in the face; she could dare 
 much, but she could not dare to thrust home with 
 " Give it, then." 
 
 Aubrey read her eyes and flushed. " If you think 
 of it," she went on hurriedly, " with any sense of 
 humour, how can I put it as a bargain, and a bargain 
 for opinions too, as if they were at command ? ' Dear 
 sir,' I suppose I should write, ' I am obliged by your 
 kind offer ; the castle would suit my requirements fairly 
 well if it had more outhouses. Perhaps you could see 
 your way to building these?'" Her voice fell from 
 mockery to discouragement again. "No, no, it is a 
 tangle ; whichever way I turn I lose."
 
 TERMS OF SURRENDER 75 
 
 " Perhaps I could do something," said Eleanor, as if 
 musing on possibilities. 
 
 " Could you ? No, that would never do ; that is 
 not what I feel I want. I want him to go on being 
 unconscious yes, he must be quite unconscious; but 
 if I could inake him see with my eyes and think my 
 own thoughts. It is my own fault that he does not. I 
 know I have a power over him if I could only use it in 
 the right way. If I could only take him right out of 
 his own world and into mine ! " 
 
 Her lips trembled, and she smiled faintly at her own 
 vehemence. 
 
 " You can," said Eleanor, soothingly ; " I am sure 
 you can. " I think you did quite take him away with 
 you when you were playing just now." 
 
 " The music did, perhaps ; but he cared little enough 
 for the things I wanted him to understand." 
 
 " I am not sure of that," said Eleanor, with a gentle 
 pressure of her arm upon Aubrey's. "Perhaps there 
 were too many of us there. It is a pity," she went on 
 more lightly, " that you can't just lure him back into 
 the fourteenth century for a time." 
 
 " I will," she replied, " if he will come." 
 
 "Oh, he will come," said Eleanor, as they turned 
 into the avenue ; " I will answer for that. You have 
 often taken me there already."
 
 XII 
 
 IT was exactly half-past one when Stephen left his 
 room at the summons of the gong. As he came to the 
 head of the staircase" the hideous braying died away, 
 and gave place to a. chorus of childish laughter, a sound 
 that could never fail to move his heart. He hastened 
 down to the half-landing, and almost stopped as he 
 turned the corner and came in sight of the group in 
 the hall below him. On a long divan which faced the 
 foot of the stairs sat Mrs. Oldham, no longer cold or 
 scornful, but as fresh and beautiful as the summer day 
 itself, in the Eomney dress and shady hat in which she 
 had been sitting for her portrait. By her side and at 
 her knees clustered a group of children, four in number, 
 but for the moment as uncountable as the chequers in 
 a kaleidoscope or the struggling heads at the opening 
 of a nest. 
 
 " Oh, do let us ! oh, do, do let us I " they were 
 clamouring ; and the mother- bird's head bent graciously 
 over each in turn, whispering a secret word and 
 drawing back with a quick flash of bright eyes and a 
 light, playful turn of the head. 
 
 " Oh no ! not ' perhaps,' " they all broke out again 
 76
 
 A CHILD'S DESIRE 77 
 
 in chorus. The smaller of the two boys came in late 
 for the chime. " Not praps," he said, screwing up his 
 face with appreciation of his own droll mimicry, " but 
 anything-you-like-and-don't-bower ; that's what Nanna 
 says." 
 
 The Eomney lady rose to her feet. " Mr. Bulmer," 
 she said, laughing, " I don't think you've made the 
 acquaintance of the most important part of the house- 
 hold. This young comedian is our future lord and 
 master Worlter, he calls himself and this is his 
 sister Cynthia, my brother's eldest child. The third is 
 a baby ; and these are my two," she continued, drawing 
 forward an older boy and girl. " George is seven, and 
 Margaret is six. Shake hands with Mr. Bulmer, both 
 of you ; he is a very wise gentleman, and knows exactly 
 what is going to happen before it happens." 
 
 Margaret opened a pair of deep blue eyes very wide, 
 and stood gazing at Stephen in silence. George was 
 bolder and more practical ; he clung to Stephen's hand 
 with both his own, and leaned back with upturned face 
 to question him, 
 
 "Do you know what is going to happen this 
 afternoon ? " he asked. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Stephen, in a deep, mysterious voice. 
 
 " No, but do you really ? Mother won't tell us, you 
 know; she won't tell us if we are going to pick bees 
 after dinner."
 
 78 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " Going to do what?" asked Stephen, in astonishment. 
 
 "You see how unreasonable they are," said Anne, 
 laughing, whether at them or him was not clear. 
 
 " If you do pick bees," said Stephen to the children, 
 "I can certainly tell you what will happen this 
 afternoon : you'll be stung." 
 
 The chorus burst forth again in a perfect scream of 
 laughter, at the end of which came once more Walter's 
 slow, full accentuation. 
 
 " They's not buzz-bees," he said ; " they's grass-bees." 
 His face puckered with humorous contempt. 
 
 " I haven't the faintest notion what they mean," 
 said Stephen to Mrs. Oldham. 
 
 " Bee-orchises," she replied, " they grow in certain 
 places in the park, and the children have been promised 
 by their grandfather that he will take them out some 
 time to look for them. They want me to ask him if 
 to-day may be the day ; but I don't suppose he will 
 have time before his other guests arrive." 
 
 " No, no, mother ; no, no," cried the children. " Not 
 before they come ; we can't go without the cousins." 
 
 " That is another difficulty," Anne explained. " My 
 sister is bringing her two little girls, and they must 
 come too ; they cannot be here till four." 
 
 The rest of the party were now straggling in, and 
 luncheon began, the children being allowed for this one 
 day to fill the places afc the long table which had been
 
 A CHILD'S DESIRE 79 
 
 made ready for the larger company expected at dinner. 
 They were as quiet as mice, but their presence had its 
 effect : the conversation was more broken, and even the 
 vivacious Laverock showed no inclination to be dispu- 
 tatious. Stephen was pleased to find that although 
 Walter had treated him with scorn and Cynthia with 
 complete indifference, he was already on good terms with 
 George, who sat next to him, and an object of interest to 
 Margaret opposite, whose wide, wondering eyes were 
 never lifted from her plate except to be fixed upon his 
 face. Before they went upstairs for their midday rest, 
 they had formally invited him to be of the bee-picking 
 party, to which grandpapa seemed disposed to give his 
 consent. It was an affair of five minutes only, he 
 explained in an aside to Stephen ; the flowers, if they 
 were to be found at all, were almost within sight of the 
 terrace. 
 
 To the children, however, it was a great expedition, 
 and by four o'clock they were all armed with their tiny 
 baskets and skirmishing about the courtyard in expec- 
 tation of the arrival of the cousins. Fortune favoured 
 them, for when the carriage came at last it contained 
 only 'Mrs. Saltwode and the two little girls ; nurse was 
 following with the luggage, and Uncle Philip Mr. 
 Saltwode was walking through the park with Captain 
 "Warburton. Lady Barlaston was driving over later in 
 the afternoon from the house of some distant neighbours
 
 80 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 with whom she had been staying. There was, therefore, 
 nothing to keep grandpapa indoors, and the half-hour 
 remaining before tea was given up to the rapture of the 
 hunt. 
 
 Dorothy Saltwode herself led it. She was the most 
 beautiful of Mr. Earnshaw's three daughters, a creature 
 of the sun and air, living in swallow flights, never twice 
 the same, never ceasing her insatiable quest for beauty 
 and delight. She had scarcely alighted in her sister's 
 arms before she was through the house and out upon the 
 verandah and down on to the terrace, kissing a cluster 
 of wistaria as she passed, like a wayward zephyr. The 
 children followed, stumbling and shouting, and by the 
 time Mr. Earnshaw and Stephen reached the path 
 the whole party of children, mothers, and aunts was 
 streaming away along the cool, green level of the east 
 avenue like a rout in some Elizabethan Masque of 
 Summer. 
 
 At the gate they stopped for breath, and the 
 children clung about their grandfather, who began to 
 assume an air of mystery. He led them along the slope 
 below the carriage road until they came within sight of 
 the little path which leads off from it down to the 
 boathouse. In the angle between the two stood a small 
 clump of trees, with a little scattered undergrowth 
 beneath and around them. This was the haunt of the 
 bees, and the hunters were instructed in whispers to
 
 A CHILD'S DESIRE 81 
 
 creep upon them silently and stealthily. The directions 
 were for the space of half a minute faithfully observed ; 
 then George, perceiving that his sister was tiptoeing 
 straight towards a flower without seeing it, flung himself 
 before her with a yell, and both rolled over. The rest 
 followed with a rush, and Dorothy flew to help. After 
 all there were but three sprays to be found, but these 
 were brought back in triumph to Mr. Earnshaw, where 
 he sat on the grass above with Stephen and Eleanor, 
 laughing at the scene before him. 
 
 "When I was their age," he said, "my father 
 showed me these flowers; I can hear his voice at this 
 moment calling down the hill to my sister. Twenty 
 years ago I brought my own children to this same place, 
 just as I have brought their children to-day; and so it 
 goes on." He ended with a half-sigh. 
 
 Stephen was looking curiously at a fine " bee " 
 which Margaret had brought back and offered to 
 him. 
 
 " It is really a bee, isn't it ? " he said, surprised by 
 the appearance of the flower, which he had never seen 
 before. " I did not know bees could turn into flowers." 
 
 The child stood still, with wide blue eyes gazing 
 level into his. 
 
 " But mother says," she replied, in her clear, earnest 
 little voice, " that you know everything that is going to 
 happen, before it happens." 
 
 a
 
 82 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " Not quite everything," he said ; " only some kinds 
 of things." 
 
 She came a little nearer. " Do you think," she 
 asked, with a great effort, " that you could know some- 
 thing for me ? " 
 
 "Tell me what it is." He put an arm about her and 
 drew her to him. 
 
 " When shall we all wake up ? " 
 
 Stephen did not understand. " Are we asleep ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Yes, you know, we are all asleep, and we've all got 
 to wake up some day mother and George and grand- 
 papa and every one. Do you think we could all wake 
 up together ? " 
 
 Stephen felt the slow, clear words falling like magic 
 drops upon the eyes of a dreamer. For a moment he 
 saw the vision of a timeless existence, a life without age 
 or separation, a world where none can be forgotten. 
 Tears sprang to his eyes, and he rose quickly to his feet, 
 holding out a hand to the child. 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Earnshaw, rising too, " it is time we 
 thought of tea ; this generation has picked its bees."
 
 XIII 
 
 PHILIP SALTWODE was some years older than the rest 
 of Mr. Earnshaw's family circle, and had already sat 
 in three Parliaments. He belonged to the Conservative 
 party, which had been in power for practically the 
 whole of that period, and promotion had not yet come 
 to him in the form of office ; but he had long been 
 distinguished by the intimacy of several of his chiefs, 
 and was private secretary to one of them. His capacity 
 for this kind of work was very considerable, but his 
 future was a little compromised by his fondness for 
 ideas. His interests were, in fact, those of a philosopher 
 rather than what is called a practical politician; but 
 if his prospects suffered by this, he found great con- 
 solation in the whispers which would brand him as a 
 "dangerous" young man. Of all the party now at 
 Gardenleigh he was probably the one who had read 
 Stephen's book with most care ; for though the author's 
 views had not for him the personal interest that they 
 had for Aubrey and Eleanor, he assigned to them a 
 much higher place among opinions of public importance. 
 After dinner, when the dining-room was deserted 
 for the verandah, he seated himself by Stephen, who 
 
 83
 
 84 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 turned to him with pleasure, attracted already by his 
 intellectual face and unconventional charm of manner. 
 
 " I don't want to ask an indiscreet question," Salt- 
 wode began ; " but if you are thinking of taking any 
 part in political life, it would interest me very much to 
 hear about it." 
 
 " I can only say," replied Stephen, readily, " that I 
 am unconscious of any such inclination at present ; but 
 I am always glad to talk politics, especially English 
 politics, about which I have very little first-hand in- 
 formation. I don't count the newspapers." 
 
 " Well," said Philip, " if it were merely information 
 that you wanted, in the ordinary sense of the word, the 
 press has never been so well informed as it is now. But 
 I take it your inquiry is really one into principles, and 
 in that case the less you read about tactics the better." 
 " You make me feel very unfledged," said Stephen. 
 " I suppose principles are a kind of juvenile ailment in 
 the life of a politician ?/' 
 
 "Not in my opinion," replied Philip, seriously. 
 " The party division is to me as real as the difference 
 between the sexes; and when a mind is once estab- 
 lished in either class it can never change except in 
 abnormal instances, which are generally cases of 
 degeneration or of fraudulent disguise." 
 
 " May I ask," said Stephen, laughing, " to which 
 political sex you yourself belong ? "
 
 THE POLITICIAN'S ARGUMENT 85 
 
 " The masculine what we call the Conservative." 
 
 " Why the masculine ? " asked Stephen. " I have 
 always thought of Conservatism as the passive element." 
 
 " That is the common idea ; and it is true that the 
 Conservative party must naturally include all the timid, 
 senile, and old-womanish minds of the community. 
 But they are under the same misconception as yourself, 
 if you will forgive me for saying so. They take 
 Conservatism to be the creed of immobility, the cause 
 of crystallization. But obviously that is impossible ; 
 the status qiw has never been, and can never be, pre- 
 served. A mere ' stop-the-clock ' party would perish 
 in a year that is, as soon as it became evident that it 
 had entirely failed to stop the clock." 
 
 " Oh, oh ! " said Stephen ; " do you deny that there 
 has ever been such a thing as a reactionary party ? " 
 
 " Eeactionary is only a nickname for Conservative ; 
 the fundamental principle implied by both is loyalty 
 to the past, admiration of the past, imitation of the 
 past. But the past was no more static than the present 
 is ; those were living trees which our ancestors tended, 
 and under which they sat. They change, of course, 
 because they grow ; but it is our business to see that 
 they remain in their places, and are not cut down or 
 rooted up in favour of others which are not indigenous." 
 
 "I accept your simile," replied Stephen, "and I 
 ask you what you propose to do when your trees no
 
 86 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 longer give you adequate shelter; when they are 
 leafless at the extremities, and decayed in every branch 
 and hollow at the core." 
 
 " ^Radicalism," said Philip, smiling, " is the creed of 
 the faddist with the axe. He has always gone about 
 seeking what he may cut down, and naturally he 
 magnifies the decay and minimizes the surviving utility 
 of every institution that comes in his way." 
 
 " Is it your position, then," said Stephen, " that he 
 is always wrong that the moment will never come for 
 a radical operation ? " 
 
 "I do not venture to prophesy," replied Philip, 
 " but I say that in England the moment has never yet 
 been in sight when a sacrifice of the kind was called 
 for." 
 
 "I am no historian," said Stephen, "but I should 
 have thought that feudalism was in a fair way to be 
 forgotten." 
 
 "Never less so. You have been misinformed by 
 the painters and poets and pessimists, who call us 
 degenerate because the armoury of our invincible fore- 
 fathers is hung in our halls and not on our backs. So 
 it was in 1805 ; so it was in 1815 ; so it always has 
 been. The picturesque is always obsolete; but the 
 spirit of the thing, the love of war and sport, and the 
 religious regard for the weaker that is more alive than 
 ever it was."
 
 THE POLITICIAN'S ARGUMENT 87 
 
 "Not quite so effectively, is it?" asked Stephen. 
 "The Germans claim to be able to beat you in war, 
 and the Americans in athletics." 
 
 Philip smiled disdainfully. "That 'you' betrays 
 the exile," he said; "but not more clearly than the 
 argument does. Somebody has always been beating us. 
 It is in our blood to desire the Olympic dust more than 
 the Olympic crown ; and there are, as you say, certain 
 other nations who seek victory with long odds rather 
 than a fair fight against the strong. We don't win 
 oftener than others we never did but we forget our 
 defeats, and they brood over theirs." He threw his 
 cigarette away and took another. "By the way," he 
 began again, " we are a long way off the track ; we are 
 talking about chivalry, which is only a concomitant of 
 feudalism." 
 
 " Yes," said Stephen, " I was going to bring you 
 back to that. You have to persuade me that this 
 aristocratic-looking English system is not what it looks 
 to me a modern dynamo-house with a row of wax- 
 works outside in gaudy robes and tinsel coronets." 
 
 " I admit the tinsel and deny the waxworks. We 
 love tinsel ; in our climate it does something to make 
 glad the heart of .man, and we know that it does not 
 prevent the workman from doing his work well." 
 
 "If he is really a workman and not a waxwork. 
 But if you choose him for the coronet ? "
 
 88 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Philip, " that is the idea ; but we 
 don't, and we never have. You see, in this country 
 we are real believers in equality. We don't reject a 
 man because of his class or surname. Even if he is 
 born a Howard, he may yet rise to be a post-office 
 manager." 
 
 " Good ! " said Stephen, laughing ; " but he has to 
 rise. The feudal system saved him that trouble by 
 making birth and power the same thing." 
 
 " Pardon me," said Philip, " but you must really 
 let me contradict you there. In the Middle Ages they 
 thought nearly as much of birth as we do ; but they 
 annexed power not to birth, but to property. They de- 
 prived a duke of his dukedom for being poor." 
 
 " I did not know that," replied Stephen ; " but it was 
 surely only the precaution of a privileged class, anxious 
 for its own prestige." 
 
 "Possibly; but it was strictly in accordance with 
 feudal principles. The system was simply an organi- 
 zation of the resources of the country for the use of all. 
 Every one had his place, his duty, and his living wage. 
 A and B had the land and titles, and C and D and the 
 rest of the alphabet had a definite claim upon them 
 for housing, food, and employment. They have very 
 foolishly exchanged it for an indefinite claim for 
 charitable patronage, in order that they may be free 
 to boast of their independence."
 
 THE POLITICIAN'S ARGUMENT 80 
 
 " Oh," replied Stephen, " they are not all paupers, 
 surely ; and they have a vote." 
 
 " They have ; but the individual has little, if any- 
 thing, more than he has always had ; the power is not 
 with him, but with the head of his organization. He 
 used to be represented by his Lord. Lord and "Villein 
 they are still, though we call them Capital and Labour 
 in modern English." 
 
 " But Labour has its own organization now." 
 " Not for production ; only for revolt. That is the 
 uncomfortable stage which we have reached ; but it 
 cannot last." 
 
 " Still less can it lead back to feudalism." 
 Philip smiled meaningly and looked at Stephen. 
 " I can tell you with some confidence about that," he 
 said, " for I have studied the works of Buhner, our 
 most trustworthy sociologist. The present state of 
 things is leading us back, or rather leading us round, to 
 the old idea of an organized community. In that com- 
 munity every man will have a place, a duty, and a 
 living wage, and also a further reward, proportionate to 
 his value. The tinsel, which with your leave we shall 
 preserve, because we like it, will adorn the brows of 
 those who fill the higher and more responsible places. 
 Wealth in reason will be permitted too; but it will 
 never be acquired by mere chance, or held without 
 definite obligations. Those who do the best part of the
 
 90 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 most intelligent work will be enabled to live the most 
 dignified lives." 
 
 " I recognize the sketch," said Stephen, " and I am 
 very glad that it appeals to you ; but I must tell you 
 that my method was simply to draw it as different as 
 possible from anything that has existed, or now exists, 
 in England." 
 
 " It is a happy failure, then," replied Philip, " for it 
 represents very attractively the ideal of State Socialism, 
 the system from which we have come, which we have 
 never entirely abandoned, and to which we are inevitably 
 returning." 
 
 "It is a pretty paradox," said Stephen. "But I 
 need no conversion ; you must try it on your Con- 
 servative friends." 
 
 " I thought you would say that," replied Philip, 
 with an appreciative smile, " and I confess that you hit 
 me hard. There are no hindrances like those of one's 
 own household. The Conservatives shy at the very 
 name of Socialism, because they own most of the great 
 fortunes and titles, and they fear either to lose them or 
 to have them burdened with hard-and-fast responsibili- 
 ties. The Englishman loves duty, but hates obligation." 
 " I should like to ask Mr. Earnshaw," said Stephen, 
 seeing his host approach at this moment, " which of the 
 two great parties is, in his opinion, the more likely to 
 coalesce with the Socialists."
 
 THE POLITICIAN'S ARGUMENT 91 
 
 "If bidding were buying, I should say the Con- 
 servatives," replied Mr. Earnshaw; "but in some 
 bargains there are other considerations beside the mere 
 price." 
 
 "The Socialists," said Philip, "are not selling an 
 old horse to a kind home." 
 
 " No," said Mr. Earnshaw, when they had all done 
 laughing, " they are not looking for affection, but they 
 are looking for success ; and they will find it by joining 
 the party which is least handicapped by devotion to 
 system. So long as socialistic measures come singly 
 and are purely opportunist, there is apparently no limit 
 to the amount we can absorb ; for, among Englishmen, 
 the best individualist is at heart the best fellow-citizen. 
 But your German system spoils all for us. When logic 
 comes in at the door, persuasion flies out of the window." 
 
 " My father-in-law is incorrigible," said Philip to 
 Stephen ; " it is an old quarrel between us." 
 
 " It is a quarrel older than we are," replied Mr. 
 Earnshaw ; " it is as old as that " he pointed to the 
 long, silent slope of the park, where the cattle were 
 wandering in the moonlight. 
 
 The spell of the summer night fell upon the three 
 men, and they sat for some time without a word, their 
 thoughts all following the same train. For the first 
 few moments the scene had a strange air of unreality ; 
 they saw the hills and trees and silvered water as
 
 92 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 things which had been enchanted from life into 
 tapestry ; but soon they themselves were bound with 
 the same magic. This alone was real, and to think 
 again of their politics was to look from far off upon the 
 transient and dusty struggles of a half-forgotten world. 
 Is it possible, they wondered, that such things are still 
 in issue 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Earnshaw at last; "there is 
 nothing new under the moon. Let us go in." And he 
 led the way into the house.
 
 XIV 
 
 SUNDAY morning brought a still more dazzling sky, a 
 warmer air, and a deeper contrast everywhere of sun- 
 light and shadow. The year seemed to have done with 
 birth and transition; roses fell and roses opened, but 
 there was no longer any sign of change, any reason for 
 doubting that summer was to be eternal. 
 
 Stephen passed the morning in the west avenue, 
 sitting under a huge elm tree, whose upper canopy 
 towered a hundred feet above him, while the lowest 
 branches, rough and ponderous as the knees of a giant, 
 bent down almost to the mossy turf, and were sup- 
 ported there on stools of wood nearly as green and 
 uncouth as themselves. He had a book with him, and 
 was resigned to solitude ; for Aubrey had disappeared 
 from the breakfast-table with the explanation that she 
 was going to the Sunday-school, and Mr. Earnsnaw had 
 suggested that if he did not wish to attend church 
 twice in the day, he would find it more convenient to 
 wait till the afternoon service at Gardenleigh, and so 
 escape the longer walk to Croonington. It occurred to 
 him that as some of the ladies were intending to make 
 this journey and at least two of them had already 
 
 93
 
 94 THE OLD COUNTKY 
 
 made it before breakfast it could hardly be too far for 
 his own powers ; but he thought his host might possibly 
 have some reason for wishing to arrange his day for 
 him, and, since Aubrey was already out of the way, he 
 readily acquiesced. 
 
 Mr. Earnshaw's motive had merely been a desire 
 that his guest should feel free to do as he pleased ; the 
 tradition of Sunday at Gardenleigh was strongly against 
 compulsory service. His suggestion, however, brought 
 in its train another advantage, which he had not fore- 
 seen. 
 
 The "Earthly Paradise" lay open 011 Stephen's 
 knees ; he had read one of the sweet, sad stories, and 
 the still sweeter and sadder invocation to the month, 
 which followed it. His mind had lost its edge and 
 movement under the charm, and lay like an axe thrown 
 down upon the floor of the forest, no longer swinging 
 and trenchant, but half lost in flowers, and reflecting 
 only the green summer world above it. Into this 
 silence came no sound but the unceasing murmur of 
 the wood-pigeons, until a sharper note was struck by 
 the clank of the little iron gate which led from the 
 courtyard into the garden path behind him. He did 
 not stir, but listened idly to the slow tread of feet 
 upon the gravel, dying away behind the long sweep of 
 the intervening lawn. Voices, too, there seemed to be, 
 and he thought he could still hear them murmuring
 
 "OGIER THE DANE" 95 
 
 after the steps had gone; but whenever he held his 
 breath to listen, the sound had vanished. He had 
 ceased to wonder, when the green arch of the avenue 
 was suddenly flecked at the far end by two figures 
 returning slowly towards him. The murmur of voices 
 mingled again with his dream ; he feared to break it if 
 he moved, and it seemed as if a lifetime passed before 
 the sound changed suddenly from unreality to human 
 speech, and Aubrey and Eleanor stood by him. 
 
 "Don't move," cried Eleanor, with a smile of 
 sympathetic indolence ; " we are lazy too." 
 
 " I am not lazy," said Aubrey, as they sat down in 
 the basket-chairs opposite to him; "I have been to 
 school. Eleanor has done nothing yet ; she shall read 
 to us." 
 
 She held out her hand for the book, which Stephen 
 gave her. 
 
 " Yes," she said, turning over the pages as one who 
 knew them well, " that will do ; read us ' Ogier the 
 Dane.' " 
 
 " Shall I read the Argument ? " said Eleanor ; and 
 forthwith began in her low, clear voice 
 
 "'When Ogier was born, six fay ladies came to 
 the cradle where he lay, and gave him various gifts, 
 as to be brave and happy, and the like ; but the sixth 
 gave him to be her love when he should have lived 
 long in the world, So Ogier grew up, and became the
 
 96 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 greatest of knights, and at last, after many years, he 
 fell into the hands of that fay, and with her, as the 
 story tells, he lives now, though he returned once to 
 the world, as is shown in the process of this tale.' " 
 
 " Yes," said Aubrey, with an air of great enjoyment, 
 " he returned once to the world. Begin there ; we shall 
 not have time for the whole story. The others will be 
 coming home from church." 
 
 " Very well," said Eleanor, beginning to turn over 
 the pages in search of the required place ; " but does 
 Mr. Bulmer know the beginning ? " 
 
 Stephen replied that he knew no more than what 
 the Argument had just told him. 
 
 "Then I must explain," she said, "that Ogier the 
 Dane was one of the paladins of Charlemagne, and 
 a tremendous fighter and lover. In his long life he 
 saved France from the infidels, and conquered Babylon ; 
 he was King of Denmark, and afterwards of England. 
 When he was old Morgan le Fay carried him away to 
 Avalon, and set a ring on his hand which gave him 
 back perpetual youth. In Avalon they have no sense 
 of time. When Ogier had been there a few days the 
 fay comes to him and tells him that on earth it is 
 already a hundred years since he passed away, and his 
 fame is dim and scarcely remembered. France is once 
 more in danger from the heathen, and there is no one 
 like him to help, ' for men are dwindled both in heart
 
 "OGIER THE DANE" 97 
 
 and frame.' So he goes back, and finds himself un- 
 known, and all his generation long forgotten; but he 
 delivers the country, and is to marry the Queen and 
 be King of France. On his wedding morning Morgan 
 
 le Fay conies at sunrise and reminds him of Avalon 
 
 But you will hear the end when we come to it. I will 
 begin here 
 
 " ' Think that a hundred years have now passed by 
 Since ye beheld Ogier lie down to die 
 Beside the fountain ; think that now ye are 
 In France, made dangerous with wasting war.' " 
 
 The soft, clear voice began in the tones of every day, 
 but as it gradually became one with the unceasing flow 
 of the narrative, it took on a monotonous and half- 
 melancholy rhythm. Stephen's eyes were fixed on 
 Aubrey, who seemed to be too absorbed to notice him ; 
 but he had no sense of separation from her, for they 
 seemed to be floating together down the stream of 
 the story, and he felt that her thought was holding 
 his own with a force to which he willingly resigned 
 himself. 
 
 The poem is a long one, but it ended at last, and 
 for a few moments they all three sat silent. 
 
 " It is a good story," Eleanor began ; " it is so 
 delightfully fantastic, and yet so realistically put before 
 you." 
 
 " Yes," said Stephen, " the miraculous journeys to 
 
 H
 
 98 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 fairy-land and back are the easiest things in the 
 world : 
 
 " ' One moment on the twain the low sun shone, 
 
 And then the place was void, and they were gone.' " 
 
 " But so they were ; so they would be," said Aubrey. 
 " There is nothing either easy or difficult about that ; 
 you have the power, or you have not. William Morris 
 has it, as no doubt Morgan le Fay had. She would 
 not have been much of a fay without it." 
 
 " No," said Eleanor ; " her power was so absolute 
 that she could afford to give Ogier one more glance at 
 the rippling Seine. If he did not regret leaving it, 
 Morris does." She opened the book again. 
 
 " ' He turned, and gazed upon the city gray, 
 Smit by the gold of that sweet morn of May ; 
 He heard faint noises as of wakening folk, 
 As on their heads his day of glory broke ; 
 He heard the changing rush of the swift stream 
 Against the bridge-piers. All was grown a dream.' " 
 
 Aubrey looked mischievously at her. " Morris," 
 she said, " for all his revolutionary idealism, is a child 
 of earth, because he is a poet. Avalon was the better 
 place, he knows ; but poor old France, with her wars 
 and her gray cities and ancient rivers with real names, 
 is nearer his heart than any paradise of phantoms." 
 
 Stephen could not miss the challenge. " I dare 
 say," he replied, " if we only knew, his old France is 
 no more real than his Avalou. Do you think, if we
 
 "OGIER THE DANE" 99 
 
 went back as Ogier did, that we should find life possible 
 or intelligible, even here in England ? The life of past 
 centuries, I mean." 
 
 Aubrey's eyes brightened. " Life in England," she 
 said, " has always been possible and intelligible for an 
 Englishman. In the fourteenth century, at any rate, 
 I find myself at home ; it is only the more external and 
 accidental things that are different" 
 
 " Language ? " asked Stephen. 
 
 " Some of it," she replied, " I do not understand ; but 
 I often hear things said in very modern English that 
 have no meaning for me." 
 
 She flushed a little as she spoke, and Stephen could 
 have flung himself at her feet. 
 
 "There is one weak point in the story, I think," 
 said Eleanor, after a pause, " and that is that neither 
 Ogier nor Morris seem to regret the poor little Queen 
 of France, whose love is tossed aside as easily as her 
 crown." 
 
 " Don't you think," asked Stephen, " that that is 
 always so with Morris; he is satisfied if his heroes 
 are faithful to Love, but for him there is little or no 
 distinction between their lovers." 
 
 "He may be satisfied," replied Eleanor, "but we 
 are not. Even his enchantment cannot persuade us 
 that one woman is the same as another." 
 
 " Let us suppose," said Aubrey, " that in this case
 
 100 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 they really were the same. The Queen of Prance may 
 have been Morgan le Fay in human form. If Ogier 
 could go back and be reincarnated, why could not 
 she too ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Stephen, " that is a much better story ; 
 on such terms going back would be a very different 
 thing. But one would have to be sure." 
 
 Aubrey looked at him as if searching in vain for 
 a reply. Eleanor rose and held out her hands to help 
 her up. 
 
 " Let us go to meet the others," she said ; " I hear 
 them on the terrace."
 
 XV 
 
 MR. EAENSHAW had not forgotten his promise to lend 
 Stephen his notebook on the antiquities of Gardenleigh. 
 That evening, when the long hot day was falling to cool- 
 ness and quiet, when the noisy happiness of the children's 
 hour was over, and the company had dispersed for the 
 restful interval before supper, he seated his guest in an 
 armchair in his own study, placed a square, morocco- 
 bound volume in his hands, and left him to read as much 
 or as little as he felt inclined. It was, in fact, little 
 rather than much. The book was admirably kept, and 
 Stephen was astonished and interested to see how many 
 traces those forgotten centuries had left. But his 
 imagination was not to be impressed by mere lists of 
 names and dates. It was no doubt remarkable that 
 small and remote villages like Croonington and Garden- 
 leigh should have so continuous and well-authenticated 
 a history ; there were but few gaps in the list of rectors, 
 and none in that of the knightly tenants who held 
 Gardenleigh of the King in capite. Monumental in- 
 scriptions and Latin documents set out in full gave an 
 air of dignity, and a page or two of heraldic blazons 
 added a half-mysterious charm. Stephen was willing 
 
 101
 
 102 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 enough far more willing than he could have been a 
 week ago to consider these relics with an approving 
 eye; but the unadorned and unimpassioned manner 
 in which they were set forth gave him little chance 
 against his own long-ingrained habit of regarding the 
 past as a museum full of meaningless curiosities. After 
 all, he began to think, as he had often thought before, in 
 these eight hundred years some one must always have 
 been living here : one name is no more true than another 
 when all are empty husks, and if an entirely new list 
 were substituted for these to-morrow, no one would 
 perceive any difference. 
 
 So ran the argument, but he was less satisfied with 
 it than usual. There were, he knew, two people to 
 whom the difference would be a real one, instantly 
 detected ; and they were the two in all the world with 
 whom he most desired to find himself in sympathy. He 
 had a moment of acute discomfort as the thought struck 
 him that a day might be not far off when the substi- 
 tution of another name for his own on the Gardenleigh 
 dinner-table would be of infinitely less interest to its 
 owners than the changing of a Henry to a Hugh on the 
 Marland pedigree. To fail would be bitter enough, but 
 to fail because these dry bones could not live for him 
 was to be trampled by Fate in her severest, most ironic 
 mood. He rose suddenly and went to the open window ; 
 standing there with his fingers still between the pages
 
 "EARNSHAWS SELECT CHARTERS" 103 
 
 of the book, he looked through the hanging clusters of 
 the wistaria at the terrace and the hillside drenched in 
 the setting sunlight, and longed intensely for Aubrey's 
 presence to assure him that all was not yet lost. 
 
 " Is that my father's book ? " said her voice at the 
 door. 
 
 The playful humour of the tone was like the blue 
 returning to a thundery sky. He looked down at the 
 volume in his hand, and laughed at it with her. 
 
 "'Earnshaw's Select Charters' is the name it goes 
 by," she continued, '.'but no one ever reads it. They 
 prefer mine." 
 
 She laid a smaller volume on the table, an octavo 
 in white vellum binding, decorated on the sides with 
 gold heraldic tooling, and on the back with the words 
 " Gardenleigh, Vol. II." 
 
 Stephen put out a hand towards it. "May I see 
 it ? " he asked ; " it does look more inviting." 
 
 " It is a more popular style of work," she said ; " it 
 supplies a long-felt want. Not long-felt in your case, of 
 course," she added, with assumed gravity ; " but if my 
 father is going to examine you, it might save you from 
 being completely ploughed." 
 
 Stephen laughed; but the light words brought a 
 cloud that almost hid the blue again. He was in a real 
 difficulty, and he felt that it was Aubrey rather than 
 her book that must help him.
 
 104 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " I am afraid," he said seriously, with his eyes oil 
 hers, " that you think me very uninterested, very dull 
 and unsympathetic." 
 
 She gaily brushed his anxiety aside. " Oh no," she 
 said, "it is much to? soon to think anything so bad as 
 that ; you have not even read my book yet." 
 
 " I am sure to like what you have written," he said ; 
 " but that is not really the question, is it ? You would 
 not take that as conclusive ? " 
 
 " No," she replied, without wavering from her light, 
 unconscious tone. "I can imagine even a foreigner 
 liking what I have written; if we are to make an 
 Englishman of you, it must go deeper than that." 
 
 " Must every Englishman be made on one pattern ? 
 You have more kinds than one in this country ? " 
 
 " Of animals, not of men," she replied, with charming 
 scorn ; " beasts of the field may be turned out anywhere 
 Devon or Dakota, it is all one to them if the pasture 
 is equally rich. Even they, I think, know the differ- 
 ence, but they are dumb. When I speak of Englishmen, 
 I do not mean them." 
 
 He did not want to fall into an argument, but he did 
 want to assert his own good-will, to plead against the 
 touch of scorn in her voice. 
 
 " I wish " he began, almost timidly. 
 
 " I know you do," she said, laughing frankly again ; 
 " you wish you could see where we differ, and you can't*
 
 "EARNSHAW'S SELECT CHARTERS" 105 
 
 That is because you follow only your own line of 
 thought, and not mine; you must understand both if 
 you want to see how far apart they are." 
 
 " You have only to show me," he said ; " the will is 
 not wanting." 
 
 "I will show you," she replied; "in one way or 
 another, I will. But you must read my book first, and 
 get to know my friends, then we will compare notes 
 again." 
 
 She nodded as if to encourage him in his task, 
 pushed the book across the table, and was gone. Stephen 
 was divided between trembling delight at her tacit 
 recognition of his suit surely it had come to that and 
 anger at himself for making so poor a figure in what 
 might have been a great opportunity. He had gained 
 nothing except the book ; and for some time he read 
 the first page over and over without knowing anything 
 beyond the fact that it was in her handwriting.
 
 XVI 
 
 GKADUALLY the storm that shook his pulses abated, his 
 mental vision cleared, and he began to follow the 
 meaning of the words before him. But this reading was 
 unlike any he had known ; he was never for a moment 
 alone, never forgetful of the voice whose tones and 
 rhythm were faithfully echoed to his heart from every 
 page his eyes rested upon. 
 
 "If this volume is successful," the first chapter 
 began, " it will be the reader's favourite, as it is mine. 
 It is the book of the Marlands, the story of the 
 fourteenth century the century of Wyclif, Chaucer, 
 and the Black Prince. Gardenleigh was a small holding 
 then, but it was not a backwater, and the Marlands were 
 not outsiders : they did not make history themselves, 
 but they had friends who did, and they took a hand now 
 and then where they could be useful in a small way. 
 To begin with, they were Devon men; and, secondly, they 
 were business men. They left Marland St. Peter when 
 they began to prosper; young Eobert de Marland 
 inherited half Gardenleigh through his Colthurst mother, 
 and got a good appointment in Somerset. His son, Sir 
 Henry, went into the army, and did well ; he bought the 
 
 106
 
 " (JARDENLEIGH, VOL. II 107 
 
 other half of the knight's fee from his cousin, and the 
 family was successfully founded when Edward the 
 First was king." 
 
 The rest of the chapter was concerned with details of 
 the life of Eobert and Henry, told in the lively and un- 
 conventional manner in which, as Stephen had before 
 noticed, Aubrey habitually spoke of these ancient 
 inhabitants. Nothing could be more modern than 
 Eobert's bargaining with his brother Eudo for the rent 
 of the house which he eventually let to him on an 
 outlying part of the property; nothing more natural 
 than their subsequent quarrel and lawsuit, when 
 Eobert, irritated by Eudo's calm fashion of treating the 
 whole place as his own, denied him even his rights as 
 a tenant of the manor, and tried to prevent him from 
 taking "reasonable estovers" in his wood of Garden- 
 leigh. Of course, before the case came to trial the 
 women of the family intervened, and Eobert was 
 mollified; but it was only at the last moment, and 
 there were costs to be paid, which the brothers agreed, 
 as they lunched together at the Bull in Selwood, 
 amounted to nothing less than extortion on the part of 
 these rascally lawyers. 
 
 As for the purchase by Sir Henry from the last of 
 the Colthursts, Aubrey's account of it, though brief 
 enough, was singularly minute and realistic. It might, 
 Stephen thought, have served for the outline of a novel
 
 108 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 by Balzac, one of those sordid and pathetic pieces in 
 which hard cash and still harder feelings grind and 
 jingle against one another from end to end of an 
 incredibly interesting story. Last came the building 
 of Gardenleigh Church, the birth of the grandchildren, 
 and the death of Sir Henry, the old soldier who 
 had fought in so many of Edward's campaigns, and 
 lived to see the service going to the dogs under his 
 successor. 
 
 Chapter II. was longer and still more vividly 
 written. The reader was invited, or rather compelled, 
 to pay a series of visits to Gardenleigh between the 
 years 1320 and 1350. You saw the young squire the 
 second Sir Henry modernizing the house, and selling 
 here and buying there to round off the property to 
 which he had just succeeded. You saw the childhood 
 of his four little sons Edmund, William, John, and 
 Henry of whom no one could have guessed that the 
 youngest would be the one to take his father's place 
 thirty years later. You saw their friendships with 
 the Bryans Guy de Bryan was only a year younger 
 than little Harry and the Tremurs, whose second son, 
 Ralph, spent many holidays with Edmund, and in the 
 end bore him away to Oxford, much against his father's 
 wish. Guy was the favourite, and the three younger 
 Marland boys would all have gone soldiering with 
 him, if a bathing accident had not laid Will and Johnny
 
 " GARDENLEIGH, VOL. II" 109 
 
 side by side in the north chantry of Gardenleigh 
 Church. Harry and Guy were only the more in- 
 separable, and it must have been with a heavy heart 
 that Sir Henry saw them off to France, and came home 
 alone to wait for the news of Cressy. For Harry was 
 already his heir. Edmund, the eldest and dearest of 
 his four sons, had from his early years shown a discon- 
 certing taste for scholarship; then came his intimacy 
 with Ealph Tremur, a youth of vehement and masterful 
 character, against whose driving power the parental 
 influence carried on a very unequal struggle. It ended 
 in the departure of the two friends for Oxford, and their 
 entry into holy orders in due course. In 1331 young 
 Tremur was instituted to the family living in Cornwall, 
 and two years later Sir Henry persuaded Edmund to 
 come back as rector to Gardenleigh. But to a man of 
 Edmund's deeply earnest character a sinecure and the 
 easy life of a rich house were but a prison. He resigned 
 the living after a year's trial, gave away to his brothers 
 the property his father had settled on him, and devoted 
 himself to work among the seafaring population of 
 Plymouth, where a cure was found for him by John de 
 Grandison, the brilliant and energetic Bishop of Exeter. 
 But his health was often unequal to his determination, 
 and after his mother had nursed him through a series of 
 illnesses, the last of which kept him nearly a whole 
 year at Gardenleigh, she prevailed upon him to give up
 
 110 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 Plymouth and accept the position of chaplain to Lord 
 Berkeley in Gloucestershire. By so doing she un- 
 wittingly brought him within reach of a new danger. 
 The Black Death, which for a year past had been 
 decimating the clergy of the neighbouring district, fell 
 for the second time upon Portishead, and carried off the 
 incumbent with many of his flock. There was great 
 difficulty in supplying a properly qualified successor, 
 and Edmund, when he heard of it, at once volunteered 
 for the place. He escaped the epidemic, after all ; but 
 the anxiety bore hardly upon his parents, to whom, too, 
 the death of their old friend, Sir Guy, young Bryan's 
 father, came as the last and heaviest of a long succession 
 of cruel losses. At sixty-five Sir Henry was now an 
 old man, silent and broken ; but his troubles brought 
 him nearer than ever to Edmund, who was constantly 
 riding over to Gardenleigh between the Sundays. The 
 sympathy between them was deep, and needed few 
 words. Their happiest times were passed in the 
 high-walled garden on the hill opposite the house, 
 or in the little church, where so many of their old 
 associations were centred, and where in the sacrament 
 of the altar they renewed together their friendship 
 with the dead and their hope for the generations to 
 come. 
 
 Stephen read no more; he moved abruptly, as if 
 with sudden pain, and laid the book aside. The story
 
 M GABDENLEIGH, VOL. II " 111 
 
 was a simple one, but for some reason, which he did 
 not understand, it had pierced to the quick. A hot 
 tide of blood rushed through him, as if a great thought 
 had struck him unexpectedly, and the sunset light in 
 which he sat seemed to be part of an illumination that 
 was taking place within him not less than without. 
 He looked with new eyes across the valley to the upper 
 lake, by whose bank the home of these men had once 
 stood, in whose waters the church of their consolation 
 was still mirrored among its trees. For him, too, it 
 had, since yesterday, associations that could never be 
 forgotten ; it had gathered him into the fellowship of 
 all these centuries, and given the touch of life to that 
 which an hour ago had been to him the dust of graves. 
 To question Aubrey's authority, to ask upon what 
 evidences she had built, never once occurred to him ; 
 the facts of the story were the facts of human feeling, 
 the most irrefutable of all ; the characters moved and 
 breathed with the very fire of youth, the very sadness 
 and resignation of old age. They loved this place, he 
 no longer doubted, as Aubrey loved it, as he himself 
 was inevitably beginning to love it ; it was the back- 
 ground of his dearest thoughts and theirs ; they must 
 be his friends as they were Aubrey's. He desired not 
 so much to meet with Edmund as to meet him again, 
 and he looked down to the far end of the church path 
 as if in expectation that he might at any moment see
 
 112 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 him stepping out from the shadow of the trees ; for he 
 was forgetting, as he had never forgotten before, that 
 what to the eye is only a sunlit space of half a mile 
 may measure by the beat of human pulses more than 
 half a thousand years.
 
 XVII 
 
 THE evening was a warm one, and after supper the 
 moonlit terrace seemed a better place than drawing- 
 room or library. At first every one gathered in one 
 cheerful group; but as the still magic of the night 
 made itself felt, the conversation became quieter and 
 quieter, and the company melted away in congenial 
 twos and threes. Aubrey was soon sitting in her old 
 place upon the lower parapet ; and Stephen, as he stood 
 silent by her side, wondered what thoughts could be 
 stirring beneath the calm that seemed to have turned 
 the clear outline of her face to purest marble. 
 
 " Look ! " she said at last in a low voice, pointing to 
 two figures some distance away. 
 
 The moonlight gave them a weird distinctness, but 
 took from them at the same time all individuality; it 
 was impossible even to guess at their identity as they 
 moved slowly across the grass and disappeared without 
 a sound among the sombre yews and ilexes of the 
 garden slope. 
 
 " Who are they ? " asked Stephen, in the same low 
 tone. 
 
 113
 
 114 THE OLD COUNTEY 
 
 "Who can tell on such a night as this?" she 
 replied. "You know how in June evenings, or in 
 deep frost, or when the September moon is rising 
 behind great trees, things lose their century as they 
 lose their colour." 
 
 " I know now," he said. 
 
 She looked at him, and he saw that she understood. 
 " Was I right ? " she asked. 
 
 " You made one promise," he replied, " that you 
 can never fulfil : you said that you would show me 
 how we differed." 
 
 " Where have you been ? " she asked, smiling 
 faintly. " Did you make friends ? " 
 
 " That will come," he said ; " meanwhile I have met 
 with a magic stronger than my own." 
 
 " You will not burn your books ? " 
 
 " My books ? " he said quickly. " There is nothing 
 in them not one creature with the breath of life. 
 You can do what I have never done." 
 
 " You have done more than I," she said. " Your 
 people are phantoms, but you created them ; mine are 
 real, but I have only drawn them as I saw them." 
 
 " No," he said ; " you succeed where I have failed. 
 There must be life in the Future, but I have not 
 found it." 
 
 " It is not the explorer's fault," she said, with a 
 gentle earnestness that made his pulse leap ; " but in
 
 THE CAP OF DARKNESS 115 
 
 the land of bare possibilities there can be no one to 
 love. Love is the child of memory; it is the old 
 countries that are warm and full of friends." 
 
 He was silent ; the mere name of love from her lips 
 was more than he could bear ; his heart roared in his 
 ears like a storm in mid-ocean. 
 
 " If your friends are to be mine," he said at last, 
 " no one but you can take me there." 
 
 It was a sudden and dangerous moment; one 
 tremor of the hand upon the wheel, and mid-ocean 
 would have broken full upon her. But she heard the 
 change in his voice, and was not to be taken by 
 surprise. 
 
 " I have thought of that," she said quietly ; " but 
 to be hasty would spoil everything. It is further 
 than you think to the old house across the valley there, 
 and it would be better to know the risks before you 
 start. You talk of a magic stronger than your own ; 
 but you have not yet seen how strong it may be, and 
 you are mistaken in thinking it is mine to control. 
 You take it for a kind of literary gift in me a power 
 to convince by words, to make less real, less living 
 people appear almost as real and living as those we live 
 among. But that is the opposite of the truth. To 
 revisit the past in my way is to strip off illusions, not 
 to put them on. Time is the greatest of all illusions ; 
 it persuades us that our most fantastic dream is true
 
 116 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 the dream that things and people come into being and 
 pass out of being again though we know, if we once 
 think of it, that eternity is a single instant, and that 
 there are but two kinds of things or people those that 
 are, and those that are not. Those of us who are at all 
 are every one contemporaries ; but we live, as it were, 
 like figures in a tapestry invisible to each other, and 
 fondly imagining we are made of different thread to our 
 neighbours, whom we have never seen. There is no 
 reason why we should not see them ; they are here as 
 much as we are ; we have only to take the cap of 
 darkness from our heads and find them as human as 
 ourselves. In childhood we are wise; we know no 
 difference between the centuries ; but it is the first 
 business of our teachers to lay stress upon the trivial 
 contrasts of speech and dress which they think will 
 make the wooden peepshow of their history attractive ; 
 the rest the life we share they know nothing about. 
 I remember asking my first governess if she had ever 
 seen the Black Prince, and whether he was like any 
 one I knew. She scolded me for a silly child ; but I 
 have lived to know him intimately, and to see his com- 
 rades giving their own breakfast to a conquered Boer 
 army. They did not know that they were five centuries 
 out of date." 
 
 Stephen was silent. The great moment had come 
 and gone without result ; she had succeeded in keeping
 
 THE CAP OF DARKNESS 117 
 
 her course, and the wave had rolled on and spent itself. 
 Before another could gather she was speaking again. 
 
 " I am sure you have not forgotten your childhood," 
 she said ; " you must know that sudden falling from 
 you, that vanishing of the sense of time. I re- 
 member when it first happened to me I was in a field 
 full of cowslips and ladysmocks, near a little brook 
 where there were minnows. My sisters had run on and 
 left me, and when I stood up from dabbling in the 
 water I found myself in a world without hours or 
 minutes. I wandered about all day by myself, and was 
 brought home at dusk by a search party. Afterwards 
 I found that I could always bring this feeling back by 
 sitting down alone and saying my own name over and 
 over many times ; then I discovered that by repeating 
 in the same way the name of any of my favourite 
 heroes in history I could get nearer to them than by 
 all the pictures in the books. Their outward selves 
 vanished like my own, and we lived together as one 
 lives with intimate friends, by sympathy rather than by 
 the eyes." 
 
 " Yes," said Stephen, " I do remember something of 
 that feeling, though I had long forgotten it. But the 
 magic of a name " 
 
 She rose to go indoors. " Be careful," she said as 
 they crossed the terrace ; " do nothing rashly ; an ex- 
 plorer should always think of his return." She laughed
 
 118 THE OLD COUNTEY 
 
 with the half-caressing, half-mocking laugh that was 
 always Stephen's dearest memory of her. " I have 
 often thought," she said, " that perhaps some day I may 
 lose my cap of darkness once for all, and have to stay 
 the other side the valley altogether." 
 
 " Then I shall lead the search party," he said. 
 
 "Thank you," she replied as they reached the 
 verandah. " I should like that, if it is not too much 
 out of your way."
 
 XVIII 
 
 WHEN Stephen found himself alone in his own room, he 
 knew that sleep was far from him. His mind had never 
 been so clear and active, his recollection so vivid, his 
 every nerve so perfectly in tune. The entire field of his 
 consciousness seemed to lie before him like a smooth, 
 unbroken sheet of ice, upon which glided a hundred 
 images in a crowd that was never a confusion, endlessly 
 crossing one another's track in swift and unforeseen 
 figures, but never wavering from the symmetry of their 
 curves, and always returning to the centre at the 
 moment when they neared the outer darkness. Beyond 
 doubt they were his own thoughts, but they were in 
 some strange way external to him, and he followed their 
 course with a kind of amazement, for their movement 
 seemed to be concerted, and concerted by some agree- 
 ment in which his own will had no part. Why, he 
 wondered, should every event, great or small, of the 
 past two days be present to his mental vision at the 
 same instant ? Why should every thought, new or old, 
 combine to weave this recurrent tangle from which he 
 could not even attempt to break away ? 
 
 The problem was to discover the nature of the 
 
 119
 
 120 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 change which had taken place in him. His love for 
 Aubrey had ripened swiftly into passion. Was that the 
 secret of this starry dance ? Was he merely bewitched 
 by her music, her delicate mockery, her devotion to the 
 soil of her birthplace, her deep religious sense, her 
 historic imagination ? It might well have been, but he 
 saw with clear and instant conviction that it was not 
 so. That sudden new experience, which had come upon 
 him twice during liis first walk to Gardenleigh, that 
 certainty that he was remembering places which to his 
 knowledge he had never seen before, seemed to have no 
 traceable connection with Aubrey or the spells she had 
 cast round him. Was it in the place itself, this dreamy, 
 untouched corner of the West, that the charm lay ? 
 There was beauty enough here, by day or night, but 
 that which had enchanted him was the beauty which 
 lay behind the visible scene, the glimpses of the time- 
 less country into which not the magic of the earth, but 
 the voice of a child, had enabled him to pass for a 
 moment. Aubrey and the child they both knew the 
 secret; but it was not their own; it was no human imagi- 
 nation, but a birthright of the soul. Why had he waited 
 until now to claim it, and by what design was he at this 
 moment so hemmed in and whirled along in darkness ? 
 Upon the table before him lay Aubrey's book, and 
 he set himself to read it in the hope of stilling the 
 whirl of his thoughts. But though his mind, under the
 
 THE JOURNEY 121 
 
 guidance of hers, quickly freed itself from the eddy in 
 which it had been revolving, it found a fresh perplexity 
 in the very vividness and fascination of the narrative. 
 As he read the story of those lives, so ardent, so 
 complete, so tenderly coloured, they became more living 
 and more present to his imagination than the circle into 
 which he had followed the Aubrey of everyday life. 
 The faces and voices among which he had spent these 
 two days seemed to become faint and recede into a 
 distance which took from them all their vitality : 
 Aubrey alone still breathed, and kept her human speech 
 and laughter. The more he thought of her the less she 
 appeared to have in common with these toneless and 
 attenuated figures, or with the brief and trivial concerns 
 in which they were involved. She seemed to belong to 
 the world which she had called up for him, and he felt 
 that if he was ever to find and hold her real self it 
 must be there. 
 
 The night was now far advanced, and he was more 
 and more restless. He longed to be back in the moon- 
 light that still lay faintly cool upon the terrace below 
 his window. The darkened house, as he went down, 
 seemed to lie in a mortal sleep, and when he reached 
 the garden and looked back at it, he saw it as a huge 
 and stately tomb, and thought of all within it as 
 belonging to an irrevocable past, 
 
 The moon was far down towards her setting. As
 
 122 THE OLD COUNTKY 
 
 she dipped below the trees, Stephen, to whom nothing 
 could now have appeared strange or incredible, saw a 
 cloaked figure come out upon the upper terrace and 
 move quickly towards the green slope of the garden. 
 It was the figure of a woman, and surely there was but 
 one woman who could still be moving with the grace of 
 life by this great sepulchre of a buried generation. She 
 came towards him down the steps, passed without a 
 sign by the dark yew tree under which he stood waiting, 
 and turned to the left below him into the shadowy 
 alley which led, he knew, to the gate of the church 
 path. He listened for the clang of the iron latch, but 
 no sound came, and after a while he followed to the 
 gate. When he reached it, he found it standing wide 
 open ; outside the sky was fading into dawn, and there 
 was no one in sight. He strode quickly up the rising 
 path, and as he reached the highest point he saw among 
 the trees below the flutter of a white dress passing 
 quickly between the upper lakes and into the green 
 obscurity beyond. Again, when he followed, there was 
 nothing to be seen of it ; but as the sky above the far 
 end of the lake was flushing with the blue and crimson 
 that comes before the sun, he stood in the growing 
 light upon the further bank and looked up at the yellow 
 mullions and gray weathered chimneys of the old 
 house.
 
 XIX 
 
 THE hour of dawn is to most men unfamiliar; but 
 Stephen in his wanderings had seen the sun rise on 
 many lands, and knew well the keen shivering delight 
 of all the senses that comes at the moment when the 
 new day floods the world with new life and power and 
 gratitude. When this feeling had passed into the quiet, 
 half-drowsy mood of utter contentment that so often 
 follows it, he climbed the hill above the house, and sat 
 long among the faint and changing shadows of the trees 
 that hung upon the edge of the down, waiting for some 
 sign to give him a forward impulse and a clue to the 
 unknown path. Dream after dream floated past him as 
 the sunlight poured more and more warmly into his 
 veins, and many dreamlike recollections of his past 
 life mingled in the ceaseless drift. He knew the real 
 from the imaginary, but there seemed to be no longer 
 any difference in their importance ; all the pictures in 
 the book were equally shadowy, equally fit for the idle 
 contemplation of the soul in its place apart. He saw, 
 too, without any amazement, that here and there in the 
 landscape before him there were unfamiliar aspects, 
 slight changes such as those to be felt rather than seen 
 
 123
 
 124 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 after a period of absence; and from the opposite hill 
 the house from which he had come last night had dis- 
 appeared without a trace, though the avenues and the 
 old walled garden still remained. This was the world 
 he knew, but not the world as he had known it ; its 
 form and beauty were the same, but not its relation to 
 himself. Perhaps it was not upon the place, but upon 
 him that change had come ; was it, he wondered, that 
 change which comes to all men in their turn, the end of 
 so much they have known, the beginning of that which 
 they have never known ? It seemed possible enough ; 
 but the common name for such a change he tried in 
 vain to remember, or, if he remembered, he rejected it 
 as having no longer the meaning he required to match 
 his new experience. 
 
 His reverie was broken by vague sounds of move- 
 ment in the house below, and he saw that between the 
 clear expanse of the lake and the height from which he 
 looked the air was dimmed by a column of faint blue 
 smoke. It told him that here, too, were men, for here 
 there was a hearth and daily fire upon it ; here, then, it 
 might be Aubrey herself that he would find, and no 
 elusive phantom. At the same moment the beat of 
 hoofs came rapidly over the turf behind him, and he 
 saw two horses approaching by the avenue across the 
 down. One was riderless, but laden with packs on 
 either side ; the other carried a groom, who seemed to be
 
 THE ABRIVAL 125 
 
 upon this road for the first time, for he halted and 
 looked about him when he came to the steep pitch 
 where the path turned down the face of the hill. But 
 he passed on in a moment, and Stephen saw him 
 disappear through the stable gateway on the far side 
 of the road, and heard the clatter of the horses as they 
 were pulled up in the stony courtyard. At the same 
 instant a feeling of satisfaction came over him, as if 
 at the accomplishment of a journey : he knew that at 
 last he had arrived at Gardenleigh, and that nothing 
 remained for him but to descend and enter.
 
 XX 
 
 THE square-headed doorway of the porch stood open, 
 and from it as he approached came the figure of a priest 
 with both hands outstretched in welcome. 
 
 " Stephen ! " said a quiet cordial voice that was not 
 the voice of a stranger ; " here you are at last, after all 
 these years." 
 
 Stephen gripped the hands that met his own, and 
 looked straight and hard into the eyes that faced him. 
 
 " Edmund ! " he said ; and then, with sudden wonder, 
 " but how did you know me ? " 
 
 " We were expecting you," replied the other, " and 
 they told me that your man had come already. Besides, 
 you are far less changed than I must be." 
 
 Stephen looked again at the clear-cut, intellectual 
 face ; it certainly bore the stamp of more than its 
 forty-five years. The brown eyes and broad forehead 
 were still beautiful and serene, but pain and hard work 
 had drawn lines downward on each side of the mouth, 
 and set the lips together as the lips of youth are never 
 set. He realized with a quick stirring of sympathy 
 that what he had read of this man was something more 
 man a vivid tale. 
 
 I2G
 
 THE MABLANDS 127 
 
 "Yes," he said, "you have been through a hard 
 time ; I have heard it all, but some day I must hear it 
 all again from you." 
 
 " I can never tell it all," said Edmund, " and I am 
 not sure that the worst is not yet to come. You must 
 expect," he added, quickening his speech as if to change 
 the subject, " to find my father quite an old man now ; 
 but my mother is wonderful. She is as bright as ever, 
 and she is particularly happy at present because she 
 has Aubrey with her." 
 
 Stephen felt his heart fail and leap forward again ; 
 the power of speech deserted him. Awake or dreaming, 
 in one world or another, his whole consciousness was 
 gathered up into one thought, concentrated for one 
 effort. He followed Edmund in silence through the 
 hall, where servants were moving about, into an empty 
 room beyond, and out upon a stone-flagged ambulatory 
 on the eastern side of the house. There in the clear 
 morning sunlight lay a table spread for breakfast ; but 
 there were only two persons seated at it, and neither of 
 them was Aubrey. 
 
 The first to greet Stephen was Lady Marland. She 
 was singularly bright-eyed, and her voice had a high, 
 singing resonance like that of a bird. The delicate 
 proportions of her small figure and the quickness of her 
 movements added to the resemblance. She looked, as 
 Edmund had said, wonderfully young and active by
 
 128 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 contrast with her husband, who wore a black-velvet 
 skull-cap over his silver hair, and rose from his seat 
 slowly and with some difficulty. His face was thin and 
 worn, but it was not melancholy ; the white eyebrows 
 were habitually arched with an expression of almost 
 humorous resignation, as of one who, after heavy losses, 
 could still protest that life was giving him more than 
 a useless old fellow had any right to claim. But he 
 was evidently weak, and there was a weariness in his 
 voice that pierced even through the genial and charming 
 courtesy with which he welcomed his guest. 
 
 They all sat down, and breakfast began. Stephen 
 was placed with his back to the wall, that he might 
 enjoy the view of the lake ; but his senses were alert to 
 catch every sound in the house behind him, and he 
 returned but absent-minded replies to the first con- 
 ventional remarks of his hostess. 
 
 "You have not quite forgotten Gardenleigh, I 
 hope ? " she began. " It must be twenty years since 
 you were here. You have been a great traveller ; we 
 have heard something of your wanderings." 
 
 " My dear," said Sir Henry very gently to his wife, 
 " we must not ask Stephen too many questions ; by- 
 and-by he will tell us whatever he wishes us to know 
 about himself. What you do tell us," he added, turning 
 gravely to Stephen, "will be told to old friends who 
 always thought your father right wherever he was."
 
 THE MARLANDS 129 
 
 Lady Marland patted her husband's hand re- 
 assuringly. 
 
 "I was going to ask about Italy," she said, "not 
 about any private affairs. Aubrey has been in Italy 
 too." 
 
 Stephen started perceptibly. 
 
 " You remember your old playfellow Aubrey ? " she 
 continued. 
 
 " Not very likely, my dear mother," said Edmund ; 
 " she must have been a mere child." 
 
 "Where is Aubrey?" asked Sir Henry. "Why 
 doesn't she come to breakfast ? " 
 
 "She has been out early," said Lady Marland; 
 " and when I came down she had fallen asleep again ; 
 I did not like to wake her." 
 
 She half rose, as if to go in search, but sat back with 
 an exclamation. 
 
 Stephen turned quickly, and saw Aubrey standing 
 beide him, with the warm flush of life on her cheeks 
 and the old gleam of bright mischief in her eyes. 
 She held out her hand to him with perfect natural- 
 ness, but he looked in vain for any sign to show him 
 how far she shared with him in this new life the recol- 
 lection of the old. 
 
 " I am not late," she said ; " I am earlier than any 
 of you. I have been up to the garden to see the sun 
 rise." 
 
 I
 
 130 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " Aubrey is always straying," said Lady Marland to 
 Stephen, " and she will go alone." 
 
 " It is a dangerous habit," said Stephen, in the same 
 light tone ; but turning to Aubrey and looking intently 
 at her : " You might stray too far some day, and never 
 come back." 
 
 Her eyes told him nothing. " In the garden ? " she 
 replied. " How can one stray too far in a garden ? 
 And why should I not come back ? Unless some one 
 would build me a house up there," she added. " If I 
 lived at Gardenleigh, it would certainly be on the hill, 
 and not down here." 
 
 Was this unconscious or wilfully perverse, or was 
 she intentionally delaying the explanation until they 
 were alone ? It might well be so ; but as the talk went 
 on, and he heard her call him by his name, as an old 
 friend of her childhood, while her every look and her 
 very frankness denied him. any other acquaintance, a 
 fierce impatience seized him to compel the truth from 
 her, When breakfast ended, and he found himself 
 alone with her for a moment 
 
 " Tell me," he said, " after all this change " 
 
 " Yes," she replied gaily, " after all this change ? " 
 
 " Is it possible that you remember me as well as I 
 remember you ? " 
 
 " Quite possible," she replied laughing, " if you 
 remember very little of me."
 
 THE MARLANDS 131 
 
 " But I remember it would take long to tell you 
 how much." 
 
 "Then we are certainly not on equal terms," she 
 said ; " but, at any rate, I think I may say I am glad to 
 meet you again." 
 
 "Do you mean," he asked, "that we are to begin 
 afresh from so small a foundation as that ? " 
 
 " Oh ! " she replied ; " but what does the beginning 
 matter, so long as it is a beginning ? " 
 
 Nothing could be kinder than her manner, nothing 
 more unconscious ; and yet, as she turned to leave him, 
 he seemed once more to catch a passing glimmer of the 
 faint mockery he had so long known and adored.
 
 XXI 
 
 As the sun climbed higher and higher, and the day 
 began to pass from the freshness of morning towards 
 the long hours of noon, Stephen lost all sense of new- 
 ness in his surroundings; the change that he remem- 
 bered seemed to concern his present life and thoughts 
 as little as a tale of childhood, or the recollection of 
 some holiday once spent in foreign travel. There was 
 nothing strange in the delight with which he breathed 
 the warm, scented June air, and felt the beat of the 
 dusty buttercups about his insteps as he walked through 
 the park with Edmund by the side of Sir Henry's old 
 pony. It seemed to be the object of his companions to 
 spare him the embarrassment of questions, while giving 
 him freely every kind of information about their own 
 concerns. The reason of this he did not understand, 
 but it was evidently connected in their minds with old 
 troubles outside his own present knowledge, and the 
 delicacy of their attitude freed him from difficulties 
 which he had not had time even to apprehend. His 
 own affairs being thus put aside by tacit consent, he 
 found himself drawn immediately into those of the 
 Marlands, and carried away upon a stream both deep 
 
 132
 
 GRANDISON V. TREMUR 133 
 
 and turbulent. The world had been to him, until he 
 met with Aubrey, a spectacle rather than a contest, 
 and to this moment he had personally known but one 
 strong emotion, one possible cause of battle ; for though 
 he had written ardently and sincerely of the future and 
 its hopes, he had yet to feel the clenched anger and 
 desperate resolution with which a man of his breed 
 turns to face iron facts and a living enemy. 
 
 The nature of the trouble that was evidently weigh- 
 ing upon his new friends he did not perceive all at 
 once. On the following day, they told him, he would 
 have the privilege of making the acquaintance of one of 
 the most notable men in England. Their old friend and 
 patron, the Bishop of Exeter, had written to announce 
 that he would honour Gardenleigh with a visit on his 
 way from Bath into Devonshire. Sir Henry spoke 
 with profound admiration and respect of his coming 
 guest, and explained to Stephen at some length the 
 grounds, public and private, upon which these feelings 
 were based. 
 
 John Grandison, Bishop of Exeter since 1327, was, 
 it appeared, by birth and education, and still more by 
 character and achievements, a prelate of the highest 
 distinction. It was, to begin with, no small thing to be 
 the son of William Lord Grandison. This aristocratic 
 soldier of fortune, a captain, knight banneret and baron 
 of Edward the First, was a younger son, and eventually
 
 134 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 the chief, of the famous Burgundian house whose 
 principal stronghold has overlooked the Lake of Neu- 
 chatel from a time beyond memory. He claimed 
 kinship with the Emperor; his grandmother was a 
 cousin of Eleanor of Provence, his mother a daughter 
 of De Vaud, and his wife John's mother a great- 
 niece of Bishop Cantilupe, canonized as St. Thomas of 
 Hereford. She was, moreover, heiress to one-half of 
 the vast estates of her father, Lord Tregoze. 
 
 John, the second son of this last alliance, was bred 
 to the Church under auspices that befitted his descent. 
 He read theology at the University of Paris under 
 Jacques Fournier, who was afterwards to exchange the 
 professorial for the Papal chair. At an early age 
 young Grandison became Archdeacon of Nottingham, 
 and soon afterwards Prebend of Lincoln and Chaplain 
 to His Holiness at Avignon. Finally, after confiden- 
 tial employment as Papal Ambassador and other 
 marks of the highest favour, he was sent to Exeter at 
 the age of thirty-five. There he found himself in a 
 position of unexampled difficulty, faced by 1 turbulent 
 nobles, insolent monks, and a rough and independent 
 populace, with a cathedral in danger of becoming 
 ruinous, and a diocese upon the verge of bankruptcy. 
 But he was more than equal to the task. From the 
 first he had held his own against all opposition and 
 triumphed over every kind of obstacle : when in 1353
 
 GRANDISON V. TREMUB 135 
 
 the twenty-sixth year of his episcopate he com- 
 pleted and reopened the nave of his great church, he 
 had for years ruled the two wild western counties with 
 a hand of iron. 
 
 All this, and a good deal more, Sir Henry now 
 recounted to Stephen with evident appreciation, but in 
 a tone of depression which made it sound almost like 
 an estimate of the overwhelming power of a dreaded 
 adversary. For the explanation of this attitude Stephen 
 had not long to wait. There were many orders to be 
 given in preparation for to-morrow ; Sir Henry was 
 bound for the gamekeeper's lodge, and Edmund and 
 Stephen, leaving him there, were to walk on through 
 the wood to an outlying farm. For the first few 
 minutes after parting company they spoke of indifferent 
 subjects, and then fell into a silence, from which 
 Edmund at last roused himself with an effort. 
 
 " You must be wondering," he said, " why we 
 should look forward with such heavy hearts to the 
 coming of an old and valued friend, especially when he 
 is at the same time one whose presence is an honour 
 in itself. But it is the very depth of our obligation to 
 him which increases our apprehension. My father has 
 enjoyed his friendship for five and twenty years. I 
 owe to him my appointment at Plymouth, and many 
 other kindnesses ; and now for the first time we find our- 
 selves in danger of his serious and lasting displeasure."
 
 136 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 Stephen looked up in surprise, and his astonish- 
 ment deepened as he saw the stern expression of his 
 companion's face, in which there appeared to his eye 
 every sign of resolve and not one of submission. 
 Edmund caught his glance and seemed to under- 
 stand it. 
 
 "We admit our obligations to the full," he said. 
 " The Bishop has every right, human and divine, to 
 call upon our loyalty. Unhappily in this matter there 
 are also upon the other side claims which we cannot 
 deny. To be quite frank, we do not wish to deny 
 them, and I see at this moment no way out of the 
 strait place we are in ; it seems as if every grain of us 
 must be ground between the upper and the nether 
 millstone." 
 
 " What is the nether millstone \ " asked Stephen. 
 " What are these other claims ? " 
 
 " I will tell you," said Edmund, " but for my own 
 sake rather than yours. The story is a long one and 
 full of perplexity ; if it were not that I hope for some 
 comfort from you, and possibly for some help in the 
 strain of the next few days, I should be loth to burden 
 you with it." 
 
 Stephen protested his readiness to be of service in 
 any possible way, and after another interval of silence 
 Edmund began again. 
 
 " I forget whether you ever knew my friend Ralph
 
 GRANDISON V. TREMUR 137 
 
 Tremur, but you must, at any rate, have heard of 
 him?" 
 
 " I have heard," said Stephen, " that he was 
 ordained, and proceeded to a family living in Cornwall." 
 
 " True," said Edmund ; " but that is long ago : the 
 wind has blown many ways since then. Ealph was 
 not born for the Church at least, not to be happy in 
 it. It sounds strange, perhaps, for me to say that, for 
 it was through him that I came to take Orders myself; 
 but I knew him at Oxford better than any one, and I 
 had many misgivings about his career even then. It 
 was impossible to suppose that a man of his extra- 
 ordinary abilities and vehement character could ever 
 be content for long with the life of an obscure country 
 parson. He took the living to please his parents, but 
 he obtained leave of non-residence at the same time, 
 and stayed up at Oxford for another year. At the end 
 of that time he got the Bishop to extend his leave, and 
 again at the end of the year found it impossible to 
 tear himself away. He applied once more for an 
 extension, and I must say that he was treated with 
 more forbearance than he had any right to expect. 
 The Bishop was never lax in discipline; he resided 
 continuously himself, and he expected others to do the 
 same. But he sympathized in this case with a brilliant 
 and devoted scholar, and perhaps he thought he might 
 make a great servant of the Church out of him. He
 
 138 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 gave Ealph leave of absence for a third year, but 
 warned him that it was the last time he would listen 
 to such a request. By the beginning of the following 
 October he must be in residence at Warleggan. This 
 was in 1333; the year passed in futile attempts at 
 persuasion, and a month before the date named Ealph 
 had resigned his living. It is hard to blame him ; he 
 had no rival of his own age at the University, either in 
 scholarship or philosophy, and he is gifted in other 
 ways as well. He speaks with equal fluency in Latin, 
 French, English, and the Cornish dialect of his own 
 county. No preferment seemed to be beyond his 
 reach, and we hoped that his choice might prove to 
 have been justified in principle, though his best friends 
 regretted the abruptness of his methods." 
 
 " But surely," said Stephen, as his companion 
 paused for a moment, "the Bishop cannot still be 
 pursuing a fault of more than twenty years ago ? Is 
 he so vindictive ? " 
 
 "Not vindictive, but tenacious," replied Edmund. 
 " He never gives up a point he has once taken. In 
 this case he would have forgiven if Ealph had kept 
 out of his way ; but he would never have forgotten, for 
 he never forgets anything, and unhappily it is Ealph 
 himself who has kept his memory awake. He failed 
 to find the wider opening for which he had thrown up 
 his humble duties at Warleggan I have never asked
 
 GRANDISON F. TREMUR 139 
 
 why, but his temperament is a sufficient explanation 
 and as he became more and more dissatisfied with 
 Oxford, he took to haunting the neighbourhood of his 
 old home. He had always been liked down there ; the 
 rector who succeeded him was unpopular, and there 
 was a quarrel which came to the Bishop's ears. The 
 matter was not thoroughly looked into, and I think 
 that this time Ealph was unjustly blamed. But he 
 went on to a much graver indiscretion. He was always 
 of an inquiring and argumentative turn; he loved to 
 be in opposition, and would take nothing on trust. He 
 was singularly earnest and fearless, but religion was 
 to him a matter of evidence rather than of insight." 
 
 Stephen's interest was now fully awakened. "I 
 think I can guess what is coming," he said. "The 
 character you describe has all the makings of a great 
 heretic." 
 
 " Yes," said Edmund, without flinching, " you have 
 said the word ; it was in my mind for years before it 
 ever crossed my lips. But here we are at the farm ; 
 if you will wait a minute or two for me, while I give 
 my orders, I will tell you the rest on our way home." 
 
 Stephen walked slowly round the pretty house, and 
 looked into the farmyard, but his thoughts were else- 
 where. There was to him something unexpectedly 
 sympathetic in the character of this Ealph, as it had 
 been drawn by his friend and fellow-student. He
 
 140 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 longed to meet him and discuss with him fully the 
 position of the inquiring mind confronted by authority. 
 How little he had grasped the possibilities of that 
 position when both parties are in deadly earnest and 
 only one is free, he was soon to discover. 
 
 Edmund quickly returned, and they set out on 
 their homeward walk, taking a path which lay to the 
 right of that by which they had come; it was very 
 little longer, and would give them a glimpse of another 
 valley to the west, which was worth seeing. Stephen 
 brought the conversation back into its former channel 
 by warmly expressing his interest in the heretic, and 
 inquiring what form his heresy had taken. 
 
 "I am very glad you are interested," replied 
 Edmund, " because Ealph is a really remarkable man, 
 and yet with any one who is not to some extent biassed 
 in his favour it is impossible for his views to gain even 
 a fair hearing. He is said to have gone to extremes, 
 to have struck at the roots of Christianity. . . ." He 
 hesitated a moment and continued, "Until we can 
 hear from himself what he really means, we cannot 
 accept such statements, but the common report is that 
 he has for some time past denied the doctrine of Tran- 
 substantiation. Whatever his opinions may be, I have 
 no doubt that they are sincere, and founded on long 
 and careful study; but unhappily he could not be 
 content, as many holders of unorthodox philosophical
 
 GBANDISON V. TEEMUR 141 
 
 views are, to keep himself uncommitted in public. 
 He is a fanatical lover of truth, and has been for several 
 years now preaching his heresies about the country to 
 the common folk, both in the diocese of Exeter and 
 beyond it." 
 
 "And the Bishop will not stand that?" asked 
 Stephen. 
 
 "How could he?" replied Edmund. "It seemed 
 harmless enough to speak freely on such subjects 
 among one's undergraduate friends at Oxford. Inquiry 
 and disputation were in the air, and those who took 
 part in the fray were all pretty equally capable of taking 
 care of themselves. But the poor people of the streets 
 or the villages are at the mercy of a clever and 
 eloquent speaker. He risks a little mud-throwing; 
 but they are in danger of losing their eternal peace. 
 The Bishop is responsible for their souls, and he is 
 bound, he would say, to treat a preacher of heresy as 
 a wolf." 
 
 " Do you, then, side with him ? " asked Stephen, in 
 some surprise. 
 
 "On the contrary, I put his case as strongly as 
 I can because I am about to contend against it. Ealph 
 is my oldest and dearest friend. I know his character 
 as the Bishop cannot possibly know it, and now that 
 I am to have the chance of speaking with him in 
 private, I shall do my utmost to persuade him of
 
 142 THE OLD COUNTEY 
 
 Ralph's real goodness. I can say with perfect truth 
 that I have never known a more honest or sane mind, 
 or one more genuinely religious in its own way. No 
 one could seek truth more whole-heartedly very few 
 Churchmen can compare with him there but he is not 
 content to seek it only within the limits laid down by 
 the Church." 
 
 " He claims, in fact, the right of private judgment ? " 
 
 " No, no," said Edmund, quickly ; " that is not fair. 
 As I understand him, what he claims to set up against 
 accepted doctrines is not his own or any other man's 
 opinion, but a kind of necessary truth a truth derived, 
 he would say, by strict reasoning from facts within the 
 range of our ordinary senses." 
 
 "But the Church does not go so far as to forbid 
 the study of natural science ? " 
 
 " Not at all," said Edmund ; " but it teaches that 
 the knowledge of the material world is of small im- 
 portance compared with that of the spiritual; so that 
 if they conflict, if earth seem to tell us one thing and 
 Heaven another, it is the voice of Heaven to which we 
 must listen." 
 
 " And the voice of Heaven speaks only through the 
 mouth of the Church ? " asked Stephen, with compressed 
 lips. 
 
 "That," said Edmund, "is what Ealph has dared 
 to call in question. He maintains that when two
 
 GRANDISON V. TBEMUR 143 
 
 doctrines are opposed, reason alone can decide between 
 them ; in fact, that the voice of the Church is only to 
 be supreme when it accords with the human under- 
 standing." 
 
 " Well ? " said Stephen, well ? " He was chafing 
 like a hound in the leash. "What do you think 
 yourself? " he asked, almost fiercely. 
 
 " In these five years," said Edmund, " I have 
 thought fifty things about it. I have been torn this 
 way and that ; but I am less troubled now. Do you 
 see this wall?" he asked abruptly, stopping short in 
 his walk. 
 
 The path they were following had led them from 
 the first along the side of a low stone wall, much broken 
 and covered thickly with green moss. Whatever its 
 original purpose had been, it was now evidently no 
 more than a landmark. 
 
 "This," said Edmund, planting a foot against the 
 tumbled stones, "is the old boundary between the 
 manors of Gardenleigh and Buckland Barham. It 
 runs, as you have seen, right through the centre of this 
 wood from end to end, but without dividing it, as it once 
 did, for my father is now lord of both manors, and 
 Gardenleigh Wood and Buckland Wood are one 
 continuous covert continuous, that is, for their lord, 
 but not by any means so for others. The two manors 
 have an entirely different set of customs and tenures,
 
 144 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 so that to the tenants on one side and the other this 
 wall stands for a real difference ; one half the wood 
 is free to a Buckland man for winter firing, while 
 the other half feeds the pigs of his Gardenleigh neigh- 
 bour. I have comforted myself by likening the 
 territory of our minds to this old wood. There is a 
 true line of demarcation between theology and science, 
 and what is law on one side of it does not necessarily 
 hold good on the other ; but there is one lord of all, 
 and his friends may enjoy the whole domain. But the 
 lord, who is himself only the tenant-in-chief of the 
 King, is bound to act justly by those under him ; he 
 cannot force the customs of one manor on those who 
 live and work in the other." 
 
 " Good ! " said Stephen ; " and a very moderate way 
 of putting it too. What answer will your Bishop find 
 to that ? " 
 
 Edmund's face fell again. "The ploughman gives 
 no answer to the plough : he drives it through ; it is 
 he who commands the team. I am in the Bishop's hand ; 
 he is not coming to consult me, but to drive me like 
 iron through Ealph's obstinate heart." 
 
 " Defy him, then ! " cried Stephen, flaming up at 
 last. " What has your friend to fear ? If the worst 
 come to the worst, he will only be one Protestant the 
 more." 
 
 He had forgotten himself; but Edmund seemed not
 
 GRANDISON V. TBEMUR 145 
 
 to have heard the words : at any rate, he remained for 
 some time silent, and when he spoke again it was of 
 another subject. By this time they were once more 
 back at the keeper's lodge, and from there they struck 
 across to the house by the way by which they had 
 come out.
 
 XXII 
 
 STEPHEN'S hope of a quiet afternoon with Aubrey was 
 doomed to a sudden and unforeseen eclipse. Shortly 
 after midday a mounted messenger arrived in great 
 haste, bearing a note of apology from the Bishop, and 
 announcing that he had accelerated his plans, and 
 would reach Gardenleigh the same day. Lady Marland 
 put a good face on the emergency, and spoke warmly 
 before the servants of the great man's kindness in 
 treating his friends with so much confidence and in- 
 formality. Edmund exclaimed with admiration of the 
 wonderful energy of this hard- worked prelate of sixty- 
 four, who, to save a few hours, would ride through the 
 heat of a June day, and take his chance with a house- 
 hold unprepared to receive him. But Sir Henry was 
 silent and downcast ; he could not conceal the appre- 
 hension which, in reality, was troubling them all. It 
 was no pleasant business upon which their guest was 
 bound; and in such circumstances he who comes in 
 haste may only too possibly be coming in anger. 
 
 It was quickly determined that no formality should 
 be omitted. The Bishop must be met and escorted 
 home. Sir Henry had been out already, and his wife
 
 THE BISHOP ARRIVES 147 
 
 insisted that he should spare himself. But he could 
 
 go with Aubrey as far as the gate at the eastern end 
 
 of the garden avenue, and wait there in the shade 
 
 while Edmund and Stephen rode to the Bath lodge, 
 
 or as much further as time allowed. They set out aa 
 
 soon as the horses were ready, and rode at a smart 
 
 canter ; but as they passed the brook which lies in the 
 
 deep hollow on the Gardenleigh and Croonington 
 
 boundary they saw the arch of the gateway on the 
 
 hill beyond suddenly darkened, and knew they were 
 
 too late. Two riders the Bishop and his secretary 
 
 came down the steep slope at a foot's pace ; on a 
 
 nearer view both were seen to be hot and dusty, and 
 
 their appearance added to the uncomfortable feeling 
 
 in Stephen's mind that everything had somehow or 
 
 other gone wrong, and would probably continue to do 
 
 so. He was, therefore, agreeably surprised by the 
 
 manner in which Edmund's greeting was received and 
 
 his own presentation acknowledged. The Bishop's 
 
 whole address was full of dignity, but he expressed, in 
 
 the strongest and simplest terms, his regret at the 
 
 trouble which he must be causing by his change of 
 
 plans, and his unworthiness of the honour which his 
 
 hosts had done him in hastening out to meet him at 
 
 his entrance to their territory. Stephen looked hard 
 
 at him as he said the words, but there was not a trace 
 
 of insincerity to be detected. Every line of this man's
 
 148 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 face, every tone of his voice, proclaimed that he was 
 used to command and familiar with great affairs ; but 
 he held himself in with a proud humility, which was 
 evidently habitual and almost unconscious, as if 
 acknowledging continually that he was but a servant, 
 though his powers were great and would be put in 
 proof without hesitation. This attitude of continual 
 reference to a higher authority did not in any way 
 diminish the conviction which was immediately borne 
 in upon all who saw him, that here was a great man 
 surrounded by his inferiors. His force, both of mind 
 and body, was unmistakable. His figure, though spare, 
 was firm and strong ; his head, which projected slightly 
 forward over a deep chest, was keen and hard in 
 outline, with a pointed chin and straight nose, a broad, 
 low forehead and piercing deep-set eyes the head of 
 a very quick and resolute fighter, Stephen thought, 
 with the lean and clear lines of the athlete rather than 
 the ascetic. 
 
 The Bishop explained that his servants and bag- 
 gage were upon the road, but probably at some dis- 
 tance behind : he had, in fact, as afterwards appeared, 
 outrun them by nearly six miles in twelve. He rode 
 with perfect mastery a horse of great power and 
 beauty, very different in its paces from the ambling 
 ponies dear to most of the ecclesiastics of his time; 
 and he talked to Edmund without stopping as they
 
 THE BISHOP AEKIVES 149 
 
 cantered up the long slope from the brook to the 
 avenue. 
 
 There at the gate stood Sir Henry. He had dis- 
 mounted from his pony and was leaning on Aubrey's 
 arm; in front of him were drawn up four servants, 
 mounted and dressed in the white-and-scarlet livery 
 of the Marlands. As the Bishop passed between 
 them and came to the gate, Sir Henry moved forward 
 and put out his hand towards the stirrup; but his 
 guest impetuously refused to allow even the formal 
 execution of this act of homage. He flung himself 
 from the saddle without assistance, reining in his horse 
 so suddenly as to force it backwards into collision 
 with those of both the servants on Sir Henry's left 
 hand, and there leaving it to be secured as well as 
 might be. His manner to his host was considerate 
 and even gracious, but there was a masterful and 
 almost animal vigour about him which made the older 
 man's gentle courtesy seem pathetic and appealing by 
 contrast. Stephen was already deeply impressed with 
 the superior power of this dreaded antagonist; it was 
 impossible, he felt, to imagine him off his guard for a 
 moment. 
 
 He had no sooner formed this opinion than he was 
 forced to modify it. Sir Henry was drawing the 
 Bishop's attention to the young companion on whose 
 arm he was still leaning.
 
 150 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " Since you are good enough to think of us at all," 
 he said, " you must remember my niece Aubrey she 
 was Lady Salisbury's little favourite in old days." 
 
 The Bishop's face softened to a tenderness of which 
 Stephen could not have believed it capable. He took 
 Aubrey's hand in both his own. 
 
 "My child," he said, in the low tones of intense 
 affection, "it matters little who else remembers, if 
 Katharine does not forget." 
 
 He fixed his eyes upon her with a look of such 
 wistful sadness that Stephen turned away. 
 
 "Well, Henry," he heard him say, "shall we go 
 forward ? " and the next moment he saw him helping 
 his host to mount again. 
 
 Stephen and Edmund galloped ahead. "Whom 
 was he speaking of ? " asked Stephen, when they were 
 out of hearing. 
 
 " Katharine was his sister, Lady Salisbury," replied 
 Edmund ; " she died eight or nine years ago. The last 
 few years of her life she was with the Bishop almost 
 continually, and he has never got over her loss. Did 
 you see his face change when he mentioned her 
 name ? " 
 
 " See it ? " cried Stephen ; " it was like a mask 
 falling." 
 
 " No," said Edmund, " there is no mask ; his feel- 
 ings are all genuine you can see that from their
 
 THE BISHOP AEEIVES 151 
 
 vehemence but his love for his sister is the most 
 genuine and most powerful of all. Happily for us, it 
 is in our favour ; but it is the feeling he most seldom 
 shows." 
 
 " Still, he has a heart, and it can be touched." 
 "By Aubrey, perhaps," said Edmund; "for the 
 rest of us it is buried beneath all Eome." 
 
 Stephen this time was not so readily convinced; 
 he looked with sympathy upon the Bishop when he 
 entered the courtyard, and thought that in spite of his 
 abundant energy there was a touch of weariness about 
 his face when in repose.
 
 XXIII 
 
 HOT though the day had been, the sunset brought with 
 it a chilly breeze, and every one was glad to gather 
 round a wood fire which Lady Marland had ordered 
 to be lit in the gallery. This was a large room on the 
 first floor, running along the whole side of the house 
 and lighted by mullioned windows at the ends only. 
 But to-night the windows were closed, and the sombre 
 panelling was lit up by the blaze of the dry oaken 
 logs piled one above another between the great iron 
 dogs upon the hearth. Above, on the high carved 
 mantel that stretched upwards in the half-light, the 
 seven marlions in the Marland arms showed dimly 
 against the wavy gules and argent of the shield, and 
 along the wall stood several suits of armour with old- 
 fashioned helms, behind whose cross-shaped sights the 
 flickering firelight seemed now and again to rekindle 
 long dead gleams of chivalry. To the left of the 
 chimney on a high-backed chair of red-and-white 
 velvet sat the Bishop; a table by him was bright 
 with silver cups containing wine and spices. Opposite 
 to him sat Aubrey on a low seat down by the hearth ; 
 
 152
 
 STORIES BY THE FIRE 153 
 
 Stephen was next to her, and the Marlands filled up 
 the circle between. 
 
 For some time the talk was merely conventional: 
 some one said that a fire was very pleasant even in 
 summer, to which every one else agreed in slightly 
 varying forms of speech that did nothing to advance 
 the conversation. Stephen quoted a fellow-traveller 
 who had maintained that in England there is no even- 
 ing in the year on which a fire is not desirable after 
 sunset. Lady Marland disputed this opinion, and 
 Aubrey took her side, reminding Stephen that inferior 
 as the English climate was to that of Italy, it could at 
 times be more oppressively hot than he at present 
 remembered. 
 
 The Bishop alone remained majestically silent, 
 though the brightness of his deep-set eyes showed that 
 his attention was alert. like the great trout poised 
 motionless in the centre of the pool, who leaves dis- 
 dainfully to his inferiors a hundred in succession of 
 the morsels that the stream whirls down, and swoops 
 at last irresistibly upon that which he selects for him- 
 self, the Bishop seemed to be watching the eddies of 
 the talk for something that might be worth his while 
 to seize upon. The effect of this attitude upon his 
 hosts was fatally embarrassing. They were still unable 
 to guess the precise object of his visit, and, since he 
 was apparently pressed for time, it seemed possible that
 
 154 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 at any moment some chance word might give him the 
 opening for which he appeared to be looking, and bring 
 a crisis upon them. Lady Marland made a courageous 
 effort to clear up the situation. 
 
 " If this were a winter fire/' she said, " we should 
 be thinking of a story or a song." 
 
 The Bishop turned to her with ready courtesy ; no 
 hint could be too sudden or too delicate for him. 
 
 "Either," he said, "would be equally welcome 
 after my journey, and I am sure that Aubrey has both 
 in readiness." 
 
 " It is for you to choose, my lord," said Aubrey. 
 
 " No, no," he replied ; " but let it be one of your old 
 favourites." 
 
 She glanced up quickly and met his kind eyes 
 with a look of understanding. 
 
 " We used to like Marie de France," she said, " and 
 the Lay of Guingamor best of all." 
 
 The Bishop inclined his head ; Sir Henry made a 
 whimsical face of relief, as if talking to himself. 
 
 Stephen drew his chair a little away from Aubrey's 
 side, and sat back with one hand over his eyes, that he 
 might watch her face in the firelight as she told her tale. 
 
 "Once on a time in Brittany," she began; and 
 before the poem had reached the twentieth of its little 
 tinkling lines, he had ceased to hear it except as music, 
 and was lost on a shoreless sea of thought.
 
 STOEIES BY THE FIRE 155 
 
 He was recalled by a pause in the even flow of the 
 narrative or was it that Aubrey's voice had suddenly 
 changed, had fallen to a deeper and more significant 
 tone? 
 
 " Yet had it chanced, while there he dreamed, 
 Far otherwise than as he deemed ; 
 For while he numbered three swift nights 
 Within that palace of delights, 
 Three hundred years had passed on earth, 
 And in the country of his birth 
 Dead was his king, his own folk dead, 
 Yea, all his lineage lapped in lead, 
 And all the cities he had known 
 Kuined by time and overthrown." 
 
 Stephen was wide awake now; the words went 
 through him like a wind sighing among pines. He 
 moved his hand from his forehead and fixed his eyes 
 openly upon Aubrey, as if to claim beyond mistake 
 some acknowledgment of the common memories which 
 they two alone, of all in the room, could possess. She 
 saw his movement, and turned in his direction, but her 
 eyes in the half-light were unfathomable, and though 
 her voice was full of meaning, it seemed that no one 
 else found in it more emotion than that naturally 
 demanded by the course of the story. 
 
 " So on the third day unafraid 
 To his dear love he came and prayed 
 That homeward now he might be sped, 
 With boar and hound, as she had said. 
 But she made answer, ' Have thy will, 
 Yet vain is this thy longing still,
 
 156 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 For while with us three days have ehone, 
 Three hundred years on earth are gone, 
 Thy king is long in darkness thrust, 
 And all thy kindred dust in dust. 
 Seek where thou wilt in that dim land, 
 There shall not come beneath thy hand 
 One man so old that he may know 
 The names thou lovedst long ago.' " 
 
 Again her voice fell to the close in a quiet, melan- 
 choly cadence that moved him strangely. He listened 
 on to the end with growing conviction; the tale had 
 become real to him. It was himself that crossed that 
 river into the old world where he had left his friends, 
 and where now he found their memory long forgotten, 
 and their homes fallen to ruin. It was on him that 
 death, long overdue, was creeping so swiftly when he 
 was once more rescued by his lady, and once more and 
 for the last time recrossed the river into fairy-land. 
 What then? What then? The soft music ceased, 
 and he awoke again ; whether to the real world or the 
 unreal, who could tell him now ? 
 
 " Thank you, Aubrey," said the Bishop ; " you have 
 told the story very sweetly. It is a fanciful thing, but 
 there is a deeper touch in it, a reminder of something 
 real behind at least, as you recited it." 
 
 Stephen looked round with astonishment ; the echo 
 of his own thought came from an unexpected quarter, 
 but it was none the less an echo. 
 
 " It reminded me of the story of Ogier the Dane."
 
 STORIES BY THE FIRE 157 
 
 He spoke to the Bishop, but kept watch on Aubrey 
 at the same time. She gave no sign of recollection. 
 
 " There are many such legends," said the Bishop ; 
 " they are, I imagine, all shadows of one true history." 
 
 Lady Marland begged that he would tell them the 
 true story, and the Bishop began at once, leaning a 
 little forward in his high-backed chair, and folding his 
 hands before him so that the firelight flashed upon the 
 great single emerald in his episcopal ring. 
 
 " In the last year of his life that high-renowned and 
 puissant Eoman Prince, the Emperor Trajan, led out 
 his chivalry to war against his enemies. And as they 
 were riding out through the Flaminian gate the whole 
 plain before the city seemed full of knights and men of 
 arms, and overhead the golden eagles of the Empire 
 floated in the air. Then Trajan saw that a poor woman 
 was standing before him in an attitude of weeping and 
 sorrow; and she made as though she saw neither the 
 eagles nor the host, but only the Emperor, and she laid 
 her hand upon his bridle, and cried to him by his name. 
 Then he asked her, ' Woman, what is thy complaint to 
 me ? for I am in haste.' Then she answered, ' My lord, 
 I am a widow ; avenge me for my son's death, for it is 
 breaking my heart.' And he said to her, 'Wait now 
 till I return, and I will avenge thee.' But she cried 
 out as one whom grief makes impatient, ' my lord, 
 but what if thou never dost return ? ' Then he
 
 158 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 answered her, ' If I should never come again, then he 
 that fills my place will also fulfil thy desire.' But she 
 cried again, being carried by her grief beyond respect, 
 ' What is it to thee if another does his duty when thou 
 hast left thine own undone ? ' 
 
 " Then the Emperor fell into a study, and afterwards 
 he changed his counsel suddenly, and said to the woman, 
 1 Take courage ; since this is my duty I must perform it 
 before I go. Justice requires it of me, and pity for thee 
 holds me back.' So he returned to the city with all his 
 host, and he searched for the murderer who had broken 
 that widow's heart, and found him ; and it was his own 
 son. Then he sent and offered his son to the widow 
 for death or life ; and she accepted him to be a son to 
 her in place of her own who was dead. 
 
 " Now it happened within the year, that Trajan died, 
 and because he had not known the faith his place was 
 found among the damned. But after certain years the 
 blessed Saint Gregory, seeing that many by the know- 
 ledge of the faith came into bliss in despite of their 
 insufficiency and lack of virtue, and remembering the 
 eminent justice of that Eoman Prince, was moved to 
 intercede with God for him ; and he prevailed against 
 the Devil, and Trajan was delivered out of Hell, and 
 received his mortal body again, and came into the world 
 in all things as a man, to save or lose his soul. And 
 while he lived, he lived without joy, in a grievous exile ;
 
 STOKIES BY THE FIRE 159 
 
 for though he had escaped from a place of torment, yet 
 he passed his days in a pilgrimage without friends or 
 kindred, ever lamenting those who had long since 
 perished. 
 
 " Nevertheless, it is to be remembered that in that 
 second brief earthly life it was given to him to embrace 
 the faith of Christ, and to receive baptism, and in the 
 end by short sorrow to merit the eternal Paradise." 
 
 The Bishop ended on a more triumphant note than 
 Aubrey, but he too had acquitted himself well; his 
 voice and manner, Stephen thought, were perfect, and 
 touched with a sincerity that no one could help feeling. 
 Aubrey herself exclaimed, with bright eyes 
 
 " my lord, if I had known ! How could you let 
 me shame poor Marie before so great a poet as Dante? " 
 
 The Bishop frowned. " I know nothing of Dante," 
 he said. " The story of Trajan was told to me in my 
 youth at Avignon ; I brought it over with others, and 
 intended it to go into my new Lectionary at Exeter. 
 If Dante tells it too, that may be a reason for omit- 
 ting it." 
 
 He spoke with a flash of quick feeling, and Stephen 
 rushed in to support Aubrey. 
 
 "It struck me too," he said, "that many of the 
 phrases you used came from Dante's version; and 
 surely what he says of Trajan's story in the Paradiso 
 is very beautiful
 
 160 THE OLD COUNTEY 
 
 " ' Then did he know at last how dear it costs 
 Not to have followed Christ ; for he had tasted 
 Both of that sweet life and its contrary.' " 
 
 The Bishop's colour deepened. "You are right," 
 he replied fiercely ; " that is beautifully said. Honey 
 is honey even in the blasted tree." 
 
 There was an awkward silence, broken by Sir Henry 
 with a half-humorous, half-deprecatory air. 
 
 " It is a strange thought," he said, " to go back to 
 the world again; I don't know that we should all 
 welcome the chance." He arched his eyebrows as if 
 he saw himself making a still worse business of a 
 second venture. 
 
 " My dear father," said Edmund, with an accent of 
 gentle response to Sir Henry's mood, "putting aside 
 your own chances of failure, don't you think it would 
 be interesting to take a look at the world five hundred 
 years from now, and see how it will be getting on ? " 
 
 The Bishop had quite recovered his serenity, and 
 surprised Stephen for the second time by expressing his 
 complete agreement with Edmund's view. 
 
 "I don't know," said Sir Henry; "I don't feel 
 sure. I can imagine myself grumbling even at a 
 better world than this." 
 
 " Oh," said his wife, laying her hand upon his knee, 
 "you are a very gloomy old gentleman this evening. 
 You forget that many of your favourite grievances will
 
 STORIES BY THE FIRE 161 
 
 have disappeared long before five hundred years are 
 over." 
 
 " Will they ? " he said. " Very well, my dear ; and 
 what of yours ? " 
 
 " Oh, I know you think mine less serious," she 
 replied, with a droll toss of her birdlike head. " But 
 I am quite sure of one thing: before many years 
 have passed, people will have got tired of these fast 
 young ladies of the present day, who dress more 
 like men than women, and waste all their time and 
 money in going about from one tournament to 
 another." 
 
 The rest laughed at this. Sir Henry shook his 
 head solemnly. 
 
 " You are quite right there," he said ; " there will 
 soon be no money left in the country for such games, 
 and in five hundred years why, we shall be lucky if 
 there is food for us all by then." 
 
 "Why so?" asked Stephen, for whom this fresh 
 turn of the conversation had an interest that could be 
 shared by no one else. 
 
 "Why," said Sir Henry, "ever since the Black 
 Death we have not known where to turn for labour. 
 The value of land has fallen ruinously. On the other 
 hand, the more there are to work, the more there will 
 be to feed. If once the population takes to growing 
 again, it will not be long before the land will fail us. 
 
 H
 
 162 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 In five hundred years there will be neither bread nor 
 standing-room in England." 
 
 Stephen hesitated ; the natural answer for him to 
 make was an impossible one. How could a man 
 reasonably claim to state as a fact the condition of his 
 country centuries hence ? 
 
 "I can imagine," he said, "that Englishmen may 
 find the island too small for them some day ; but surely 
 it is possible for the wealth of a country to increase as 
 fast as its population ? " 
 
 " Possible," replied Edmund ; " but only if you are 
 always at war and always victorious. That may 
 happen. As a nation we seem to be more and more 
 unable to keep our hands from war and plunder." 
 
 " No, no," said the Bishop, earnestly, " it will not be in 
 that way ; we have had enough killing and robbing. By 
 the time you are thinking of there will be no more war." 
 
 " I take it," said Sir Henry, " that by that time 
 war will have done its work. I grant that we soldiers 
 are a bad lot ; but you won't take it amiss when we 
 have turned England into the Empire, and when the 
 Empire is another name for the whole of Europe." 
 
 Stephen shook his head. 
 
 " I don't understand you," said Sir Henry. " You 
 are not a Churchman, Stephen." 
 
 " Henry," said his wife, severely, " you are not 
 witty, you are wilful."
 
 STOEIE8 BY THE FIRE 163 
 
 Stephen escaped from the necessity of explaining 
 himself, for Aubrey came to the rescue of her uncle. 
 
 " I appeal to my lord," she said ; " the Church does 
 not condemn all wars. There is always lawful war 
 against infidels. My view of the future is that in five 
 hundred years the whole world will have been brought 
 to Christianity by force of arms. It will take many 
 glorious victories to do that, and it is a crusade we 
 shall never give up until we have achieved it." 
 
 Stephen looked at her in bewilderment. Either she 
 was playing a part and of that he saw no sign or 
 she had no memory whatever of the world she was 
 forecasting, the world from which she, like himself, had 
 so lately come. 
 
 She saw his astonishment, and seemed to take it 
 for dissent. 
 
 "Well," she continued, "perhaps that may take 
 longer than I think; but do not tell me that I am 
 wrong about the growth of the Church Militant. Surely 
 we can see that beginning even now. As men and 
 nations rise, they must more and more leave trade for 
 chivalry." 
 
 "What do you say to that, Stephen?" asked Sir 
 Henry. 
 
 " If you ask me," he replied, " I foresee that how- 
 ever much fighting there may be in the future, there 
 will be still more trading."
 
 164 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " I won't believe that," said Aubrey. " We can't 
 be a nation of knights and a nation of shopkeepers at 
 the same time." 
 
 "So Napoleon thought," cried Stephen; " but he 
 found out his mistake." 
 
 He had hardly said the words when he recognized 
 that they were absurd; but his companions did not 
 appear to find them so. It seemed rather that they 
 had not heard what he said, for no one made any 
 comment, and the Bishop's next remark was in reply to 
 Aubrey. 
 
 " The school of chivalry," he said, " is a fine one ; 
 but it can never be of more than secondary importance. 
 The secular power must always be subordinate to the 
 spiritual, to which alone authority belongs. Whatever 
 may be in the future the relative positions of the 
 military and commercial classes, or of any others, there 
 can be no doubt that the supreme place in the state 
 must be allotted to the ecclesiastical hierarchy ; and if 
 we could at this moment look forward over so con- 
 siderable a time as five centuries, we should certainly 
 see an empire which, whether entirely English or not, 
 will be subject in every department of life to the Holy 
 Father and those to whom he may delegate his divine 
 authority. Here, among a race of self-willed and 
 almost heathen perversity, we are far from that heavenly 
 reign; but it is coming, and to see it with my eyes
 
 STORIES BY THE FIRE 105 
 
 I would come back ten times like Trajan, though I had 
 to come not from torment, but from Paradise itself." 
 
 The fire of battle rushed through every vein in 
 Stephen's body ; but he knew that he could do nothing 
 but harm by taking up such a challenge. In the 
 silence which followed the Bishop's words he regained 
 his self-control, and by a natural reaction passed to an 
 opposite state of feeling, He looked at the Bishop as 
 he sat there in the dying and uncertain light ; the 
 majestic figure with the deep eyes and finely chiselled 
 head seemed to vanish and reappear and vanish again 
 in the wavering shadows and brief gleams of the falling 
 fire, and strong and determined though it was in every 
 line, the strength and determination were to Stephen's 
 fancy almost pathetically impotent, the sport of mys- 
 terious forces over which they could have no power, 
 but upon which they depended for their fitful intervals 
 of real existence. 
 
 A moment later the last log broke and fell with a 
 soft plash into the white dust beneath ; only a dull red 
 glow remained upon the hearth; but as the company 
 rose to depart, a tiny gleam sprang again from some 
 hidden ember, and lit up the Bishop as he led the way 
 towards the door.
 
 XXIV 
 
 ON the following morning the whole household attended 
 an early service in Gardenleigh Church. Stephen, as 
 he followed the Marlands out of the bright sunlight 
 into the shadow of the porch, felt a sudden sense of 
 oneness with them all, which came as a relief after the 
 embarrassments of their last evening's conversation. 
 Then he had been acutely conscious of the inevitable 
 differences between their point of view and his; he 
 could not share their hopes, nor they his knowledge. 
 He had encountered also now and again, since he 
 entered this life of theirs, small novelties of detail, 
 slight enough in themselves, and of no importance in 
 comparison with the real interests in which he was 
 involved. These had passed almost unnoticed as they 
 came before him one by one ; they now recurred to his 
 mind in a single moment, but only to set off more 
 clearly the unchanging character of the place in which 
 he found himself once more summoned to prayer, and 
 to disappear finally beneath an overwhelming sense of 
 the unity and timelessness of all devotion. As he 
 entered the plain little nave and saw the chantry arch, 
 
 1G6
 
 MISSA COBAM EPISCOPO 167 
 
 the font full of wild flowers, the kneeling figures of 
 those who had already taken their places, he was moved 
 by a profound and welcome feeling of familiarity. 
 Everything here was as it used to be, and as it would 
 continue, he knew, to be after many centuries ; here 
 was order, peace, and the austere beauty of carved 
 stone. The service was in Latin ; but to one who had 
 lately come from Italy there was nothing unusual in 
 this ; and even if he had never heard it before, he could 
 hardly have failed to hear it aright, for its grave and 
 sonorous language sounded like the native tongue of all 
 religion, and seemed to need but little the interpretation 
 of the intellect. 
 
 Not less permanent were the elements of human 
 character which he saw displayed around him devout- 
 ness and indifference, fervour and lassitude, extremes 
 of reverence and conventionality, in their natural and 
 perpetual contrast; and when his eyes turned to the 
 chancel he recognized in the two figures upon the 
 altar-steps two of the fundamental and enduring types 
 between which are divided the priests of all time and 
 every old religion. The Bishop was dominion per- 
 sonified; his whole bearing was a combination of 
 dignity and power. The concentration of his look 
 never relaxed for a moment ; but the impression given 
 was of a force as completely controlled as it was 
 determined and untiring a force whose movements
 
 168 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 were harmonious because irresistible. This was the 
 personal aspect of the man. On this side he was 
 visibly linked to earth by the strong passions of 
 earth passions which had been diverted, concen- 
 trated, purified, but never subdued. To this side, too, 
 belonged his individual humility. But he had also 
 an outer and even more striking aspect: he was 
 clothed with majesty as with a garment. The prestige 
 of birth, of wealth, of great ability was a part, but 
 a small part, of the conscious splendour in which he 
 moved. What gave the imperious certainty to his 
 actions and the sound of finality to his speech was 
 the ever-present consciousness of the authority which 
 he wielded as a Prince of the Imperium Divinum 
 that Empire in which Kings are but as servants, States 
 as provinces, and nations and their armies as unruly 
 children. 
 
 To all this Edmund offered a complete contrast; 
 he was as lacking in physical strength as in ecclesi- 
 astical greatness. He had, indeed, both dignity and 
 power, but it was the dignity of submission, the power 
 of an infinite desire. His frail figure and spiritual 
 face had something about them which touched a finer 
 sense, and his voice could never fail to inspire both 
 peace and confidence; but Stephen felt with a pang 
 that in this world of ours it was not to him but to 
 the other that all the victories would fall. Yet
 
 MISSA COR AM EPISCOPO 169 
 
 again he saw that here, too, was an enduring force; 
 and he reflected that in a contest which is im- 
 mortal there are in truth no victories, nor is any real 
 defeat possible of that which is never destined for 
 death.
 
 XXV 
 
 THE Bishop walked back to the house with Sir Henry, 
 and Edmund followed with his mother. All four 
 seemed preoccupied, and Stephen and Aubrey found 
 themselves for the moment forgotten. They came 
 slowly and silently across the bridge together, but 
 when they reached the path an energetic impulse 
 seized them both, and they stopped suddenly and 
 looked at each other. 
 
 " It is too soon for breakfast," Aubrey said. " Where 
 shall we go ? " 
 
 "Anywhere out-of-doors," he replied, drawing a 
 deep breath of the bright morning air. 
 
 They turned away from the house, and started at 
 a quick pace up the opposite hill towards the garden. 
 Once in the avenue, however, Aubrey turned along it 
 to the right, and led the way to the opening on the 
 southward edge, where less than two days before 
 Stephen had stood, looking down from the new house 
 to the old. As he now stood there once more, with 
 the familiar scene outspread before him, from the 
 distant hills beyond the lake to the green bower 
 under the down, where the church lay nested upon 
 
 170
 
 STEPHEN IN EXILE 171 
 
 still waters, the thought came to hun that this was 
 the place and time to put Aubrey's memory to a 
 final test. If she were not playing with him, if she 
 had, indeed, no recollection of the old life out of which 
 she had seemed to draw him into this, then it had 
 been but a phantom that he followed, and, except in 
 beauty and in name, she had nothing of the Aubrey 
 he had loved. 
 
 "This is my favourite seat," she said, taking her 
 place upon the low stone wall which bounded the 
 southern side of the garden enclosure. 
 
 "Yes, I remember," he said quietly, but with a 
 beating pulse. 
 
 " Did I tell you that before ? " she asked, laughing. 
 " I am growing old and tedious." 
 
 "No," he replied; "but I remember seeing you 
 here." 
 
 She looked at him as if uncertain of his meaning, 
 but asked no further question. 
 
 "I imagine," he began again, "that this is the 
 place you were thinking of when you said you would 
 rather live up here than down there ? " 
 
 " Yes," she replied, pointing to a gap in the avenue 
 behind her, which left a clear plateau of level turf 
 between the lines of great trees to east and west of 
 it. "That is where the Gardenleigh of the future is 
 to stand. It will look to the south I love the south
 
 172 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 and here in front it will have a terrace, with a 
 stone balustrade like the Italian ones, and a round 
 bay in the centre with a sundial, just where we are 
 now." 
 
 " I can see it all," he said, " and so I am sure 
 can you." 
 
 "Oh," she replied, smiling, "I have seen it so 
 often." 
 
 " So have I," he said, looking at her. 
 
 Again she was silent, and this time he thought 
 she seemed to understand that he was not speaking 
 at random ; but the move was still with him. 
 
 " You will leave the avenue standing ? " he said. 
 
 " Of course," she replied. " It will be a new idea 
 to have the house in the middle of an avenue instead 
 of at the end of one." 
 
 "And, as I see it," he continued, "you will not 
 use the avenue for a road at all, but enclose it in the 
 garden ? " 
 
 She nodded, and then exclaimed suddenly, "But 
 how did you come to think of that? It only came 
 into my mind two days ago, and I have never said a 
 word of it to any one." 
 
 " That is how I see the place," he said. " And 
 there at the side of your house we shall sit in the 
 heat of the day under the avenue, and talk of Ogier 
 the Dane."
 
 STEPHEN IN EXILE 173 
 
 "Ogier the Dane?" she repeated half to herself. 
 " Where have I heard that name ? " 
 
 He trembled with hope. She seemed upon the 
 verge of memory ; but in a moment her brow cleared. 
 
 " It was you," she said, " who spoke of Ogier last 
 night. I meant to ask you some time what his story 
 was." 
 
 A sudden idea rushed into his mind. " Come with 
 me," he said eagerly, starting towards the western edge 
 of the gap where they had been picturing the house. 
 
 Aubrey left her seat upon the wall and followed 
 him. At the entrance to the high green arcade he 
 turned to face her. 
 
 "Here," he said impetuously; "it will be here. 
 Since you have seen so much, is it possible that you 
 cannot see more ? Can your dream give place and 
 reality to a house, and show you nothing of those who 
 are to live in it? Do you not know that where we 
 stand at this moment there will one day be another 
 Aubrey and another Stephen, telling old tales upon a 
 sunny morning in June? Ogier or Guingamor or 
 Trajan it is all one a story without time, a story of 
 the land where days are centuries and centuries are 
 indistinguishable ? That Stephen of the future what 
 if he, too, should learn the magic and leave his genera- 
 tion, as others leave their country, to go into a land 
 of exile five hundred years away ? Have you no
 
 174 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 feeling for that exile ? If he stood before you now, lost 
 to all his world, and alone in yours, would you deny 
 him a word of sympathy and understanding, a sign 
 that you knew him from the rest, from the unsuspect- 
 ing native-born inhabitants of your own century ? " 
 
 He spoke almost vehemently, but Aubrey looked 
 at him with clear, unconscious eyes. 
 
 "It is a new story," she said warmly, "and a 
 thrilling one. I have often thought that there is just 
 that difference between people. Some have a kind of 
 reality in themselves, and might belong to one age as 
 well as to another. Some are like reflections : they 
 seem only to exist because certain other things and 
 persons exist. You," she continued, with a delicate 
 direct sincerity in her voice, "are one of the real 
 people to me. I think in any century you would 
 always be living ; and I am not unsympathetic. I do 
 recognize that you have come from a different world 
 into this little old-fashioned corner of ours as I have, 
 in a way, myself. So there are all your questions 
 answered." 
 
 She smiled and held out her hand to him, turning 
 at the same time to move in the direction of home. 
 He responded mechanically, but he scarcely felt the 
 pressure of her fingers in his growing apprehension. 
 
 "The tale I am telling now," he said, "is truer 
 than you think. I am speaking of a Stephen you
 
 STEPHEN IN EXILE 175 
 
 seem to have forgotten, a Stephen who has literally 
 come from a different world, filled with recollections of 
 you. Does this seem mere folly, or do you remember 
 anything of the Aubrey for whose sake he has come 
 come by this very path, from the new house to the 
 old?" 
 
 She coloured a little, but looked at him with frank, 
 happy eyes. 
 
 " I am afraid," she said, " you think me wilfully 
 forgetful ; this is not the first time you have expected 
 my memory to match yours. I wish it could. I feel 
 that we are old friends, but I remember very little of 
 those days, except" she continued with a flash of 
 mischievous daring " except that I had a childish 
 admiration for a boy I used to meet here." 
 
 For one brief instant his heart leaped, then fell 
 almost to despair. This was a kind and beautiful lady, 
 but she was not his Aubrey, for he was not the Stephen 
 she remembered. He had spoken to her of yesterday ; 
 she answered him with recollections of a childhood 
 which had no counterpart in his own memory. As 
 they re-entered the cold, deep shadow of the courtyard 
 the house frowned upon him like a prison ; he felt that 
 he had indeed come far, and lost his way.
 
 XXYI 
 
 THE Bishop was in haste to continue his journey. 
 To-day was even cooler than yesterday, he declared, 
 and he was determined to leave Gardenleigh an hour 
 before noon. There was, therefore, no longer any 
 possibility of evading or postponing the dreaded 
 moment of crisis. After breakfast the orders for 
 departure were sent out to the stables, and Edmund, as 
 he sat with the two ladies and Stephen in front of the 
 house, was nervously expecting from one moment to 
 another to be summoned to the solar, where the Bishop 
 was closeted with Sir Henry. 
 
 At last the garden door opened, but to every one's 
 surprise it was no messenger, but the Bishop himself who 
 came out, and he came alone. He was more dignified 
 and masterful in appearance than ever, but his face 
 showed nothing like a frown, and his voice was 
 measured and courteous. 
 
 " There is still the matter of business upon which 
 I came," he said to Edmund. " I have just mentioned 
 it to your father, but I am loth to trouble him with it 
 further than is absolutely necessary. If you could 
 
 176
 
 THE BISHOP'S MOVE 177 
 
 spare half an hour to walk with me, I think I could 
 soon put you in possession of my views." 
 
 Edmund flushed deeply, and exchanged a quick 
 look of understanding with his mother. Gratitude 
 rang in his voice as he replied that he was ready then 
 and there. 
 
 " Perhaps your friend will give his counsel too," 
 added the Bishop; and Stephen quickly assented so 
 quickly that he saw too late the cloud that came over 
 Edmund's face. He realized, however, that it was 
 caused by a doubt of his own discretion, and deter- 
 mined to keep a tight rein on his feelings; the more 
 so as he did not altogether share Edmund's relief at 
 the unexpected method adopted by the Bishop. 
 
 Lady Marland and Aubrey looked on silently and 
 with some agitation while the three men left the house 
 together and moved away along the lake-side. But the 
 Bishop, so long as they were within earshot, continued 
 to talk with Edmund in a cheerful, unstrained tone 
 that was reassuring to hear ; and Stephen, who was 
 walking a step behind the others, turned back and 
 waved his hand encouragingly. Aubrey waved her 
 right hand in reply ; her left was thrown round Lady 
 Marland's shoulder with a charming gesture of pro- 
 tection. Whatever she was, she was no phantom ; and 
 Stephen felt that her friendship with him, even if it 
 were based on a double misunderstanding, was at any 
 
 N
 
 178 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 rate justified by a real sympathy. He was thinking 
 more of this than of the affair in hand, as he followed 
 his companions along the well-remembered path; but 
 when they halted halfway down the lake by a fallen 
 tree-trunk which lay by the water-side, he was sharply 
 recalled to a more appropriate train of ideas. This was 
 the place where he had once sat with another friend 
 and discussed the position and claims of the Church. 
 It seemed fitting and inevitable, as even the strangest 
 incidents in a dream appear to the sleeper fitting and 
 inevitable, that the Bishop should pause just here, and 
 stand looking out over the sunlit water and the broad 
 expanse of water-lilies. 
 
 " What I like so much about Gardenleigh," he was 
 saying pleasantly to Edmund, " is the orderliness of it ; 
 such as it is, it is always at its best, for everywhere it 
 bears the mark of obedient and industrious care." 
 
 He took his seat as he spoke upon the fallen trunk ; 
 Edmund remained standing before him ; Stephen leaned 
 against a tree at the Bishop's right hand, a position 
 from which he could see the faces of both, and appear 
 to make one of the party while holding aloof from the 
 conversation as far as possible. 
 
 " My father," said Edmund, in reply to the Bishop's 
 comment, " has the soldier's love of discipline. I often 
 wonder he ever allowed me to choose a profession 
 different from his own."
 
 THE BISHOP'S MOVE 179 
 
 " I have no doubt," said the Bishop, " that he was 
 rightly guided there. He saw that in the matter of 
 discipline there is no difference between the two. 
 Loyal submission to authority is the first principle of 
 both; of the Church, indeed, even more than of the 
 army." 
 
 Edmund was silent, and Stephen realized with 
 dismay that the line of attack was one which would 
 begin by putting his friend out of action, and end by 
 drawing himself almost inevitably into the conflict. 
 
 " It is in the name of discipline that I have come 
 here," the Bishop continued earnestly, "and I do not 
 think I shall have come in vain, if you are the true son 
 of your father. It is to you that I make my appeal 
 rather than to him, because the sacrifice which I am 
 about to ask of you all is a small matter to the rest, 
 and a heavy one to you. The friendship between your 
 family and the Tremurs is of old standing, but it is 
 no longer so intimate as it once was ; since the death 
 of his parents Ealph is the chief representative of it 
 on the one side, and yourself on the other." 
 
 " My mother has always been very fond of Ealph," 
 said Edmund. 
 
 " Your mother is a beautiful and tender character, 
 but her tenderness is one with her religion. If any 
 earthly love of hers were put in conflict with her love 
 for the Church, she would not hesitate. I have not
 
 180 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 wished to trouble her peace of mind by recounting the 
 terrible words and deeds of one to whom she has shown 
 so much kindness ; she will believe you if you assure 
 her that they are indefensible, and not fit to be named 
 among Christians." 
 
 At these words Edmund's pale face flushed sud- 
 denly, but he kept his self-control, and his voice, though 
 it trembled a little, retained its low, sad tone. 
 
 " My lord," he said, " I could not ask my mother 
 to believe on my authority that which is not within 
 my own knowledge. The facts will be not less painful 
 to me than to her ; but surely I must know them if I 
 am to guarantee them." 
 
 " The authority," replied the Bishop, " is not yours, 
 but mine. I have already told you that what I hear of 
 Ealph is not fit to be repeated." 
 
 Stephen here made an involuntary movement, as if 
 to come into the discussion, but a glance from Edmund 
 checked him. The Bishop, however, had seen what 
 passed ; he had from the first, for reasons of his own, 
 intended Stephen to take part in the conversation, and 
 he now addressed himself to both the younger men at 
 once, taking as he did so a more genial tone and manner. 
 " Come," he said, " let us reason together, and think 
 no more of facts or persons for the present ; right and 
 wrong are independent of our affections. The question 
 I put before you is one of duty. It is not one which
 
 THE BISHOP'S MOVE 181 
 
 arises now for the first or the last time ; it is involved 
 in the very fabric of human society. It is the question 
 of the obedience due from the individual to the Order 
 into whose hands has been committed the whole 
 direction of that society. I ask you to forget upon 
 whom this claim is now made, and by whose unworthy 
 mouth it is now put forward ; think of it simply as the 
 claim of the Church upon the loyalty of man." 
 
 Stephen could restrain himself no longer. He 
 moved forward so as to avoid Edmund's warning eye, 
 and faced the Bishop directly. 
 
 "My lord," he said, "forgive me if I speak from 
 a point of view which is not your own, but upon what 
 do you base this universal claim to blind obedience ? In 
 what sense can the interests of the Church be identified 
 with those of human society ? " 
 
 " There is nothing to forgive," replied the Bishop ; 
 " it is a great part of my business in life to answer that 
 question, and I may begin by saying that I do not in 
 the least expect to find a difference between your point 
 of view and mine. We probably all stand upon the 
 same ground ; where we may differ is in the clearness 
 and completeness of the survey we take from it. I 
 agree with you in repudiating the claim for 'blind 
 obedience.' If there is to be obedience, it should be 
 based on a scientific conception of the nature of human 
 society."
 
 182 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 Stephen could not conceal his surprise ; he assented 
 cordially to this proposition. 
 
 " Such a conception," continued the Bishop, " cannot 
 be derived from our knowledge of the world of nature, 
 for it must be rational ; nor from the idea of a distinc- 
 tion between races or nations, for it must be universal. 
 The community we are thinking of must include all 
 mankind, and our idea of it must take into account 
 spiritual as well as material existence. I need hardly 
 remind you that there is not, and has never been, more 
 than one sucfr conception of the world. In the Christian 
 view, and in that view alone, mankind is one vast 
 community, under the supreme government of God, 
 from whom all subordinate rulers derive their authority 
 directly or indirectly. This society, this Whole, is 
 divided and subdivided again and again into parts, 
 until we come down to the unit or individual. Every 
 one of these intermediate parts has a double aspect; 
 it is a Whole with reference to its own parts, and at 
 the same time a Part of the Whole above it. Now, 
 since this articulated commonwealth of the human race 
 is a true organism, a mystical Body, it must have not 
 only one government, but one law. Its law is this, that 
 the Whole must always come before the Part, the One 
 before the Many, the Community before the Individual." 
 
 Stephen would have spoken, but Edmund was 
 before him.
 
 THE BISHOPS MOVE 183 
 
 " My lord," he said, " I can but say that I humbly 
 assent to all this ; it has been part of my education 
 as a priest. But human life has two sides ; and when 
 you deal with me, not as an ecclesiastic, but as a 
 member of my family, surely the case falls on the 
 secular side." 
 
 " It is true," replied the Bishop, " that man has two 
 destinies one Spiritual, and one Temporal presided 
 over by two Orders of authority. Nevertheless, he is 
 not himself two, but one. We cannot be content with 
 any system which would separate his two existences ; 
 there must be some higher unity in which they are 
 fused. Of the two Orders, can we doubt which of the 
 two is that which must include and dominate the 
 other ? The One State can only be the Givitas Dei ; 
 the One Authority must be the Church." 
 
 Edmund could go no further ; it was not for him 
 to plead against the authority of the Church. But 
 neither could he leave the argument to be taken up 
 by Stephen where he had dropped it. He must escape 
 from this dangerous ground, however abruptly. 
 
 "May I remind your lordship," he said, "that it 
 is not the supremacy of the Spiritual Power which is 
 in question now; what we are permitted to discuss 
 is rather the sphere of its activity. Ealph is a priest, 
 and undoubtedly subject in every way to ecclesiastical 
 authority. Will not your lordship be satisfied with
 
 184 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 his submission, if his friends can bring him to that 
 frame of mind ? " 
 
 " No," said the Bishop, sternly ; " submission is not 
 enough. There must be recantation ex animo, and that 
 you will never get from him." 
 
 " The submission and penitence may be real," said 
 Edmund, " though the opinions remain ; and how can 
 any authority change them ? " 
 
 "What the physician cannot heal the surgeon 
 amputates," replied the Bishop, shortly, rising from 
 his seat. 
 
 " Ah ! my lord," cried Edmund, with despairing 
 earnestness, " forgive me if I offend, but there must 
 be some quiet place between expulsion and agreement 
 where opinion may breathe a silent freedom. I know 
 well that it is the inward union, not the outward, that 
 best deserves the name; but is it not also the rarer 
 and more difficult of attainment ? What is agreement, 
 as between man and man ? My brother and I may 
 indeed use the same words, but who can tell if they 
 bear the same colour to his inward sight and mine ? 
 It is our hearts, and not our intellects, that must be 
 one. If the heart submits, can the intellect deserve 
 the outer darkness ? " 
 
 A stormy cloud of anger was gathering on the 
 Bishop's face. He turned suddenly away from Edmund, 
 and spoke to Stephen in a voice thick with the coming 
 thunder.
 
 THE BISHOP'S MOVE 185 
 
 " And you, sir, how would you have me deal with 
 the conforming heretic ? " 
 
 Stephen's blood was up; he was glad of his 
 opportunity. 
 
 " My lord," he said, " it would be of little use for 
 me to adopt your standpoint, even if I could do it. I 
 should still see the world differently, for what is black 
 to you is white to me. What you call heresy I call 
 a salutary difference of opinion. I am a Christian and 
 a well-wisher to the Church ; but my view is that it 
 is by such differences that the Church benefits most. 
 Give them free expression, and answer the dissentients 
 if you can. Whatever the result of the argument may 
 be, you will stimulate intellectual effort and invigorate 
 faith itself. Besides, you will keep the minds of your 
 people alive to the fact that the aspect of truth is 
 continually changing. Hitherto the Church has always 
 been taken by surprise. All that you get by suppress- 
 ing inquiry is an unwholesome sleep, from which your 
 patient wakes bewildered. The fact is that authority 
 is no remedy for doubt ; it is only a drug that must be 
 administered in stronger and stronger doses. In the 
 end it fails altogether, and you get paralysis." 
 
 The Bishop's brow contracted, his head leaned 
 forward over his chest, and his eyes gleamed like the 
 points of two spears levelled irresistibly at Stephen. 
 
 " I asked for your opinion," he said, " and I cannot
 
 186 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 complain if you have given me nothing but words, for 
 you have nothing else to give. Learn from me in 
 return that life is not a school of rhetoric, where the 
 divine government of the world is an image, an 
 ornament, a figure of speech like any other, and where 
 the truths by which men's souls are saved are fit 
 subjects for a thesis or a disputation. You have been 
 listening to the same eloquent devil who has led Ralph 
 Tremur into the most deadly of all heresies, who has 
 taught him to deny the Sacrament in which all 
 other Sacraments are completed, perfected, and con- 
 firmed ; the food by which the people of Christ are 
 daily refreshed spiritually that they may not faint by 
 the way; the gift, than which it is impossible to 
 imagine anything more worthy of our acceptance or 
 more conducive to the salvation of men ; the mystery 
 in which is most triumphantly displayed the power 
 entrusted to God's ministers on earth. You speak at 
 large of salutary differences ; but I tell you that this 
 man preaches and affirms in public and in private other- 
 wise than as the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church 
 believes, preaches, and affirms. He dares erroneously 
 and heretically to assert and maintain that the bread 
 and wine are not changed substantially by the words 
 of Consecration; which manifestly, and beyond all 
 doubt, is to subvert entirely the Catholic Faith, to make 
 void every one of the Sacraments, and utterly to destroy
 
 THE BISHOP'S MOVE 187 
 
 the truth of the Gospel. Is it by the hearing of such 
 blasphemy that we shall refresh our minds and stimu- 
 late our faith ? If Authority is a drug, what is this ? 
 Is it not the venom upon the mad dog's tongue, and 
 shall we not justly harden our hearts to cut out that 
 poisonous tongue and cast it forth among the swine ? " 
 
 The blow had fallen. Its violence had taken 
 Stephen's breath, but left him unshaken ; he felt like 
 one who has expected a crushing swordstroke and 
 encountered only a handful of sand. He was none the 
 less embarrassed, for though he saw a hundred joints 
 in his opponent's armour, he saw also that the distance 
 between the Bishop and himself was too great for any 
 weapon of his to reach them. Besides, he repented 
 already of his own impetuosity, and was apprehensive 
 for his friends rather than for himself. 
 
 Before he could collect himself Edmund's quiet, sad 
 voice interposed. 
 
 " Let it be me, and not Stephen, to bear the blame 
 for having angered your lordship. It is all the fault 
 of my weakness in not asking at first what is exactly 
 the nature of the service required of us." 
 
 The Bishop saw the opportunity ; he turned with a 
 more gracious manner to Edmund, and the vehemence 
 died out of his voice. 
 
 " The Church is merciful," he said, " and so long as 
 there is any discretion left to me you may be sure,
 
 188 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 Edmund, that old friendship will weigh heavily in the 
 balance. Perhaps you have been unjust to me in your 
 thoughts. When I spoke of casting out, it was no 
 extreme penalty with which I threatened Ralph. For 
 excommunication I should not need to ask your help ; 
 but I have determined to offer one more chance to a 
 man who may, after all, be more mad than consciously 
 depraved. I am about to issue a letter to the officials 
 of my diocese, setting out the facts and enjoining upon 
 all my people that until this unhappy man has returned 
 to his right mind they are to abstain from all manner 
 of dealing or intercourse with him, and to refuse him 
 every necessary of human life. It is possible that, even 
 at the eleventh hour, this may bring him to a sense of 
 his true situation. He has now but few friends left 
 outside the diocese, and where they are, like yourselves, 
 in a position to give him shelter or support, I am 
 calling upon them, in the name of their duty to the 
 Church, to consider themselves as much bound by my 
 proclamation as if they were actually members of my 
 particular flock." 
 
 Edmund made no answer in words ; his eyes were 
 fixed upon the speaker's face, but they seemed to 
 convey no message to him. The silence again gave 
 the Bishop his opportunity. 
 
 "Do not think," he continued more kindly still, 
 " that I mistake anything you have said, Edmund, for
 
 THE BISHOP'S MOVE 189 
 
 resistance to the voice of the Church. Your desire to 
 save your friend Ealph is a right desire, and one for 
 which I honour you. It was upon this feeling of yours 
 that I relied in coming here, and I am glad to find 
 that it is not less deep and faithful than I had hoped. 
 Wild and reckless as he has been, it is difficult to 
 believe that he will not pause to reflect when he finds 
 that he is losing the countenance of even his best and 
 oldest friends." 
 
 Edmund was still silent, and Stephen wondered 
 whether the Bishop's attitude was purely diplomatic, or 
 whether he was in reality convinced of the complete- 
 ness of his victory. Whichever was the case, he 
 appeared to be satisfied, and as they came in sight of 
 the house once more his voice was once more soundin 
 
 O 
 
 a cheerful and reassuring note. But no one could now 
 mistake Edmund's look for anything but depression, 
 or Stephen's for anything but angry and ill-subdued 
 defiance.
 
 XXVII 
 
 TEN minutes later the whole party was assembled in 
 the courtyard. Two horses only were waiting there, 
 for the servants with the baggage had left nearly two 
 hours earlier, and the Bishop, who meant to overtake 
 them at Sherborne, had refused all escort or company 
 in order to be free to ride his own pace from the 
 moment of his departure. 
 
 Lady Marland and Sir Henry bade him good-bye 
 from the step of the porch. Both of them, Stephen 
 knew, must in truth have been relieved to see him go, 
 but this feeling seemed to be completely overlaid in 
 her case by her warm hospitality, and in Sir Henry's 
 by an old man's reluctance to part from a friend for 
 what might be the last time. 
 
 " Good-bye," said Lady Marland, in her high little 
 voice. " I wish you could have stayed to dinner ; but 
 you will find something in your saddle-bags to remind 
 you of us when the time comes." 
 
 " Good-bye," said Sir Henry ; " and if I live to see 
 you here again, I hope you will spare us a day or two 
 more perhaps when Guy and Harry are back from 
 France." 
 
 190
 
 THE BISHOPS DEPASTURE 191 
 
 " You may be sure," said the Bishop to them both, 
 " that I shall not forget your kindness, and that I shall 
 come again as soon as I can. I have many troubles to 
 contend with nowadays, and few old friends to help 
 me. I am the more grateful to those upon whom I can 
 still depend." 
 
 He looked round for the others: Aubrey was in 
 the middle of the courtyard, feeding the horses with 
 withered apples from the storeroom, but Edmund and 
 Stephen were close beside him, and his gesture seemed 
 to imply that his last remark was intended for at least 
 one of them as well as for their elders. His parting 
 words to Edmund made this clearer still. 
 
 "It has been a great pleasure to me," he said, 
 laying his hand on the younger man's shoulder, "to 
 find you here. I shall always be sorry that you are no 
 longer in my diocese, but I am happy to think that 
 your father has such a son within call." 
 
 Edmund looked steadily at the Bishop, but in spite 
 of his self-control his face showed nothing but pain. 
 
 "Do not praise me, my lord," he said, with an 
 effort ; " I am very far from deserving it." 
 
 "No; it is not for me to praise you," said the 
 Bishop, quietly ; " but you have the great gift of self - 
 surrender, and I am thankful for it." 
 
 Edmund's lips trembled; he was on the point of 
 some less ambiguous protest, but the Bishop had
 
 192 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 turned from him with an air of finality, and was 
 addressing a curt and formal farewell to Stephen. This 
 done he moved towards the horses, and bent over 
 Aubrey with a grave and almost sorrowful courtesy. 
 
 Stephen looked quickly back at Edmund, and from 
 him to his parents : he saw them all three as victims 
 helplessly enmeshed in the web of cunning. Edmund 
 at least was in rebellious mood; but even he had let 
 the time go by: henceforth the struggle would be no 
 longer with the spider, but with the net, in whose 
 entanglement every movement would involve them all 
 more hopelessly, for the net was woven of honour and 
 of circumstance. In his desperation he felt that he 
 must break the spell at any cost and in any way ; it 
 mattered little what was said or done, so long as this 
 fatal acquiescence was torn asunder and the possibility 
 of resistance once regained. He had no time to think : 
 in a moment he was standing by the Bishop, who was 
 in the act of mounting. 
 
 " My lord," he said, in a voice so full of emotion 
 that the Bishop turned in his saddle and looked down 
 in surprise, " may I say this before you go : I fear 
 that you are carrying away a false impression; that 
 you have misunderstood the spirit in which your 
 request has been received." 
 
 He stopped in evident perturbation, and for once 
 the Bishop's insight failed him. It was natural enough
 
 THE BISHOP'S DEPARTURE 193 
 
 that this young friend of the Marlands should have 
 come to his senses, and seen the outrageous impropriety 
 of his language of an hour ago ; his submission came 
 at the last moment as a fitting completion of the 
 morning's work, and the manner and voice of the 
 penitent seemed to leave no doubt as to his sincerity. 
 The prelate's face relaxed and his tone was of the most 
 gracious. 
 
 " I am more than glad," he said, " to hear this, and 
 to hear it from you." 
 
 For a moment Stephen was bewildered ; but there 
 was no time to ask himself what had happened. All 
 that he could see was the miraculous change in the 
 Bishop's manner ; he saw, too, in a instant how to use 
 his opportunity. 
 
 " There is one thing," he said, " one little thing, my 
 lord, which I beg you to consider. Could you not 
 grant a private audience to Ralph Tremur before you 
 take this step against him? It would mean a great 
 deal to us." 
 
 In his eagerness to enforce his petition by every 
 possible influence, he had almost unconsciously taken 
 Aubrey's hand in his. She hardly understood what 
 he was about, but she saw that he was very much in 
 earnest, and did not draw it away. Her apparent con- 
 fusion put a new thought into the Bishop's quick brain, 
 and again he deceived himself. Stephen, as he now 
 
 o
 
 194 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 saw him, was not only a young man moved by an 
 excellent impulse and a friend of the Marlands; he 
 appeared to stand in an intimate relation to Aubrey, 
 for whom no tenderness could be too great. The 
 gracious face softened still more, and the voice became 
 almost paternal. 
 
 " If it would mean so much to you," he said, look- 
 ing down upon them as they stood hand-in-hand before 
 him, " I will do what you ask. I will give you twelve 
 days from to-day. If within that time you can find 
 Ralph and persuade him to come to me, I will see 
 him. I shall be at Chudleigh. But remember," he 
 said, gathering up his reins, "I cannot wait beyond 
 the octave of the Holy Trinity ; and whether he comes 
 or not, I warn you against the bitterness of vain 
 hopes." 
 
 He raised his bridle hand and was gone, without 
 looking back. The next moment the beat of his 
 great horse's hoofs thundered on the steep path be- 
 hind the house, mounting at a pace that seemed to 
 the listeners to have something of the ruthlessness 
 of war. 
 
 Edmund was standing by Stephen and Aubrey ; he 
 had heard with amazement the Bishop's last words, and 
 his face was radiant. 
 
 "What have you done?" he cried. "Do you 
 know what you have done ? "
 
 THE BISHOP'S DEPARTURE 195 
 
 " Not quite," replied Stephen, looking at Aubrey. 
 
 " Can you find Kalph ? " asked Aubrey, eagerly. 
 
 "Find him!" said Edmund. "He is here! That 
 was our danger, and you have saved us, Aubrey." 
 
 " It was not I," she replied ; " it was Stephen." 
 
 Edmund looked from one to the other ; it was in- 
 credible that the Bishop should have granted anything 
 to Stephen. But since they both would have it so, he 
 was content. 
 
 " Well," he said, " I do not understand; but between 
 you, you have accomplished a miracle. And now let 
 us all go and bring Ealph home." 
 
 Stephen, too, had been puzzled, but his conversa- 
 tion with the Bishop was now coming back clearly to 
 his mind, and he suddenly perceived the explanation of 
 his own success. It was an embarrassing discovery, for 
 he might well seem to have profited knowingly by a 
 misunderstanding. As he passed out through the path- 
 way he was conscious that Aubrey's eyes were upon 
 him, and he wondered uncomfortably how his conduct 
 appeared to her. But when he looked round she 
 smiled in reply with sparkling eyes. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "that was a splendid stroke of 
 yours. You took him quite by surprise." 
 
 Clearly she had understood little or nothing of 
 what had passed; but he still wondered whether he 
 ought not to explain. Then he remembered that the
 
 196 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 Bishop had made two mistakes, not one. Of the 
 second, at least, nothing could induce him to speak. 
 
 " Come," said Edmund, turning back to them, " the 
 sooner we can tell Ealph, the sooner I shall believe it 
 myself."
 
 XXVIII 
 
 EALPH was at Curtrey Hill, a farm scarcely more than 
 half a mile from Gardenleigh House, but lying over on 
 the Buckland side of the estate, and completely screened 
 from the park and road by the continuous line of high 
 woods. He had arrived almost immediately after the 
 Bishop's first messenger, and had been taken over to 
 his place of hiding only just in time to avoid the 
 second. His presence there had been successfully con- 
 cealed from Lady Marland and from Aubrey, but the 
 knowledge of it had added greatly to the anxiety of 
 Edmund and his father, who were only too well aware 
 of the risk they ran if by any unlucky chance or rash- 
 ness on Kalph's part a meeting should take place with 
 the Bishop on their own ground. They must have 
 been drawn into the conflict before they had had any 
 chance of consulting with Ealph or pressing modera- 
 tion upon him; they could not have abandoned him 
 to his adversary, as they certainly would have been 
 called upon to do. The resulting situation must have 
 been the worst possible for every one concerned. 
 
 " What we have to do now," said Edmund, as they 
 walked rapidly up to the head of the valley, " is to let 
 
 197
 
 198 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 Ealph talk himself out, and then get a promise out 
 of him." 
 
 "Exactly what we have done with the Bishop," 
 replied Stephen. "Is there so much resemblance 
 between them ? " 
 
 Edmund was in high spirits; he laughed heartily 
 at this question. 
 
 " I wonder," he said, " which of them would be the 
 more insulted ! You could not imagine a more perfect 
 contrast ; each has just the qualities that are entirely 
 wanting in the other. You have seen the dignity, the 
 unction, the governing force, the constructive ability; the 
 other will show you the fanaticism, the rough common 
 sense, the learning, and the destructive critical power, 
 in which the Bishop neither has nor would wish to 
 have any part. The Bishop's intellect was from the 
 first mortgaged to his creed ; but there is probably no 
 proposition known which Ealph has not denied at 
 one time or another. However, you will see for 
 yourself." 
 
 " Do you know him ? " said Stephen to Aubrey. 
 
 " Oh yes," she replied ; " I have seen him more than 
 once, long ago. I remember I was very much afraid of 
 him ; he used long Latin sentences, and asked me 
 strange questions. Once he told me that there is no 
 such thing as time." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Stephen, flinching from his own
 
 RALPH TREMTTR 199 
 
 troubled recollection of their early talk upon the 
 terrace. " What did you say to that ? " 
 
 "I was angry," she replied, "and he asked me 
 why. I said that I would not believe him, because I 
 wanted to grow up; and he said that the soul never 
 grows up." 
 
 " I remember," said Edmund ; " but that was years 
 ago, when he was full of poetry and mysticism, before 
 he took service with Science. I am afraid he is only 
 too certain now that his own soul has grown up." 
 
 The light had gone out of his face as he spoke, 
 and his companions said no more. A moment after- 
 wards they reached the farm. 
 
 Ealph was not within, but he could not be far off, 
 for he had only just left the house. The path by which 
 he was said to ha" ve gone led them off to the left of the 
 road, by the side of a long hedge which divided a field 
 of pasture from a much larger stretch of plough-land. 
 Where the pasture ended they turned round its angle 
 to the left again, and saw not far before them a gate 
 which led back into the park. On the other side of it 
 two standing stones rose from a mound of turf. 
 
 " Those," said Edmund to Stephen, " are the oldest 
 of all our monuments ; they are called ' the Gardenleigh 
 Stones,' and are said to have been erected by the 
 Druids for some purpose connected with their heathen 
 sacrifices."
 
 200 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 They passed through the gate, and Stephen, as he 
 stooped to refasten it, heard a sudden exclamation. He 
 turned quickly, and saw Edmund hurrying forward to 
 greet a man who had evidently been sitting at the foot 
 of the great stones, and who was now standing placidly 
 in front of them with a peculiarly broad and shining 
 smile upon his face. Was it possible that this was 
 Ealph Tremur, the famous Oxford scholar, the man of 
 science, the great anti-ecclesiastical champion, the 
 proto-martyr of Protestantism, the one mind of all his 
 generation to foresee the trend of modern thought if, 
 indeed, he was not rather the progenitor than the 
 prophet of the change to come ? 
 
 Stephen's fancy conjured up the figure of the Bishop 
 beside him as he stood there upon the little knoll of 
 green turf, and compared the two antagonists; his 
 disappointment was keen, for the contrast was sharp, 
 and it was at the first glance entirely in favour of the 
 prelate. There was no appearance of birth, dignity, or 
 learning about Ealph ; every line of him was plebeian, 
 almost coarse, and but for the fact that his brown beard 
 and untrimmed curly hair were strangely out of keeping 
 with his priestly dress, his whole figure would have 
 seemed ordinary in the extreme. He looked young for 
 his forty-five years, but there was nothing graceful to 
 compensate for the lack of dignity, and his face was 
 conspicuously wanting in beauty or refinement: the
 
 RALPH TBEMUR 201 
 
 features were too thick, the eyes pale, the nose 
 spreading, the lips too full. Stephen remembered to 
 have seen just such a broad, smiling countenance in a 
 grotesque representation of the sun. But the smilo 
 was a good one, he felt, both kindly and confident ; and 
 he knew, as his hand fell into a grasp much wider and 
 stronger than his own, that here was, at any rate, a 
 human and a lovable character. A moment later he had 
 discovered that, though every feature of this face was 
 plain, there was not a trace of ugliness in it ; and he 
 found upon further reflection that the combination of so 
 much that was commonplace made up, after all, the 
 distinct expression of a personality unlike any he had 
 ever known. 
 
 " I suppose from your all coming here," said Ralph 
 to Edmund with the greatest good-humour, " that my 
 right reverend Father in God is no longer with you ? 
 Ah ! if only you could have let us meet ! " 
 
 " I can," replied Edmund. " I have come to 
 arrange it." 
 
 " Good ! " said Ealph. " Where is he ? " 
 
 " On the road to Chudleigh ; he expects you there." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Ealph ; " not here ! " His voice sank to 
 
 the tone of disappointment naturally enough, but to 
 
 Stephen's astonishment it suddenly rose again into a 
 
 gust of the most violent and uncontrolled rage. " The 
 
 fox ! " he cried ; "the foul, sleek fox. He has played
 
 202 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 with you, do you hear ? and he thinks he can play with 
 me. It is not on fair and open ground that he will 
 meet me, but down there in his own vile den, among 
 his own long-toothed cubs, where truth and reason 
 stand no better chance than they would in Eome 
 itself!" 
 
 His face was distorted and debased with anger, and 
 the sound of his own words as he spat them forth 
 seemed to increase his fury rather than relieve it. It 
 was in vain that Edmund tried to put in a word 
 of explanation; the torrent carried away everything 
 before it. 
 
 " I tell you," he went on fiercely, " that I know the 
 man, and you do not ; to think of reasoning with him is 
 the crazy bravado of drunkennes. He is an assassin, a 
 murderer of the helpless and unarmed, a perjurer who 
 swears away innocent lives and never takes an honour- 
 able challenge. Do you know what he has said of me ? 
 how he has warped my words and turned them against 
 me, like a secret poisoner at a man's own table ? Listen ! 
 Silence ! Listen ! In my argument against the authority 
 of Eome, I said that Peter the fisherman was no head 
 for a Church of Cardinals and Princes; no Pope, no 
 sacrificing Pontiff, no Potentate of Purgatory; but a 
 plain, good countryman, with little in his head but 
 country matters. This Grandison of yours knew well 
 enough! He could not meet me there; he charges it
 
 RALPH TREMUE 203 
 
 against me instead that I spoke of the Blessed Saint 
 Peter as an empty-headed rustic; and that I blas- 
 phemed Saint John as a liar and his Gospel as false 
 witness, because I reasoned in my sermon on the 
 criticism of the Scriptures that a man cannot be heard 
 to say both that he is one that beareth witness, and also 
 that he voucheth that his witness is true. What cares 
 he for truth, or what does he understand of it ? If he 
 stood here before me now, must I call him traitor and 
 cold-hearted coward, or dunce and numbskull, ass and 
 the colt of an ass ? " 
 
 It was not so much the unrestrained vehemence of 
 the man that shocked Stephen so painfully, but the 
 disappearance from his face of all that had ennobled it. 
 Nothing remained but the vulgarity, and from the sight 
 of such a complete and sudden degradation Stephen 
 found himself instinctively averting his eyes. Edmund 
 had taken Tremur's arm and was drawing him, still 
 vociferous and uncontrolled, along the edge of the wood 
 towards the path by which they had come. Aubrey 
 and Stephen turned away to the right over the grass, 
 and made more directly for the house, which they 
 reached without having exchanged more than half a 
 dozen formal sentences.
 
 XXIX 
 
 EDMUND and Ealpli were not at dinner, and it appeared, 
 upon inquiry, that neither of them had been seen near 
 the house. Aubrey explained to Lady Marland what 
 had happened, and a discussion followed on Ealph's 
 peculiarities, which had been well known to the whole 
 family since very early days. 
 
 " He's a queer fellow," said Sir Henry ; " but he's 
 a dear fellow, too, for all that." 
 
 "Henry," said his wife, in a tone of pugnacious 
 warning, " I hope you are not going to defend him 
 when he does wrong." 
 
 " Well, my dear," he replied, with a droll look aside 
 in Stephen's direction, " I'm a bad-tempered man 
 myself, and I always think there's something to be 
 said for temper." 
 
 "You are not bad-tempered," said Lady Marland, 
 severely " at least not to that extent ; if you were, 
 you know that you would be unendurable to every- 
 body." 
 
 "That may be," replied her husband with serene 
 irony ; " but Ealph is not unendurable to any one who 
 really knows him, and I can tell you why." 
 
 204
 
 STEPHEN'S MONEY 205 
 
 "Of course he has his good qualities," said Lady 
 Marland. " I hope we all of us have." 
 
 " No," said Sir Henry, " it is not only that ; it is 
 that bad temper is not so much a vice as an ailment, 
 and a very painful one, much to be pitied. Most 
 people learn that, and act on it at least most men 
 do." He glanced again at Stephen as an audacious 
 schoolboy glances at a quieter companion. 
 
 Stephen thought it might be well to save his hostess 
 from further aggravation, however humorously ad- 
 ministered. 
 
 " I confess," he said, " that I was really troubled by 
 what I saw this morning ; it was so complete a trans- 
 formation, and so ugly. But I can quite understand 
 what Sir Henry means about such faults not making 
 a man unendurable to his friends. We don't love our 
 friends for their qualities, and obviously we don't hate 
 them for their faults, if they are really friends." 
 
 " I wonder what it is exactly that we do love them 
 for," said Aubrey. 
 
 " For themselves," replied Stephen " for their 
 personality." 
 
 " "What is it, then," she asked, " that makes them 
 themselves ? " 
 
 He looked across at her, and a long train of thought 
 formed in his brain so rapidly that every link of it 
 seemed to have gone past before he could seize and
 
 206 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 arrest it. Three days ago he would have been in no 
 such difficulty ; but since then the question had taken 
 an unheard-of form, and here was the Sphinx herself 
 asking him the riddle of her own existence. 
 
 Aubrey saw that he was lost in a reverie ; but his 
 gaze remained fixed upon her, and she knew that her 
 aunt was looking quietly at both of them, speculating 
 probably on the meaning of the sudden silence. She 
 rose rather hastily, made some trifling request, and left 
 the room. 
 
 " Aubrey says odd things at times," Lady Marland 
 observed to Stephen, who was still absorbed in his own 
 thoughts; "but there is no harm in being a little un- 
 usual ; she is as good as gold, and never cross-grained." 
 
 He came back to consciousness at this, but it took 
 a moment or two for the mental context of the remark 
 to become plain to him. When at last he perceived 
 the trend of her thought, he felt his cheeks burn sud- 
 denly, as if with a sharp blow. 
 
 "No, indeed," he said, "she need^ no defending." 
 And he added lamely, " I was not thinking of her 
 at all." 
 
 His embarrassment seemed to give Lady Marland 
 complete satisfaction; but at this moment a servant 
 entered the room and announced the arrival of a mes- 
 senger for Stephen. He supposed it to be a man from 
 the farm, sent by Edmund, and went out at once to the
 
 STEPHEN'S MONEY 207 
 
 courtyard, glad enough to escape, as Aubrey had done, 
 from a position of unavoidable awkwardness. 
 
 The messenger had come on horseback, and evidently 
 from a much greater distance than Stephen had con- 
 jectured. He brought a small but heavy packet, which 
 he was commissioned, he said, to deliver only into the 
 hands of the gentleman to whom it was addressed. 
 Stephen took it accordingly, directed him to stable his 
 horse and come back to the house for refreshment, and 
 turned away, with knife in hand, to cut the string of his 
 parcel. But as he was in the very act, recollection 
 came upon him like a flash from a distant mirror, 
 startling and puzzling at once. From whom in the 
 world from whom in this world could the thing have 
 come for him ? To the Marlands only, of all their gene- 
 ration, could he or his presence here be known ; and from 
 his own lost world what message or what messenger 
 could follow him ? 
 
 In part, at any rate, these questions could be solved 
 at once ; but his mind was so busy that his fingers still 
 delayed, and it was not until he had passed through the 
 hall, and returned to the room where he had left his 
 friends, that he opened the parcel at last, and removed 
 the outer wrapping. Inside was a smaller but more 
 solid packet, and a letter on which his own name was 
 once more inscribed. 
 
 He read the letter twice. The writer, a steward of
 
 208 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 his own, apparently, on an estate in Warwickshire, 
 informed him that he was sending, as requested, a sum 
 of money representing one-fifth of the rents paid at 
 Lady Day, and requested his instructions as to the 
 remainder, which, whether in money or in kind, he now 
 held at his master's disposal. The packet contained a 
 round sum in gold, and Stephen perceived by a very 
 simple calculation that his income from this source was 
 a considerable one. 
 
 It might well have occurred to him to doubt his 
 own right to this property, but a certain disappointment 
 at the commonplace nature of the letter, and a sense of 
 difficulty in replying to it, for the moment entirely 
 engrossed his thoughts. Afterwards a curious feeling 
 grew upon him that the whole transaction, troublesome 
 as it was, was not troublesome for the first time ; the 
 familiarity of it became more and more impressed upon 
 him, till something like memory began to stir about it, 
 and he was no longer sure that he had not actually 
 given, or dreamed that he was giving, the orders which 
 his agent had obeyed. But that was later ; at the first 
 moment he was conscious only of the difficulties of the 
 situation, and instinctively he passed the letter across 
 the table to Sir Henry, without committing himself to 
 a word of explanation. 
 
 Sir Henry read it in his turn, laid it down, and took 
 up the money.
 
 STEPHEN'S MONEY 209 
 
 "If I understand it rightly," he said, " this is a fifth 
 part of your rents for the half-year, or one-tenth of 
 your annual income. But what you want with so 
 much money here, I cannot imagine." 
 
 "Oh, money is always useful," replied Stephen, 
 vaguely. " I can't tell when I may be needing it." 
 
 " In the mean time, I suppose you want me to put it 
 away for you in a place of safety ? " 
 
 He counted the gold pieces out upon the table. 
 Stephen took two of them, and packed up the rest 
 again. 
 
 " I'll see to that at once," said Sir Henry ; and he 
 left the room accordingly. 
 
 " My dear Stephen," said Lady Marland, when he 
 had gone, " this is a welcome surprise to me. I had no 
 idea your father had left you so well off ; I imagined 
 he had parted with that Warwickshire property long 
 ago. There is no house on it, is there ? You might 
 settle down near us, and look about you for a wife. 
 But perhaps you have thought of that already ? " 
 
 " You are very kind," he replied in his most formal 
 tone, " but there are difficulties of which you can hardly 
 be aware." 
 
 She looked encouragingly at him, but he said no 
 more.
 
 XXX 
 
 THE afternoon went by without any sign of Ealph and 
 Edmund, and at supper their places were still vacant. 
 In the gallery Lady Marland had again ordered a wood 
 fire; but it was a smaller and much less animated 
 company that sat around it this evening. Continual 
 expectation continually disappointed is a frame of mind 
 very unfavourable to any kind of gaiety or enjoyment. 
 Every one's thoughts had been full of Ealph, and it 
 seemed very dull to pass the whole day within reach 
 of him and yet be unable to tell him of their efforts 
 and discuss his plans with him before the freshness of 
 their interest had worn off. 
 
 Stephen felt conscious too that his own attitude 
 to-night was not adding to the cheerfulness of the 
 party. He was tired after a long and exciting day, and 
 in no mood to cope with the perplexities of his own 
 position. The sense of exile, and even of imprisonment, 
 which had fallen upon him early that morning had 
 been forgotten during the more stirring part of the day, 
 but now returned with double weight. He was almost 
 angry with Aubrey both for being what she was, and 
 for not being some one else. He was quite angry with 
 
 210
 
 SIR HENRY'S BOUNDARY 211 
 
 Lady Marland for her evident desire to intervene in 
 his affairs when she could not possibly understand 
 them. These feelings were, he knew, utterly unreason- 
 able, and the knowledge added to his discontent ; but 
 he was too weary to play more than a defensive part, 
 and nothing better occurred to him than to avoid as 
 far as possible the society of both the ladies, and attach 
 himself to Sir Henry for the remainder of the evening. 
 This he accomplished without difficulty. 
 
 Aubrey and her aunt accepted the situation with 
 apparently unconscious serenity. They busied them- 
 selves with needlework, spoke but seldom, and then 
 only to each other and in low tones, without once 
 attempting to join in the men's conversation, or indeed 
 giving any sign that they heard it at all. 
 
 Sir Henry, on the contrary, discoursed freely and 
 on many subjects, and his ready flow of conversation 
 not only made matters easy for Stephen, but gave him 
 plenty of mental distraction. The talk came back, of 
 course, at last to Ralph and his affairs, and showed that 
 Sir Henry had formed a very clear and decided view 
 of his own upon the case. 
 
 "We are all prepared," he said, "to back Ralph; 
 but I'm not sure that any of us agree with him. Some 
 of us " he gave a confidential nod in his wife's direc- 
 tion " don't like his temper ; Edmund disapproves of 
 his theology ; I am happily too ignorant to understand
 
 212 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 it, but I can see that it is the wrong leg to put forward 
 in a fight." 
 
 " But surely that is past help now," said Stephen. 
 " The quarrel is on that very point ; it is not either the 
 right or wrong leg, it is the territory for which the 
 battle is to be fought." 
 
 " Very good," replied Sir Henry ; " but you don't 
 mean to tell me, as a soldier, that the territory for 
 which I fight must necessarily be the ground on which 
 I make my stand ? We must choose our position for 
 the best advantage ; if we win there, we win elsewhere 
 too. Ealph's quarrel is a double one. He claims that 
 the Church is in error about a certain doctrine; but 
 whether he is right or wrong, he will never get any 
 following there. He also claims that his friends among 
 the laity are entitled to receive and support him in 
 spite of his Bishop's condemnation. Now, I don't say 
 he is certain of success there either ; but if he fails, it 
 will not be for want of a certain amount of backing, up 
 and down the country. We are a very stupid lot in 
 England; we have had it explained to us for many 
 years past that Popes and priests are our lords and 
 masters, but we have somehow never taken it in. You 
 have been away, Stephen," he continued, with a serious 
 voice and a mocking arch of his eyebrows; "you 
 probably do not know to what lengths our national 
 stupidity had gone. His present Holiness has been at
 
 SIR HENRY'S BOUNDARY 213 
 
 great pains to teach us that the Church rules the State 
 and he rules the Church ; but within these last five years 
 Parliament has twice gone wrong, and said its lesson 
 upside down. First they denied the Pope's power to 
 interfere with the right of presentation to benefices in 
 England, and then they forbade any appeal to Eome 
 from a judgment of the King's courts. The penalties 
 attached were pretty severe too outlawry, imprison- 
 ment for life, and so forth. In fact, Stephen, they may 
 be said to have put a certain amount of obstinacy into 
 their misunderstanding ; and if they are called up again 
 before His Holiness, as they are very likely to be, it 
 would not surprise me to hear them repeat the whole 
 mistake still more emphatically." 
 
 "You mean," said Stephen, smiling, "that the 
 whole country is in a rebellious mood ? " 
 
 " It is, over just this question of Church and State ; 
 and that is where I think Ealph's chance lies. If he 
 remains in his own diocese and preaches heresy, he is 
 answerable to his own Bishop, as every priest should 
 be ; it is only reason. But if he goes elsewhere, there 
 is a good chance of his countrymen being as uncon- 
 vinced by the Bishop's logic as they were by the Pope's. 
 And, after all, we laymen are still in a majority." 
 
 At this point Lady Marland rose, put her work 
 back in her basket, and took Aubrey away to bed. 
 
 " If you continue to receive Ealph," asked Stephen,
 
 214 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 as soon as they were gone, " do you expect the Bishop 
 to go to extremes ? " 
 
 Sir Henry frowned. "I wish Ealph would ask 
 himself that question," he replied. " The Bishop will 
 do what the Church always does; he will go just as 
 far as he can carry public opinion with him. Fierce 
 as he is, he always puts the Church's interest before 
 his own feelings. He certainly will not get people like 
 us excommunicated if the question of this particular 
 doctrine is kept in the background ; but if once he can 
 get Ealph tried on the point of Transubstantiation " 
 
 The door opened, and Lady Marland reappeared. 
 "Henry," she said, with her firmest intonation, "I 
 don't know what you are talking about, but I don't 
 think your views on sacred subjects can do Stephen 
 any good, especially at this time of night." 
 
 The two men rose meekly, and wished each other 
 good night.
 
 XXXI 
 
 ON the following morning Edmund returned to break- 
 fast. He brought a promise from Ealph that he too 
 would come over during the day ; but the exact time 
 was uncertain, for he was occupied in drawing up and 
 arranging the heads of his argument against the Bishop. 
 Sir Henry made a humorous gesture of despair, and 
 succeeded in putting more despair than humour into it. 
 Lady Marland expressed with precision her opinion of 
 the manners of this very unconventional guest. Aubrey 
 made excuses for Ealph as a man of genius. The 
 windmill, she said, must work when the wind is blow- 
 ing, if it is ever to work at all. 
 
 "Windmill, truly," said Edmund. "You should 
 have seen him ! " 
 
 An hour afterwards Ealph no longer needed defend- 
 ing, for he came in person, and his mere appearance 
 instantly disarmed all criticism. Stephen found himself 
 once more under the necessity of revising his judgment 
 of this extraordinary man, who was now as courteous 
 and as charming in manner as yesterday he had been 
 the reverse. Any one seeing him in this mood for the 
 
 215
 
 216 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 first time would have taken good-humour to be his 
 most prominent characteristic, and must have admired 
 the look of bright distinction which a very plain set of 
 features derived from the sincerity and sweetness of 
 their expression. 
 
 His own affairs seemed to be entirely laid aside; 
 he talked of everything else, and made himself agree- 
 able to every one. He took Aubrey out in the boat, 
 brought her back when the sun became too hot on the 
 water, and listened for an hour to Sir Henry's views on 
 the land and the labourer. At dinner he entertained 
 the company with stories in the Devon dialect, and 
 afterwards he volunteered to escort Lady Marland as 
 far as one of the lodges, where she was holding her 
 Wednesday class for the instruction of half a dozen 
 tenants' wives in plain sewing and morals. 
 
 He returned alone from this walk, and found 
 Edmund and Stephen leaving the house to join Aubrey 
 and her uncle, who were sitting under the trees on the 
 edge of the down. As the three men took the little 
 green path which slanted up the hill, Stephen re- 
 membered that he had climbed it once before two days 
 ago, and that in the very nook where he could now see 
 Aubrey's white dress among the shadows he had sat 
 alone that morning, a traveller newly arrived from the 
 other Gardenleigh, and not yet an inmate of this one. 
 He had walked in a strange tangle since then, but for
 
 SIX PROPOSITIONS 217 
 
 the moment he forgot it all as a clear voice came down 
 the slope to greet their approach. 
 
 "We wondered," said Aubrey, "how long you 
 would be before you followed us ; it is deliciously cool 
 up here just the place for theologians." 
 
 Ralph sat down beside her. " Was it here," he 
 asked his two companions, " that you had your battle 
 yesterday ? " 
 
 "No," replied Edmund, pointing to the fallen tree 
 by the water-side ; " it was down there." 
 
 " I am glad of that," said Ralph. " I should wish 
 always to take my stand on higher ground than the 
 Bishop." 
 
 "Take care, then," said Aubrey; "even a Bishop 
 might look down upon that joke." 
 
 "Not this Bishop," Ralph replied gaily; "he has 
 come down far lower. He once said that my position 
 was as shaky as my name." 
 
 A chorus of incredulous laughter greeted this state- 
 ment ; but as it died away Aubrey's quick eye saw the 
 shadow descend again on Ralph's face. 
 
 " Would you mind," she asked him instantly, " if I 
 were to change places with you ? I am cramped with 
 sitting so long in one position." 
 
 The move was effected with a good deal of disturb- 
 ance, and when every one was once more settled the 
 danger had passed. Ralph, however, was still in a
 
 218 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 more serious mood, and Sir Henry looked grave as he 
 saw him draw out and unfold a sheet of paper closely 
 covered with a fine handwriting. 
 
 "What is that, Kalph?" he asked. "It looks 
 rather strong meat for young ladies and old gentlemen, 
 doesn't it ? " 
 
 "Oh no," replied Ralph, grimly; "I have taken 
 pains to make this plain enough for understandings far 
 below yours. This is a set of theses addressed to the 
 Bishop ; if you will allow me, I will read them to you." 
 
 "One moment," said Sir Henry. "Has Edmund 
 seen them ? " 
 
 "Not yet," Ralph answered; "but he is familiar 
 enough with their substance to be able to comment on 
 them at once if he feels inclined." 
 
 He straightened out the paper and began to read. 
 
 "Against certain opinions commonly received and 
 held upon insufficient or erroneous grounds, and more 
 particularly brought forward at the present time by my 
 Lord Bishop of Exeter, I am prepared by reasonable 
 argument to maintain the following propositions, 
 namely : 
 
 "First, that Christendom is conterminous neither 
 with the inhabited world in its entirety, nor even with 
 the circle of nations known to us, and justly reputed 
 for learning and chivalry. It follows that if, as the 
 Bishop alleges, the whole human race is included under
 
 SIX PROPOSITIONS 219 
 
 one divine Imperium, such a government must be con- 
 ducted on wider and more comprehensive lines than 
 those of the Christian Church." 
 
 "The world is certainly not all Christian," said 
 Edmund; "but you speak almost as if you did not 
 think it desirable that it should be." 
 
 " No," replied Ealph, " I do not say that ; but I do 
 say that we Christians have no right to despise or 
 ignore those of other religions. Consider what we owe 
 to Aristotle and Plato, to Seneca and the Stoics, and in 
 modern times to Alfarabius, Avicenna, and Algazel 
 not only philosophy, but ethics. The Saracens would 
 not gain much by taking in exchange the morals of 
 Avignon or Eome." 
 
 "There is something in what you say," remarked 
 Sir Henry, " and we know that our great-grandfathers 
 accepted Saladin's people as brothers in chivalry; but 
 I doubt if public opinion would stand even that 
 nowadays." 
 
 "I disagree with you entirely," replied Ealph. 
 "Whatever the English may think of a nation's 
 religion, they think a good deal more of its fighting 
 capacities. They would no more shrink than the kings 
 of Spain and Portugal have shrunk from an alliance 
 with a heathen power black, brown, or yellow if 
 they were sure of its diplomacy and military genius. 
 Our own Prince will not hesitate, you will see, to join
 
 220 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 any alliance that may suit him, if there is no graver 
 objection to be met than the presence of the Moslem as 
 a party to it." 
 
 "Well," said Sir Henry, doubtfully. 
 
 " We have wandered a little," said Ealph ; " but you 
 see what I mean: the claim of the Church to govern 
 all men by Divine right is based on premises which are 
 contrary to the facts of the world. I pass on to my 
 second point : That even in Christendom itself, if there 
 be, as the Bishop alleges, only one State and one Head, 
 then this Head must be not the Pope, but the Emperor > 
 not the Spiritual but the Temporal Sovereign, the Church 
 being part of his Eealm, and completely absorbed in it. 
 I need not argue that ; it is all in Ockham, and Mar- 
 silius of Padua has said the same thing." 
 
 " All the same," said Stephen, " I can assure you 
 that the Popes will never abandon their claim to be the 
 overlords of all Temporal Powers." 
 
 " Then we shall abandon them, that is all," replied 
 Ealph. 
 
 " In any case," said Edmund, " your second point 
 will not convince the Bishop, Ealph ; go on to the third." 
 
 " The third is this : That even if the spiritual are to 
 take precedence of the secular forces in any state, this 
 cannot be accomplished by the domination of the Church 
 as we see it. A visible Church must always be an 
 impure image, with a body and probably a head of clay,
 
 SIX PROPOSITIONS 221 
 
 and far from comprehending, even in its parts of 
 genuine gold and silver, all the precious metal in the 
 world. The true Church of Christ is no elaborately 
 organized system, no corporation with a legal skin of 
 parchment, no noble caste with titles and grades of 
 rank ; it is an invisible body, a fellowship which, being 
 based upon nothing but religion, can be entered by all 
 the religious, and by no one else among men ; a com- 
 munity of the predestinated those who, as Bacon says, 
 taste even in this life of the peace which is the sweet- 
 ness of the life eternal. In such a community what 
 need or place is there for the tyrannous authority of 
 Popes or Bishops? And close upon this follows my 
 fourth point: That even if, as my lord alleges, the 
 Christian world is divided and subdivided between a 
 hierarchy of powers, it is not true that each division in 
 turn is of more account than its parts, and they again 
 of more account than the individuals which compose 
 them. On the contrary, it is always, in the spiritual 
 life, the Singular which must come before its Universal. 
 God has created this world and devised salvation not 
 for the sake of Universal Man, but for the sake of 
 individual persons. There is therefore no community, 
 no Whole or partial Whole, which is entitled, as the 
 Bishop alleges, to claim from any man such blind 
 obedience to authority as would be harmful to his own 
 soul, or to the cause of truth."
 
 222 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " My dear Ralph," said Edmund, " you are going a 
 little too fast ; you must not assume that we all assent 
 to all that you have been saying." 
 
 " I do," said Stephen. 
 
 " So do I," said Aubrey, eagerly. 
 
 " But perhaps," said Edmund, " you do so without 
 having clearly before you the difficulties of such a 
 position. Is there nothing in union and organization 
 that you abandon them so lightly? Can you have a 
 community worth the name if it is not conscious of its 
 own corporate existence ? Will not the individual find 
 his life widened by the sense of an acknowledged 
 brotherhood, and will not his powers be grer.tly raised 
 by his knowledge that he is associated with and led by 
 others stronger and better than himself ? And is it not 
 well that in some part of his worship he should be 
 joined with his fellows, that here too he may learn to 
 rid himself of the selfish element, and express that 
 which is common to all men ? " 
 
 " If the average man," said Stephen, " is raised by 
 associating with the better, he is also lowered by 
 contact with the worse. If too much individualism 
 is a source of weakness, over-organization produces 
 deadness, which in the spiritual life is far more fatal ; 
 and you have forgotten to consider truth and science 
 at all." 
 
 He was conscious as he ended that he had spoken
 
 SIX PKOPOSITIONS 223 
 
 too hotly and in too personal a tone. But Edmund 
 seemed untouched by it ; his interest lay too deep for 
 personal feeling, and he replied as quietly as if he had 
 been musing on a book that he had read. 
 
 "It is too often forgotten," he said, "that the 
 Church is itself a scientific institution, and concerned 
 with truth. It is continually occupied in investigating 
 the Christian life as a method. As with other scientific 
 bodies, one of its main functions is to check isolated 
 results, to secure continuity and permanence. Its 
 experiments are carried on over centuries of time, and 
 in them is gathered up the experience of an immense 
 number of -witnesses, living and dead. The life, the 
 method, which is the subject of this unremitting inquiry, 
 it teaches to all who will learn, from their early youth 
 to their last conscious moment. The truth which it 
 possesses and imparts is no doubt imperfect, for it has 
 passed through human vessels ; but it i? just because 
 the Church is an organized body, and not a dispersion 
 of individual atoms, that this truth has been preserved 
 and handed on at all." 
 
 " Where I differ from you," said Ealph, " is on the 
 word ' imperfect.' What the Church calls truth is not 
 only partial, but largely erroneous a survival from less 
 enlightened ages than ours, and repugnant to our 
 reason and our present knowledge. Individual exami- 
 nation and criticism would long ago have winnowed it
 
 224 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 as other scientific and philosophical truth has been 
 winnowed ; it is just the preservation and handing on 
 of which you speak that have done the mischief. And 
 that brings me to my fifth proposition, which is this : 
 That even if in the Church the individual is rightly 
 subject to authority, yet neither Pope nor Bishop can 
 claim to impose upon the conscience of men any belief 
 which is demonstrably contrary to the true text and 
 meaning of Scripture, or to facts established by the 
 human reason. How carelessly they have come to rely 
 upon the brute force of authority may be seen in their 
 treatment of the Biblical text the most important 
 evidence, as you must admit, Edmund, of the truth 
 committed to their keeping. They have not only not 
 purified it, they have handed it on in a condition more 
 corrupt than that in which they received it. It is now 
 full of errors, some of grave importance ; but they 
 systematically discourage and disable the scholars who 
 would go back to the original Greek, and restore the 
 older and better supported readings. And yet, while 
 they are so careless of the letter, they cling with 
 superstitious and ferocious tenacity to every syllable 
 of the interpretation and the doctrine handed down to 
 them from the dark ages, and shut their eyes wilfully 
 to the evident progress of knowledge. Truth, they say, 
 cannot change. No, but it may be sifted, confirmed, 
 and completed ; and even then its aspect will change
 
 SIX PROPOSITIONS 225 
 
 as our standpoint changes. In this last hundred years 
 such a change has been going on rapidly. Man has 
 realized that 'by the use of Nature he can do all 
 things,' and he has set himself to discover and conquer 
 the powers of the material world. Look at the inven- 
 tions of the past fifty years the invention, for 
 instance, of paper, of explosives, and of the mariner's 
 compass. The possibilities involved in such things 
 as these are incalculable; but the Church neither 
 hears, thinks, nor cares until the work is done, and 
 then it steps in to hinder and condemn it for what ? 
 For novitas ! And no wonder ; for where there is 
 novelty of fact, there will be also novelty of view." 
 
 "Still, said Edmund, "your new facts and your 
 new views must be tested. They should be no more 
 exempt from examination than the old ones." 
 
 " I will tell you," replied Ealph, with scorn in his 
 voice, " how the Church does the testing. I will give 
 you a modern example. Here is this new book of 
 travels by the fellow who calls himself Sir John 
 Mandeville. Never was testing more needed ; but 
 I have just heard that it is to be passed entire by the 
 Holy See. And why ? Because it appears to tally with 
 some fusty old map of the world which the Popes have 
 had lying by them for centuries, ' Appears/ I say ; and 
 this is where the point comes if these holy noodles 
 had but looked a little more thoroughly, they would
 
 226 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 have found not only a hundred lies and stolen stories in 
 the book, but one piece of truth quite fatal to their 
 Mappa Mundi. The traveller says that it is possible, 
 he finds, to go by ship all about the world, both above 
 and beneath. The world, in fact, is now proved to be 
 not flat, but round, as many have long suspected, and 
 some have half-openly maintained, both in Oxford 
 and Paris. Wait till the Church wakes up to this, 
 and you will see an example of her alternative method 
 of testing scientific truth. Her officials are always 
 the same at least, they always oscillate between 
 careless ignorance and reckless ignorance." 
 
 "They are human," said Edmund, gently. "I 
 think you ask more of men than men can give you." 
 " No," retorted Ralph; " I ask nothing but tolerance." 
 "That is hardly an answer," said Sir Henry, 
 arching his eyebrows with one of his humorous looks. 
 " But seriously," he continued, " if you will let an old 
 man put in a word, I think these very well-drawn 
 propositions of yours have led us a little away from 
 practical considerations. We are all with you, Ealph, 
 when you speak of truth and tolerance ; but common 
 sense will not allow me to forget two things. One is 
 that the Church, perfect or imperfect, is one of the 
 facts of the world one of the largest facts, a fact 
 which can never be abolished or ignored. It does not 
 matter how or why this is, It lies somewhere in the
 
 SIX PROPOSITIONS 227 
 
 nature of things; it is one of the features of the 
 landscape, and in planning the battle of life you must 
 take it into account, or your campaign is hopeless from 
 the beginning. The other thing is that you have 
 carried your argument beyond the point which is of 
 immediate importance to us. It is most interesting 
 to hear your views on such subjects ; but these ques- 
 tions of science and dogma are, for us, outside the 
 argument. We have only to consider how we can hope 
 to justify our position if we support you when you 
 have been condemned by your ecclesiastical superior. 
 We are not directly subject to him, as you are. We 
 wish to maintain our freedom as laymen; but we 
 cannot let ourselves be drawn into the theological 
 controversy. Our case depends entirely on our keeping 
 the two questions separate. You must see that." 
 
 " I see what you mean," said Ealph, in a tone of 
 disappointment ; " but you are cutting me short at the 
 most vital point of all. My sixth and last proposition 
 deals with the doctrine of Transubstantiation." 
 
 Sir Henry inclined his head. " I thought it might 
 possibly do so," he said, with courteous gravity, " and 
 I have no doubt that it is well worth hearing in itself. 
 But even if I were not so incompetent to form an 
 opinion upon it, I must still keep myself at present 
 quite clear of that part of your challenge. Edmund, 
 of course, is in a different position here, and so is
 
 228 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 Aubrey ; they may discuss anything with you. But 
 if you will excuse me, I will ask Stephen to give me 
 his arm as far as the house." 
 
 He rose with some assistance, laid his hand for 
 a moment kindly on Balph's shoulder, and started 
 down the hill, leaning on Stephen. 
 
 " I might have taken Aubrey instead of you," he 
 said, "but she has a quieting effect on him; and 
 you can go back directly if you would care to hear him 
 out. He will be at it for a long time yet."
 
 XXXII 
 
 QUICKLY though Stephen returned, he found that he 
 had missed Ealph's sixth proposition. It had evidently 
 been stated with some violence, for both Aubrey and 
 Edmund looked troubled, and Edmund was speaking 
 in his lowest and most gentle tones. 
 
 "My dear Ealph," he was saying, "you cannot 
 imagine how you pain me. You know that I am not 
 bigoted or unsympathetic; you know how far I have 
 gone with you in this matter, long ago. But when you 
 abandon your own lofty and spiritual standpoint, and 
 threaten to meet crude materialism with still cruder 
 and more material methods of disproof, you seem to 
 me forgive me for saying it you seem to be setting 
 yourself below the lowest of your antagonists. They 
 err in understanding, but their error, however grotesque, 
 comes in its origin from reverence; you would err in 
 feeling, and no vindication of your senses or your 
 intellect could make up to you for that." 
 
 "I only meet them on their own ground," said 
 Ealph. " They allege a physical change ; I propose a 
 physical experiment." 
 
 Edmund shook his head. "You forget," he said, 
 
 229
 
 230 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " that it is meeting them with poisoned weapons : they 
 could inflict nothing on you comparable to the mortal 
 pain they must suffer at your hands. And there is 
 something in yourself that you would injure too. You 
 know that there is a mystery here beyond the reach 
 of any material proof. Eemember the words of your 
 own champion, Bacon. You could accept his statement 
 of the doctrine, and so could your opponents. Why 
 not be content with that ? " 
 
 " Bacon is not my champion here," replied Ealph ; 
 " on this side he was as blind as the rest." 
 
 "I read him differently," said Edmund, "and so 
 did you once. Eemember how he expressly says that 
 although both the Human and the Divine Nature are 
 present in the Sacrament, yet the Human Nature is 
 not present as we know it elsewhere. It is in itself, 
 he says, a thing created; but it there transcends the 
 laws which govern created things, and exists after the 
 manner of the Divine being, and not of the material 
 creature." 
 
 Ealph was quite unaffected by the gentleness and 
 reverence of the tone in which Edmund had spoken. His 
 face was set, and his voice harsh with contentiousness. 
 
 " What is the use," he said, " of all these mystical 
 phrases, when he follows them with the plain state- 
 ment that the Eeal Presence is hidden in order to save 
 our stomachs from revolting ? "
 
 A HERETIC'S THEOLOGY 23 
 
 Edmund turned and looked at Aubrey. Her face 
 was flaming, but there was no sign of flinching in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " Go on," she said imperiously, laying her hands on 
 Edmund's ; " you must answer." 
 
 "Kalph is quite right," he said; "there are words 
 to that effect, but the context throws a different light 
 upon them. Both the Divine and the Human Nature, 
 Bacon says, are hidden under the symbol, because our 
 senses could not bear the majesty of the one or the 
 reality of the other. He does not mean to dogmatize 
 about the exact manner in which we should otherwise 
 have had to face that reality. What he does say is 
 that we are permitted to look upon it in the Sacrament 
 with our mental vision only. In the same way he 
 speaks of the words of the Mass always as words 
 of the heart, as well as words of the mouth. For 
 him there is nothing mechanical about it ; belief 
 comes foremost: 'To gain eternal life we need but 
 have faith in our hearts and a sentence of five 
 words upon our lips.' And by ' eternal life ' he means 
 not a mere future existence in another world, but an 
 immediate union with the Divine. This alone would 
 exclude all possibility of a gross material interpretation ; 
 for he says that we are so fed in the Sacrament as to 
 become that upon which we feed, which can happen 
 with no material sustenance, but only with the
 
 232 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 spiritual : ' By partaking of the Christ we become each 
 one of us a Christ.' These are the words, remember, 
 of a great man of science; will they not satisfy you 
 too ? They would certainly satisfy the Bishop." 
 
 " I do not believe it," replied Ealph. " They did 
 not satisfy the Pope : Bacon was condemned." 
 
 "For his view of the heathen philosophers, not of 
 the Christian religion." 
 
 " Well," said Kalph, obstinately, " I don't care what 
 the Bishop may think of him, he does not satisfy me. 
 You cannot get over the fact that he places the Eeal 
 Presence in the Host, and I do not. There is a wide 
 gulf between us there, and I cannot be certain I am 
 right unless I use my own words." 
 
 " I should have thought," replied Edmund, " that in 
 speaking of a miracle none of us could ever be certain 
 that he was right ; and least of all a man of science." 
 
 " Paradox is not a good method of persuasion," said 
 Ealph, curtly. 
 
 "No," replied Edmund; "but consider a moment. 
 Is there not really a great difference between the mind 
 that seldom sees a miracle because it is so stored with 
 science, and the mind which is constitutionally in- 
 capable of wonder? The truly scientific mind may 
 come to think all existence miraculous ; for when 
 we have made all the easy generalizations, and dis- 
 covered all the proximate causes, we begin at last to
 
 A HERETIC'S THEOLOGY 233 
 
 realize the depth of the mystery that lies behind 
 them all." 
 
 "Then leave me to select my own miracles. I 
 will wonder where I please, and not at the bidding of 
 an ignorant Pope-made prelate." 
 
 "Be fair, Ralph," said Edmund, in the gentlest 
 possible tone of remonstrance. " It was not the Pope 
 who made him your Bishop; you voluntarily placed 
 yourself under him when you were ordained." 
 
 " I never bound myself I could not bind myself 
 to take my creed from him." 
 
 "No," said Edmund; "our beliefs are our own ; but 
 we have bound ourselves to obey. We think as we 
 must ; but we cannot preach what we are forbidden to 
 preach." 
 
 "Speak for yourself," cried Ealph, his voice 
 trembling with a sudden access of rage. " I will do that 
 and more. Let every Bishop in England hunt me up 
 and down, I will say my say. I make my appeal to 
 my countrymen. I know their minds; I am no 
 intruded foreigner, no half-bred Burgundian, but an 
 Englishman of the right Apostolic succession, by which 
 there shall never be wanting men duly qualified to 
 serve God in the holy office of heretic while the world 
 lasts. Grossetete is gone, and Bacon, and Ockham; 
 but they laid their hands on me, as I have laid mine 
 on young John Wyclif. He shall do the work when I
 
 234 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 am gone ; but while I am here no man shall take my 
 place from me. As for my lord Bishop, I give him 
 a Bishop's answer, 'With filial piety and obedience I 
 disobey, I deny, and I rebel ! ' " 
 
 He was white with passion as he shouted his 
 defiance; but this time Stephen was moved by his 
 fierce courage, and saw nothing in his face to shrink 
 from. Aubrey, too, he could see, was at the least 
 divided between regret and admiration ; but Edmund's 
 whole figure expressed a sadness that seemed to crush 
 him, as if he bore already the invisible load of the 
 misery to come. As they all rose to go homewards 
 he passed his arm through Ealph's, and seemed about 
 to speak. But he was silent until they reached the 
 foot of the slope ; then he said in a low voice, as if he 
 almost hoped that he might be unheard 
 
 " I remember the words, and what was said of him 
 who uttered them : ' He attacked many ; he was 
 attacked by most ; and he knew not what peace was.' " 
 
 " So be it," said Ealph.
 
 XXXIII 
 
 IT soon became evident that Kalph and Stephen had 
 taken a strong liking to each other. For the next 
 three days they were inseparable : they walked together 
 by the hour, they talked incessantly and argued in- 
 terminably, and still, when they came to table, chal- 
 lenged each other as eagerly as if they had been meeting 
 again after a separation of years. It surprised Stephen 
 to find that he was far from agreeing 'with Kalph as 
 completely as he had expected; it astonished every 
 one else to hear him controverting his new friend a 
 dozen times in the hour without once bringing down 
 upon himself the storm which a chance word from 
 others had so often provoked. Frank, rude, even 
 brutal, Ralph certainly was at times ; but he never 
 again fell into that insensate passion of rage, and 
 Stephen thought that he could distinguish the cause 
 of this seeming inconsistency. It was not opposition 
 that maddened Ealph ; on the contrary, he loved strife 
 and could give and take the hardest of hard knocks. 
 But the mere suspicion of an unfair advantage, the 
 faintest hint that any one could claim to use force, to 
 bring authority to bear, to crush reason by the weight 
 
 235
 
 236 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 of will, would turn his broad, sunlike smile to the 
 scowl of a wild beast, and in less congenial or less 
 tactful company would have once more let loose the 
 savagery of his under-nature. In Stephen he recognized 
 something of a kindred spirit, one who would resent 
 the intrusion of force on his own side as quickly as 
 on the other, and was by nature hostile rather than 
 submissive even to legitimate authority. Stephen, 
 therefore, might say what he pleased, and contradict 
 without hesitation. He certainly tried his antagonist 
 to the full, for he attacked Ealph in plain terms for 
 want of feeling ; asserting with a great deal of truth 
 that he constantly made the mistake of treating human 
 beings as automatons, made to be moved by uniform 
 springs, and worthless or defective in proportion as 
 their actions were derived from affection or choice 
 rather than from the steel coil of reason. 
 
 "A fault on the right side," Ealph shouted, in 
 reply to this charge. " Get men to show some feeling 
 for my science, and then my science shall take some 
 account of their feelings." 
 
 Stephen shook his head. " I am all for science," he 
 said, " but its professors are but human. The time will 
 come when they will set up an orthodoxy of their own, 
 and make a church whose bishops will interdict 
 religion." 
 
 He was astonished at the effect of his words.
 
 BALPH DEPARTS 237 
 
 Ralph was not only silenced but extinguished by them, 
 and Stephen afterwards saw him more than once glanc- 
 ing curiously in his direction, as if troubled with a 
 question which he did not like to ask in words. He 
 was himself, however, too preoccupied to think more 
 of it, for Edmund had made over to him the task of 
 persuading Ealph to go to Chudleigh and lay his case 
 before the Bishop in a reasonable manner. He had 
 very little expectation of being able to do this, for 
 Ealph shied violently whenever he was led within 
 sight of the proposal, and openly accused the Marlands 
 of thinking more of their own position than of the 
 cause of truth. Stephen could, and did, meet this 
 easily enough, for it was only their desire to help 
 Ealph that brought them into the question at all; 
 but he was not quite on firm ground, for he felt that 
 he was not at one with the Marlands in their view 
 of Ealph's relation to the Bishop. They persistently 
 ignored as, indeed, did Ealph himself the fact that 
 this was not the simplest case of insubordination 
 the case of a parish priest disobeying his ordinary. 
 Ealph had resigned his living many years ago, and 
 had never again sought preferment in the diocese, 
 though he had passed much of his time in it for family 
 reasons. He seemed, therefore, to Stephen to be in 
 the position of the many University tutors who are 
 but nominally in holy orders, and who for practical
 
 238 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 purposes owe no allegiance to any ecclesiastical 
 superior. 
 
 "No, no," said Sir Henry, when the point was 
 made clear to him ; " there is nothing in that. Once a 
 priest, always a priest ; a man cannot unfrock himself." 
 
 " But suppose the Church unfrocks him ? " asked 
 Stephen. 
 
 " Then all is over. There is nothing left for him 
 in this world but the life of an outlaw precarious, 
 base, and short. Only his friends can save Ealph from 
 that now if he would but see it, and do something 
 to help." 
 
 But the days went by, and Ealph gave no sign of 
 yielding. Edmund, however, showed a patience and 
 forethought which moved Stephen's admiration. He 
 could not compel Ealph, but he could be ready, if he 
 should succeed in persuading him even at the last 
 moment. He had already exchanged his duty with 
 John Perrot, the young Eector of Gardenleigh, who 
 had been at Portishead for over a week now : the time 
 was extended by a letter sent off without Ealph's 
 knowledge, and a secret arrangement was also made 
 with the neighbouring parson of Croonington, by which 
 Edmund was set free to go away, if necessary, at a 
 moment's notice; for he meant to do all that was 
 possible not only to bring about the interview, but to, 
 make it a success.
 
 RALPH DEPARTS 239 
 
 Sunday had come and gone, and Stephen, when at the 
 end of the day he found himself alone in his own room, 
 remembered that there was now but a week left of the 
 time conceded by the Bishop. The thought kept him 
 long awake. In the keenness of his new friendship, 
 and his burning interest in Ealph's quarrel with 
 authority, he had for the time almost ceased to trouble 
 himself about his own situation. He could never rest 
 till he had recovered the hopes which he had lost ; but 
 in that direction all the ways were wrapped in im- 
 penetrable darkness. In the mean time, here was a 
 path which lay clear before him, and he followed it 
 with eagerness. In the old life Aubrey had been for 
 him the one real figure among a crowd of phantoms. 
 If the Aubrey of this world was herself a phantom, at 
 any rate she had brought him among very real people, 
 and set him on work more real than any he had ever 
 taken in hand before. 
 
 His feeling had changed a good deal in these four 
 days. He had begun as a partisan of Ealph's cause; 
 he had ended as a friend of the man himself, and this 
 involved a different view of the course to be adopted. 
 The main point was not so much to defeat the Bishop 
 as to save Ealph; the Marlands were right after all. 
 What could be Ealph's own object in dashing himself 
 to pieces against a rock ? If he perished, as he must, 
 would not his work die with him ? Was it not to the
 
 240 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 slow, undermining influence of time that he should 
 trust, rather than to a direct attack, however forcible ? 
 The future was safe ; Grandison was a sterile tree, his 
 theories alien to the soil of England, where Ealph's 
 mustard-seed of science would one day strike root and 
 spring up like a forest. 
 
 So he reasoned with himself as he lay there in the 
 warm, dark summer night. It was midnight, and sleep 
 was still far from him. Through the open window 
 came the rapturous shouting of the owls as they swept 
 softly through the mazes of their ghostly chase ; now 
 and again from the reed-beds by the lake a low, guttural 
 sound was heard across the still water, as if one among 
 the host of waterfowl were crying in his sleep; then 
 for a time all fell once more to silence. But Stephen 
 had a feeling that for him the silence was not that of 
 solitude. Somewhere in the house, he was certain, his 
 wakefulness was shared by another watcher, and he 
 waited, with every sense alert and pulse quickening, 
 to catch the sound which should put an end to his 
 suspense. 
 
 No sound came ; but in the silence and the darkness 
 he became aware, by some other channel than the 
 everyday senses, that the door of his room was opening 
 that it had opened wide, and that he was no longer 
 alone. He seemed to himself to have asked again and 
 again, " Who is it ? " but he knew also that he had not
 
 BALPH DEPARTS 241 
 
 spoken, and the time of waiting was surely longer than 
 his whole life. Then suddenly a quiet voice, that 
 seemed to part the silence without breaking it, came 
 out of the darkness close to him. 
 
 " Are you awake, Stephen ? " 
 
 The strain was loosened in a moment; the blood 
 which had stood still in his choking veins flowed with 
 a warm rush through his whole body, and his throat 
 relaxed. 
 
 " Is that you, Ealph ? " he said in a calm, low 
 voice that hardly seemed his own. " What is it ? " 
 
 Ealph drew the curtain that darkened the window, 
 and Stephen saw that the night was not so black as it 
 had been an hour ago ; the sky was no longer overcast, 
 and the moon was shining. Ralph closed the door 
 and came and sat down on the side of the bed. 
 
 " Stephen," he said, " I am going to Chudleigh." 
 
 At any other time Stephen would have been 
 surprised into an exclamation; but he was saved by 
 the quick perception and control which the brain 
 acquires in the hours of darkness; he knew that he 
 must wait to hear what this decision meant 
 
 "Yes, I am going," Ralph continued; "but to 
 what end ? Have you thought of that ? " 
 
 " I have thought of nothing else for an hour 
 past." 
 
 " Of course," said Ralph ; " I knew that. But you 
 
 R
 
 242 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 think, like the others, that I ought to save my 
 bones." 
 
 They were both silent, as if they could wrestle it 
 out in their thoughts without words. But when Kalph 
 spoke again, he had changed his grip unexpectedly, 
 and took Stephen by surprise. 
 
 " Tell me," he said, " do you know, or are you only 
 guessing, like the rest of us ? " 
 
 " Do I know what ? " asked Stephen ; but he knew 
 the answer already. 
 
 " I have heard in the North," said Ealph, " of men 
 with a second sight, which is more penetrating than 
 our deepest wisdom; since it is unknown in the 
 Church, there may be something more in it than 
 superstition. In your own opinion you seem to have 
 some such gift ; every day you speak of things to come 
 as if you saw them. I do not ask you for your secret, 
 but if you know what is hidden from me, you can give 
 me the clue to my labyrinth." 
 
 For a moment Stephen thought he could speak out : 
 truth, that we clothe so carefully by day, may strip 
 herself at midnight. But as he saw his chance he saw 
 the danger too, and the uselessness of incurring it. If 
 he were not believed his influence would be gone, and 
 in any case it was only the distant future that he 
 knew ; of Kalph's own fortunes he could foretell 
 nothing.
 
 RALPH DEPARTS 243 
 
 "I am confident," he said; "but I claim only to 
 know as you know by my reason." 
 
 " That is not the whole truth," said Kalph. " The 
 confidence I speak of did not come from reason : you 
 did not assert yourself, you forgot yourself." Then, 
 as no answer followed, he added in a low, urgent tone, 
 utterly unlike his everyday voice, "Stephen, do not 
 play with me ; I am dare-devil enough at times, but life 
 is as much to me as to any one more, a hundred times 
 more, for I verily believe that I carry Man and his 
 fortunes in this storm." 
 
 In the growing light Stephen could see him bending 
 forward with an earnestness that smote him to the 
 heart. How idle, how academic and hollow seemed 
 the life from which he had come, to which he would 
 one day return. It was here in the backwoods of time 
 that the real work of men was going forward, with 
 sweat of the brow and blistering of hands, with action 
 and agony and endurance in place of talk and specula- 
 tion. How poor a thing was he, cheering on the battle 
 that for him was already a victory, compared with this 
 man who was girding himself to rush blindly upon the 
 spears. How he longed to help him; but though the 
 whole great saga lay open before him, he knew that 
 Ralph's own fate was nowhere upon the five hundred 
 pages he had read of it, and he groaned inwardly, for 
 it was of Ralph that he was thinking first.
 
 244 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " My dear fellow/' he said, " I am not playing with 
 you ; you must not think it. I have a sight of some 
 things that this generation cannot see, but it does not 
 show me what you ask." 
 
 "I ask only this," said Ealph: "shall I live or 
 die?" 
 
 " You are a man," replied Stephen, " and it needs 
 no gift to know that every man must die. But your 
 cause will be living five centuries from now as it is 
 living to-day, and far more strongly. Is not that 
 enough ? " 
 
 " Enough ? " cried Ealph, starting up, " What more 
 could I have asked ? " 
 
 " I was thinking," said Stephen, lamely, " of your 
 own life, and the survival of your name." 
 
 " My name ! " said Ealph, with a touch of scorn 
 mixed with the triumph in his tone. "What is my 
 name to me five hundred years from now ? You may 
 name the river what you will, if only I may know that 
 it will reach the sea." 
 
 " You need not fear," said Stephen ; " it will reach 
 the sea." 
 
 " That is my life, then," said Ealph ; " you have 
 answered me after all. Good night." 
 
 It was not till he had been gone some time that 
 Stephen remembered the advice he had intended to 
 press upon him. In what had passed between them
 
 BALPH DEPARTS 245 
 
 there had been no talk of prudence or moderation ; 
 that must be for to-morrow. 
 
 But when he woke it was already too late ; Kalph 
 had clamoured to be off at daybreak, and Edmund had 
 not ventured to oppose him.
 
 XXXIV 
 
 THE week passed slowly and quietly ; every one spoke 
 of hopes, and no one of misgivings. But probably it 
 was no great surprise to any one when, on Saturday 
 evening, as they sat at supper, the door opened silently 
 and Edmund took his place by his mother with an air 
 of dejection for which no fatigue could be accountable. 
 The Bishop, he said, had been ill. They had reached 
 Chudleigh at noon on Wednesday, only to be told that 
 his lordship, though better of his fever, could see no 
 one for some time to come. A letter would be delivered 
 to him if desired, but not at once. In short, the 
 expedition had failed. 
 
 "You left a letter, of course?" asked Sir Henry, 
 and hearing that this had been done, he brightened 
 considerably. " After all, Edmund," he said, " the 
 position is saved for the time being. Our side is not 
 in fault. There is no reason why the meeting should 
 not come off later." 
 
 Edmund did not raise his eyes from the table. 
 " I hope it may," he said ; and his father, seeing that 
 there was more behind, lifted his eyebrows and was 
 silent. 
 
 246
 
 EDMUND RETURNS 247 
 
 The ladies took up the burden of conversation until 
 the meal was over; then, when the servants had left 
 the room, there was an embarrassed pause, every one 
 waiting anxiously for Edmund to speak. 
 
 " You have not told us yet where Ealph has gone," 
 said Lady Marland at last. 
 
 " I do not know," said Edmund, wearily ; " he is a 
 hard man to help. It is almost too late to hope the 
 Bishop will ever see him now ; too late, perhaps, even 
 to wish it." 
 
 "What has happened?" asked Stephen, with a 
 sinking heart. 
 
 " I will tell you," replied Edmund ; " perhaps you 
 will see it less gloomily than I do." He drew himself 
 up in his chair, and looked in his self-forgetful way 
 straight into his father's face as he told his story. 
 " We got on well," he said, " until we reached Exeter. 
 There we heard of the Bishop's illness. I was afraid 
 Ealph would take the opportunity to cry off ..." 
 
 Stephen shook his head. 
 
 "No," continued Edmund; "he insisted, on the 
 contrary, that the illness was feigned in order to avoid 
 the interview, and that his own policy was to force 
 himself upon the Bishop. Happily, this was im- 
 possible, and before noon we were on our way back 
 to Exeter. I asked him to come on here with me, and 
 he seemed inclined to think of it. We decided to stay
 
 248 THE OLD COUNTKY 
 
 one more night in Exeter, and I hoped to get him away 
 next morning. After dinner we went to vespers in the 
 cathedral ; the nave has been finished since I was last 
 there, and the music, as it soared up and chimed under 
 the stillness of those great arches, seemed to me the 
 most wonderful thing I had ever known in my life, 
 and the nearest to the heart of human wisdom." 
 
 " The wisdom of the Psalms is Divine, not human," 
 said Lady Marland. 
 
 Stephen had scarcely time to feel the jar. Aubrey 
 was already stilling it as no one else could have done. 
 
 "No, dearest," she . said, "Edmund is right. The 
 music of chanting is all human ; it is the sound of the 
 troubles and hopes of time going up into eternity and 
 dying away under the roof of heaven." 
 
 "The child's right," said Sir Henry, and Stephen 
 thought so too. 
 
 " When the music ended," Edmund continued, " I 
 found that Ealph had gone without my knowing it. 
 When I came out of the west door, there he was on the 
 upper side of the street, standing on a bench and 
 preaching wildly to a crowd of rustics and idlers. 
 Before I could reach the place, I felt myself pushed 
 roughly aside, and a posse of monks rushed past me 
 into the crowd and made for Ealph. He was forced 
 from his bench; but the monks were evidently un- 
 popular, and the street was filled in a moment with a
 
 EDMUND RETURNS 249 
 
 mob who hoisted Ralph on their shoulders and drove 
 his assailants off the ground with shouting and cheer- 
 ing that could be heard a mile away. Since that 
 moment I have seen nothing more of him, I inquired, 
 as widely as I dared, what had become of him, and I 
 was able to make sure that he had left Exeter before 
 night they said he had gone westward, probably into 
 Cornwall. Could anything be more disastrous ? " 
 
 "Nothing could possibly be more selfish," said 
 Lady Marland, severely. 
 
 Aubrey looked at Stephen as if she expected some- 
 thing from him. 
 
 " I feel sure that you are mistaken there," he said 
 to Lady Marland. " I had some talk with him the night 
 before he left, and he certainly was not thinking of his 
 own interests." 
 
 " He certainly was not thinking of ours," remarked 
 Sir Henry, in a tone of unusual bitterness. 
 
 Stephen felt rebuked, but an approving look from 
 Aubrey did something to redress the injustice. 
 
 " And what are you going to do now ? " he said to 
 Edmund. 
 
 " Go back to my work, and wait for daylight," he 
 replied. 
 
 " Eight ! " exclaimed Stephen, and he looked as if 
 he would have said more, but Sir Henry stopped him. 
 
 " You will not leave us too ? " he said in a tone
 
 250 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 between anxiety and reproach " such a broken-kneed 
 old pair." 
 
 Stephen looked at the worn, sad, indomitable face, 
 where humour still flew like a flag above the ruins, 
 and his heart pledged him without authority. 
 
 " Leave you ? " he cried ; " not while I can help 
 you," and for the moment he felt strong enough to 
 bear it out. 
 
 Then, like a stunning blow came the realization 
 of what his promise involved, and through the con- 
 fusion he heard Lady Marland's high little chirp of 
 satisfaction. 
 
 " Thank you, Stephen," she said ; " that is just what 
 I should have expected of you." 
 
 On the following Monday Edmund left for Portis- 
 head.
 
 XXXV 
 
 Now that alarms and conflicts no longer urged him to 
 activity, Stephen passed day by day more completely 
 under the spell of the warm, heavy west-country air 
 a spell which from late June till early September lies 
 upon the valleys of Somerset with a dreamy enchant- 
 ment that is almost oppressive. Being himself of 
 Midland descent, he had not inherited that immunity 
 against the softening influence of climate, or that un- 
 alterable restlessness of energy and imagination, which 
 have carried the glory of the West over the world, and 
 which he had lately seen so strenuously exemplified 
 in Ralph Tremur. His mind, it is true, continued to 
 move, but it moved more slowly and within limits : it 
 was no Devonshire stream rushing and sparkling among 
 rocks, but a quiet and rather dull river, flowing through 
 tame pastures, and never gathering volume enough to 
 break its invisible bounds. 
 
 To himself his powerlessness was sufficiently proved 
 by his continued inability to grapple with the problem 
 of Aubrey's identity. With a slow calm and a detach- 
 ment very unlike his old self, he marshalled on one 
 side and the other the few facts that lay within his 
 
 251
 
 252 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 immediate reach; but though he resolved again and 
 again to press for more decisive evidence, to thrash the 
 question boldly out as he might have done that first 
 morning upon the terrace, he found invariably, when 
 the moment came, that he was no nearer to carrying 
 out his resolution : he seemed rather to be further from 
 it ; more tongue-tied by a shyness which he could not 
 understand. He was learning for the first time that 
 delicacy is no late refinement, but one of the first and 
 strongest instincts of the mind of man : poetry, religion, 
 and love, his chief concerns, are the last upon which he 
 can bring himself to speak freely, and perhaps the only 
 ones he will never deal with in plain, square speech. 
 For a bargain, a quarrel, a lie, he may possibly come to 
 use direct statement and words of one syllable : but for 
 the things which lie nearest to his beating heart there 
 must be images and tropes, or an approach by zigzags, 
 veiled and stealthy past the onlooker's comprehension, 
 and to the last moment at the mercy of unreasonable 
 panic. 
 
 For Stephen, in his present situation, plain speaking 
 was doubly hard. He had failed to tell his story even 
 to Ealph, who seemed upon the verge of guessing it 
 unaided ; how, then, could he ever succeed in forcing it 
 upon so unprepared a listener as Aubrey? Yet the 
 case was urgent ; none the less so because he had no 
 immediate limit of time before him ; for since he was
 
 EDEN VALE 253 
 
 apparently to spend his days for the present in close 
 companionship with her, he must choose his direction 
 and strike out for it, or he might be carried down by 
 eddies and undercurrents, of which he knew nothing. 
 There is, he dimly perceived, only one thing certain 
 about the relations of any man and any woman, and 
 that is that they will never remain the same for any 
 length of time. 
 
 His escape from this difficulty came about in a 
 manner which was unexpected but not unnatural, 
 though it was long before the whole tangle was un- 
 ravelled. 
 
 On the third morning after Edmund's departure, 
 Sir Henry asked at breakfast how the day was to be 
 spent. 
 
 " There is a little service to-day," said Lady Mar- 
 land ; " it is the Translation of King Edward. I shall 
 go to church ; I hope every one will go to church." 
 
 She looked at Stephen, who replied without enthu- 
 siasm that he would certainly come. 
 
 " It is also Midsummer Eve," said Aubrey to him. 
 " How are you going to keep that ? " 
 
 Stephen replied that he had never kept Midsummer 
 Eve, and knew no way of doing so. 
 
 " What ! " cried Aubrey. " Have you never looked 
 for the way to Fairyland ? " 
 
 He smiled a little bitterly. " I thought I had
 
 254 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 found it once," he said, "but some one misled me, 
 after all." 
 
 " Would you like to try again ? " she asked, with 
 bright eyes full of a childish playfulness. They made 
 his heart ache, but there was no resisting them. 
 
 So these two started together towards the cool of 
 the day, when the sun was westering, in a direction 
 that was new to Stephen almost from the first. 
 
 They left the park by a stile below the lodge where 
 he had come with Edmund to meet the Bishop, crossed 
 the road where it passes through the hamlet of Lower 
 Croonington, and found themselves at the entrance of 
 the little valley through which the river Sel winds 
 quietly between two high tablelands of green pasture. 
 From the upper level the ground falls steeply to the 
 water meadows, which lie one beyond another in the 
 folds of the stream : on the further bank are orchards, 
 a cottage or two, and an ancient mill ; the space on the 
 near side is narrower, and shut mysteriously in by a 
 succession of high hedges and by the long, undulating 
 line of alders which marks the river's course. In each 
 great hedge, as it comes steeply down to the foot of the 
 hill, there is a gate at the lowest and narrowest point ; 
 and when Stephen and Aubrey passed through these 
 gates one after another, and saw before them each time 
 a yet more remote and bowery meadow sleeping under 
 the golden stillness of the evening, it was as though
 
 EDEN VALE 255 
 
 they were retracing the path by which they had come 
 so far from childhood, and wandering further moment 
 by moment back into the land where people and facts 
 are so small, and colours, songs, and fancies so abundant 
 and so magically powerful. 
 
 "This is the end of Eden Vale," said Aubrey, as 
 they came towards the last of the great hedges, beyond 
 which the valley widens, and the steep pitch of the 
 bank upon their left melted away into a long and gentle 
 slope. 
 
 " And who named it Eden Vale ? " asked Stephen, 
 looking at her. 
 
 " Not I," she said, almost indignantly ; " how could 
 you think it ? " 
 
 " It is a charming name," he said in self-defence, 
 " and a right name." 
 
 " It would not be a right name," she replied, " if it 
 were only an invention of mine." 
 
 "Forgive me," he said; "I have offended, but I do 
 not know how." 
 
 She reddened, and was silent for a moment ; then 
 looked up again at him with clear, frank eyes that 
 seemed determined to be understood. 
 
 H I love this country," she said ; " I love it as I love 
 nothing else in life. It is to me everything that men 
 have ever loved a mother, a nurse, a queen, a lover, 
 and something greater and more sacred still. There is
 
 256 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 not one look of it that I shall ever forget or cease to 
 long for, and I would as soon kill a friend as change 
 the name of the smallest of its fields." 
 
 Her voice quivered and rang in Stephen's memory : 
 this was surely the music that for him could have no 
 counterpart. But it was still beyond his power to 
 speak of that. 
 
 "I understand," he said, "but I had almost for- 
 gotten that patriotism could be so intense and yet so 
 local." 
 
 " If you forget that," she replied, " you forget all. 
 Patriotism has its own high spiritual thoughts ; but it 
 has a body too very earth of very earth, born of time 
 and the land, and never to be found or made ; it is as 
 human as our other passions, instinctive and deep and 
 unreasonable, and as hot as the blood by which we 
 live." 
 
 Stephen remembered how the white cliffs had 
 stirred his pulse against his own will. 
 
 " I have been long away," he said, " but I know 
 you are right." 
 
 "You must come back to it," said Aubrey, in a 
 more matter-of-fact tone. " You will have no difficulty 
 there ; it can no more be lost than acquired. But 
 now," she continued, returning lightly to her old serious 
 playfulness, " we have come to fairyland itself." 
 
 She pointed through the last gate, and he saw before
 
 EDEN VALE 257 
 
 him a field unlike any of those through which they had 
 yet come. It rose on the left very gradually to the 
 far-receding crest of the hill, and in its upper part was 
 studded with great oaks, now casting enormous shadows 
 across the slope ; but it was the lower stretch, where it 
 ran level to the riverside, upon which Stephen and 
 Aubrey were now entering, and it was this that gave 
 the place its curious distinction. Here, as in the field 
 before it, the deep green grass was thickly set with 
 rushes, but in this place alone the rushes were of a pale 
 and bluish tinge, and completely changed the colour of 
 the field. 
 
 Aubrey stooped and gathered a handful of the fine 
 smooth stems. 
 
 " Look," she said, handing them to Stephen : " slim 
 and pointed every one ; and you may come here when 
 you will, at any time of the year, you will never find 
 them different. When all other rushes are brown and 
 thick with flower, these are always slender and blue- 
 green, as you see them now: they are the true fairy 
 rushes, of which the Little People make their lances, 
 and their colour is so pale, because they sow them by 
 moonlight instead of by day." 
 
 " On Midsummer Eve ? " he asked. 
 
 " No," she replied gravely, as if to a child, " on 
 Midsummer Eve we gather them, those of us who are 
 wise ; but every one must gather his own," she added, 
 
 s
 
 258 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 taking back the bunch she had given to Stephen, and 
 pointing to the ground before him. 
 
 He stooped obediently and picked an ample hand- 
 ful ; they had to be taken one by one, and he had time 
 for many thoughts as he gathered them. When he rose 
 at last and looked up, he met the low rays of the setting 
 sun. For a moment he was dazzled and closed his eyes ; 
 when he opened them again he found himself alone. 
 He turned quickly and looked in every direction round 
 the field ; but it was empty, and now it seemed to be 
 far wider and more lonely than he had thought. The 
 great oaks were a long, long way up the hill, the elms 
 in the hedge opposite stretched out enormous shadows 
 towards him, the gate by which he had come he saw 
 across an infinite space of misty gold : there was a dead 
 hush everywhere, except in the alders by the stream, 
 where a single robin sat eyeing him maliciously between 
 the snatches of his restless and elfish little song. 
 
 The sensation of loneliness caught him suddenly, as 
 the void seems to snatch a falling man: there was 
 something unnatural in this sudden and utter solitude. 
 He ran breathlessly to the gate; whether it was for 
 himself or Aubrey that he feared he hardly knew, but 
 certainly it was fear that drove him. When he saw 
 her once more the fear ceased, but the mystery remained, 
 for she was further off than he could have thought 
 possible, and was even then disappearing through the
 
 EDEN VALE 259 
 
 next gate on ,fter homeward way along the valley. It 
 was some time before he overtook her, and she seemed 
 to greet him with the same air of malicious understand- 
 ing as the elfin robin in the alder tree. 
 
 " How did I miss you ? " he cried ; " when did you 
 leave me ? " 
 
 " It is easy to see that you have been in fairyland," 
 he said ; " one is always alone there ; and minutes 
 seem like years, and years like minutes." 
 
 " There is certainly something uncanny about the 
 place," he replied, " but it is very beautiful." 
 
 " ' But ' is the wrong word," she said. " Of course 
 it is beautiful, and of course it is magical haunted 
 from ages beyond memory by the spirits of the earth. 
 You will see to-night ; " and she touched the rushes in 
 his hand with those which she was carrying herself. 
 
 He looked at her with a smile, but met a face more 
 inscrutable than ever ; if he could read anything there, 
 it was a touch of kindly scorn, a gentle tolerance of a 
 blindness that could not last. So far as it was blind- 
 ness to beauty it was cured, he felt, already ; her love 
 of the land he understood too ; but there was something 
 more, and all the way home he wondered, while they 
 talked of other things, what it could be that this child 
 knew and he did not.
 
 XXXVI 
 
 STEPHEN slept that night, as he had promised to do, 
 with the rushes beneath his pillow, and his dreams were 
 long and vivid. He thought that he was newly come 
 to Gardenleigh, a boy eager for boyish delights, such as 
 he had enjoyed there more than once before, but dis- 
 appointed and miserable to find himself alone. Sir 
 Henry he could see, and Lady Marland, but they were 
 grave and sad, and seemed to be unaware of his presence ; 
 his own companions were gone, and he felt that he 
 could not rest until he had found them. He looked for 
 them everywhere, and though he could not overtake 
 them, he seemed to be everywhere close upon their 
 track in the garden, on the down, by the lake, and in 
 the avenue he seemed to know that they had been 
 before him by only a few minutes, and he followed 
 them with a breathless and strangely anxious expectation 
 through woods and valleys that he seemed to have long 
 forgotten and now saw again with mingled recognition 
 and surprise. He came at last towards home, and saw 
 the church lying below him ; it was the only place he 
 had not searched, and he knew at once that they must 
 be there. But as he stood at the door and raised the 
 
 260
 
 STEPHEN'S DREAM 261 
 
 latch, a new and terrible sensation gripped him round 
 the heart ; he felt that he was going into the presence 
 of something that he had never yet known, and from 
 which he could never again be free. Opposite to him 
 as he entered he saw the archway of the Marland 
 chantry; it was hung with a curtain of black. He 
 lifted this and looked within; on the floor lay two 
 crosses of wild flowers, freshly gathered, covering a 
 space where the pavement had been taken up, and the 
 gap closed for the time with white wood planks. At 
 the foot of these stood Edmund and another boy, whom 
 Stephen knew at once for Harry Marland ; they were 
 looking down at a child of six who lay sleeping on the 
 floor. Her long hair was tumbled among the cowslips 
 on the grave ; one hand was thrown up round her head 
 and grasped a little bunch of wild pansies; with the 
 other she had rubbed tears from her face, and marked 
 her cheek with a faint earthy stain. 
 
 Once more Stephen seemed to be remembering 
 something that he had unaccountably forgotten ; side 
 by side beneath these flowers were lying Will and 
 Johnny Marland, companions of his own boyhood, lost 
 a month ago beneath the waters of the lake. Their 
 faces came before him suddenly in a hundred little 
 scenes, and he felt himself start forward as if it might 
 even now be not too late to save them from the moment 
 that had taken them for ever.
 
 262 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 Then he thought the other two turned and saw him ; 
 they said nothing, but Harry pointed to the sleeping 
 child. Stephen wondered who she was, and why she 
 seemed so still ; a fear came upon him that she too 
 might be dead, and he stooped quickly and laid his 
 hand upon her little bare wrist. She woke and sat up, 
 staring at the two boys opposite. Edmund held out his 
 hands to her, but she turned quickly and flung herself 
 sobbing into Stephen's arms. He carried her out 
 through the black-hung archway, and sat down under 
 the west wall of the church ; he felt her tears wet upon 
 his own cheek, and her breath coming in warm floods 
 under the soft curtain of her hair, till the sobbing died 
 away again by longer and longer intervals into the 
 regular breathing of sleep. 
 
 It seemed to him that he sat there for a long time 
 motionless ; his arms ached a little at first, then stiffened 
 and lost the feeling of their burden. A stream of low, 
 sad music came down from the chancel, and he forgot 
 himself in thought. When the music ceased, he heard 
 the long burr of the organ, and the sound of the key- 
 board closing. He rose to go, and found that his arms 
 were empty. At the door stood Edmund and Harry, 
 waiting for him. " Where is Aubrey ? " they asked ; and 
 in a sudden panic terror he turned back, and woke. But 
 the child's face was still clearly before him, and he felt 
 still the warm glow of a deep and immemorial affection.
 
 XXXVII 
 
 THAT face was still before Stephen when he threw back 
 the curtain from his window, and his dreams, instead 
 of fading away among the bright colours of the day, 
 grew every moment more vivid as he recalled them, 
 until they fixed themselves in his mind rather as newly 
 recovered memories than as the transient and bloodless 
 imaginations of sleep. Whether or not these scenes 
 were indeed part, in some way, of his own history in 
 the past, they belonged to Aubrey's recollection of him, 
 they had been called up by her, they were a key, he 
 told himself, by which he could at last unlock her secret. 
 He came to meet her with a light heart, and suffered a 
 quick and unaccountable disappointment. She gave 
 him a cold and passive hand; her eyes were not for 
 him at all. Throughout breakfast she spoke only to 
 Lady Marland, or to Sir Henry, when he addressed her 
 directly ; and by the time the meal was over, Stephen's 
 mood had passed from bewilderment into despair, and 
 from despair into an indignant resolution to insist upon 
 knowing the worst immediately. 
 
 He found her alone at last, bending over her em- 
 broidery, in a cool and darkened room. Lady Marland's 
 
 263
 
 264 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 work and work-basket lay on the table near, and her 
 return seemed only too probable ; but Stephen could 
 not wait. He took the empty chair at Aubrey's side, 
 and sat down close by her ; then, as she made no sign, 
 he summoned all his courage, and touched her hand 
 with the two or three rushes which he was carrying. 
 
 " You have not asked me about my dreams," he 
 said, with a manner intended to be light and disarm- 
 ing ; but in his own ears his voice seemed to croak. 
 
 "Dreams?" she replied, looking straight at him, 
 and then straight away at her work. " Are you still 
 thinking of dreams ? " 
 
 " When should one think of dreams," he asked, " if 
 not on Midsummer Eve and the morning after ? " 
 
 " Oh ! on Midsummer Eve," she said rather disdain- 
 fully. " Yes, one may be childish at such times ; but 
 the morning after ! " 
 
 "Do you know," he replied, "that what you said 
 appears to me less childish this morning than it did 
 last night ? " 
 
 She lifted her eyebrows in silence, and prepared 
 to thread her needle with a fresh piece of silk. 
 
 " Is it possible," he cried, " that your magic works 
 so unfailingly upon others and leaves yourself un- 
 touched ? Or did you forget your rushes ? " 
 
 Her hand shook ; she laid down the silken thread 
 and began hastily to search for another.
 
 AUBREY'S DEEAM 265 
 
 " Come," she said, with surprising suddenness ; " if 
 you really think your dreams so interesting, let me 
 hear them ; but you must not expect me to take any 
 responsibility for them." 
 
 " But I do," he replied, more seriously ; " and I 
 thank you for them ; they gave me back many treasures 
 that I did not know I had ever possessed." 
 
 He told the whole story, with every smallest and most 
 vivid detail, but with more and more difficulty towards 
 the end. When he had to tell of the sobbing child 
 asleep upon his shoulder, the words came in toneless 
 jerks, which enraged him by their inappropriate ugliness. 
 When he had finished, he felt that no action could be 
 too violent or hazardous, if only it would carry him out 
 of his embarrassment. 
 
 Her voice came upon his discomfort like a cool, firm 
 hand upon fevered eyes. 
 
 " I am glad you had that dream," she said very 
 quietly, speaking almost to herself, " because it is all 
 true, and you had forgotten ; but I wonder whether you 
 would have believed it if there had been no one to tell 
 you it was true." 
 
 " I believed it instantly," he replied, puzzled by her 
 quiet earnestness. 
 
 " Do you mean," she persisted, " that it is possible 
 to know when one has dreamed of real things and when 
 not?"
 
 266 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " Sometimes, certainly ; I knew at once." 
 
 " But how did you know ? What told you ? " 
 
 " My heart," he answered, in a voice that was no 
 more than a hoarse whisper; and he felt the blood 
 beating round his temples like the full race against a 
 heavy mill-wheel. 
 
 Aubrey seemed unconscious of his agitation; she 
 was intently following out her own question ; but the 
 current of her thought was tinged by his last words, 
 and dyed her cheeks slowly as it passed along. Stephen 
 saw the change, and felt himself upon the brink of a 
 great discovery. He leaned towards her, and his voice 
 became again almost a whisper, from his very eagerness 
 to be heard and answered. 
 
 " Aubrey," he murmured, " have you no dreams to 
 tell ? " 
 
 But now that the moment had come she was ready 
 and unperturbed. Across the frame of her embroidery, 
 lifted quietly from her knees, she looked at him with 
 eyes that were unsubdued, and met his summons with 
 a demand of their own. 
 
 " Listen," she said : " but you must promise to deal 
 fairly, whatever it may cost." 
 
 He hesitated, casting about for her meaning. 
 
 " You have told me," she went on, " of old times 
 and places where I have been with you, long ago ; they 
 were dreams, and I have made them real for you."
 
 AUBREY'S DREAM 267 
 
 He nodded, anxious for the sequel, and already 
 half guessing it. 
 
 "It was not much to own to, but it would have 
 been easier to let it pass and fade. If I too have 
 dreamed truth and you know it, you must own it in 
 your turn." 
 
 " I will," he replied eagerly ; " why should I not ? " 
 
 " Wait," she said ; " it may not be so easy as you 
 think." 
 
 She was silent a moment, looking at him, he 
 thought, as if from a great distance, and with the 
 kindness of pity or regret. 
 
 " What I dreamed," she began at last, " was some- 
 thing like this. I thought that I was here at Garden- 
 leigh, seeing and hearing everything that passed, but 
 neither seen nor heard myself. There was great re- 
 joicing in the house, and a wedding was to take place 
 that day. I saw the bride, already dressed, come into 
 the hall and throw her arms about an old man who 
 was waiting for her there with a crowd of other people. 
 He kissed her again and again, and they went out 
 together towards the church. Then I saw the bride- 
 groom coming alone down the hill from the garden ; 
 he was in a white-and-gold cloak, and I saw his face 
 clearly and knew it well. But as he came down the 
 path I saw another figure starting from the edge of the 
 avenue, from the place where I have so often sat; it
 
 268 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 came straight across the grass, and I saw that it would 
 intercept the bridegroom halfway down the path. 
 There was something terrible about this figure; it 
 moved so quickly, and passed over the sea of tall grass 
 and buttercups without stirring or trampling them. It 
 came to the bridegroom without stopping, and pushed 
 him lightly from the path; he fell quietly into the 
 long grass, and I saw that he was dead. The figure 
 stooped over him, and took his wedding-cloak and put 
 it on ; and now I saw that it was wearing a mask, and 
 the mask was made like the bridegroom's face. Then 
 the figure came down to the church and went in, and 
 I saw with astonishment that every one took it for 
 the bridegroom himself. I spoke to those near me, 
 but they did not answer ; the service had begun. I 
 became more and more terrified ; I cried aloud, ' He is 
 a murderer : tear off his mask ! ' but no one seemed to 
 hear. I struggled towards the bride, to warn her before 
 it was too late ; she at least would see the imposture. 
 But when I stood beside her I could not speak ; I was 
 struck dumb with horror to see how marvellously like 
 the mask was to the man. Then I saw them go out 
 of the church, but at the door the false bridegroom 
 turned away from the house and led the way to the 
 garden path. The bride would have stayed him, but 
 she could not : she wept bitterly, and stretched out her 
 hand to the old man ; but no one moved to help her,
 
 AUBREY'S DREAM 269 
 
 and those two went very swiftly up the path and dis- 
 appeared into the avenue. Then every one began to 
 follow ; but when they had gone halfway they stopped, 
 for there in the grass lay the true bridegroom dead. 
 They led the old man up to the place, and I saw the 
 despair in his eyes. He said, ' She is lost ; I shall 
 never see her again.' I heard myself crying fiercely, 
 ' You shall ! you shall ! ' but he could not hear me, 
 and I felt myself being carried away irresistibly to an 
 infinite distance, where I could no longer see or hear 
 either the place or the people of my dream." 
 
 When she paused Stephen was silent for a moment, 
 for she had told the story with the power of unforgotten 
 horror, and he needed time to recover from the im- 
 pression it had made upon his imagination. 
 
 " Well ? " she demanded at last, with a sharp ring 
 in her voice that was almost peremptory. " What do 
 you say ? true or untrue ? " 
 
 "It is untrue," he replied. "I have supplanted 
 no one." 
 
 " You wear the mask," she retorted. 
 
 " And the cloak ? " he asked boldly. " If I do, it 
 is my own." 
 
 "The mask," she repeated "the mask: you can- 
 not say that you are what you seem. Where is the 
 country from which you came, and to which you will 
 return ? "
 
 270 THE OLD OOUNTKY 
 
 Her voice faltered from its firm questioning to a 
 wistful and uncertain tone. 
 
 " Aubrey," he said, looking into her eyes, " was that 
 truly your dream ? and were there none but that ? " 
 
 She crimsoned slowly, as if with the reflection of 
 an unseen light ; her work slipped down, and one hand 
 fell with it by her side. 
 
 " Yes, there were more ; but they are all summed 
 up in that. They were all of parting from the old loves 
 and going away into the dark." 
 
 " The dark ! " he said. " You are no coward ; and 
 life is always the unknown." 
 
 "Ah! things and places," she sighed. "I should 
 not fear them, I think; it is only persons that are 
 strange and terrible." 
 
 " You are afraid of me ? " 
 
 The tenderness in his voice shook her; she spoke 
 hurriedly. 
 
 " I was afraid : how could I not be afraid ? I had 
 seen another Stephen, in another life." 
 
 Joy sprang in him like dawn, and the future flushed 
 upward from the horizon. 
 
 " Not another," he cried exultingly " not another ! 
 There is only one, and that one yours." 
 
 He took her hand in both his own and bent to kiss 
 it. She drew it gently away and rose to her feet. 
 
 "No, no; that cannot be. Your place is there,
 
 AUBREY'S DREAM 271 
 
 where I saw you, in the age to come, where I can only 
 go in dreams ; mine is here in the past, that is only a 
 dream to you." 
 
 " Aubrey," he said, " I will never give you up. I 
 do not care whether it is here or there, but you and I 
 must be together now." 
 
 She shook her head, looking at him with wide, sad 
 eyes. 
 
 " A man's life is where his work is ; you can never 
 be content with this." 
 
 " Then come," he said, holding out his hands. 
 
 She pointed at them with her own. " You confess 
 it," she said despairingly, " and you ask what is im- 
 possible." 
 
 The door opened, and Lady Marland came in, chat- 
 tering like a sparrow.
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 " IMPOSSIBLE " is a word that the lover has always had 
 to face, but he has given it a meaning of his own. It 
 claims to be final; yet to him it brings not the dull 
 sound of the cold, eternal rock against which hands of 
 flesh beat vainly, but merely the fiat defiance of a 
 closing door a door, like all doors, made to be opened, 
 either from without or within. If not to-day, then 
 perhaps to-night ; and if to-night too he finds it barred, 
 there may be possibly a light behind the chinks, or 
 a voice for the listener, waiting intently in silence. 
 To-morrow, at any rate, the house will be his own. 
 
 To-morrow seemed to Stephen to be a long way off, 
 but there was much that helped him to pass the time 
 of waiting. He spent long days with Aubrey, and long 
 days by himself; sometimes riding through the greenest 
 and most peaceful country that the world contains, 
 sometimes floating on still water in which the deep 
 tranquillity of summer seemed to repeat itself in a yet 
 deeper mystery of peace, at once more fragile and more 
 unsubstantial. The distant unrealities of everyday life 
 passed over him like the drift of light clouds that 
 chequer the sky with only momentary changes. 
 
 2^2
 
 THE BELLS 273 
 
 Visitors and travellers came and went, and neighbours 
 now and then, as the weather cooled and lightened 
 towards autumn. There was often news to talk of 
 news of the King in Scotland, of the Duke in Nor- 
 mandy, of the Prince upon his new campaign ; news, 
 too, of the Bishop and his health, but not a word of 
 Ralph from any one. 
 
 Mid-September brought a wilder and more melan- 
 choly note; for several days the rain fell hour after 
 hour from twilight to twilight, and the wind went 
 straining and sighing among the great trees with a 
 sound like the breathing of a strong man tossed in the 
 long, unconscious agony of death. Vague rumours 
 came of a disaster in France: Sir Henry would not 
 hear a word of them, but he was unusually bitter when 
 he spoke of the inveterate folly of marching with too 
 small a force, and risking everything upon a single 
 hazard. The others would have covered up so anxious 
 a topic. Stephen, though he could remember little 
 enough of the Black Prince, argued determinedly that 
 his force was a match for any odds, for he knew by 
 experience that even defeat may well be less terrible 
 than the nightmare of dumb endurance that crushes 
 men separately when their pride will not allow them 
 to talk openly of their fears. He thought that Aubrey 
 looked hard at him while he was speaking, but she 
 would not be drawn into the conversation, or own to 
 
 T
 
 274 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 any definite opinion on the war ; whatever unacknow- 
 ledged memories she might share with him, she was 
 still, to all appearance, the child of another century 
 than that from which he had come. 
 
 The sky cleared at last, the gale dropped, and the 
 nightmare faded away before the returning sun. There 
 were fallen trees to be trimmed and lopped and sawn, 
 and carted to the timber-yard a week's work at 
 least, and a great grief to Aubrey, who loved the dead 
 giants as if they had been human. For her they all 
 had characters and voices of their own, and it was a 
 lucky moment that inspired Stephen to speak of them 
 as her " fellow-countrymen." She joined in the laugh 
 at herself, but laid the saying away in a secret place 
 among others much more serious ; and went out with 
 him to see the woodmen at their work. The park 
 echoed with the crash of timber and the ringing strokes 
 of the axe ; the great teams stood patiently by, waiting 
 motionless, until the huge trunk was stripped and 
 fettered for its last journey. Then the whip cracked, 
 and the word of command from a gruff Saxon throat 
 set the shaggy horses thudding ponderously on the 
 turf; the head-bells rang, and the bright brass on the 
 martingales flashed in the sun ; the vast baulk started, 
 stuck, started again, and glided at last from the rollers 
 to the waggon with a heart-shaking rattle. Then once 
 more the chains were shifted and made fast, and the
 
 THE BELLS 275 
 
 horses went on their way with a slow, majestic step 
 worthy of a great king's obsequies. 
 
 "Ah!" cried Aubrey, with shining eyes, "how I 
 love the earth! She builds trees where we can only 
 build houses." 
 
 "Houses can be English too," said Stephen, half 
 laughing at her. 
 
 " They can ; but they change. Yesterday they were 
 of wood, to-day they are of stone, to-morrow they may 
 be of something else; there is no finality in houses. 
 But trees are always trees, and what we have been 
 looking at is a picture that might belong to any gene- 
 ration since England was England." 
 
 " And while England is England, I think." 
 
 To this, however, he got no reply, and he began to 
 realize that, from some feeling at which he could only 
 guess, the future was a subject on which she did not 
 wish to talk with him. But, except for this one 
 limitation, their companionship became even closer 
 than before. 
 
 And now, to Stephen's wonder and content, this 
 quiet valley that he had watched all through its 
 summer dream passed on into a still profounder calm, 
 the bright reverie of the year in its riper and serener 
 age. Morning after morning broke under the light 
 October mist, that left as it dissolved a delicate silver 
 tissue glimmering and sparkling on the grassy slopes.
 
 276 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 All day the windless air became softer and more 
 mellow; roses bloomed again for the last time, and 
 great red admirals sailed in fleets among the autumn 
 purples. The woods glowed as if every sunset dyed 
 them deeper; single trees hung in the landscape like 
 towering golden clouds. The distant Selwood chimes, 
 as they floated over the old red-walled garden where 
 he sat one afternoon with Aubrey, seemed to be an 
 inseparable part of the enchantment, the very voice of 
 immemorial beauty. 
 
 To her they brought a widely different message : 
 she sprang up white and trembling. 
 
 " The bells ! " she cried ; " the bells on Friday ! 
 Stephen, it is victory ! " 
 
 She caught her breath and listened again: two 
 bright tears gathered in her eyes, till she shook them 
 down with a laugh and turned to Stephen. 
 
 " Let us go down and send for news," she said ; and 
 they hurried to the gate. 
 
 As they came out of the shelter of the high wall 
 on to the hill, the sound of the chimes came still more 
 clearly, and changed to a shooting peal that seemed to 
 crash with reckless joy. It echoed in Stephen's heart, 
 but Aubrey it seemed to possess like an inspiration; 
 she walked beside him with such an ecstasy of silent 
 pride as he had never seen or imagined. As they 
 neared the house there was a sound of trampling and
 
 THE BELLS 277 
 
 loud shoutiDg of many voices ; two men were striding 
 quickly from the stables to the courtyard. Aubrey's 
 voice rang out like a silver trumpet ; the two figures 
 turned, and one stepped back a pace to look between 
 the trees. " Harry! " she cried again, and ran on to fling 
 her arms about his neck. When Stephen came up he 
 found them all three laughing and talking at once. 
 " Here he is, Stephen ! " she said, leaning fondly on 
 her cousin's arm; "and I think you used to know 
 Lord Bryan."
 
 XXXIX 
 
 THAT was a festal night. Stephen was astonished at 
 the fervour and universality of the rejoicing ; he hardly 
 recognized his staid and tongue-tied fellow-countrymen. 
 But there was in reality little cause for his surprise. 
 No such news as this had come from oversea since the 
 great days of '46, and even the memory of Cressy had 
 long suffered eclipse beneath the black shadow of the 
 pestilence. But now for an hour the age was young 
 again, the nation one triumphant fellowship, the cost 
 and strain of war forgiven, the Crown re-jewelled by 
 that Prince who was at once the friend of the Commons 
 and the flower of the world's chivalry. No wonder 
 that the hills of England shouted together, as of old, 
 with tongues of fire ; no wonder that here at Garden- 
 leigh, as in a hundred other valleys, the old hall was 
 crowded and gay that night with a revelry it had long 
 forgotten. 
 
 At the high table Lady Marland and Sir Henry sat 
 between the messengers of victory ; Harry Marland by 
 his father, and Lord Bryan on his hostess's right; 
 Aubrey next, and Stephen by her; two of the five 
 squires below them; the rest at the other end with 
 
 278
 
 THE TACTICS OF POITIERS 279 
 
 the Rector, tall John Perrot, a saint with a soldier's 
 eye, who knew when feasting on a Friday was legiti- 
 mate his turn would come to-morrow. The lower 
 tables were filled to overflowing by Lord Bryan's men, 
 quartered for the most part in Selwood, but for the 
 evening safer here among the well-disciplined house- 
 hold of the Marlands, than running loose through the 
 pothouses of the town. They were glad to be back, 
 doubly glad to find themselves so far on their way 
 westward ; and since they were all Devon men, with 
 a becoming confidence, the sound of their speech came 
 up the hall as pleasant and as free as the wind over 
 the heather. At Sir Henry's bidding they drank to 
 the King, the Queen, and the Eoyal Family, with en- 
 thusiasm ; and to the Prince with a roar that seemed 
 intended to be heard across the Channel. Then the 
 high table rose, and left them to it. 
 
 In the great gallery wine and spices were waiting 
 on two tables by the fire. The room was ablaze with 
 light from end to end, and hung along the walls with 
 fresh leafage of all the richest colours of autumn. 
 Where the armoured figures stood in their grim, un- 
 bending rank there was a wreath on every helmet, 
 and the nearest mailed hand gripped the tarnished 
 and moth-eaten banner of Harry's grandfather, the first 
 Sir Henry, crowned with oak-leaves, and wound about 
 the staff with bright new scarlet and silver. The fire,
 
 280 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 piled high with logs, gave out a clear and steady glow, 
 that flashed on the silver cups and flagons, and was 
 reflected again in the polished surface of the tables on 
 which they stood. 
 
 The soldiers all exclaimed with admiration as they 
 entered the room ; it was many months since they had 
 seen such comfort, and here there was an added touch 
 of stateliness, the more impressive because it told, not 
 of effort or ostentation, but of ancestral wealth and the 
 unconscious ease of a country long untouched by the 
 havoc of war. 
 
 "That was a gay scene downstairs," said Lord 
 Bryan, as he handed Lady Marland to the high-backed 
 chair by the fireside. 
 
 " Was it not terrible ? " she replied, in her shrill 
 little voice. " It was all I could do to hear myself speak." 
 
 " I heard you quite well, my dear," said her husband 
 gravely, with a gleam behind the gravity. 
 
 Among the younger squires there was some danger 
 of a lapse from decorum ; but it passed off, fortunately, 
 without attracting Lady Marland's attention. 
 
 " I did my best," she replied, with plaintive dignity, 
 " but I am sure I have strained my throat." 
 
 Aubrey settled herself at her aunt's feet. " Never 
 mind, dearest," she said ; " we need not do any more 
 talking now. Guy is going to tell us all about the 
 battle."
 
 THE TACTICS OF POITIEKS 281 
 
 Lord Bryan smiled and poured out wine. " All 
 about this battle is a long story," he said, " and more 
 than I really know. Harry saw it from beginning to 
 end better than I did ; if he will be chronicler, I will 
 do my best to help him out here and there." 
 
 "Well," said Harry, cheerfully, "where am I to 
 begin ? You know we started on the ninth of August, 
 and drew covert after covert for more than a month 
 before we found anything like a warrantable deer. I 
 can't go through all that now it would take much 
 too long. It ended at last in our coming on the 
 whole herd at once they were seven or eight times 
 as many as we were and we got them safely harboured 
 in Poitiers on a Saturday night. We slept out our- 
 selves, in a wood by the abbey of Nouaille, and began 
 to lay the pack on first thing in the morning. They 
 were tired of all this casting about, and just mad for a 
 kill. But we had all forgotten what a wily quarry we 
 were after. At the very moment when we thought he 
 was going to show sport, what should we see but a great 
 Cardinal one of these professional arbitration-mongers 
 trotting towards us, as calmly as if he had been coming 
 to pay a friendly call. He talked a great deal about the 
 wickedness of shedding Christian blood, and wasted the 
 whole day for us by running backwards and forwards 
 between the two lines, carrying the most impossible 
 proposals from one to the other. It was rather too bad,
 
 282 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 considering that the skirmishing had already begun 
 before he started, and our men and theirs had watered 
 their horses at the same stream that morning, and 
 promised each other any amount of broken heads. But 
 the Frenchmen did not fool the Prince as completely as 
 they thought ; they got up a lot of reinforcements during 
 the day, and our fellows grumbled a good deal as they 
 saw the banners coming in ; but we had a good rest and 
 did some useful scouting. In the evening the nego- 
 tiations were broken off, as every one knew they would 
 be, and we moved away a little to avoid any chance of 
 a surprise. They were fifty thousand odd eighty-seven 
 banners and we were a bare seven thousand : in a 
 night attack they would have gone right over us, like a 
 harrow over a toad. 
 
 " At breakfast-time next morning would you 
 believe it ? there was the Cardinal again. We really 
 rather admired the fellow's obstinacy ; but we had no 
 idea of losing another good day, so this time we sent 
 him off home at once, with a' cheer to show that there 
 was no ill-feeling. You ought to be pleased with us 
 for that, mother." 
 
 " My dear," replied Lady Marland, " I am always 
 pleased when you behave properly to the clergy. I 
 have no doubt the Cardinal is a very good man." 
 
 " Oh ! is he ? " said Harry, with a nod to his father. 
 " I will come to that a little later on. I want you now
 
 THE TACTICS OP POITIERS 283 
 
 to understand exactly the position we were in. For a 
 straight fight according to the rules we were not so 
 badly off as the figures would appear to show : we had 
 four thousand men-of-arms to their eight; the rest of 
 their big battalions were sure to be very unsteady, and 
 they had practically no marksmen to set against our 
 archers two thousand archers we had. On a fairly 
 narrow front, with no open flanks, we might very well 
 hold our own if we could only manage to get our huge 
 baggage-train into leaguer. Now, just across the river, 
 which lay on our right, the Prince had marked a piece 
 of ground that was almost exactly what we wanted : a 
 big field, or rather an enclosed hill, with a good hedge 
 and ditch all round it ; and what was better still, that 
 part of the hedge which was to be our front ran down 
 on the left into a piece of marshy ground by the river, 
 which was practically impossible for cavalry. Some of 
 the enemy were supposed to be already down under the 
 front of the hill, but the higher part that we were to 
 occupy first had a lot of bushes and brambles on it that 
 would give us good cover; and besides, we should have the 
 advantage of the ground. The top of this hill was rough 
 pasture ; on the south and west face there were vines, 
 where we meant to clamber up, and the remainder of the 
 field that is, the whole of the north and eastern slope 
 down to the hedge was stubble and green crops, and so 
 was the ground beyond, on the French side of the fence.
 
 284 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " The first thing to do was to get across the river, 
 which lies very awkwardly in a deep bed. There was a 
 ford, happily, just narrow enough to be practicable, and 
 over we went in a scramble Warwick first with the 
 van, then the Prince's division with the waggons. 
 Salisbury had the rearguard, and he came flying over 
 and got into position on Warwick's right rear before our 
 division had half finished leaguering in the marsh ; but 
 some of us the men-of-arins had gone on up to the 
 top of the hill with the Prince himself. There he kept 
 us, in reserve, as it turned out ; and that is how I came 
 to see the whole show so well." 
 
 " Where were you, Guy ? " asked Aubrey. 
 
 " In the same place," Lord Bryan replied ; " but I 
 was in the first line of the reserve, which was used up 
 much earlier. It was the last four hundred Harry and 
 his friends that really did the business." 
 
 " Don't listen to him," said Harry. " I'm telling 
 you the whole thing just as it happened, and you 
 must attend to me. What I want you to see is this : 
 Warwick, with fifteen hundred men-of-arms, lining out 
 behind the hedge on the slope where it began to run 
 down into the marsh, in touch with our fellows in 
 leaguer at the bottom. On his flanks he had a thousand 
 archers ; they stood mostly outside the hedge, on the 
 bank above the ditch, but some were in among the 
 vines, and those lowest down were right in the marsh.
 
 THE TACTICS OF POITIERS 285 
 
 Down on the more level ground in front, where it was 
 dry enough, Warwick's young bloods were trying to get 
 up a little tournament with some of the French cavalry, 
 who were beginning to advance in two lots, under the 
 Marshals Clermont and Audreham. By the way, they 
 had been quarrelling, those two, and they came on too 
 quick, without waiting for their supports. It appears 
 that when the Prince began to cross, and his banner was 
 moved about and finally went out of sight in the dip, 
 one of them said we were evidently retreating, and the 
 other sneered at him; so they raced each other into 
 action and spoiled the timing of the whole attack. 
 While Clermont was skirmishing, Audreham halted a 
 moment to watch. Clermont seized the opportunity to 
 make a dash for a big gap in the fence, some way up 
 beyond Warwick's right. It was a good move, because 
 if he had got in he would have taken the whole first 
 division in flank. But he reckoned without Salisbury, 
 whom he probably could not see. When he reached the 
 part of the hedge where the gap was it was a really big 
 gap, a cart-track wide enough for four horses abreast he 
 found Salisbury there already ; he had moved forward on 
 his own account, and had his archers very neatly drawn 
 up in open order, with a second rank closing the intervals, 
 and his men-of-arms in line behind them. So the 
 rearguard, to their huge delight, were in action first, 
 after all."
 
 286 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " In fact," said Sir Henry, " they had given them- 
 selves leave not to be a rearguard at all. What did the 
 Prince say to that ? " 
 
 " Well, he saw that Salisbury had really no choice in 
 the circumstances; but, of course, he looked black, 
 because it just doubled his fighting line and halved his 
 reinforcements. What he did was to make his own 
 division into two reserves, as Guy has told you. Even 
 so, if we had had to meet four successive attacks, as 
 the French intended, we might have been done; but, 
 happily, Orleans never toed the line at all, and we just 
 lasted out." 
 
 " Now come back to the marshals," said Sir Henry. 
 
 " The marshals got to close quarters in much better 
 order than we liked ; the shooting of Warwick's men 
 straight in their faces seemed to produce very little 
 effect upon them ; so the Prince sent Oxford down in a 
 hurry to advance the archers on the left. By George ! 
 you never saw such a change in five minutes; those 
 fellows ran out without any cover, and smote the French 
 cavalry on their right flank and rear with a perfect 
 hailstorm. Some of the horses looked like hedgehogs ; 
 all of them went down or bolted, and Warwick did what 
 he liked with the few who had got through the hedge. 
 Then the archers came back to their place in regular 
 marching order, as cool and quiet as if they had been 
 out to the butts. Meanwhile, Salisbury had done
 
 THE TACTICS OF POITIERS 287 
 
 equally well on the right ; so there was an end of the 
 marshals and their quarrel Clermont was dead and 
 Audreham a prisoner. 
 
 " Nothing in the way of pursuit was allowed : Nor- 
 mandy's division was already advancing ; they were too 
 late to support, so they made a separate attack of it. 
 There were a great lot of them, and they had a good 
 stiffening of men-of-arms, but fortunately no artillery. 
 Still, it looked like a long and tough business, and the 
 Prince sent down the larger half of his reserve into the 
 fighting line to enable Warwick to extend towards 
 Salisbury. This time the archers seemed to be out of 
 it: there were no horses for them to stick, and they 
 used up all their arrows on steel plates that were too 
 good for them. It was a ding-dong fight ; our fellows 
 had begun by standing outside the hedge this time I 
 suppose they wanted to get their backs up against some- 
 thing but the Frenchmen pushed them home again 
 with an ugly rush, and began to follow through the 
 fence. Then some archers of our division, including 
 Guy's little lot of Devon men, who had finished their 
 work down among the baggage, came at a grand run 
 light up the waggon side of the hill and over the top 
 and down on to the thick of the mellay outside the 
 hedge. There they stood and shot at point-blank range, 
 and that soon settled the business. Then came the 
 greatest stroke of luck we had. When our fellows had
 
 288 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 once shifted the French, they kept them moving so 
 briskly that they ran them right into Orleans' men 
 behind, and the greater part of both divisions went off 
 the field together towards Chauvigny. Those of them 
 who did not bolt went back and joined the King's 
 own division. They must have been good men to come 
 again after such a shaking, but they got nothing by it ; 
 it was not their day." 
 
 " Oh ! don't say that," said Aubrey, gently ; " it was 
 their best day." 
 
 "It was certainly their last," replied Harry, with 
 satisfaction. 
 
 " My boy," said his father, " you have every right to 
 triumph, but what were you feeling like yourselves 
 about that time ? " 
 
 Harry reddened. " I did not mean to be brutal," he 
 said ; " and we certainly were not thinking lightly of 
 them just then. Our front was a dreadful sight ; the 
 wounded were being dragged hastily under cover, and 
 there were not half enough men to do the work properly, 
 for we had hardly a man left standing in the line who 
 was not either wounded himself or dead beat with 
 fatigue ; and then there was such a shortage of arrows 
 that the archers were all over the field collecting what 
 they could even pulling them out of dying men, 1 
 heard ; it was no time for squeamishness. Mercifully, 
 the French King was so long in getting under way that
 
 THE TACTICS OF POITIERS 289 
 
 things were straightened out at last, and the men got 
 their breath a little ; but there was no doubt that they 
 did not like the look of the weather, and some of them 
 raised a scare that the Captal de Buch had gone home. 
 He had certainly disappeared, with all his command 
 fifty or sixty men-of-arms and a good hundred archers 
 but he was the last man in the world to go before the 
 end, and he proved it once for all. While we were 
 refitting, he was marching back clean round the hill we 
 were on, and out to the right, so as to fall on the left rear 
 of the French when the pinch came. Meanwhile, the 
 Prince ordered us down at last the only four hundred 
 fresh men he had got the whole line out into the open, 
 with us in the centre, and called out to Walter Wood- 
 land to ' advance banner.' Then the French made their 
 final mistake. When they saw us on the move, with 
 the lilies and lions overhead and all our trumpets 
 sounding the charge, they started right off toward us at 
 the double, as if they meant to roll over us like a huge 
 wave. Of course, when they got up they were in rather 
 ragged order, and quite blown. Still, the shock was 
 tremendous, and our line reeled from one end to the 
 other. But the Prince was not going to lose his best 
 fight, if hard hitting would save it. We could see the 
 Captal by this time ; he was flying a big St. George's 
 ensign to warn us not to mistake him, and quite right 
 too, for he came absolutely straight in upon the French 
 
 u
 
 290 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 rear, in the very track they had just trampled. Then 
 the Prince knew he had them between the crackers ; 
 they were a big nut and a hard one, but he kept shouting 
 to us, ' Forward ! forward ! ' and laying on himself like 
 ten men threshing, till he got the rush to a standstill, 
 and we felt that we were holding them. At that 
 moment, in the nick of time, the Captal's archers began 
 to let fly ; ours had already spent their shot, and were 
 joining in with swords and sticks and anything else 
 they could pick up even stones. But those hundred 
 fellows had every one of them a full quiver and a fair 
 target ten thousand backs at thirty yards. There were 
 more than twenty companies in that division. Well, 
 they were hopelessly clubbed almost before we knew 
 what was happening ; but we soon saw that they were 
 hurting each other more than us, and when the banners 
 began dropping one by one we knew that we really had 
 them at last. It was more like reaping than fighting ; 
 they were standing so thick that they could not hit out 
 at us, and we cut them down in swathes all along the 
 line, while the Prince and Chandos and Cobham went 
 deeper and deeper in, trying to reach the King himself. 
 He was easy to see, because he was down below us and 
 on a bit of a mound, and had Chargny by him with his 
 banner ; but to get near him was a very different matter, 
 because of the mob of hungry fellows who wanted him 
 alive for his ransom. He kept them off with quick,
 
 THE TACTICS OF POITIERS 291 
 
 dangerous strokes, just like a stag at bay, and whenever 
 any of them tried to get at him from one side or the 
 other, his young son Philip called out, ' Eight, father ! 
 left! right!' At last Chargny went down with the 
 banner in his hands, and the King saw that it was time 
 to cry ' Enough ! ' After all, he had done uncommonly 
 well ; it is not often that a King gets such a taste of the 
 real thing, and if his men had all put as much good- will 
 into it as he did, we should probably not be here now." 
 
 " Who took him in the end ? " asked the Eector. 
 
 " Oh ! a Gascon, of course," replied Harry, with a 
 short laugh. 
 
 " And how much did he get for him ? " 
 
 " No one knows exactly. You see, a dozen fellows 
 claimed the prize, and the Prince said he would hear 
 all their claims when he got home ; but the King had 
 given this Morbecque his glove and asked his name. So 
 it was really a clear case, and Morbecque, when we 
 came away, had already been promoted and had an 
 enormous sum given him on account, to keep up his 
 position the position of a Gascon adventurer ! " 
 
 Lord Bryan laughed. " Cheer up, Harry ! " he said. 
 " You and I ought to be thankful we don't need the 
 money, for after all, he was forty yards in front 
 of us." 
 
 " Besides," said Aubrey, " I dare say it was less 
 humiliating for the King to surrender to a Frenchman."
 
 292 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 Lord Bryan ceased to smile. " I assure you," he 
 said, in a quiet tone that seemed to change the whole 
 key of the conversation, " that if he thought so, he was 
 never more mistaken. No matter who took his glove, 
 it was to Edward Prince of Wales that he surrendered." 
 
 There was no pride in the voice, but so much in the 
 words that every one was silent. 
 
 " Let me tell you," he continued, " what happened 
 the first evening. When supper was ready, the Prince 
 brought the King into his tent and placed him at a high 
 table with Prince Philip and seven others of the highest 
 degree among those we had taken unhurt. The rest of 
 the prisoners of rank were arranged at other tables, with 
 Chandos and Cobham and many more of our own people 
 among them. Everything was done so well and with 
 so much ceremony that it was more like supping in the 
 pavilion after a tournament at Windsor, than in a tent 
 hastily pitched on the field of battle. At the high table 
 an English knight stood behind the chair of every guest, 
 and when the French King had taken his seat two 
 trumpeters sounded for the service to begin. The King 
 looked about him in surprise, and asked where his host 
 was to sit. When no one answered he turned round ; 
 the Prince was there beside him on one knee, offering 
 him water for his hands in a silver basin." 
 
 The words fell deliberately one by one from the 
 speaker, as if he knew that he had no need to repeat
 
 THE TACTICS OF POITIERS 293 
 
 a single stroke ; he had drawn the picture as he in- 
 tended, and it must convince. 
 
 "What did the King say then?" asked Aubrey, 
 eagerly. 
 
 "I could not hear, but I saw that he was remon- 
 strating, and the Sire de Bourbon rose from his seat on 
 the Bang's left to give up his place to the Prince. But 
 the Prince remained kneeling, and there was a sudden 
 hush all through the tent, so that we could hear every 
 word that followed. The Prince said that he was not 
 worthy to sit at the table with so great a King. The 
 King replied, with a bitter little smile, that the day's 
 work was a sufficient answer to that. But the Prince 
 said very earnestly, ' Sir, I beg you will not take it 
 so hard that the fortune of war has gone against you. 
 Let me assure you that you will meet with so much 
 honour and kindness at my father's hands that you 
 will remember to-day only as the beginning of your 
 friendship with him.' That was enough ; I saw the 
 King's face change. He looked straight at the Prince 
 for one moment, then dipped both his hands in the 
 bowl without another word. 
 
 "After that, every one's tongue was loosed again, 
 and even the French were loud in the Prince's praise. 
 The one who was sitting next me he was a very fine 
 courtly old gentleman seemed to be much moved ; he 
 said to me, ' Sir, your Prince is like to prove a great
 
 294 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 King ; ' to which I replied, ' Yes, if God send him life 
 and a continuance of such good fortune.' He turned 
 quickly away, and to my great surprise I saw that he 
 was in tears. Presently he recovered himself, and said, 
 ' You do well not to make too sure ; I made too 
 sure.' His own son was a very promising young 
 captain, of much about the Prince's age, and he had 
 been killed with Clermont in the morning." 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " said Sir Henry, in a low voice, and 
 he went on murmuring to himself in a tone of deep 
 feeling, " Poor fellow ; poor fellow ! " 
 
 Every one knew that he was thinking of his own 
 lost boys, but no one knew what to say ; there was a 
 moment of embarrassed silence, and then the squires 
 rose to bid their hostess good night. They had to get 
 the archers away to their quarters before it was too 
 late ; the Eector took his leave at the same time, and 
 when they had gone Lady Marland went downstairs 
 herself to recall her household to discipline, and give 
 her orders for the morning. Aubrey she left behind 
 to look after Sir Henry: besides, while anything 
 remained to be told of the victory, it would have 
 been impossible to tear her away from the hearing of it.
 
 XL 
 
 THE five who remained re-grouped themselves more 
 closely round the hearth. Aubrey moved Lord Bryan 
 into the seat her aunt had just left, and took his place 
 by Sir Henry, who was still musing with his eyebrows 
 lifted wearily, and his eyes cast down upon the floor. 
 Stephen sat on his other side, and Harry stood in front 
 of the fire cracking walnuts, with the air of one who 
 is biding his time. He was silent during the moment 
 or two of coming and going at the door ; when it had 
 finally closed behind Lady Marland and the Kector, he 
 looked up and said to his father 
 
 " Now that the clerical party have left us, perhaps 
 you would like to hear the rest of that good man the 
 Cardinal" 
 
 "Eh?" said Sir Henry, rousing himself. "What 
 was that, Harry ? I forget." 
 
 " It was nothing very much, but it pleased some of 
 us a good deal. I told you how the Cardinal of 
 Perigord wasted a whole day of our time in expounding 
 to us the doctrine of the Church on the wickedness 
 of war, and rebuking us for wanting to fight. Well, 
 after all that, and after posing as the impartial friend 
 
 295
 
 296 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 of both sides, what do you suppose the old red fox did ? 
 He went off to Poitiers himself, as sorrowful and as 
 sanctimonious as you please, but he left all his own 
 people, except his chaplains and secretary, to do their 
 best against us, fighting in the King's division. Half 
 of them were under his own nephew, Sir Eobert do 
 Duras, and the rest with his underling, the Castellan 
 of Amposta. When the final smash came, the Cas- 
 tellan was one of the first prisoners brought in. The 
 Prince was naturally furious to see him there, and 
 ordered him to be beheaded on the spot. While they 
 were hunting for the provost-marshal and a log, the 
 wretched Castellan tried to beg off. 'No no ! ' the 
 Prince said. 'People employed by the Church, who 
 come and go in treaty for peace, ought not in reason 
 to bear arms or to fight on either side ; and if they 
 do, they must pay forfeit like any other felons.' But 
 then Chandos reminded him that he would have plenty 
 of time later, and just now there were many other 
 things of more importance to think of. So he went 
 on, and left the Castellan, for he never can say 
 'no' to Chandos; but they had not gone a hundred 
 yards further when they came on Sir Eobert de Duras 
 himself lying dead under some trees. The fellow had 
 even had the bare-faced impudence to take his banner 
 into action, and there it was lying by him with a 
 dozen of his men, all as dead as their master.
 
 THE ETHICS OF POITIERS 297 
 
 'Here, at any rate, is something for the Cardinal,' 
 says the Prince, grimly. ' There is nothing to wait 
 for this time, I think, Chandos ; ' and he made them 
 take up Duras's body just as it was, and carry it into 
 Poitiers to the Cardinal on a shield, with this message : 
 ' The Prince of Wales's thanks to the Cardinal of 
 Perigord for his courteous and Christian endeavours, 
 and he salutes him by this token.' " 
 
 There was a moment's silence: the hearers were 
 evidently all impressed by the story, but no two of 
 them in quite the same way. 
 
 " Well, father," said Harry, presently, " what do 
 you think of that ? " 
 
 Sir Henry answered one half the question only. 
 " There can be no doubt," he said, " that the Church- 
 men were entirely in the wrong." 
 
 " Yes," said Aubrey, " the Prince was right there ; 
 but I cannot help wishing he had not sent that 
 message. It seems to me somehow to be inconsistent 
 with his behaviour to the King that was splendid." 
 
 " Oh ! " replied Harry, in a tone of disappointment 
 and remonstrance. " If you are going to talk of con- 
 sistency, we are all inconsistent at times; and the 
 Prince, after all, is a man like the rest of us." 
 
 " I am glad to hear you say that," said Stephen, 
 " because from what I have heard he seems to be even 
 more interesting as a character than as a commander ;
 
 298 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 and I have been wondering whether I might ask some 
 questions about him without offence." 
 
 "Ask away," replied Harry, with unmeasured 
 confidence. " If you get one shot home, I'll say you've 
 a keen eye." 
 
 Lord Bryan, who had been listening to the con- 
 versation in silence, with his eyes fixed upon the red 
 glow of the crumbling logs, now turned slowly in his 
 big chair, so as to face the speakers. Stephen saw the 
 movement, and was embarrassed by it ; but it was not 
 in his nature to shrink from any argument against 
 any odds. Besides, he had been longing all evening 
 for an opportunity to talk with this distinguished 
 soldier and diplomatist, who at thirty-seven had 
 already fought in three great wars, held two governor- 
 ships, and kept the Great Seal of England ; and who 
 carried himself with an unconscious air of greatness 
 that seemed to leave his friend and contemporary, 
 Harry Marland, half a lifetime behind him. 
 
 " What I mean," Stephen said, " is this. I feel, as 
 Aubrey does only I feel it in more ways than one 
 that there is an inconsistency in the Prince's behaviour 
 and ideas. His chief characteristics seem to clash with 
 each other, and I cannot help wondering whether this 
 is because some of them are the man himself, and 
 some only put on, or at any rate, less real than the 
 others. I am not criticizing, you understand; I am
 
 THE ETHICS OP POITIERS 299 
 
 only inquiring. His most undoubtedly genuine feeling, 
 I suppose, is his love of fighting ? " 
 
 " Eight ! " replied Harry, with warm approval ; 
 " there is nothing put on there." 
 
 "Then he seems also to have a great love of 
 pageantry, a sort of romantic feeling for the sound 
 and colour and fame of war." 
 
 " Well ? We all have, haven't we ? " 
 
 " Possibly," said Stephen ; " but some of us wish we 
 had not. The Prince himself, when the fighting is 
 over, and he has got the best of it, professes a totally 
 different creed; he puts courage and pride away, and 
 brings out a most elaborate courtesy and humility in 
 their place. Are they equally part of the man 
 himself?" 
 
 " Yes ! " replied Harry, defiantly. 
 
 "No," said Lord Bryan at the same instant, in a 
 quiet tone, full of meaning. 
 
 Stephen looked from one to the other. 
 
 " Not equally," Lord Bryan explained ; " they are 
 the man himself, the most real thing about him. You 
 hardly believe that ? Let me tell you one more saying 
 of his, the most significant of all. When the French 
 King was first brought to him he offered, quite 
 naturally and simply, to help him off with his armour. 
 The King said with great dignity, ' Thank you, cousin, 
 but after this it is not for you to serve me ; no Prince
 
 300 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 has ever won such honour in a single day.' The 
 Prince was touched to the quick ; he cannot bear that 
 his honour should be another's misfortune. He said 
 in a very low voice, ' God forgive me this victory.' 
 The King evidently did not understand : he did not 
 know the man ; but I think I may claim that I do, 
 and I say that he was never more himself than at 
 that moment." 
 
 " So do I," cried Aubrey, passionately, " and so do 
 you, Stephen. You know that was not acting; you 
 know that no one could ever have invented anything 
 so beautiful." 
 
 Stephen felt himself flush; for a moment it was 
 as though the warm current from her heart was beating 
 through his own veins. 
 
 " I agree," he said ; " that was fine, and it was 
 certainly instinctive. He seems to be made up of 
 impulses; but that only increases the difficulty. Is 
 it not extraordinary that the same man should make 
 such a reply to one of his defeated prisoners, and 
 order off another to be executed in cold blood ? " 
 
 " That is what I felt," she replied ; " but I suppose, 
 as Harry says, that when we act on impulse we are 
 often inconsistent. What do you say, Guy ? " 
 
 " You have not got to the bottom of it yet, I 
 think," said Lord Bryan. " The Prince is impulsive 
 by nature, but he is no longer the boy he was at
 
 THE ETHICS OP POITIERS 301 
 
 Cressy. He has thought things out, and though his 
 actions are still instinctive, they are very far from 
 being haphazard or inconsistent. I do not say that 
 he is perfect ; I think he went over the line when 
 he sent that message to the Cardinal ; but you must 
 remember that he was doubly tempted first, because 
 one of his most cherished principles had been violated, 
 and secondly, because the offender was his old antago- 
 nist, the Church." 
 
 " What ? " cried Stephen" his antagonist ? That 
 makes him a more splendid riddle than ever. I had 
 always thought of him as unusually devout." 
 
 " So he is," replied Lord Bryan. " If any man was 
 ever born a Christian, he was. But on the point of 
 war, he no more accepts the Church's view of Christi- 
 anity than you do, or I, or any other Englishman who 
 is honest with himself. He does not believe that war 
 is always unlawful ; he knows that all existence is a 
 struggle, that we love fighting because it is the savour 
 of life itself, and that in this world of forces every- 
 thing must depend on force in the last resort. The 
 time of peace may come, and no one prays for it more 
 sincerely ; but that will be the time of perfection, and 
 in the mean time right must be righted, and wrong 
 ended." 
 
 "Every nation," said Stephen, "being, of course, 
 right in its own view. Does not that bring you to
 
 302 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 arbitration between communities, just as we have 
 justice now between man and man ? " 
 
 He feared he had spoken too keenly, but Lord 
 Bryan parried the thrust with unruffled ease. 
 
 "Who is to be the arbitrator? The Church, of 
 course. Let us forget the Cardinal of Perigord, and 
 grant the impartiality of the Church. How is the 
 judgment to be enforced ? Would you excommunicate 
 a whole nation ? " 
 
 " I agree that the Church is out of the question," 
 replied Stephen; "but a jury of Kings would have 
 power to carry out their own decrees." 
 
 " That means no more than an alliance of the ayes 
 against the noes ; or, possibly, of all against one. But 
 I cannot help thinking that there are points on which 
 a nation would rather fight the whole world single- 
 handed than obey. Then I wonder whether your jury 
 of Kings would be always right and always dis- 
 interested ? May there not be cases too difficult for 
 any judge? If Solomon himself were here, he could 
 not fail to give a decision in favour of King Edward's 
 claim to the crown of France ; but if you and I were 
 Frenchmen, should we submit to it ? " 
 
 " The Prince would not, I am sure," said Stephen, 
 smiling. " But he would be acting merely as the 
 natural man. How does he bring war within the law 
 of Christianity ? "
 
 THE ETHICS OF POITIERS 303 
 
 "I think he would answer that by saying that 
 Christianity is not a law, but a light ; a hope for the 
 world, but a way for the Christian only, who is not 
 of the world, though he is in it. It is an hypocrisy to 
 pretend that the world is Christian. What good can 
 come of hypocrisy ? of nations professing principles 
 in which, as nations, they do not believe ? The true 
 Church, which is the body of the faithful, and nothing 
 else, cannot be strengthened by any such professions ; 
 the official Church encourages them because it thereby 
 enlarges its own borders, but it brings both confusion 
 and dishonesty into human affairs by doing so." 
 
 The argument pleased Stephen as much as it 
 puzzled him. 
 
 "I agree about the Church," he said warmly, 
 " but I am still in the dark about the Prince. Is it 
 his creed that a man should be a Christian in 
 private, and a savage in public ? " 
 
 "Savage is a difficult word," said Lord Bryan, 
 pleasantly. " May I change it ? May I put the case 
 in this way ? There are among men some masculine 
 virtues, and some feminine. Where the masculine 
 alone have been cultivated, life has been disordered, 
 perhaps savage. Christianity has given us the femi- 
 nine virtues ; the Church would have us practise them 
 to the exclusion of the masculine. We soldiers believe 
 thai this would only lead to disorder of the same kind."
 
 304 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 "You make Christianity, in short, a counsel of 
 perfection, to he postponed indefinitely ? " 
 
 " We should do so, but for chivalry." 
 
 " Let me understand you," said Stephen. " Chivalry, 
 as I have seen it from a distance, I have taken to 
 mean a love of fighting, a love of pageantry, and a 
 fantastic love of women, mixed into a rather unwhole- 
 some ferment." 
 
 " You have lived abroad," replied Lord Bryan ; 
 " there is no place in England for that kind of folly, 
 and, so far as I know, there never has been. For us 
 chivalry is a plain rule of conduct, by which a man 
 may live in a world of men, without savagery and 
 without monkery." 
 
 " Good ! " exclaimed Stephen ; " but how ? " 
 
 " Look at the Prince," said Lord Bryan ; " it is 
 written large in him. He is pious and courteous, the 
 brother of all brave men, the servant of the weak, the 
 beaten, and the suffering. In short, he Joves God with 
 all his heart, and his neighbour as himself. What is 
 that ? " 
 
 " That is Christianity ; but I ask you again, how 
 does loving your neighbour come to include fighting 
 him, or taking his life ? " 
 
 " I reply with another question. Are you not con- 
 fusing the unreal with the real putting the material 
 before the spiritual ? The warfare of every one of us
 
 THE ETHICS OF POITIERS 305 
 
 must end in death; we need not love a man less 
 because it falls to us to strike the final stroke. It is 
 only the hatred, the treachery, the selfishness, that 
 make the crime of murder ; and what injury can the 
 real man suffer except those inflicted by himself ? " 
 
 "Does your Prince act up to his creed in that?" 
 asked Stephen. " I know, of course, that he is fear- 
 less of himself; but would he, for example, take the 
 death of a friend as no injury ? " 
 
 " A man is no soldier," replied Lord Bryan, " unless 
 he remembers every morning, when he wakes, that 
 this may be the day on which his life or his comrade's 
 will be required of him. No one could face that 
 parting better than the Prince. I know, because 
 I saw him say good-bye to Audley." 
 
 " Audley ? " asked Sir Henry. " Is James Audley 
 dead ? You did not tell us that." 
 
 "No," said Guy, "when I left he was making a 
 good recovery; but if he did not die, it was not 
 because he was not ready. When we were setting 
 forward to meet the final attack, he came to the Prince 
 and volunteered to do what he could to break the 
 French line before it reached us. I suppose his offer 
 might be called fantastic ; but it was very coolly made 
 and very effectually carried out." 
 
 " Tell us ! " said Aubrey, imperiously. 
 " There is really nothing to tell ; he came up and 
 
 x
 
 306 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 said, ' You know, sir, I vowed that I would lead the 
 charge if ever we met the French King.' He knelt 
 on one knee, as if to ask a favour. The Prince's face 
 set like iron. ' Very well, James,' he said. ' Good-bye, 
 and God bless you.' There was no time to be lost. 
 Audley got up and went down the hill with four 
 squires behind him. We saw him divide the rush 
 for a moment like a rock thrown down into a 
 stream ; then they re-formed and went over him, but 
 they came on perceptibly slower and less steadily." 
 
 " How many were killed ? " asked Aubrey. 
 
 " Of Audley and his men ? Not one of the five, 
 by George ! " cried Harry. " The squires picked him 
 up, good men, and we picked up the squires. They 
 made their fortunes; Audley divided between them 
 all the land the Prince gave him, that same evening." 
 
 " Did the Prince approve of that ? " 
 
 " He gave Audley as much again, and was glad to 
 do it. I think he was more grateful to those four 
 than even their master was ; he loves Sir James better 
 than any reasonable man could love himself." 
 
 " It is a fine character," said Stephen. " Still," he 
 went on in the tone of one not yet convinced, " it is 
 strange to see so much feeling side by side with so 
 much hardness." 
 
 " Pardon me," answered Lord Bryan, " if I change 
 your word again. He is not so much hard as stern.
 
 THE ETHICS OF POITIERS 307 
 
 Injure him personally, and lie will give you good for 
 evil ; break a rule of the game, and he will exact the 
 forfeit to the uttermost, as he would expect to have 
 it exacted from himself. It is only on such terms 
 that the code can be preserved ; you may forgive the 
 offender, but if you remit the penalty you spare your 
 own feelings at the expense of those who come after 
 you. So he would have made an example of the 
 Castellan of Amposta, as he always would of any one 
 who played false man, woman, or child. If a whole 
 town went over to the enemy, I believe he would 
 execute them all relentlessly. His people know the 
 conditions on which they serve him ; they know that 
 he asks nothing from them that he is not prepared 
 to give himself." 
 
 "You think they really understand him?" said 
 Stephen. 
 
 " Whether they know it or not, they understand 
 him ; you would not wonder if you had heard him 
 speaking to the men on the morning of the battle. 
 ' It is our business,' he said, ' to lead, and yours to 
 follow keenly, mind as well as body. If we come off 
 with life and victory, we shall be better friends than 
 ever; if the chances are against us, and we go the 
 way of all flesh, remember this, that you shall never 
 be forgotten or dishonoured; whatever our rank, we 
 will all drink of the same cup with you to-day.' "
 
 308 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 Stephen's guard was broken at last; the words 
 went through his heart. He knew that Guy was 
 right ; this man had laid hold on life itself ; no time 
 or change would ever still the reverberation of such 
 words. He sat silent, blinking at the fire. 
 
 " Guy," said Sir Henry, putting out his hand to 
 the wine flagon, "will you take anything more? 
 Then perhaps you would like to go up; you have 
 had a long day."
 
 XLI 
 
 THE two soldiers left Gardenleigh next day, in almost 
 opposite directions. Lord Bryan was returning to take 
 over a command in Devonshire ; Harry Marland, who 
 was to remain only a few weeks in England, had a 
 longer journey before him into Cheshire, where his 
 wife and children were staying at his father-in-law's 
 house. On his way he was to spend a night at Portis- 
 head with his brother Edmund ; but his parents would 
 not hear of his starting until the last possible moment, 
 and in order to leave them entirely to each other's 
 society, Stephen proposed to ride with Lord Bryan 
 for some little distance upon his journey westward, 
 and return at his leisure during the afternoon. 
 
 " I suppose," he said to Aubrey, as they were leav- 
 ing the house, " that I may speak to him about Kalph'a 
 affairs ? " 
 
 " To Guy ? " she replied. " Of course ; but you 
 know who his wife was ? " 
 
 Stephen hesitated and looked round. 
 
 She lowered her voice. " The Bishop's niece ; hia 
 sister Katharine was her mother." 
 
 309
 
 310 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " Lady Salisbury ? Then he will have great influence 
 with the Bishop ? " 
 
 " Very great ; but he may not agree with us. He 
 has his own view about everything." 
 
 The prospect of the discussion pleased Stephen ; he 
 smiled and nodded to her confidently. She shook her 
 head in reply. 
 
 " Be careful ! " she said. " I should like you to 
 understand one another." 
 
 So for the first part of the ride he set himself to 
 observe rather than to talk. His reflections in every 
 way bore out the estimate of his companion which he 
 had formed the night before. This was an altogether 
 different type from any of those which he had hitherto 
 met with, and it was the more interesting to him 
 because it was the type of a finished character, and 
 one evidently developed in circumstances of which he 
 himself had had no experience. The original nature 
 of the man was visible in the clear, frank eyes, the 
 singularly sweet and ready smile, the simple courtesy 
 of his manners; but there was added to all this an 
 ease and certainty which ran through every act and 
 word, and which was far too perfect, Stephen felt, to 
 have come to any man by nature. His movements 
 were neither slow -nor hasty, his replies were never 
 hesitating, yet never unconsidered ; he talked and rode 
 with the same mastery, keeping an even pace and
 
 LORD BRYAN'S VIEW 311 
 
 meeting every emergency with a faultless seat and the 
 lightest of hands. He had all the soldierly directness 
 of Harry Marland without any of his crudeness ; and 
 as much dignity and power, Stephen thought, as the 
 Bishop, but with less self-consciousness and a total 
 absence of pride. Edmund was nearer to him there, 
 and nearer too, perhaps, in other ways ; but the world 
 that Edmund could only conquer by agony and sur- 
 render seemed to be for Lord Bryan a brilliant and 
 familiar tilt-yard, where he played out the game of life 
 with perfect skill and fearlessness. These are seldom 
 attributes of the deepest kind of character ; but if Guy 
 had his limitations, Stephen found no trace of super- 
 ficiality or slightness in him. On the contrary, he 
 seemed to possess some secret, some wisdom hidden in 
 his own heart, which made existence so easy and so 
 unperplexed ; his face was calm rather than sanguine, 
 as if he saw both good and evil days coming, and 
 looked beyond them both. 
 
 The power of command he certainly had in a very 
 unusual degree, as Stephen saw when they came into 
 Selwood and found the archers hardly yet ready to 
 march. Some of them had not quite recovered from 
 the potations of the night before, others had been with 
 difficulty retrieved from odd corners of the town ; two 
 of the squires were disputing over some misunder- 
 standing of their orders, and a crowd of idlers was in
 
 312 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 everybody's way at once. But when Lord Bryan 
 appeared, the tangle unravelled itself in a moment ; 
 his voice expressed neither surprise nor dissatisfaction, 
 but his air of quiet expectation cleared away all diffi- 
 culties. They seemed to vanish, not because he saw 
 them, but just because he did not see them. His men 
 appeared to regain their discipline and self-respect 
 almost without an effort of their own ; they were what 
 their commander made them, and followed him, as the 
 Black Prince had bidden them, with their minds as 
 well as their bodies. 
 
 Their first stage was a comparatively short one, 
 but it was not till they were nearing the end of it 
 that Stephen ventured to approach the subject of 
 Ralph Tremur. 
 
 "I suppose," he asked his companion, "that 
 your road will be the same as that by which the 
 Bishop travelled when he left Gardenleigh not long 
 ago?" 
 
 " Exactly the same as far as Exeter," replied Lord 
 Bryan, " and probably with the same halts ; he and I 
 ride very much the same pace." 
 
 "I saw that he rode more like a soldier than a 
 priest," said Stephen, "and I thought he had quite 
 a military idea of discipline too." 
 
 " Carew here will tell you about that," said Lord 
 Bryan, calling up the squire who was riding nearest to
 
 LORD BRYAN'S VIEW 313 
 
 him. " William, you can give us the story about the 
 insurrection of the Grenvilles ? " 
 
 The move was too opportune to be accidental, but 
 there was so little sign of intention that Stephen, rather 
 to his own surprise, accepted the check without a 
 struggle, and occupied himself with the Grenville 
 history for what remained of the ride. But he deter- 
 mined not to let himself be baulked when the midday 
 halt was called, for that would be his last opportunity 
 He was relieved, therefore, to find, on reaching the inn, 
 that Lord Bryan and he were to dine alone together. 
 
 "Now," said Guy, as soon as the service was 
 finished, " I think you had something to tell me about 
 Ealph Tremur." 
 
 Stephen had intended to be very cautious, and to 
 confine himself as far as possible to the role, of inquirer ; 
 but there was something about his companion's frank- 
 ness which compelled him to imitate it. He spoke out 
 at once and felt, too, that he was speaking with a 
 simplicity and ease that were above his ordinary level. 
 
 Guy heard him to the end with great attention, 
 asking a question here and there, but with no sign of 
 bias. When the whole story was before him, he turned 
 a little so as to face Stephen more fully, and began to 
 speak without hesitation. 
 
 " You may be thinking," he said, " that my relation- 
 ship to the Bishop is likely to influence me in his
 
 314 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 favour. If so, I beg that you will put any such idea 
 out of your mind from the beginning. It is part of 
 your case Ealph's case that the Bishop has been 
 hard and overbearing. I need not commit myself ; I 
 only remind you that if that is his character, as you 
 believe, you may be sure that after many years of 
 intimacy it cannot have escaped me. As to his 
 position, the Marlands will tell you that I am no 
 slave to authority of any kind, though I am before 
 everything a servant; the cause I serve has for long 
 been that of the small against the great, the humble 
 against the powerful." 
 
 " The Prince ? " asked Stephen, in surprise. 
 
 " The cause of the Prince is the struggling cause 
 that of the Commons. I am used to rebellion against 
 dignitaries, and I should find it easy to sympathize 
 with Ealph if it were not for doubts about the good- 
 ness of his quarrel." 
 
 Stephen flushed. "You do not sympathize with 
 him you do not like his religious position ? " 
 
 " I know nothing of theology," replied Lord Bryan ; 
 " but from my point of view it almost seems as if the 
 man had no religious position, and therefore no position 
 worth fighting for." 
 
 "Oh, surely!" said Stephen. "He opposes the 
 Bishop ; if his adversary has a position, so has he." 
 
 " I do not think it follows. My view may be a
 
 LORD BRYAN'S VIEW 315 
 
 wrong one or a narrow one, but it is the view of the 
 best men of our generation. In that view we live, 
 and we have the right to live, only by virtue of 
 our devotion to something greater than ourselves. I 
 heard it well put by a monk not long ago ad seroi- 
 endum venisti, non ad regendum: 'you are here to 
 serve, not to rule.' Is not that a true saying ? " 
 
 Stephen's thoughts flew back to the morning's 
 scene in Selwood and his reflections on it. 
 
 "It may be true," he said: "I have not thought 
 of it; but I confess I am surprised to hear it from 
 you." 
 
 Guy left the personal point untouched. " But look 
 around you," he said earnestly; "look at the lives 
 you know. The Bishop, whatever you may say of his 
 methods, has served the Church for fifty years, as Sir 
 Henry has served the King; Edmund, I often think, 
 stands higher still he is the servant of God. Ealph 
 alone follows no cause but his own, and no man of 
 whom that is true can have any reality; he has no 
 unity in him, he is a wandering fire an ignis fatuus 
 of the marshes." 
 
 " Ealph serves truth," said Stephen, " and that is 
 to serve mankind." 
 
 " It may be," replied Lord Bryan ; " but what has 
 he ever established? Has not his life been spent in 
 denying ? What is the truth that lies behind all these
 
 316 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 denials? What is it that he has not denied? In 
 what does he find his peace ? " 
 
 At another time, and against another antagonist, 
 Stephen might have found abundant resources for 
 argument and even for eloquence. He was under no 
 temptation, even as it was, to give up his belief in 
 Ealph and in the righteousness of his cause; but he 
 was confused by a kind of echo in his own mind which 
 seemed to double the force of what he heard. He 
 remembered how Edmund had said that there was no 
 proposition known which Ealph had not denied at one 
 time or another, and how Ralph himself in three 
 terrible words had accepted the life that "knew not 
 what peace was." He saw, too, that his difficulty 
 came in part from the power which Guy possessed, 
 of compelling him for the moment to look at the 
 whole question from a point of view which was strange 
 to him. Left to himself, he would no doubt be able to 
 bring it into focus, to find the necessary reconciliation ; 
 but while the foreground was filled with so splendid 
 a figure he was distracted and almost dazzled. He 
 only knew that it was impossible to meet this man 
 as an enemy; and if he could have done so, he felt, 
 as he looked him in the face, that he would be en- 
 countering armour better proven than his own. Guy's 
 last word dwelt in his mind " In what does he find 
 his peace?" and insensibly drew the whole current
 
 LORD BRYAN'S VIEW 317 
 
 of his thought away from Ealph to the personality 
 living and shining before him. 
 
 Lord Bryan's voice broke in upon his reverie. " I 
 am afraid," he was saying, " that it is almost time for 
 us to say good-bye. I see my men getting under 
 way." 
 
 Stephen followed him to the window, and they 
 stood for a moment watching the archers as they 
 prepared to move off. 
 
 " What do they think they serve ? " asked Stephen. 
 
 " They could not tell you, you think ? Perhaps 
 not ; a soldier is generally thoughtless when he speaks, 
 and dumb when he thinks. But you must not be 
 deceived by that; these fellows serve their country, 
 and they know it, in a way of their own. After all, 
 we too have each our own meaning for the name of 
 England." 
 
 He stopped a little abruptly for once, but when 
 Stephen turned he went on in the same tone. 
 
 " You will find in any thatch some reeds drier than 
 the rest ; but fire is fire to all of them, and the slower 
 stuff takes it from the quicker." 
 
 " Do you not think," asked Stephen, " that they 
 will come to learn, in the same way, a feeling wider 
 and deeper than mere love of country ? " 
 
 Lord Bryan smiled and took a lighter tone. "I 
 had no idea," he said, " that you were so old-fashioned
 
 318 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 you will wait a long time if you wait for that river 
 to flow uphill again." 
 
 " I know what you mean," replied Stephen. " They 
 have been telling me and I have seen it myself that 
 national feeling is running high just now in England. 
 But I doubt if that is a stream ; to me it looks more 
 like a tide, which flows and ebbs, as it has done before, 
 and will do again from time to time." 
 
 "I will meet you half way," said Lord Bryan, 
 smiling. " Let us call it a tidal river ; that gives 
 you the ebb and flow, and leaves me the natural direc- 
 tion of the current, which I am convinced has its 
 source somewhere in the highlands of human nature." 
 
 Stephen recognized, not without pleasure, that in 
 the tactics of metaphor he had met his equal; but 
 he made one more effort to save the position. 
 
 "If it came from the highlands I should expect 
 a wider and purer stream." 
 
 " It will widen before the end," replied Lord Bryan ; 
 "and I regret your other word. Perhaps you have 
 been hearing some loud talk from those who stay at 
 home; that is part of the patriotism which looks for 
 what it can get, rather than what it can give. You 
 should speak to Aubrey about her country." 
 
 " I know what you mean," said Stephen, hurriedly, 
 " and I withdraw that word. But if we are to think 
 of giving, would it not be better to begin at once with
 
 LORD BRYAN'S VIEW 319 
 
 giving to all? Why must we always think of our- 
 selves first? A pyramid does not spring from its 
 narrowest point." 
 
 " No," said Guy, " but a tree does ; and human life 
 is much more like a tree than a pyramid. Even if 
 you are to build, you would not build a dozen cities 
 at once. Let us set up our own first, and make it 
 the joy of the whole earth." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Stephen, " you come near me there." 
 
 " I am glad," said Guy, " for I am afraid our talk 
 must end there for the present. It is time for me to 
 be gone. Remember if ever you come West that you 
 have friends at Tor Bryan." 
 
 Stephen went to the door with him, and waved a 
 cheerful farewell as he rode away ; but when he turned 
 to call for his own horse he felt as if his day had lost 
 the sun.
 
 XLI1 
 
 THE shadow continued to lie upon Stephen through- 
 out his homeward journey. Thanks to his horse's 
 instinct, or to some equally unconscious knowledge 
 of his own, he made the right choice at every turning ; 
 but he saw nothing of the road, and could not have 
 told whether or not he had ever passed that way 
 before. Lord Bryan's visit, though it had been in 
 itself a bright and stirring episode, seemed to have 
 roused from sleep all the cares that lay about his 
 path, and set them on to snarl and dog his footsteps 
 afresh. To begin with, there was Ealph. Nothing had 
 been heard of Ealph for months, and nothing need be 
 apprehended at this moment more than at any other ; 
 yet since his case had been laid before Lord Bryan, 
 Stephen felt that it had in some way taken a turn 
 for the worse. This impression, he reasoned with 
 himself, was a mere personal illusion ; but the trouble 
 was in no way lightened by being traced to his own 
 sense of failure in the defence of Ealph against Guy's 
 criticism. Why he had so failed he could not now 
 understand. The truth of Guy's view of life appeared 
 to him upon reflection as striking as ever, but it no 
 
 320
 
 STEPHEN DOUBTS 321 
 
 longer seemed to afford any argument against Ralph 
 or in favour of his antagonist. Where there is untrue 
 or unjust affirmation, he told himself indignantly, 
 there, for the sake of all men, there must be some one 
 to deny. How can it be said of such a champion that 
 he is the servant of none ? Is it no service that one 
 man should die for the people? still more that he 
 should spend his life in that barren desert of denials 
 which Ealph had accepted as his portion ? Is it not, 
 he might have asked Lord Bryan, thanks to such 
 humble service as this, that you and those whom you 
 hold up for admiration are able to find room for your 
 souls to live and breathe and build the fearless towers 
 and palaces of your more spiritual imagination ? To 
 this, he assured himself, there was no answer ; but he 
 remained none the less dissatisfied. There, after all, 
 stood the lofty and beautiful life that Guy and his 
 Prince had built a life that all might imitate; and 
 beside it the work of opposition and negation, however 
 necessary, however courageous and devoted, seemed 
 a meaner and less ennobling task, and one not alto- 
 gether free from the contamination of malevolent zeal. 
 Was it possible, he wondered at the blackest moment 
 of his meditation, that the Bishop's theory of demoniac 
 possession had some reason in it, after all? Was 
 Ralph's insane fury due not so much to a fault in 
 his own nature as to the presence of a spirit to whom 
 
 Y
 
 322 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 all iconoclasts are inevitably given over, and whose 
 influence cannot be excluded from any task of pure 
 destruction, even when it is a very citadel of tyranny 
 and falsehood that must be laid in ruin ? How should 
 any nation, under the leading of such a spirit, establish 
 or even conceive a type of society which might endure 
 for the admiration of the whole earth ? 
 
 Once more at this point he regretted his enforced 
 parting from Guy. It had moved him strongly to find 
 in this man, of a generation so far from his own, a 
 touch of the hope and the enthusiasm which he had 
 come to regard as the message committed in a special 
 degree to himself, and practically, as he assumed, 
 unheard of in the world before the century in which 
 he had been born. Mere Utopians he had always 
 disdained ; he had claimed to preach only the practical, 
 and even to foretell facts. Guy, too, was no dreamer 
 of mere possibilities ; he wished to reform life, not to 
 re-make it : he might have proved to have a real 
 sympathy, Stephen thought, with his own outlook 
 towards the 'future. But there again the thread of 
 his reverie caught and tangled as it ran off the skein ; 
 Guy had declared for the method he had so long 
 decried the devotion which begins at home and runs 
 the risk of staying there. He had even laughed at 
 Stephen's cosmopolitan ideal, and labelled it as 
 " old-fashioned " old-fashioned five centuries before
 
 STEPHEN DOUBTS 323 
 
 it had come in vogue in Stephen's world! The his- 
 torian of the Future groaned with the pain of a new 
 suspicion could he have been inventing that which 
 was not new, and discovering that which was non- 
 existent? Were his own Uplands, after all, in no 
 nearer latitude than the New Atlantis or the City of 
 the Sun, and his message no newer than the other 
 hopes of man ? 
 
 By the time he had reached this point he was 
 passing through the town of Selwood. As he climbed 
 the slope on the far side of the market-place, and 
 struck into the road that turned to the left along 
 the river, he was vividly reminded of his first 
 arrival in the place, and his meeting with Aubrey 
 in the old life. He remembered then, with an infinite 
 sense of comfort, that whatever might be the true 
 value of his hopes and theories, they had, at any rate, 
 brought him near to her; though she, like Guy, had 
 withstood him in the name of patriotism, she had 
 never sided with the forces against him, or lowered 
 him in his own esteem. In the warm glow of this 
 recollection he forgot that he had not yet wholly 
 solved the mystery in which her present life was 
 wrapped ; or rather, he had unconsciously changed his 
 view, and while he felt his own feelings coming more 
 and more into line with hers, he had almost ceased 
 to demand that she should completely draw aside
 
 324 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 the veil that lay between her memory and his 
 own. 
 
 He crossed the stream at a quicker pace, and was 
 glad to find himself once more in Gardenleigh territory. 
 The sun was down on the horizon now, and the flush 
 in the sky above seemed to deepen the shadow of 
 twilight under the October woods as he pressed onwards 
 up the southward face of the hill. On the down 
 above, in the sombre entrance of the avenue, he could 
 see a woman's figure leaning wearily against the wall, 
 beside the gate. It was Aubrey, and his heart stirred 
 as he saw that she was waiting for him. She held 
 open the gate when he came up, and as he passed 
 through he saw that there were tears upon her face. In 
 a moment he had dismounted and was turning towards 
 her with his bridle on his arm; but before he could 
 speak she had buried her head upon his shoulder. 
 
 Lady Marland had died at midday, an hour after 
 Harry had left for Portishead.
 
 XLIII 
 
 THE days which followed were darker still. Stephen 
 had had no previous experience of the preparations 
 for an English funeral, and there seemed to him to 
 be something unnatural about the gloom that lay upon 
 the house; it had the deadening oppression of a 
 nightmare, and he felt at times as though it would 
 never lift again. Edmund and Harry, Aubrey and 
 himself he saw them all busied with duties which 
 must be performed neither whole-heartedly nor half- 
 heartedly, all going about continually under the 
 burden of a meaningless behaviour, equally far from 
 any true semblance of grief or joy. A tacit and 
 nerveless consideration for each other, a conventional 
 regard for the expectations of a wider circle these 
 cloudy spectres had breathed an icy mist on all the 
 more human feelings, had forbidden sorrow its moments 
 of agony and relief, its free expression and its high- 
 hearted resistance, and almost seemed for the time 
 to have bound life about with the winding-sheet of 
 the dead, stifling every voice and constraining every 
 movement with its frigid and unlovely folds. 
 
 But this misery of deadness was not to last; it 
 
 325
 
 326 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 vanished for ever at the moment when they all stood 
 in Gardenleigh Church and heard the first words of 
 man's immemorial petition for his beloved dead. 
 "Requiem eternam," said a voice that was and was 
 not the voice of Edmund, "Requiem eternam dona ei 
 Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei" Tears sprang to 
 Stephen's eyes; he felt himself strangled and shaken 
 by a sudden passion. It could be no grief of his 
 own, for that which lay before him under the blind 
 and silent pall had never been for him the symbol 
 of a deep or long familiar affection. But he saw 
 around him not only the sorrow but the helplessness 
 of those whom he loved ; he saw old age and manhood 
 and girlish youth all alike bowed to drink of that 
 cup which must always keep its bitterness while man 
 keeps his human nature. He had himself laid his 
 father in the grave ; but that parting, terrible as it 
 was, had come upon him when he was alone and in 
 a far country; it had made a complete break in his 
 own life, and yet had troubled the happiness of no 
 one else, so that he had come to think of it as a 
 grief peculiar to himself, and had never realized that 
 death was hourly bringing to others what it had once 
 brought to him. Now he saw that the greatest of 
 human sorrows is one and indivisible, and that what- 
 ever immunities man may learn or wrest from nature 
 in the bright world of the future, he can never, even
 
 REQUIEM ETERNAM 327 
 
 for a day, shut his ears against the passing bell, or 
 deaden his heart to the De Profundis of his race. 
 
 The sense of pity was deepened yet more as he 
 looked round upon the company of friends and 
 neighbours who filled the church. If men are but 
 as grass, that to-day is and to-morrow is cut down 
 and laid away, what, then, were these but the long 
 fallen leaves of a very far-off summer, to whose hollow 
 forms some strange, airy current of his own imagina- 
 tion had for a time given back a lifelike movement 
 and a whisper of the human voice? Yet again he 
 saw that, in their love and grief and hope, there was 
 a reality beyond that of their bodily existence, and 
 he fell to wondering whether the hour that was waiting 
 for them all, and for him too in his turn, would bring 
 upon them any change of the true self, comparable 
 to that which must befall the body. What end or 
 what beginning is it that we peer at through the 
 name of death ? How are we to think of the dead, or 
 what to desire for them and for ourselves ? 
 
 A second time the calm, sad, unwavering voice 
 began its deep music "Requiem eternam dona ei 
 Domine ;" and then, through the murmur of the 
 voices that echoed it, a second time he heard the 
 words which followed: " JEt lux perpetua luceat ei" 
 The flood of thought which came upon him seemed 
 to bear him up no longer ; he sank to a depth where
 
 328 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 no light or sound of the material world could reach 
 his consciousness. When he returned to the upper 
 air it was to find the service over, and Edmund 
 standing face to face with the little company of 
 mourners, as if he could not let them go without 
 one more word. 
 
 " My friends," he said, " it has been the custom of 
 our people from a time beyond memory to speak of 
 death in the language of the Psalmist to say that 
 man's life is a shadow, that he passes away and his 
 place knows him no more. We cannot deny that it 
 is true, yet we cannot forget that it is true only with 
 the truth of this world. For us in these later days 
 another view is possible the view, not of men who 
 must remain behind, but rather of spirits who are upon 
 the point of following. We may bethink ourselves that 
 for those who are dead, and for us too, since we shall 
 soon be with them, to depart hence is not to perish, 
 but to survive the perishing of all that was less real 
 about us, the fading of all the shadows with which our 
 life was darkened. To-day, therefore, in this service of 
 separation, we have been weeping not only for the loss 
 that has befallen the home of our transitory existence, 
 but also for our own continued blindness that will not 
 let us see life as it is. One whom we love has been 
 released from this darkness and bondage of time ; she 
 has passed, as the greatest of all poets was once
 
 REQUIEM ETEBNAM 329 
 
 permitted to pass before his death, from the human life 
 to the divine, from the temporal to the eternal. In our 
 prayers for her we must keep this always before us, 
 lest we speak the old familiar phrases with the under- 
 standing of a bygone age, and deceive ourselves with 
 words of comfortable sound that are the very denial of 
 our only true consolation. If we ask that God may 
 give His beloved eternal rest, we must think of no 
 such sleep as that which we have known ourselves. 
 They shall rest not from their work, but from their 
 labours ; not from their service, but from the wilfulness 
 and vacillation that alone could make it wearisome: 
 they shall cease not from the active consciousness 
 which is the life of the true self, but from the appetites 
 and trivialities by which that life is here continually 
 broken. Let us think of them, therefore, as we see 
 them pictured upon their tombs : lying motionless and 
 with folded hands, in token that for them the warfare 
 of the body has been accomplished, and the will sur- 
 rendered to the eternal peace ; with eyes upturned and 
 open, to signify that they know no longer the alterna- 
 tion of day and darkness, but enjoy continually all 
 knowledge, all love, and all fulfilment, as it were in 
 one changeless moment of perpetual light."
 
 XLIV 
 
 ON the following morning Harry Marland started for 
 the second time on his journey to the North. Edmund 
 stayed some days longer, and said the Kequiem again 
 on the octave of his mother's death. Stephen and 
 Aubrey looked forward to his departure with the 
 greatest anxiety; while he remained, Sir Henry showed 
 a strength and self-control that were beyond all ex- 
 pectation, but it seemed impossible that these should 
 continue in the same degree after he had gone, for he 
 spent every moment of the day with his father, and 
 appeared to be more indispensable to him than ever. 
 But when the time came they found that they had 
 under-estimated the old man's courage: he continued 
 to show the same power of patient, half-humorous re- 
 sistance to his troubles which had for so long been 
 characteristic of him, and rather gave than needed 
 consolation and encouragement ; the lamp was burning 
 low, but the dying light made a brave flicker, and 
 would brighten, while it lasted, everything about it. 
 
 Stephen watched with admiration, but with a pre- 
 sentiment that the strain of this effort would hasten 
 rather than delay the end. He saw more than one 
 
 830
 
 AN OLD MAN'S THOUGHTS 331 
 
 sign that Sir Henry himself was conscious of a coming 
 change, and he was not surprised when at last the 
 moment came for speaking openly. 
 
 It was a bright, still morning the second day of 
 November and Aubrey had asked him, as usual, to 
 keep her uncle company for an hour while she was 
 busy with the affairs of the household. Sir Henry 
 was sitting by the window of the solar, and seemed to 
 be occupied, as he often was, or pretended to be, in 
 trying to count the wild duck which came upon the 
 lake in increasing numbers at this time of the year. 
 His attention appeared to be entirely given to these 
 birds, and for some time Stephen's conversation with 
 him was limited to the identification of mallards, coots, 
 and pochards ; but in spite of the zest with which this 
 pastime was followed, Stephen received an impression, 
 for which he could hardly perhaps have accounted, 
 that there were more serious matters to be discussed 
 that morning, which were being postponed from minute 
 to minute from some kind of reluctance to approach 
 them directly. 
 
 At last Sir Henry turned from the window with a 
 sigh, and drew a small packet from under his cloak, 
 which lay by him upon the window-seat. 
 
 " Stephen," he said abruptly, " this is your money." 
 
 Stephen held out his hand mechanically to receive 
 the packet, but his surprise showed plainly in his face.
 
 332 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 "I want to give it back to you," Sir Henry con- 
 tinued, " because well, I will tell you why later on ; 
 it will be quite safe for you to keep it yourself, now 
 that the whole house knows it is in my strong box. 
 Put it out of sight, and say nothing about it to any 
 one. And now I want to talk to you about other 
 things." 
 
 Stephen expressed his readiness, but for some time 
 nothing followed. Sir Henry was once more gazing 
 out over the water ; he seemed to be still embarrassed, 
 and Stephen guessed rightly that the "other things" 
 of which he spoke were in reality nothing but other 
 methods of approaching the same point. 
 
 " You will think me a foolish old man," Sir Henry 
 began at last " and faint-hearted, perhaps but I have 
 been thinking a good deal about what Edmund said in 
 church that day. Do you remember ? " 
 
 " I remember every word," replied Stephen ; " but 
 which part of it has been in your mind especially ? " 
 
 " The part about the perishing of the temporal life. 
 I thought it very beautiful." He arched his eyebrows, 
 and made a deprecating gesture with his hands. " You 
 know, I always think Edmund says very beautiful 
 tilings ; but I want to know how it looked to you, this 
 idea that Time is not real at all." 
 
 Stephen hesitated ; his interest was almost too 
 great for words.
 
 AN OLD MAN'S THOUGHTS 333 
 
 " I thought you would be sure to have an opinion," 
 Sir Henry continued; "you have been accustomed to 
 deal with these matters, and I have not : but the time 
 has come well, I am more interested in such thoughts 
 than I used to be. To-day is All Souls' Day; we 
 make little of it here because the day before All 
 Saints' is their big festival at Croonington, and our 
 people like to go there ; but I was thinking a good 
 deal last night of my dear wife and the boys, in the 
 church yonder. I like to believe that they are not 
 sleeping that they have some knowledge of us, or at 
 the least some memory but I should be still more 
 glad if you thought I might accept what Edmund said 
 about Time as the truth ; true, that is, in the way in 
 which I understand it. I dare say you see why." 
 
 " Not quite," Stephen replied. " I am sure that I 
 agree with all that he said, but I have not yet caught 
 the whole of your meaning." 
 
 " Why, it makes all the difference if it is true ; 
 the real sadness of these partings has always seemed 
 to me not so much that one goes where the rest must 
 follow, as that if one dies long before another, they 
 cannot ever meet again in their old relation. I must 
 either find strange men where I lost my own lads, or 
 they must greet an old fellow whom they never knew. 
 But if Time is unreal, then so, I suppose, is age ; we 
 shall all be just ourselves, and no more disguised from
 
 334 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 each other by our years than we are here by our 
 clothes." 
 
 The wistful and humble simplicity with which he 
 spoke touched Stephen profoundly. 
 
 "I have no doubt whatever," he said, "that you 
 are right. But it is I who am learning from you; 
 I am afraid I have never really studied these questions 
 certainly not in the way you supposed." 
 i&t " But I thought you had many ideas of your own 
 about the future ? " 
 
 " I have been interested in the future of the race ; 
 but that is different." 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Sir Henry, more humbly still ; 
 "you make me ashamed of my selfishness, but it is 
 too late to teach me now. You might tell me every- 
 thing that is to happen on earth in the next five 
 hundred years, but if I had the choice I would rather 
 hear what is to happen to me in the five minutes after 
 death." 
 
 Stephen's face burned. In the world where his 
 theories of the Future had won so easy a triumph, no 
 one had ever faced him with such an answer, but it 
 suddenly stood revealed to him that ten thousand must 
 have been thinking then what he had heard none speak 
 until now now, in the past he had affected to despise. 
 
 "You are right," he said again, "you are right, 
 you and Edmund ; your future is the real one."
 
 AN OLD MAN'S THOUGHTS 335 
 
 He spoke fervently, driving the point home against 
 himself as if in expiation of his old folly. Sir Henry 
 saw the emotion ; the true cause of it was hidden from 
 him, but he was grateful for what he understood. 
 
 "I cannot tell you," he said, laying his hand on 
 Stephen's knee, " what a support you have been to me." 
 
 " I wish I could have done more," Stephen replied ; 
 " but I can only repeat what I promised before, that I 
 will stay as long as you need me." 
 
 Sir Henry looked at him as if hesitating once more ; 
 then he said 
 
 " Stephen, this is what I wished to tell you : it 
 will not be for very long now that your promise will 
 bind you. That is why I gave you back the money." 
 
 " I hope you are mistaken," said Stephen. 
 
 " I hope not," he replied, and he looked away again 
 across the lake. 
 
 For some time neither of them spoke ; then Sir 
 Henry turned again to Stephen with his old half- 
 humorous air of weariness. 
 
 "I can talk with a man," he said, "but I never 
 could face a woman. Will you send Aubrey to me 
 now?"
 
 XLV 
 
 FROM week to week the year faded quietly to its close. 
 The chestnuts had cast their splendid mantles almost 
 in a single night, the beeches stood ankle-deep in the 
 rustle of their own rich brown leaves ; but the woods 
 were green with moss and gay with the bright pink 
 berries of the service tree, and in the park the elms, 
 after all the rest were bare, still rose like great golden 
 clouds against the pure faint blue of the sky clouds 
 thinner and more ethereal every day, but exquisitely 
 radiant to the last. Even December, in this warm 
 green West, seemed to have none of the rigour of 
 winter. Night came earlier and stayed longer, but she 
 was neither cold nor angry. Nature seemed brooding 
 over her hopes rather than her memories ; already the 
 deep combes were starred with a few pale primroses, 
 and thrushes sang above them as they had not been 
 singing since June. 
 
 Edmund came and went and came again. He spoke 
 no word of anxiety about his father, but when Stephen 
 told him of the return of his money and the conver- 
 sation that had followed, he seemed in no way sur- 
 prised, and confessed shortly afterwards that he had 
 
 336
 
 THE NEW LORD 337 
 
 gone so far as to send a messenger to Harry at Bor- 
 deaux, begging him to obtain leave from the Prince 
 to spend the remainder of the winter at home. The 
 man returned with the welcome news that this request 
 had been readily granted, and that Harry, who was 
 already back in England, would hasten down to Gar- 
 denleigh as soon as he had delivered the letters and 
 concluded the business with which he was charged. 
 
 The delay was not a long one. Some few days 
 later Stephen was walking back alone from Crooning- 
 tou ; rain had been falling, and he took the road 
 instead of the pathway across the fields. He had 
 passed through the Bath Gate into the park, and was 
 descending the steep slope to the brook, when he heard 
 behind him the hollow sound of hoofs resounding 
 under the great vaulted archway of the gatehouse. 
 He turned and saw Harry Marland, as he had once 
 seen the Bishop, riding out from the stone frame of 
 the arch and coming rapidly towards him. 
 
 "Well met, Stephen!" he cried, but with more 
 relief than cordiality in his voice. He dismounted at 
 the same moment, and gave his horse to one of the 
 men who followed him, with an order to go straight 
 to the house. "We will walk," he said shortly to 
 Stephen, and they took the footpath to the left round 
 the lake. 
 
 As they went he questioned Stephen minutely about
 
 338 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 his father's health, and was evidently far from satisfied 
 with the result. He became more and more moody, 
 and walked more and more slowly, though the dusk 
 was deepening every moment, and a light misty rain 
 was drawing down over the valley. When they reached 
 the fallen tree he stopped altogether, as if unwilling to 
 go on to the house until he had made a further effort 
 to lighten his mind of its burden. 
 
 " I cannot understand it," he said for the fifth time, 
 " and I must say that you have not helped me, Stephen. 
 Men like my father do not die without a cause." 
 
 " I do not claim to understand it either," Stephen 
 replied; "but I think it may be equally true that a 
 man of his age and infirmity does not go on living 
 without some strong animating principle which seems 
 to be lacking here." 
 
 "That sounds well," replied Harry, with a touch 
 of bitterness, " but it is too fine-drawn for me. I have 
 seen men die of many things, but never anything 
 negative except starvation." 
 
 " Your father has eaten less and less lately." 
 
 "And why is that?" asked Harry, brusquely. 
 "Why do you not admit at once that he is worrying 
 himself to death ? " 
 
 " I see no sign of it." 
 
 "No sign? He has talked to you, they tell me, 
 quite openly ; you have seen Ralph, you have seen the
 
 THE NEW LORD 339 
 
 Bishop, you know the whole trouble from beginning 
 to end." 
 
 Stephen began to see the meaning of his companion's 
 somewhat sullen attitude. 
 
 " Yes/' he replied, in a conciliatory tone, " it is a 
 great trouble, that ; but I do not think it has counted 
 for much lately. Of course, it may come upon us 
 again at any moment." 
 
 " That is it," exclaimed Harry, fiercely ; " it is Ealph 
 who is killing him. I wish we might never hear the 
 fellow's name again." 
 
 Stephen started as if he had been lashed with a 
 whip, but he recovered himself and held his tongue. 
 He stood looking away over the water and up the 
 misty hill to Aubrey's seat. Harry, having once set 
 his grievance spinning, continued to flog it till it 
 whirled and hummed as though it would never 
 stop. 
 
 While he was speaking, arguing, grumbling, Stephen's 
 resolution was hardening. 
 
 " Well," he said, when the tirade came to an end, 
 " what can we do ? " 
 
 " You can end the whole affair : tell Ealph out and 
 out that my father's life is more precious than his ; say 
 that you have no more encouragement for him ; he must 
 get on as best he can without you." 
 
 Stephen again mastered his indignation. "I have
 
 340 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 promised your father," he replied, "that I will stand 
 by him to the end in this matter." 
 
 "Have you?" retorted Harry. "Then I absolve 
 you of that promise." 
 
 Stephen did not answer. As the words sank into 
 his mind a sudden sense of crisis came upon him ; the 
 situation seemed to define itself. At the same moment 
 he saw that the rain had ceased, and the veil of mist 
 had receded a little up the hill. At the top it \vas 
 still heavy and motionless, and seemed to have rolled 
 together into a dense mass in the centre, where the 
 gap divided the garden avenue, and where Aubrey had 
 so often planned to build. He could almost fancy that 
 he saw the house of her imagination, the house of the 
 centuries to come, the house which he had left to 
 follow her. 
 
 Harry saw that he was moved, and thought himself 
 the cause. 
 
 "My dear fellow," he said, with a sudden return 
 of kindlier feeling, " I have hurt you. Forgive me, for- 
 give me ; I have said more than I meant." 
 
 Stephen took his outstretched hand gratefully, and 
 they walked home together without referring to the sub- 
 ject again. As they passed an open space between the 
 trees the garden slope was visible once more, and 
 Stephen saw without surprise that the phantom house 
 was still looming upon its gray terrace of misty twilight.
 
 XLVI 
 
 BELIEFS and associations which it would take many 
 successive impressions to fix upon the mind in later 
 life, are often in early youth produced by a single vivid 
 experience, and when tested long afterwards prove to 
 be little better than illusions. Stephen, who had not 
 spent a Christmas in England for twenty years, now 
 saw his childish recollections sadly falsified. He re- 
 membered only a succession of hard white winters; 
 but this one was green and mild, without a thought of 
 snow. He supposed that the season would bring with 
 it a general and irresistible feeling of gaiety ; and here 
 he found himself in a silent and anxious house, looking 
 out upon a future clouded with uncertainty and heavy 
 with threatening storm. Some ceremony there cer- 
 tainly was, some observance of tradition, but all that 
 was festive in it was left to the young and irresponsible ; 
 for the others the time was rather one of memories and 
 sad comparisons, thrust out of sight, but never laid to 
 rest by the dutiful assumption of cheerfulness. 
 
 The week went slowly by, and December seemed 
 to be drawing to a peaceful end. It was a long-estab- 
 lished custom of the Marlands that the household 
 
 341
 
 342 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 should sit up on the last night to watch the passing 
 of the old year, and to wish each other God-speed 
 in the first moments of that which was beginning. 
 To Stephen, and perhaps to some of the others, this 
 observance seemed on the present occasion to have an 
 almost ominous appropriateness; but no one ventured 
 to suggest that it should be abandoned, and long after 
 Sir Henry was asleep the little company of four was 
 still sitting round the fire in the great gallery, and 
 talking fitfully as they waited for midnight, while the 
 servants were assembled in the same fashion in the 
 hall below. 
 
 Even at such a time, when all were quiet and a 
 little weary, differences of character and outlook could 
 not fail to produce their visible effect. Of the circle 
 in the gallery, Edmund was the most silent; he had 
 that day been feeling more anxiety about his father's 
 condition than he had allowed any one else to suspect, 
 and his face, though serene in its expression, was deeply 
 marked with lines of pain. Still, in spite of all, it was 
 serene, and in strong contrast to that of his brother, 
 for whom any unwonted activity of the mind increased 
 rather than diminished the necessity for activity of the 
 body. For days he had been growing more and more 
 restless; he was troubled about his father, he was 
 troubled about his wife, whose condition would not 
 allow of her making the long journey from Cheshire
 
 THE SAND IN THE GLASS 343 
 
 to rejoin him; he was troubled about Ealph and the 
 Bishop, and about his own attitude and Stephen's 
 towards their difference. To-day he was at fever 
 point, unable to stay for a moment in any one position, 
 and constantly uttering half-intelligible murmurs and 
 exclamations, by which he only added to the fatigue 
 both of others and of himself. 
 
 Aubrey had for a long time done her best to draw 
 him into a more tranquil state of mind ; but this had 
 proved impossible, if only from the abruptness with 
 which he would leave the room and return to it on 
 various errands of his own restless invention. She 
 gave him up at last, and turned to Stephen, who re- 
 sponded at once, as he always did, to the charm of her 
 warm-hearted sympathy, spiced even now and made 
 more cordial by the pinch of playful malice that she 
 so seldom omitted. For the hundredth time he dis- 
 covered what had struck him at his first meeting with 
 her, that the secret of her perfect companionship lay 
 in the combination of certainty and unexpectedness; 
 you could always foretell and rely upon her feelings, 
 but the turn of her thought was a continual slight 
 surprise. From the beginning he had felt sure of her 
 friendship, and almost sure of a stronger liking; but 
 though she had never for a moment played him false, 
 she had constantly mystified and defeated him by little 
 feints, ambushes, delays, and counter-strokes too skilful
 
 344 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 to be unintended, yet too playful to be intended seriously. 
 She would give, it appeared, but not yet; for what, 
 then, was she waiting ? She had long ago forgotten, 
 or seemed to have forgotten, her dread of the unknown 
 future towards which he was calling her, just as he 
 himself had ceased to be troubled by the fact that he 
 did not know the whole secret of her life ; yet the end, 
 the moment of decision, seemed to be no nearer than 
 it had been many times before. But Stephen, though 
 he was as far as ever from understanding her, felt that 
 he loved her better and trusted her entirely ; to-night, 
 when every other light was dim, his affection was 
 burning with a clear, unwavering flame, and though 
 he had more problems to perplex him than any of his 
 companions, he was certainly the least troubled of the 
 four. 
 
 At eleven Harry had gone suddenly downstairs, 
 and brought back with him a large hour-glass, which 
 he placed in the centre of the chimney-piece. It had 
 been already turned, and the sands, as they ran through 
 in their thin and almost invisible stream, were heaping 
 up in the lower bulb a tiny pyramid which mounted 
 and slipped down, and mounted again, and held the 
 eye of those who watched it with a kind of fascination. 
 Stephen saw that so long as he was looking at the 
 base of the mound, it appeared to grow but slowly, 
 while the moment his glance travelled upwards to the
 
 THE SAND IN THE GLASS 345 
 
 point of infall, the rush of atoms seemed to be im- 
 mensely accelerated, He amused himself by recalling 
 the old comparison of the days or hours of life to the 
 running sands, and wondered idly how many before 
 him had noted that time, like the atoms on the heap, 
 passes quickly or slowly according to the point of view 
 from which it is looked at. 
 
 "It is a terribly vivid image," he said at last to 
 Aubrey. 
 
 "Yes," she replied; "but which part do you take 
 for our life ? " 
 
 "Oh," he said in surprise, "the upper half; don't 
 we say that a man's days are numbered, or that his 
 days are running out ? " 
 
 She smiled, but kept to the low, quiet tone which 
 was intended only for his ear. 
 
 " But we are surely gaining," she said, " not losing. 
 Time may give ; he certainly cannot take away." 
 
 " I see," he replied ; " but if we are the lower half, 
 what happens when the heap is finished and there are 
 no more sands to come ? The image does not help us 
 there." 
 
 " Yes, it shows that when that happens Time is at 
 an end for us ; to go on with that kind of life would 
 involve being started again as empty as we were at 
 the beginning." 
 
 "Well? "he asked.
 
 346 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " Well, to me there is nothing there worth having ; 
 if you take my memory away, you take my self." 
 
 " You think that ? " he exclaimed, in a low, eager 
 voice, looking deep into her eyes. 
 
 She smiled again her faint, half-mocking smile, as 
 if she had long known how eager he was to have 
 that question solved, and had purposely delayed to 
 answer it. 
 
 " I have always thought so," she replied. " But see 
 how quickly the sand is falling ; there is not much left 
 now." 
 
 " No" said Harry, springing up ; " it is almost time 
 we went down." 
 
 They followed him from the room and down the 
 stairs; the household was gathered in the outer hall, 
 looking towards the door, which was unbarred but still 
 closed. The hour was not quite up. For a moment 
 Harry stood waiting with his hand upon the latch; 
 then he flung the door wide open, and spoke the 
 traditional words, "Farewell the old, and enter what 
 God will." 
 
 There was a pause, and then a stir of almost terrified 
 surprise; a footstep came across the dark and silent 
 courtyard, a black shadow crossed the circle of light 
 beyond the door, and came quickly into the porch 
 itself. Harry stepped back ; the figure passed him by 
 and strode on into the hall.
 
 THE SAND IN THE GLASS 347 
 
 "Edmund," said the voice of Kalph Tremur, "do 
 what you will with me to-morrow; but I can go no 
 further to-night." 
 
 " Hush ! " said Edmund, and he drew Ealph quickly 
 away to his own room. 
 
 Harry followed them scowling ; Stephen and Aubrey 
 wished each other a happy New Year with a long 
 hand-grip and shining eyes.
 
 XLVII 
 
 NEITHER Stephen nor Aubrey heard a word of Ralph's 
 story that night, and they had great difficulty in find- 
 ing an opportunity to speak with him alone next day. 
 At last, when Harry was engaged by his father for 
 an hour's talk on matters of business, and Edmund 
 had left Sir Henry's bedside for a short rest in his 
 own room, they all three slipped out of the house 
 together and took the path up the down, which, being 
 at the back of the house, lay out of sight of Sir 
 Henry's window. To guard still further against being 
 followed, they turned aside out of the Selwood track 
 about halfway down the avenue, and made for a 
 small hollow a furlong to the right, formed by stone- 
 quarrying in another generation, and now thickly 
 fringed with bushes and undergrowth. Here they 
 could sit in some comfort, sheltered from the wind 
 and facing ^the low afternoon sun, but, above all, secure 
 from any kind of interruption. 
 
 " Now," said Stephen, when they were safely settled 
 there, " tell us quickly, Ealph, how the situation has 
 changed since you were last here." 
 
 Ealph laughed a short and angry laugh. " Changed, 
 
 348
 
 THE HUNT IS UP 349 
 
 indeed ! Last time I was among friends ; an enemy is 
 master here now." 
 
 The other two had not a word to say to this ; it 
 was not true, but it was too near the truth. 
 
 " That is not what I meant," said Stephen. " I 
 was asking you what has happened : what have you 
 been doing, what has the Bishop done ? " 
 
 "I have seen him at last," replied Kalph, with a 
 touch of exultation in his voice. " He surpassed him- 
 self; my only fear is that his eloquence prevented 
 him from hearing half of what I told him." 
 
 Aubrey glanced at Stephen with a swift, appreci- 
 ative twinkle in her eyes. 
 
 " Did you follow all that he said ? " she asked, with 
 great simplicity. 
 
 " Not I," replied Ealph ; " it was my last earthly 
 chance of speaking to the Church face to face." 
 
 She looked at him with the fond, admiring regret 
 of a mother for the gallant perversity of her 
 child. 
 
 " Oh, Ealph," she said, " you will drive him to 
 extremes." 
 
 " Look here," he replied more soberly, " the mischief 
 is all done; it is the remedy that we must think 
 about. It is four days since I saw him; by now 
 his threats are threats no longer. He has cursed me 
 with bell, book, and candle ; he has proclaimed me an
 
 350 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 outcast, a leper, one cut off from the body of Christ 
 and given over to everlasting torments." 
 Aubrey gave a low exclamation of horror. 
 Stephen's anger flamed up into his eyes. "Who 
 cares ? " he cried fiercely ; " his curses cannot make 
 right wrong." 
 
 "No," said Ealph, "but they can make life im- 
 possible for me. He has persuaded my other Fathers 
 in God, the Bishops of London and Wells, to excom- 
 municate me too; I have not a friend outside their 
 jurisdiction, nor any means of livelihood. You will 
 see the last of me to-morrow." 
 
 " Why ? " asked Stephen. " Why not stay here as 
 you did before ? " 
 
 Ealph looked at him with the gentlest and kindest 
 look that Stephen had ever seen upon his face. 
 
 "Dear fellow," he said, "you are forgetting. My 
 leprosy is contagious now ; he that takes my hand is 
 lost too. Harry Marland is right to-day, whatever he 
 was yesterday." 
 
 "Oh, don't be hard, don't misjudge him," cried 
 Aubrey. "Whatever he was yesterday, he will be 
 right to-day ; he will never give you up, he will find 
 some way out for you." 
 
 "Ay," said Ralph, "the open door." 
 
 The words were bitter, but very gently spoken, and 
 moved his hearers to sympathy rather than indignation.
 
 THE HUNT IS UP 351 
 
 Aubrey looked thoughtfully at Stephen, who was staring 
 grimly at the distant line of wood behind which the 
 sun was at this moment disappearing. He knew that 
 Ralph made no mistake; powerless or not, Harry 
 would not shelter him: but he was turning rapidly 
 over in his own mind a dozen possible and impossible 
 courses; one way or another he was determined that 
 the Bishop should be baulked. 
 
 At last the bright gold was gone from behind the 
 distant trees; the valley filled imperceptibly with a 
 soft grey twilight. Stephen stood up suddenly with 
 a quick, resolute movement, and held out a hand to 
 each of his companions. 
 
 " Come," he said, " it is getting dark ; let us go 
 back and talk to Edmund." 
 
 They walked slowly towards the avenue. As they 
 turned into it the sound of hoofs came rapidly across 
 the down, and they had barely time to step back 
 between the trees before two horsemen galloped past 
 them, and went down over the edge towards the 
 house. Aubrey had gone forward again into the path, 
 and stood looking after them. 
 
 " I believe " she began with amazement in her 
 
 voice. " I thought " 
 
 But at that moment a louder noise was heard. 
 Stephen sprang forward and drew her back out of 
 the track. Half a dozen riders were following the
 
 352 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 other two; they passed at the same fierce gallop, and 
 with a clank of steel somewhere among them; the 
 acrid steam of their horses seemed to sicken the 
 quiet twilight. Aubrey looked at the two men; her 
 amazement was near terror now. 
 
 " You were right," said Ealph ; " the* hunt is up 
 already." But he went on walking towards the house 
 without any sign of fear.
 
 XLVIII 
 
 EDMUND met them at the door. He was very grave, 
 and spoke briefly. 
 
 "Kalph," he said, in a low voice, "the Bishop is 
 here; you must go straight to the keeper's lodge 
 and sup there. To-night, when you hear the curfew 
 bell, go round to the old gate at the west side of the 
 garden; one of us will come and tell you what has 
 happened." 
 
 Ealph hesitated for a moment, then gave in and 
 went without a word. 
 
 Edmund turned to Aubrey and Stephen. "We 
 have no time to consult now," he said; "the only 
 thing I can advise is that we should all speak straight- 
 forwardly when we have to speak, but that we know 
 nothing until we are compelled to know it. From 
 what we heard last night, the excommunication has 
 probably been already pronounced, but that is nothing 
 to us till we hear it as a fact from the Bishop himself. 
 You understand ? " 
 
 They nodded and went in with him. 
 
 Supper that night was a terrible ordeal; the 
 Bishop alone was at his ease. His manner showed his 
 
 353 2 A
 
 354 THE OLD COUNTB7 
 
 perception of the fact that the government of Garden- 
 leigh had practically changed hands, and that the new 
 lord was likely to be easier to deal with than the old 
 one. Harry more than half-resented this attitude, for 
 although he had no intention of defending Kalph, he 
 was by nature quite as jealous as his father of all 
 ecclesiastical pretensions. Aubrey and Stephen were 
 embarrassed by marks of confidence which they did 
 not deserve, and yet could not reject. Edmund, as 
 ever, bore on his own shoulders the anxieties of all 
 the rest, and he had, in addition, to devise the means 
 of clearing up the position in time to warn Kalph 
 that night, for it seemed only too probable that Garden- 
 leigh would be no place for him next day. 
 
 When they found themselves once more gathered 
 round the fire after supper, there was .little time to be 
 lost. Edmund threw all his strategy aside, and came 
 straight to the point. 
 
 " My lord," he said, " can you give us any news 
 of Ealph Tremur ? " 
 
 " I am glad that you have asked me that," replied 
 the Bishop, "because I should otherwise have had 
 some reluctance to pain you, Edmund, by opening the 
 subject myself. I grieve to tell you that he has finally 
 proved himself unworthy of your friendship." 
 
 Edmund would have ventured another question, 
 but Harry interrupted him.
 
 THE OUTER DARKNESS 355 
 
 " My dear Edmund," he said, " you really must 
 not argue any more ; you have done all that any one 
 could expect of you. Ralph has pleaded his own cause, 
 and been condemned. My lord has found it neces- 
 sary to excommunicate him, and there is an end of 
 the matter. We can give him no further countenance." 
 
 Edmund did not reply. His last appeal must be 
 to the Bishop, not to his brother. 
 
 "My lord," he said, standing humbly before the 
 splendid figure enthroned in the great chair of red- 
 and-white velvet, " this man has been very near our 
 hearts ; is nothing more permitted to us ? " 
 
 " Nothing," answered the Bishop, sternly. " Hence- 
 forth he is dead and damned, outcast alike from the 
 Church on earth and the mercy of God." 
 
 " By whom ? " cried Stephen, leaping to his feet. 
 " By man, his fellow-man, and by an ignorant and 
 unjust sentence." 
 
 "You forget, sir," said the Bishop, with great 
 dignity, turning towards Harry. 
 
 " Stephen, you are mad," said Harry. 
 
 " I am not mad, and I forget nothing," cried 
 Stephen, hotly; "but where one persecutes, another 
 may defend, or you make the world a torture-house 
 and a place of slaves. Curse me too, if you will, with 
 all your bells and candles. I am for Ralph and the 
 outer darkness,"
 
 356 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 An eternal silence seemed to fall upon the room. 
 He dared not look at Aubrey; the faces of the rest 
 had in one instant grown as unreal to him as the 
 stone effigies of a long dead past. Before any one 
 had moved or spoken, he had closed the door behind 
 him. A moment later he had taken all his money 
 from his room, and was hurrying to the garden across 
 the starlit valley. He had lost Aubrey, but he knew 
 that to turn back would have been to lose her no less 
 certainly
 
 XLIX 
 
 INSIDE the garden gate Ealph was waiting. Stephen 
 found him pacing quietly up and down at the western 
 end of the avenue, his broad face expanded into a smile 
 of pleasurable anticipation. The furious spirit which 
 had so often torn him at the mere thought of authority, 
 seemed to have departed now that the tyranny had 
 actually come upon him; he had raved against a 
 general system of coercion, but when it was practically 
 applied in his own case, he seemed rather to enjoy 
 the struggle. 
 
 " Well," he asked cheerfully, as Stephen came 
 within hail, " have the hounds winded me yet ? " 
 
 "I do not think the Bishop knows that you are 
 here," replied Stephen, "but he soon will. He has 
 excommunicated you, and Harry has accepted his 
 decision." 
 
 " Then I must go," said Ralph. 
 
 " So must I," said Stephen ; " come, we'have nothing 
 to stay for." 
 
 " Where are you going ? " 
 
 " I hardly know. I have some land in Warwick- 
 shire." 
 
 357
 
 358 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 " Safe enough for you," replied Ealph, " but not 
 for me. I tell you they are hunting me ; you have 
 not heard all. When I was preaching down there in 
 Cornwall I took the pyx out of a church, and burnt 
 the Host before a houseful of people. I broke into the 
 church, you understand, and those fellows with the 
 Bishop have the sheriff's writ against me." 
 
 " I don't understand." 
 
 " Don't you ? but the Bishop does. The civil law 
 kills quicker than his curses ; give a man without 
 money or friends one winter in gaol, and he will 
 never live to stand his trial. No ! I'll not be caught. 
 I shall make straight for Weymouth without touching 
 a high-road, and if I can earn or beg a passage to 
 France " 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Stephen, joyfully, " I had forgotten." 
 He took out the money and put it into Ealph's hand. 
 
 The weight told its own tale. Small though the 
 packet was, it held not merely a safe passage to 
 France, but food and shelter for a year at least. 
 Ealph, in his triumphant joy over the gift, quite 
 forgot to thank the giver. This to him was some- 
 thing more than a personal escape, a personal success. 
 He turned towards the house across the valley, the 
 house which held his enemy, and raised both his 
 clen died hands above his head in a kind of ecstacy. 
 
 " John, John, John of Exeter ! " he cried, " I
 
 RALPH'S FABEWELL 359 
 
 shall outlive you yet. England is yours to-day, but 
 I shall come back. I shall come back when you are 
 dust," 
 
 Then he remembered, and turned to grasp Stephen 
 by both hands. 
 
 " I am not quite an outcast," he said, " while I have 
 a patron saint. I shall keep St. Stephen's Day when 
 I have forgotten all the rest. Now I must be gone ; 
 but there is one thing more. It will be safest not to 
 speak of me, but if ever you meet John Wyclif, at 
 Oxford or elsewhere, take him aside and tell him all 
 he cares to hear." 
 
 Stephen could not speak ; he felt that he could 
 not utter lifeless commonplaces in presence of this 
 buoyant and sanguine vitality, and his real thoughts 
 were too confused and tumultuous to find expression. 
 He pressed Kalph's hand in silence, and stood watching 
 in a maze of memories and conjectures so long as he 
 continued in sight. He saw him cross the park where 
 it lay open to the stars, and followed the swing of his 
 step as he marched noiselessly along the edge of the 
 high wood : now he was hardly more than a shadow ; 
 now the imagination saw him rather than the eye; 
 and now even the darkness kept no trace of him. 
 Stephen turned away with leaden feet ; the longing 
 of farewell drew him irresistibly. He passed along 
 the bare, ruined arcade of leafless trees slowly and
 
 360 THE OLD COUNTEY 
 
 with no conscious will, but when he found himself 
 by Aubrey's seat he knew why he had come. There 
 was the lake by which he had walked so pleasantly 
 with those he loved, and fought so fiercely against 
 that which he hated. There was the church on its 
 island, the church which seemed to stand so wholly 
 apart from life, yet to which all the lives around it 
 were continually and inevitably returning. There was 
 the house by whose fireside he had sat in peace, and 
 heard the echoes of a great nation's voice, loud with 
 the triumph of war, and deep with the murmur of 
 just rebellion. There, too, he had followed Love ; lost, 
 found, conquered, and resigned. How could he turn 
 his back on this place and live ? 
 
 He leaned upon the low wall where he sat, with 
 a hand as cold as the stone itself. The night was so 
 silent and the shadows so motionless that it seemed 
 as if all life had ceased, and the earth had passed 
 out of the region of change. Thought, regret, and the 
 sense of time died in him ; he saw all that he had 
 ever done as a bright and curious picture, the events 
 of which were strangely vivid, but drawn so small 
 and so remote that they could no longer touch the 
 springs of human feeling.
 
 WHEN he found himself once more in the world of 
 thought and action, the stars were pale and the 
 shadows had faded from the grass; a faint breeze 
 touched him with a mysterious warning of change, and 
 passed on as if to deliver the same message to others of 
 its secret fellowship. He rose reluctantly in obedience 
 to the summons, and turned to look around. Above 
 him, to the right, loomed the entrance to the western 
 avenue, the shadowy corner where he had once sat with 
 Aubrey to hear the story of Ogier the Dane ; and 
 as he looked, a cloaked and hooded figure flitted from 
 beneath the great elm, and came towards him with a 
 light, familiar step. By the form, by the grace, by the 
 quickening of some subtle sense within him, he knew 
 who it was that came, though her face was hidden, and 
 he could not guess the purpose of her coming. She 
 moved towards him swiftly, and as he went to meet 
 her he saw in a flash, as one sees an arrow's direction 
 in the last moment before it strikes, that she was coming 
 not with uncertainty, but with resolve. An instant 
 after she had thrown back the hood from her face, and 
 her arms were clasped about his neck. He kissed her 
 
 361
 
 362 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 in a dream, with utter and unquestioning content ; 
 then as he drew back and looked into her eyes, his 
 heart leaped like a bird in the net : this was no longer 
 the lady of his desire and his despair, but one whom 
 until this moment he had never seen or met with or 
 imagined a stranger, the strangest among women, for 
 she was his own. Yet he bent over her once more, 
 and as their lips touched, he knew that always and in 
 all existences her life and his had been and were to be 
 inseparably bound together. 
 
 " Why are you here ? " she asked at length. 
 
 " I was saying good-bye ; I thought that I must go." 
 
 "Go where you will," she said, "and I go with 
 you." 
 
 " You cannot," he said ; " you have not thought." 
 
 Her lips trembled, but her eyes laughed at him. 
 " It was always I who thought ; you were only feeling." 
 
 " Yes, I have broken all my rules." 
 
 " But you have kept all mine." She laughed 
 happily, and ended with a little sigh of satisfaction. 
 
 " Tell me your thoughts," he said ; " I have been in 
 the dark so long." 
 
 She looked up at him gravely for a moment, as if 
 hesitating; then, while he wondered, the old bright 
 malice flashed out irresistibly. 
 
 " I was thinking how different things would have 
 been if you had not broken all your rules."
 
 THE SHADOW ON THE DIAL 363 
 
 " Different for you ? " 
 
 " Oh ! you cannot think what it would have been 
 to leave this place." 
 
 " How can you bear to leave it now ? " 
 
 She laughed again. " You are changed, indeed." 
 
 " No," he said, " but I have learned so much." 
 
 Again she sighed out her happiness. " Ah ! if you 
 had not learned ! " , 
 
 " But even now, how can you leave it ? " 
 
 " To go with you," she answered gravely, " is not to 
 leave it." 
 
 He looked fondly at her, but the doubt in his eyes 
 was still unanswered. 
 
 " No," she repeated, " not now ; my home goes with 
 you. Do you think that so slight a change ? " 
 
 " How could I know ? " he pleaded. " I had heard 
 that lovers live in one another." 
 
 Gentle scorn played about her lips. " man ! " 
 she said, " what woman could ever live in a palace of 
 to-morrows ? " 
 
 Her voice had all the tones that had so long delighted 
 him, but through and below them all there was now 
 another that he had not known ; a soft, deep note of 
 certainty, of rest, of possession, that woke an answering 
 vibration within him, unlike any feeling he had ever 
 known. 
 
 Long after she ceased speaking he was silent,
 
 364 THE OLD COUNTRY 
 
 listening to this new music, until at last he was recalled 
 by the pressure of her hand in his. 
 
 " Where shall we go ? " he asked, rising to his feet. 
 
 " To the garden first," she said, " for roses." 
 
 " Eoses ? " he asked. " I thought it had been winter 
 this long while." 
 
 "Have I been so cold?" she cried, leading him 
 towards the rose-alley under the old red wall of the 
 garden. 
 
 He followed unresisting, in dreamy contentment. 
 To-night the wilderness had blossomed for him, to-day 
 a new dawn was breaking upon a new world; why 
 should there not be roses in midwinter ? 
 
 She plucked a handful and gave them to him. 
 They were red and sweet; the green thorns pricked 
 him as he grasped them, the dew splashed coldly upon 
 his hand and wrist ; all down the alley the dusk was 
 fresh with the same cool fragrance, and overhead be- 
 tween the heavy poles a tangle of leaves and rambling 
 clusters darkened the gray spaces of the sky. 
 
 At the end they turned and came slowly back ; 
 the east was lightening before them, and Stephen saw, 
 when they crossed the avenue again, that the great 
 aisle was massy now and star-proof with sombre green. 
 By Aubrey's seat the terrace lay once more as he re- 
 membered it: below, the long slope of the park was 
 a deep sea of summer grass, with trees in full foliage
 
 THE SHADOW ON THE DIAL 365 
 
 becalmed upon it ; above, the house stared down with 
 gray face and sightless windows, as cold and still as 
 when he saw it last under the setting moon. A second 
 time the light breeze whispered a mysterious message 
 and was gone again; a faint flush rose behind the 
 distant hills and mounted till half the sky was glowing 
 softly with ethereal blue and crimson. 
 
 " There comes the sun," said Aubrey ; " let us see 
 what time it is." 
 
 They leaned upon the sun-dial together, watching 
 intently for the first pale shadow, as if great things 
 depended on the due performance of the rite. When 
 the moment came at last, and the golden light fell 
 across the dial, they looked up at one another and 
 smiled. 
 
 " Our first day has begun," she said. 
 He pressed her hand silently, and they looked down 
 again at the shadow, watching it dreamily as it moved 
 from one figure to another on the green, mould-spotted 
 circle of bronze. 
 
 " How fast it steals along ! " he said, musing ; " it 
 counts our moments as hours." 
 
 " That is nothing to us," she murmured, still more 
 softly. " We know that it is only a shadow." 
 
 THE END
 
 PRINTED BT 
 
 WllXUJI CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 I.OXDON AND BICOLE8.
 
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