She suddenly flushed a deep scarlet.

"What are these?" she said, pointing with a shaking finger to the things on the table.

"Them?" said Mr. Hamlyn in cheerful surprise. "Ma.s.s wafers, my dear. I buy them in a shop in Covent Garden. We distribute them among the Luther Lecturers, for object lessons to the poor deluded Ritualists."

The girl had crouched to the wall of the room. Hamlyn was seriously alarmed. Her face was almost purple, her eyes started out of her head.

"They"re not con--_consecrated_?" she gasped.

Hamlyn could not understand her emotion. "No," he said; "why, Gussie, what a superst.i.tious little thing you are. And if they were, what then?"

Frank amazement showed on his face.

"Oh, nothing, Mr. Hamlyn," the girl said at length, becoming more normal in her manner.

In a few minutes, Hamlyn left the house, leaving the girl in her ordinary manner, eating the chocolates that he had brought her.

His able mind was busily at work. He knew that during Miss Pritchett"s adhesion to St. Elwyn"s Gussie had, perforce, been one of the congregation there and had been taught and trained by the clergy.

"No wonder," he thought bitterly to himself; "no wonder that they can win along the line, when they can sow seeds like that in a girl"s mind.

Why, she"s a thorough little Protestant at heart. To think that those things should have startled her so! It"s a lingering prejudice, I suppose. They _are_ a queer lot--the Romanists!"

As he communed thus with himself, a swift thought came to him. At the moment of its arrival in his brain, he almost staggered. Then, pulling himself together, he walked rapidly to his own house.

He thought he saw his way to a _coup_ that would make all his previous efforts as nothing. How wonderfully simple it was! Why had he never thought of it before--_what_ a fool he had been! Here was the solution of all the difficulties he was in. The answer seemed to have come to his conversation with Samuel in the morning.

He went to his study and fortunately found that Sam was already there.

Miss Maud Hamlyn sat in the room also, but when she saw her father"s face, she left the room at once. It wore the "business look" she knew well, and, though she but dimly understood what her brother and father were engaged in, she knew it had brought great prosperity and honour to all of them, and was loath to intrude upon any profitable confabulation.

"Have you got it, Pa?" said Samuel, eagerly.

"Yes, I _"ave_," answered the secretary, "and very fine it is too!"

"How much?" asked Sam.

"What do you mean?"

"The cheque, Miss Pritchett"s latest."

"Oh, _that_," said Hamlyn. "Two hundred, what we expected. I meant something else. I"ve got the new scheme to wake things up! The best thing we"ve done yet, my boy!"

Sam rubbed his hands. "What did I say this morning? I knew you"d do it, Pa. Well, let"s have it."

Mr. Hamlyn sat back in his chair, willing to dally a moment with his triumph and enjoy the full savour of it.

"Why we never thought of it before," he said, "beats me entirely!

Something suggested it to me to-night, and I"ve been wondering at our neglecting such a move."

"What _is_ it then?"

"What about one of us going to the Ma.s.s and bringing away the consecrated wafer? Then a big public meeting"s called and I _show_ the people what we"ve got! The "flour-and-water G.o.d" of the Romanists! Not the usual plan of producing a wafer we"ve bought from a shop, but the _real thing_, Sam! Then they"ll all be able to see that there"s no difference between before and after! It"ll explode the whole thing and give the League an advertis.e.m.e.nt better than anything that"s gone before!"

Sam looked very grave indeed. "It"s a little bit _too_ much, I"m afraid, Father," he said.

"What do you mean, my son?" answered the secretary in extreme and real surprise.

"Well, I don"t know," Sam said doubtfully, "but I shouldn"t like to meddle with it myself."

Mr. Hamlyn leaned forward. "Sam," he said, "you"re a fool. You"re as bad as Gussie Davies! Leave the matter to me. Who"s awakened Protestantism in Hengland? ME! Who knows how to work a popular cause? ME! Who"s going to boom the Luther League up to the top again? ME!"

"Have it your own way, Father," Sam said, "you generally do come out on top."

"Ring the bell for some tea," said Mr. Hamlyn, "and let"s talk out the details. We"ll "ave to get it where we aren"t known by sight."

CHAPTER XI

THE NEWS THAT CARR BROUGHT

As the days wore on, and Lucy Blantyre became accustomed to her surroundings, she found that she was in thorough tune with them. During the year she had been away from St. Elwyn"s, she had spent most of the time abroad, at first with Lady Linquest, afterwards with friends. The old life of fashionable people and "smart" doings palled horribly.

Travelling was a diversion from that, and, in some sense, a preparation for the more useful life that she determined to live in the future.

She had quite made up her mind to that. Nothing would induce her to go back to live in Park Lane once more. Life offered far more than the West End of London could offer; so much was plain. She kept up a regular correspondence with her brother and was fully informed of all that took place in Hornham. Her thoughts turned more and more affectionately towards the dingy old house, centre of such ceaseless activities, the old house with the great church watching over it.

Down there it seemed as if provision was made for all one"s needs of the mind. Stress and storm beat upon it in vain, and it combined the joys of both the cloister and the hearth.

In her limited experience, there had been nothing like it. A year or two ago, she would have smiled incredulously if any one had told her that she would like going to church twice or three times on a week-day. But during her stay at St. Elwyn"s how natural and helpful it had seemed, how much a part of the proper order of things. The morning Eucharist while day in the outside world was beginning, the stately and beautiful evensong as men ceased their toil, these coloured all the day, were woven into its warp and woof. She knew that the _abnormal_ life was the life of the majority, the life of those who lived in a purely secular way, who never worshipped or prayed.

When any mind, in its settling of its att.i.tude towards the Unseen, gets as far as this; when it realises that, despite the laughter of fools and the indifference of most people, the _logical_ use of life is to make it in constant touch with G.o.d, then, as a rule, the personal religious conviction will come in due time. It had not come to Lucy yet in full and satisfying measure, it had not come even when she determined to make her home with her brother for a time and help in any way she could.

During the year of travel, she was also in regular communication with James Poyntz. Insensibly his letters to her had become the letters of a lover. He told her all his thoughts and the details of his work and hopes, and, mingling with what were in fact a series of brilliant personal confessions, there began to be a high note of personal devotion to her. One does not need the simple alphabet of lover"s words to write love letters. Poyntz used no terms of endearment, and as yet had made her no definite proposal of marriage. But the girl knew, quite certainly, exactly how he felt towards her. There was no disguise in his letters, and the time was drawing near when he would definitely ask her to share his life.

She had not yet definitely summed up her att.i.tude towards him. She was at the crossing of the roads; new influences, new ideas were pouring into her brain from every side. It was necessary to readjust herself to life completely before she could settle upon any course.

She knew that to be Lady Huddersfield was to take a high seat in Vanity Fair. The Huddersfields belonged to the old order of society, to that inner circle of the great who never open their door indiscriminately to the Jew and the mining millionaire. People laughed at them and called them pompous and dull, but there was a high serenity among them nevertheless. She might have married half a dozen times had she so chosen. Her income was large enough to make her a small heiress, at any rate to be an appreciable factor in the case, besides which her birth was unexceptionable. It was known that when Lady Linquest fluttered away to another world, the old lady"s money would come to her niece. But position merely, rank rather, did not attract a girl who already went wherever she chose. And among the men in society who had offered her marriage, or were prepared to do so, she found no one capable of satisfying her brain. Poyntz did this. She found power in him, strength, purpose. She knew that, in whatever station of life he was, the man was finely tempered, high in that aristocracy of intellect which some people say is the only aristocracy there is.

She was conscious of all this, but, especially since she had been settled in the vicarage as a home, she was becoming conscious of many other influences at work upon her. Religion, the personal giving of one"s self to G.o.d, was tinging all her life and actions now. Hour by hour, she found herself drawing nearer to the Cross. Her progress had become a matter of practical experience. It was impossible to live with the people she was among, to watch every detail of their lives, to find _exactly where the motive power and the sustaining power came from_, without casting in her lot with them in greater or less degree. Every day she found some hold upon the outside world was loosened, something she had imagined had great value in her eyes suddenly seemed quite worthless! Looked at in the light that was beginning to shine upon her, she was frequently surprised beyond measure to find how worthless most things were! Her brain was keen, cool, and logical. Hitherto she had refused to draw an inference--no proof, by the way, of any want of logical skill;--now she was drawing it.

She was great and intimate friends with the two a.s.sistant priests, Stephens and King. Stephens was engaged to a girl in the country, King belonged to some confraternity of celibates. Both were high-minded men, who appreciated to the full the charm of cultured feminine society and found her drawing-room a most pleasant oasis now and then. And every one at the clergy-house began to see a great deal of Mr. Carr. The lonely man found companionship and sympathy there. He found intellectual men, university men like himself, with whom he could talk. He had been intellectually starving in Hornham, and good brains rust unless they have some measure of intercourse with their kind.

He was constantly with his new friends. One Sunday Father Blantyre preached at St. Luke"s. The church was crowded, to hear a man whom a great many there believed capable of almost any form of casuistry and sly dealing. But when the little Irishman got into the pulpit he gave them a simple, forcible discourse on some points of conduct, delivered with all his personal charm, his native raciness and wit; many wagging tongues were silenced in the parish. Carr"s experiment was a bold one, but it succeeded. An ounce of fact is worth a pound of hearsay.

Blantyre was so transparently honest, so obviously incapable of any of the things imputed to him by the Luther Leaguers, that the most prejudiced folk at St. Luke"s said no more than that it was a pity such a decent fellow, who could preach such a good sermon, wasted so much of his time over unnecessary fads!

For some reason or other,--she could not quite explain it to herself,--Lucy looked on Carr with different eyes from those with which she viewed Stephens or King. He seemed less set apart from the ordinary lot of men than they were. His ordinary clerical costume may have had something to do with it, the contrast between his clothes and those of the laymen not being so marked as in the case of the High Church clergy.

And his manner also was different in a subtle way. Lucy liked the manner of King and she liked the manner of Carr, but they were markedly unlike each other. The former spoke of everything from the Church"s point of view, the latter more from the point of view of an ordinary layman who loves and serves our Lord.