On the Monday after the events in Hornham, Agatha Poyntz and her brother James were in the lovely private backwater of Scarning. Their punt was moored to the side of a tiny island, set like a gem in the clear brown water, the red silk cushions of the boat making a vivid splash of colour on the bank. With these two was Miss Poyntz"s great friend and confidante, Lucy Blantyre, the only sister of the vicar of St. Elwyn"s.

Lucy was a girl of medium height, not at all the willowy modern heroine of pictures and romance. Her hair was of a deep, dead black, coiled on a small Greek head. Her complexion was dark, like that of her brother, the priest, but quite without a certain sallowness that was noticeable in him. It had the dusky paleness, the pearl-like _morbidezza_ of some southern types, and, despite the lack of colour, showed a perfect and happy health. The mouth was rather large. Mockery lurked there, and in the dark eyes a lambent and somewhat scornful humour was wont to play.

Agatha Poyntz was a tall and merry girl--"a nut-brown maid" her father called her. Her round, plump face showed a sheer light-heartedness and joy in life that was always refreshing to people who found this life rather a drab and ordinary affair. The care-worn priests and churchmen who were her father"s friends, men who were always too painfully aware of the great stream of human tears which is for ever falling through the shadows of the world, were all fond of her freshness and sparkle. And, so the wisest of them thought that since she took nothing seriously, and was quite untouched by the vexing problems in which they were submerged, it was perhaps a good thing that so gay and bright a creature should come into their lives for a s.p.a.ce, realising that, after all, G.o.d made the b.u.t.terflies which hovered so daintily over the Scarning water-flowers upon their painted fans.

James Poyntz, Lord Huddersfield"s only son, was a very different type.

He resembled his dead mother, a daughter of the Duke of St. Just. He was tall, slender, and muscular. His face was clean-shaved, lean, and with a heavy jaw, not the heaviness that signals sensuality and dulness, but purpose and resolution. His eyes were grey, and glittered when he became animated, and his clear, cold voice grew emphatic.

Not long before, he had come down from Oxford, where he had distinguished himself in the history schools, and also by availing himself of the little-used permission to absent himself from chapel and the examination known as "Divinity Moderations," granted to men who have come of age, and who sign a declaration of their absolute and sincere disbelief in the supernatural. It had been a piquant spectacle to the sceptic undergraduates and younger dons, to see the son and heir of Lord Huddersfield openly scornful and protesting against all that his father held so dear, and quietly taking the much severer tests that the University statutes impose upon those who would dispense with the puerile divinity examination.

James Poyntz was on rather bad terms with his father. There was no confidence between them, and perhaps but little love--though that had never been tested. The young man had a sufficient fortune from his mother, and his father was prepared to supplement his income in any way he might wish, being far too sensible and just a man to endeavour to make his son suffer financially for his opinions. But James Poyntz refused money which, as he said, would have been purely superfluous to him, and was occupied in carving a career for himself at the common-law bar, where he was already a not inconspicuous figure among the junior men.

His knowledge of ecclesiastical law was good, and in the wrangles between diocesan chancellors and recalcitrant clergy which were becoming more and more frequent, he was frequently retained. He was a very familiar figure in Dr. Tristram"s Consistory Court, and his familiarity with ecclesiastical litigation only increased a contempt for those who professed and called themselves Christians, which was as profound as it was sincere, and as fundamentally the result of ignorance as it was both.

For, brilliant as he was, the young man had not the slightest acquaintance with modern religious thought. He saw everything through the spectacles of temperamental distaste, and still believed that Professor Huxley had dealt the final blow to Christianity in 1876! Lord Huddersfield had often pressed his son to read the question as it at present stood, to see what Gore and the philosophic apologists were saying, or even to note the cautious but inevitable conclusions that prominent scientists like Lord Kelvin and Sir Oliver Lodge were arriving at. But the young man always refused. The ancient indictment of the Gadarene swine represented the last word in the controversy for him, and a brain keen and finely furnished with facts on all other questions, on this was not only content to be forty years behind the conclusions of theological science, but imagined that it was in the van of contemporary thought.

Of late, Lord Huddersfield had given up the attempt to influence his son"s opinions. "It is impossible," he had said, "to explain that the sky is blue to a man who has blindfolded himself all his life, and one cannot build a basis in a vacuum." So, while both men respected each other"s attainments on all subjects but religious ones, on these James thought his father a fool, and Lord Huddersfield knew that his son was.

Despite all this difference, the younger man was a frequent and welcome visitor at his father"s various houses, and between him and his sister Agatha there was a real and deep affection. Agatha was conventionally indifferent to religious things, James was profoundly antagonistic to them, and thus, if they did not meet quite on common ground, they were never likely to disagree.

And Lucy Blantyre, the third member of that gay young trio on the summer morning, was a combination of both of them. She was very well off in the affairs of this world, as indeed was her brother, Bernard Blantyre of St. Elwyn"s. But, while he had early devoted his life and money to the service of G.o.d, Lucy had refused to identify herself with his interests.

She lived with her aunt, Lady Linquest, a gay old dame of Mayfair, and it was only at rare intervals that she paid a duty visit to her brother. Yet, though she was, from a surface point of view, purely a society girl, popular, and happy in a bright and vivid life, there were temperamental depths in her, unsounded as yet, which showed her sometimes--to her own wonder and discomfort--that she was a true blood-sister to the priest in north-east London. At times, a wave of scorn for the Church possessed her. She saw the worst side of religious externals and poured bitter fun upon their anomalies. This is, of course, a very easy thing to do. Any one can ridicule the unseen and its ministers: it requires no special talent to be rude to G.o.d! At other times, the girl saw this very clearly and was ashamed. She had a good brain and despised all that was cheap and vulgar at the bottom; and when her moods of wilfulness had pa.s.sed, she stood upon the brink of devotion and belief.

Nothing serious animated any of the three. The day was wonderful. In a sky like a hard, hollow sapphire the sun burned like a white-hot disc of platinum. The island was deliciously cool; the murmur of a near river mingled with the bourdon of the bees. The smooth turf on which they lay was starred with chaste and simple flowers.

"Isn"t it _perfect_ to-day!" Agatha said. "Bee, go away from my face!

"Pleasant it is when the woods are green and the winds are soft and low, to lie amid some sylvan scene"--Lucy, dear, what are you thinking about?"

"I was wondering if we were really reclining in what the poets of last century called "bosky shade." Is this bosky, Mr. Poyntz?"

"Decidedly bosky, I should say. But surely both of you can put the island to a better use than merely to ill.u.s.trate quotations from the poets? It"s far too fine for that."

"Oh, do let me have "bosky"," Lucy replied. "It"s such a dear, comic word. I"ve always loved it. It always seems a fat word to me. I"m sure it"s fat and it waddles--in the word world!"

"Then what does Agatha"s "sylvan" do?"

"Oh, sylvan?--well, I should think it was a slim, graceful, and very young-ladyish kind of word. It wears a neat grey tailor-made coat and skirt, and says, "Papa is of opinion that," or, "Mamma has frequently told me.""

They all laughed, pleased with themselves, the hour, and the charm that perfectly absurd talk has for young and happy people.

"Oh, don"t talk of words, Miss Blantyre," Poyntz said, "I"m tired of them. The long vacation draws near, when I want to forget all about them. My words, the words I live by, or for, are beasts."

"Quote, dearest," Agatha said.

"Well, this is the sort of thing I see more often than anything else at present," he replied: ""The humble pet.i.tion of the vicar and churchwardens of St. Somebody sheweth that, it being considered desirable to make certain alterations and improvements in the church of the said Parish, a meeting in Vestry duly convened for considering the same, was held on the first of June, at which it was resolved that the alterations shown in the plan annexed hereto and there produced, should be carried out, a copy of which resolution is also hereto annexed.""

Both the girls cried out to him to stop.

"What musty words, dry and rusty words!" Lucy said. "And, please, what are they all about, and what do they mean?"

"They mean this--some worthy parson has badgered his congregation for money. It is the desire of his soul to have a rood-screen in his chancel, with a gilt and splendid crucifix upon the top. So, armed with a mouthful of words like that, he gets him to a sort of cellar near St.

Paul"s, where a dear old gentleman, named the Right Worshipful T. H.

Tristram, K. C., D.C.L., sits, in a big wig and a red robe. The parson eloquently explains his wishes, and the Right Worshipful tells him to go and be hanged--or polite words to that effect. Then I and other young legal "gents" get up and talk and argue, and the Right Worshipful listens until he"s tired, and then says no again. The parson goes back to his roodless temple and preaches against Erastianism, and I and the other young legal "gents" pouch a few guineas, and go and play pool at the Oxford and Cambridge Club."

"And then," Agatha went on,--"then father makes a speech and writes a letter to the _Times_ and gets fearfully excited and worried for about a week, neglects his meals, pa.s.ses sleepless nights, and behaves in a perfectly foolish manner generally. Then he goes down to the parish and has a convivial meat tea with the poor parson, and before he goes gives him a cheque for fifty pounds to go and have a holiday with after all the strain!"

"Exactly," said Lucy, "I will take up the parable. I have seen our friend, the parson, in the unutterable north London slum, where my poor dear brother Bernard spends all his time and money. He goes, as you say, for a holiday, to recover from the scene in the cellar near St.

Paul"s. He goes to Dieppe or Boulogne, where he attends the cathedral three times a day, and tries to fraternise with the priests, who regard him as a layman masquerading in borrowed plumes. In revenge, he goes and makes things uncomfortable for the local English chaplain, who, in most continental towns, is an undersized person with a red nose and an enormous red moustache and a strong flavour of Chadband at home. So "all"s well that ends well." But, really, what fearful nonsense it all is! Isn"t it wonderful that people should waste their energies so!"

"If it amuses them it doesn"t matter in the least," Agatha said. "Look how happy it makes poor dear father. And I daresay he does good in his way, don"t you know. It"s far better than racing or anything like that.

Poor dear Hermione Blackbourne was staying here not long ago, and she was telling me what a wretched time they have at home. Lord Saltire hardly ever pays the girls" allowances unless he"s won a race, and the poor dears have to study the sporting papers to know if they"ll be able to afford new frocks for Goodwood. Father"s fads are at least harmless, or, at any rate, no one has to suffer for what he gives away."

"The old type of clergyman seems to have quite died out," Lucy said.

"When I was a little girl, the rector at home was a dear old man, who dressed just like an ordinary person, and went otter-hunting three days a week. Yet I"m sure he was just as earnest as any of these new faddy people. We had a delightful old pew, with a fireplace and chairs, and poor dear father used to get his nap. And as for altar lights and copes and incense, I don"t suppose dear old Mr. Jenkyns had ever heard of such things. The amount of money that Bernard spends on his church in that way is ridiculous."

"The only good I can see in it," James Poyntz said, "is that it brings a certain colour element into drab and dull lives. The people in your brother"s parish, who never see any thing artistic, must gain in that way, I suppose. After all, Miss Blantyre, "it"s an ill wind that blows n.o.body any good." All this Church nonsense gives pleasure, however much we may laugh at it. Take myself, for example. I"m intensely amused at all the squabbles that go on between Christians. More evil pa.s.sions are stirred up and let loose over half a yard of green silk or the precise manner in which half an ounce of flour and water is baked than the politics of a century excite! It"s perfectly true. There"s a spirit of bitter hatred in it all that is intensely interesting to the student of character. There are hundreds of thousands of people in England who would burn my poor father in front of St. Paul"s to-morrow if they could--good, respectable, honest British folk!"

"Well," Lucy said, with affected gloom, "all this only reminds me of my coming penance. In a day or so now, I must dive into Hornham for my yearly stay with Bernard. I shall emerge quite thin and crushed. I always do. The "clergy-house," as they call the vicarage, is a lugubrious place that suggests a rather superior workhouse. When I go, the drawing-room is solemnly opened by the housekeeper. Bernard gives a couple of dinner parties and a garden party to a set of the most extraordinary people you ever saw in your life. I have to be hostess and chatter to weird people, with whom I haven"t a single idea in common.

Lady Linquest drove down from Park Lane to the garden party last year. I shall never forget it. She gave Bernard such a talking to, told him to "dress like a gentleman," and exchange to a nice country parish with some county people close by, and marry. I wish he would, too! He"s wasting his life, his money, and his health in that awful place. I don"t wonder at aunt"s being angry. Why can"t he do as she says? He could have high jinks in a nice little country church in one of the home counties just as well as where he is now."

"Beastly life, I should think," James Poyntz said. "Does he live all alone?"

"Oh, the two curates live with him, Father Stephens and Father King--they"re all "fathers," it seems. These are two intense youths, who dress in ca.s.socks and tippets all day long, and wear their berrettas everywhere. I think it"s positively indecent to sit down to a meal dressed like that. But the worst of it is, that there"s always some fast day or other, and I feel an awful pig to be having chicken and claret while the other three have oatmeal and apples. But I insisted on proper meals last year, much to the disgust of a gaunt old cat of a housekeeper, whom Bernard thinks the whole world of."

She stopped, laughing at her own volubility, and lay back upon the cushions, staring up at the green-leaf canopy above her head. All these questions seemed very trivial and unreal at that moment, in that pleasant place of sunshine, soft breezes, and the murmur of falling water. She thought of the long, mean, suburban streets of Hornham with humorous dismay. Thank goodness that she was only going to spend a fortnight there, and then would be away in a gay continental watering-place with Lady Linquest. But the few days were imperative. She was fond of her brother and knew how bitterly disappointed he would be if she were to withdraw from her promise to stay at St. Elwyn"s. It was a duty which must be done, and it was an unkind fate indeed that had placed her brother in surroundings which were so uncongenial to her, and endowed him with opinions so alien to her own.

James Poyntz had lighted a cigarette. The smoke curled upwards in delicate grey spirals, and he could see his sister"s friend through them, surrounded by a shifting frame which cut off the striking and clever face from its immediate surroundings, giving it a vivid and independent individuality. He could survey it more completely so. There was something in Lucy Blantyre that had begun to appeal to the young man with great and greater strength as the days went on. She was close upon beauty, and she had all the charm of a high-spirited and well-bred girl in perfect health, and knowing no trouble in life. But in the life to which he had been born, girls like her were not uncommon. Despite the fiction-mongers who fulminate against the vices of "society," and would have their readers believe that the flower of English girlhood is to be found in the middle cla.s.s alone, Poyntz knew many gracious girls who were worthy to stand by any man"s side throughout life. But in Lucy Blantyre he was beginning to discern something deeper and stronger. He thought that he saw in her a wonderful capacity for companionship, a real talent for wifehood. He could imagine that she would be more to her husband than an ordinary wife, identified with his hopes and career with all her soul"s power, one for whom Milton"s epithalamium itself would not be unworthy, with its splendid "Hail, wedded love!"

But, though such thoughts had been in and out of his mind for some time, he was hardly in love with her as yet. His temperament was honest and sincere, but cool and judicial also. He was the last man to take any definite step without a full weighing of the chances and results.

But the two had become great friends. Agatha Poyntz had her own thoughts about the matter, and they were very pleasant ones. Nothing would have pleased her more than the marriage of her brother and her friend, and she had made _tete-a-tetes_ for them in the adroit, un.o.btrusive manner that girls know.

In all his conversations with Lucy, Poyntz had found a keen, resilient brain that answered to his thoughts in precisely the way he wished. The tinge of cynicism in her corresponded to the flavour of it in him, and there was sometimes real wit and understanding in her mockery.

She "suited" him--that is how he would have put it--and he was now beginning to ask and examine himself if love were not being born, a love which might make their union a perfect and lasting thing upon his way through life. Of her sentiments towards him he knew no more than that she sincerely liked him and that they were friends.

The regular throbbing pant of a steam launch on the silver Thames outside was heard, and Lucy turned suddenly in Poyntz"s direction. She saw that he was looking at her gravely and steadily. A very faint flush came into her cheeks, almost imperceptible indeed, and then she smiled frankly at him.

He smiled also, pleased with himself and her, and with a sense that a new intimacy was suddenly established between them, an odd sense of which he was quite certain.

Agatha looked at the little watch in a leather bracelet on her wrist.

"It"s nearly lunch time!" she said; "I don"t know how you people feel, but the word has a very welcome sound to me. Jim, get up and punt us home. You"ll be able to argue with Father Saltus; I"ve asked him to lunch with us to-day. I didn"t know you were coming down."

She spoke of Lord Huddersfield"s domestic chaplain, a wise and courtly elderly man, whom they all liked, without in the least realising the part he played in Church affairs, regarding him, indeed, as a harmless student and a pleasant companion, but no more.

In fact, as the light and careless conversation of all of them showed, not one of the three young people had the remotest idea of what they were discussing. And though each one of them had a sense of humour, they were not able to see the humorous side of their airy patronage of the Catholic Church! This Mr. Saltus was known as one of the most profound metaphysicians of the day. The greatest modern brains were influenced by his writings in Christian apologetics; bishops, statesmen, great scientists knew of him as one to whom it was given to show how all thought and all philosophy were daily proving the truth of the Incarnation. His work in the life of the Church was this, and he was Lord Huddersfield"s chaplain because that position gave him leisure and freedom for his work, and kept him in touch with the very centre of things.

James Poyntz had arrived from London by an early train, and had joined the girls at once.