THE VISION SPLENDID

BY

D. K. BROSTER AND G. W. TAYLOR

AUTHOR OF "CHANTEMERLE"

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1913

BOOK I: CRAG AND TORRENT

BOOK II: GARISH DAY

BOOK III: LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT

EPILOGUE: THE MORN

THE VISION SPLENDID

BOOK I

CRAG AND TORRENT

CHAPTER I

(1)

The broad faces of the sunflowers surveyed, with their eternal, undiscriminating smile, the nape of Horatia's white neck, and were no wiser. Her back was towards them, and they could not see what book was in her lap. But the hollyhocks further down the border were probably aware that she was not really reading anything. They swayed a little, disturbing a blundering bee; and Horatia, turning her head towards the flower-bed, glanced for a moment at those tall warriors en fête.

A gust of perfume suddenly shook out at her from the border. Certainly the summer seemed hardly within sight of its end, though on this Monday, the thirtieth of August, 1830, much of the corn was cut already.

Horatia's own summer was at the full, and it was now only old-fashioned people who thought the single woman of twenty-four in peril of the unblest autumn of perpetual maidenhood. For the sake of the red-gold bunches of curls at her temples, the dazzling skin that goes with such hair, the straight, wilful little nose, the mouth holding in its curves some petulance and much sweetness, an admirer might well have been sitting beside her in this agreeable old garden. Yet Horatia Grenville was not accounted a beauty. She was neither statuesque nor drooping. But part of the blame lay undeniably with the book on her lap, the Republic of Plato in the original. Horatia could and did read Greek without too much difficulty; could not, or would not, occupy her fingers for ever with embroidery or knitting, and was believed to despise amateur performance upon the harp. In short she was "blue," and therefore—at least in her own county—was not beautiful; she was learned, and could not, in Berkshire, be lovely.

Yes, she was twenty-four, and unmarried; a country parson's daughter, but well-born and well-dowered; suspected (unjustly) of knowing Hebrew as well as Greek, but always admirably dressed. She had never been in love, and had never, to her knowledge, even desired to taste that condition. Nor had she discovered in herself any aptitude for flirting. She wished sometimes that she did not frighten young men by her real or supposed intellectual attainments, but not for any plaudits of the drawing-room would she have bartered all that was typified to her by the Greek text on her knee. And she had no craving for domestic bliss.

Indeed, she could have had that bliss had she desired it. At least two decorous and (to her) entirely negligible requests had been made for her hand. They had come from quite suitable personages, whom she had met during her periodical sojourns with her various relations. Moreover, here, at home, five years ago, the man who had known her from a child, and was indeed a distant connection, had asked her to marry him.

That episode had startled and distressed Horatia. Tristram Hungerford, six years her senior, had always been a quasi-fraternal part of her life. The boy who came over daily on his pony from Compton Parva, what time a pony was still to her as an elephant, who was construing Livy with her father while her own fingers created the tremulous pothook, who climbed the Rectory apple-trees while her infant legs bore her but precariously on terra firma—whom she welcomed home from Eton with unrestrained joy and offerings of toffee, from Oxford as frankly but less exuberantly—that this young man should suddenly propose to make her his wife was absurd, and she did not like it at all. At nineteen, Horatia Grenville had been singularly immature for her times. She had no wish but that her playmate and friend should retain that rôle always; why should he want to change it? She signified as much, and to her great relief Tristram reverted with extraordinary completeness to his former part, and had filled it for five more years.

Miss Grenville had, however, taken no vow against matrimony. It was merely that she could not bear the idea of so sudden a finality. Even now she refused to picture herself sitting down, as she put it, to count over forks and spoons. Indeed, having returned but two days ago from a visit to a newly married friend, whose chief occupations, so it seemed to her guest, were quoting "what Henry says," and trying to out-do other young married women of her acquaintance in dress, she was still full of an almost passionate wonder that people could shut down their lives to that kind of thing. Yet, deep in her heart, perhaps she realised—perhaps she did not—that in six or seven years' time, when the fatuities of the recently-wed had dropped away from Henry and Emilia, when there were children round them, they would have full lives, whereas she...

But Horatia greatly desired her life to be full. She wanted to express herself somehow. Sitting there by the sunflowers and the phloxes, she thought of the many women of the day who had succeeded in doing this. She thought of Mrs. Somerville, of Miss Mitford, of Hannah More and of Mrs. Fry; of Joanna Baillie and Miss Edgeworth; of Miss Jane Porter, whose Scottish Chiefs had delighted her childhood; and of Lady Morgan. Most of these celebrated women were unmarried. And she considered also the women of the past: Joan of Arc, St. Catherine of Siena, Madame de Rambouillet, Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu.

It was not that Horatia Grenville wished definitely either to lead a nation to battle or to write plays, to be an astronomical genius, or to sway the councils of princes. She wanted to do something, but knew not what that something was. This afternoon she was more conscious than usual both of her desire and of its vagueness. It occurred to her that she was rather like the sleepy wasp who, having painfully climbed up the skirt of her gown and attained the open page of the Republic, was now starting discontentedly to crawl down again.

"Really, I am getting morbid!" thought Miss Grenville; "and here is Papa!"

The Honourable and Reverend Stephen Grenville, Rector of Compton Regis, was seen indeed to issue at that moment from the long window of the drawing-room and to approach her over the grass, comfortable, benignant, and of aristocratic appearance. He held a half-written letter in one hand, and a quill pen in the other; his spectacles were pushed down his nose. His daughter jumped up.

"Do you want me, Papa?"

"My dear, only for this," replied Mr. Grenville, holding up the letter. "I am writing to your Aunt Julia, and you must really make up your mind whether you will pay her a visit this autumn. In her last letter she mentions the matter again."

Horatia looked up at her parent. "Papa," she answered gravely, "I don't like staying with people who disapprove of me." A sudden little smile came about the corners of her mouth. "I shouldn't stay with you if you didn't appreciate me, you know!"

The twinkle which was never far from the Rector's eyes came into them at this pronouncement. "Of that I have no doubt, my child," he said. "But it is a mercy that your aunt cannot hear your filial sentiments."

Horatia caught at his arm. "Sit down, dearest Papa," she said half imperiously, half coaxingly, "and let us discuss the visit to Aunt Julia."

The Honourable and Reverend Stephen, still holding paper and pen, submitted to be placed in her chair. Horatia, with the grace that was peculiarly hers, sat down upon the grass at his feet, her full skirt spreading fanwise around her.

"First," she began, taking hold of the letter, "we will see what you have said about me."

The Rector yielded it. "There is nothing at all about you as yet, my dear," he remarked mildly. "Your Aunt is thinking of putting some money into this new railroad between Manchester and Liverpool, and asks for my advice."

Horatia made a face and returned the letter. "Papa, you always have the best of me! Now put down that pen—especially if there is still ink upon it, as I suspect—and I will show you many reasons why I should not pay Aunt Julia a visit. In the first place, she disapproves of me because I do not make flannel petticoats for the poor; in the second place, she wishes to see me married; in the third place she calls Plato a heathen and Shakespeare 'waste of time.' In the fourth place, I am but just returned from visits elsewhere; ... In the hundredth place—I prefer to stop with you. One hundred reasons against Aunt Julia." And she laid her fresh cheek upon the hand that held the letter.

The Rector pinched the cheek. "'La Reine le veult,' as usual, I suppose. Shall you always prefer to stop with me, Horatia?"

"It is my duty, Papa," said Miss Grenville, without lifting her head. The solemnity of her voice was too much for her father, and he broke, as she had intended he should, into a chuckle.

"That word on your lips!" he exclaimed. Then he put his hand gently on the smooth and radiant head. "I could bear to see you go from me," he said in a suddenly stirred voice, "if I knew you were going to a happy home of your own."

The head moved restlessly. "You know how much I dislike—how much I wish you would not talk of that, Papa!" said the girl almost shortly, and she raised herself. "Why must every woman get married? One would think that you wanted to be rid of me." Her cheeks were a little flushed. "But even if you did, I would not marry!" she added. "I would—never mind what I would do." She flung her arms round her father's neck and kissed him. "Do not speak of it again! You do not deserve to have such a good daughter. Now go and tell Aunt Julia that I cannot stay with her—say that I am translating Rousseau, that will make her furious—and tell her that a Christian gentlewoman should not know anything about investments!"

(2)

Having thus dismissed her parent, Miss Horatia Grenville did not return to her book or her reverie, but crossed the lawn, showing herself as tall and generously made in her dress of thin mulberry-coloured silk with the great puffed sleeves, trim waist and full short skirt of the prevailing fashion. Catching up a flat basket and a pair of scissors, she then walked up and down by the flower border, snipping off dead blossoms and singing to herself snatches of Deh vieni. So occupied, she heard the click of the garden gate. "Probably Tristram," she thought to herself. "It is quite time that he came."

And indeed a masculine figure was stooping to fasten the little gate at the end of the short privet-walled path, by which it had just entered. As it raised itself, and turned, it was revealed as that of a young man of about thirty, in riding costume, darker in hair and eyes than the majority of Englishmen, but none the less unmistakably English. Pleasant to look at, and more than common tall, he would not however have drawn the attention of a casual observer; a closer critic might have become aware of something in the eyes not quite consonant with his vigorous and every-day appearance.

Horatia put down her basket and went towards him, holding out both hands.

"I am so glad that you have come," she said frankly. "How are you, Tristram?"

"As usual, very glad to see you," responded the young man, smiling. "I wondered if you would be in. Where is the Rector?"

"Papa is writing to Aunt Julia, about investments and about the difficulty of getting me to leave home."

"Before Martha has unpacked your trunks from this last visit, I suppose you mean?"

"Don't tease me, Tristram, when you have not seen me for so long! Come and sit down on the lawn and talk sensibly. Papa will be out soon, I expect. You will stay to dinner, of course?"

"I shall be very pleased," responded the guest, and he looked as if he were pleased too—as indeed he was—with his greeting. He walked beside her to her chair on the grass, picked up Plato, lying there face downwards, murmured "What shocking treatment for a philosopher!" fetched himself another chair from a little distance, and, sitting down by Miss Grenville, said "How did you enjoy your round of visits?"

"Not at all," replied Horatia petulantly, half laughing. "I have not said this to Papa, because it might make him conceited; but I will tell you that I am delighted to be home again." And she added, still more confidentially, "Tristram, the newly-married bore me extremely! I shall not visit Emilia Strangeways again for seven years at least."

Tristram Hungerford laughed. "All the better for us! It is dull enough without you."

"O, what stories!" exclaimed Horatia. "You have not been dull. You have had Mr. Dormer with you!" There was mockery in her eyes. "I know all about it. Tell me the truth now! How long did he stay?"

"A week, Horatia, only a week, and since then it has been duller than ever."

"That I can believe," retorted Miss Grenville; "but it has been dull because Mr. Dormer has left you, and not because I have been away. You have no one now to exult with over the increasing circulation of the Christian Year, and no one to melt you with the sufferings of the Non-Jurors—which I think they brought on themselves. However, I must not jest about Mr. Dormer, I know; he is sacrosanct. Tell me any news. Tell me something interesting."

The life, the vitality that responded to hers, dropped suddenly out of Tristram Hungerford's face.

"I have got some news," he said hesitatingly, "but I am not sure that you will find it interesting. I have made up my mind at last, quite definitely, to take Orders—that is, if the Bishop will have me."

And at that Miss Grenville's face changed too, and after a moment's pause she said, very seriously, "Why?"

"Because," returned the young man almost guiltily, "I think that I may be able to serve the Church better that way, and the time is coming when we shall have to fight for her."

Horatia did not try to conceal her feelings. "I thought you were getting views of that sort," she said gloomily; "and I was afraid that it would end in your taking Orders—in fact, I said so to Papa the other day. Of course, in my opinion you are made for it; but I wish that you were not." She sighed, and added inconsequently, "It must make a difference."

Tristram flushed and leant forward. "But, Horatia, what do you mean? I shall never be any different—I never could be so to you!" The feeling in his voice was almost ardour—and it was not the ardour of a friend. Whether Miss Grenville were fully aware of this or no she pursued her own thoughts aloud.

"I wonder; I am not so sure. By taking Orders you will be throwing in your lot for ever with all those Oriel people. That is what it means."

"I cannot think," said the culprit, "why you dislike them so."

"It isn't that I dislike them exactly," said Horatia, considering; "but that there is something about them that I don't like. Even Mr. Keble, although he lives in the country and writes poetry, can't be as harmless as he seems, or they would not all pay him such deference. I have nothing against Mr. Newman and Mr. Froude; in fact I liked Mr. Froude when you brought him out here, which is more than I could ever say about Mr. Dormer. He can make himself very charming, but he's steel underneath, I'm quite certain.... Yes, they are all different, and yet they are alike. They are only clergymen, as Papa is, but at his age they won't be in the least like him. For one thing they won't be half as nice. There is something about them that makes me shiver. They are too absolute. I have the feeling that they will change you, that they are changing you. O, I can't explain it; but I know what I mean—and, Tristram, I could not bear that you should be different from what you are?"

She looked at him directly, earnestly, like a child pleading that something it likes may not be taken away from it, and never noticed her companion turn suddenly rather white.

"Horatia, if you——" he began, and suddenly the Rector's voice cut through his own—"What are you two discussing so warmly that you haven't heard the dinner-bell?" it said, coming before its owner as he emerged through the drawing-room window. "It's long after half-past five. Tristram, my dear fellow, I am very glad to see you. You are staying, of course?"

And after a barely perceptible pause the young man got up and said that he was.

CHAPTER II

(1)

"Papa has really no right to be hungry," observed Miss Grenville as they sat down to table. "Saturday, you know, was our annual village feast, and he acknowledges that he is obliged to eat a great deal on that occasion."

"How did it go off, Rector?" asked the guest.

"Oh, quite successfully," replied Mr. Grenville, carving a leg of mutton. "There was a good deal to eat, I must admit. I left, as I always do, before the dancing; but not before I heard a swain (I think it was one of Farmer Wilson's men) assuring his inamorata that he would kiss her if she wished it."

"The lady seems to have been forward," observed Horatia. "Papa, you are not forgetting the plate of meat for old Mrs. Jenkins? You know you promised to send in her dinner while she is ill."

"No, my dear," returned her father, looking round. "I have not forgotten the meat, but Sarah appears to have forgotten the plates."

The handmaid fled and remedied her error. It was no unusual thing for the Rectory crockery to go voyaging in the cause of charity.

Horatia seemed in high though rather fitful spirits. She amused her hearers with an account of her visits. At one house, she affirmed, she was entertained to death; at the other her host and hostess only seemed to want to be alone together, though they had pestered her to go there.

"You will find us, as usual, very quiet," said Tristram, looking across the table at her animated face. "I don't think anything has happened since you went away.—Stay, though, something has taken place in Oxfordshire. Rector, I suppose you have heard about the affair at Otmoor on Saturday night?"

Mr. Grenville had not.

"Well, Otmoor, as you know, was drained under Act of Parliament in 1815, and this proceeding has been a cause of discontent ever since, because the embankments were thought to prevent the water draining away from the land above. You remember the disturbances last June, and how the farmers cut the banks, and were indicted for felony, but acquitted on the ground that the embankments did do damage and were a nuisance?"

"Yes, I recall the circumstance," said the Rector.

"Well, the Otmoor people appear to have jumped to the conclusion that the Act of Parliament was void, the enclosure of Otmoor consequently illegal, and that they had a right to pull down the embankment. On Saturday night, therefore, they started to do so, and I believe they proceeded with the work last night also. They are said to have been riotous. I wonder you had not heard of it."

"Dear, dear," commented the Rector, "that is excessively serious! I am afraid that there is indeed a spirit of unrest abroad at present. There have been one or two rick fires lately that looked to me very suspicious, very. And then there was that barn near Henley about a fortnight ago."

"Do you think, then, that we shall have a revolution in England like the Days of July?" asked Horatia a little mischievously.

"No, of course not, my dear! The Revolution in France the other day was above all things dynastic—at least, so I read it—and no one wants to turn out our new King, whom God preserve. But there is social unrest..."

"Good Heavens!" suddenly exclaimed Tristram Hungerford. "I had quite forgotten, and your mentioning the Days of July has reminded me. I've got a Frenchman, a Legitimist, coming to stay with me the day after to-morrow. You remember how, when I was in Paris a few years ago, I made the acquaintance of the sons of the Duc de la Roche-Guyon, the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber? I stayed with the eldest at their place in the country for a few days, and I asked them to come and see me if ever they were in England."