The Three Brides

CHAPTER XXVI

A Stickit Minister

And the boy not out of him.

Julius had only too well divined the cause of his summons.  He found Herbert Bowater’s papers on the table before the Bishop, and there was no denying that they showed a declension since last year, and that though, from men without his advantages they would have been passable, yet from him they were evidences of neglect of study and thought.  Nor could the cause be ignored by any one who had kept an eye on the cricket reports in the county paper; but Herbert was such a nice, hearty, innocent fellow, and his father was so much respected, that it was with great reluctance that his rejection was decided on and his Rector had been sent for in case there should be any cause for extenuation.

Julius could not say there was.  He was greatly grieved and personally ashamed, but he could plead nothing but his own failure to influence the young man enough to keep him out of a rage for amusement, of which the quantity, not the quality, was the evil.  So poor Herbert was sent for to hear his fate, and came back looking stunned.  He hardly spoke till they were in the fly that Julius had brought from Backsworth, and then the untamed school-boy broke forth: “What are you doing with me?  I say, I can’t go back to Compton like a dog in a string.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t care.  To Jericho at once, out of the way of every one.  I tell you what, Rector, it was the most ridiculous examination I ever went up for, and I’m not the only man that says so.  There was Rivers, of St. Mary’s at Backsworth,—he says the questions were perfectly unreasonable, and what no one could be prepared for.  This fellow Danvers is a new hand, and they are always worst, setting one a lot of subjects of no possible use but to catch one out.  I should like to ask him now what living soul at Compton he expects to be the better for my views on the right reading of—”

Julius interrupted the passionate tones at the lodge by saying, “If you wish to go to Jericho, you must give directions.”

Herbert gave something between a laugh and a growl.

“I left the pony at Backsworth.  Will you come with me to Strawyers and wait in the park till I send Jenny out to you?”

“No, I say.  I know my father will be in a greater rage than he ever was in his life, and I won’t go sneaking about.  I’d like to go to London, to some hole where no one would ever hear of me.  If I were not in Orders already, I’d be off to the ivory-hunters in Africa, and never be heard of more.  If this was to be, I wish they had found it out a year ago, and then I should not have been bound,” continued the poor young fellow, in his simplicity, thinking his thoughts aloud, and his sweet candid nature beginning to recover its balance.  “Now I’m the most wretched fellow going.  I know what I’ve undertaken.  It’s not your fault, nor poor Joanna’s.  You’ve all been at me, but it only made me worse.  What could my father be thinking of to make a parson of a fellow like me?  Well, I must face it out sooner or later at Compton, and I had better do it there than at home, even if my father would have me.”

“I must go to Strawyers.  The Bishop gave me a letter for your father, and I think it will break it a little for your mother.  Would you wait for me at Rood House?  You could go into the chapel, and if they wish for you, I could return and fetch you.”

Herbert caught at this as a relief, and orders were given accordingly.  It seemed a cruel moment to tell him of young Hornblower’s evasion and robbery, but the police wanted the description of the articles; and, in fact, nothing would have so brought home to him that, though Compton might not appreciate minutiæ of Greek criticism, yet the habit of diligence, of which it was the test, might make a difference there.  The lingering self-justification was swept away by the sense of the harm his pleasure-seeking had done to the lad whom he had once influenced.  He had been fond and proud of his trophies, but he scarcely wasted a thought on them, so absorbed was he in the thought of how he had lorded it over the youth with that late rebuke.  The blame he had refused to take on himself then came full upon him now, and he reproached himself too much to be angered at the treachery and ingratitude.

“I can’t prosecute,” he said, when Julius asked for the description he had promised to procure.

“We must judge whether it would be true kindness to refrain, if he is captured,” said Julius.  “I had not time to see his mother, but Rosamond will do what she can for her, poor woman.”

“How shall I meet her?” sighed Herbert; and so they arrived at the tranquil little hospital and passed under the deep archway into the gray quadrangle, bright with autumn flowers, and so to the chapel.  As they advanced up the solemn and beautiful aisle Herbert dropped on his knees with his hands over his face.  Julius knelt beside him for a moment, laid his hand on the curly brown hair, whispered a prayer and a blessing, and then left him; but ere reaching the door, the low choked sobs of anguish of heart could be heard.

A few steps more, and in the broad walk along the quadrangle, Julius met the frail bowed figure with his saintly face, that seemed to have come out of some sacred bygone age.

Julius told his errand.  “If you could have seen him just now,” he said, “you would see how much more hope there is of him than of many who never technically fail, but have not the same tender, generous heart, and free humility.”

“Yes, many a priest might now be thankful if some check had come on him.”

“And if he had met it with this freedom from bitterness.  And it would be a great kindness to keep him here a day or two.  Apart from being with you, the showing himself at Compton or at Strawyers on Sunday would be hard on him.”

“I will ask him.  I will gladly have him here as long as the quiet may be good for him.  My nephew, William, will be here till the end of the Long Vacation, but I must go to St. Faith’s on Monday to conduct the retreat.”

“I leave him in your hands then, and will call as I return to see what is settled, and report what his family wish.  I grieve more for them than for himself.”

Julius first encountered Jenny Bowater in the village making farewell calls.  He stopped the carriage and joined her, and not a word was needed to tell her that something was amiss.  “You have come to tell us something,” she said.  “Herbert has failed?”

“Prayers are sometimes answered as we do not expect,” said Julius.  “I believe it will be the making of him.”

“Oh, but how will mamma ever bear it!” cried Jenny.

“We must remind her that it is only a matter of delay, not rejection,” said Julius.

“Have you seen him?”

“Yes, the Bishop sent for me, and asked me to see your father.  It was partly from slips in critical knowledge, which betrayed the want of study, and the general want of thought and progress, and all the rest of it, in his papers—”

“Just the fact—”

“Yes, which a man of less reality and more superficial quickness might have concealed by mere intellectual answers, though it might have been much worse for him in the end.”

“Where is he?”

“At Rood House.  Unless your mother wishes for him here, he had better stay there till he can bear to come among us again.”

“Much better, indeed,” said Jenny.  “I only hope papa and mamma will see how good it is for him to be there.  O, Julius, if he is taking it in such a spirit, I can think it all right for him; but for them—for them, it is very hard to bear.  Nothing ever went wrong with the boys before, and Herbert—mamma’s darling!”  Her eyes were full of tears.

“I wish he had had a better Rector,” said Julius.

“No, don’t say that.  It was not your fault.”

“I cannot tell.  An older man, or more truly a holier man, might have had more influence.  We were all in a sort of laissez-aller state this autumn, and now comes the reckoning.”

“There’s papa,” said Jenny.  “Had you rather go to him alone, or can I do any good?”

“I think I will go alone,” said Julius.

Mr. Bowater, who had grown up in a day when examinations were much less earnest matters, never guessed what brought Julius over, but simply thought he had come to wish them good-bye; then believed in any accident rather than in failure, and finally was exceedingly angry, and stormed hotly, first at examinations and modern Bishops, then at cricket and fine ladies, then at Julius, for not having looked after the lad better, and when this was meekly accepted, indignation took a juster direction, and Herbert’s folly and idleness were severely lashed more severely than Julius thought they quite deserved, but a word of pleading only made it worse.  Have him home to take leave?  No, indeed, Mr. Bowater hoped he knew his duty better as father of a family, when a young man had publicly disgraced himself.  “I’ll tell you what, Julius Charnock, if you wish him to forget all the little impression it may have made, and be ready to run after any amount of folly, you’d make me have him home to be petted and cried over by his mother and sisters.  He has been their spoilt pet too long, and I won’t have him spoilt now.  I’ll not see him till he has worked enough to show whether there’s any real stuff in him.”

Mr. Bowater never even asked where his son was, probably taking it for granted that he was gone back to Compton; nor did Julius see Jenny again, as she was trying to comfort her mother under the dreadful certainty that poor dear Herbert was most cruelly treated, and that the examining chaplain came of a bad stock, and always had had a dislike to the family.  It was to be hoped that Mr. Bowater would keep to his wise resolution, and not send for Herbert, for nothing could be worse for him than the sympathy he would have met with from her.

What with looking in to report at Rood House and finding Herbert most grateful for leave to remain there for a few days, Julius did not reach home till long after dark.  Pleasantly did the light greet him from the open doorway where his Rosamond was standing.  She sprang at once into his arms, as if he had been absent a month, and cried, “Here you are, safe at last!”  Then, as she pulled off his wraps, “How tired you must be!  Have you had any food?  No—it’s all ready;” and he could see ‘high tea’ spread, and lighted by the first fire of the season.  “Come and begin!”

“What, without washing my hands?”

“You are to do that in the study; it is all ready.”  He did not exactly see why he should be too tired to mount to his dressing-room; but he obeyed, not ungratefully, and his chair was ready, his plate heaped with partridge and his tumbler filled with ale almost before his eyes had recovered the glare of light.  The eagerness and flutter of Rosamond’s manner began to make him anxious, and he began for the third time the inquiries she had always cut short—“Baby all right?  Terry better?”

“Baby—oh yes, a greater duck than ever.  I put her to bed myself, and she was quite delicious.  Eat, I say; go on.”

“Not unless you eat that other wing.”

“I’ll help myself then.  You go on.  I don’t see Herbert, so I suppose it is all right.  Where’s your canonry?”

“Alas! poor Herbert is plucked.  I had to go round by Strawyers to tell them.”

“Plucked!  I never heard of such a thing.  I think it is a great shame such a nice honest fellow should be so ill-used, and when all his pretty things have been stolen too!  Do you know, they’ve taken up young Hornblower; but his friends have made off with the things, and they say they are in the melting-pot by this time, and there’s no chance of recovering them.”

“I don’t think he cares much now, poor fellow.  Did you see Mrs. Hornblower?”

“No; by the time I could get my hat on she had heard it, poor thing, and was gone to Backsworth; for he’s there, in the county gaol; was taken at the station, I believe; I don’t half understand it.”

Her manner was indeed strange and flighty; and though she recurred to questions about the Ordination and the Bowaters, Julius perceived that she was forcing her attention to the answers as if trying to stave off his inquiries, and he came to closer quarters.  “How is Terry?  Has Dr. Worth been here?”

“Yes; but not till very late.  He says he never was so busy.”

“Rosamond, what is it?  What did he say of Terry?”

“He said”—she drew a long breath—“he says it is the Water Lane fever.”

“Terry, my dear—”

She held him down with a hand on his shoulder—

“Be quiet.  Finish your dinner.  Dr. Worth said the great point was to keep strong, and not be overdone, nor to go into infected air tired and hungry.  I would not have let you come in if there had been any help for it; and now I’ll not have you go near him till you’ve made a good meal.”

“You must do the same then.  There, eat that slice, or I won’t;” and as she allowed him to place it on her plate, “What does he call it—not typhus?”

“He can’t tell yet; he does not know whether it is infectious or only epidemic; and when he heard how the dear boy had been for days past at the Exhibition at the town-hall, and drinking lots of iced water on Saturday, he seemed to think it quite accounted for.  He says there is no reason that in this good air he should not do very well; but, oh, Julius, I wish I had kept him from that horrid place.  They left him in my charge!”

“There is no reason to distress yourself about that, my Rose.  He was innocently occupied, and there was no cause to expect harm.  There’s all good hope for him, with God’s blessing.  Who is with him now?”

“Cook is there now.  Both the maids were so kind and hearty, declaring they would do anything, and were not afraid; and I can manage very well with their help.  You know papa had a low fever at Montreal, and mamma and I nursed him through it, so I know pretty well what to do.”

“But how about the baby?”

“Emma came back before the doctor came, crying piteously, poor child, as if she had had a sufficient lesson; so I said she might stay her month on her good behaviour, and now we could not send her out of the house.  I have brought the nursery down to the spare room, and in the large attic, with plenty of disinfecting fluid, we can, as the doctor said, isolate the fever.  He is quiet and sleepy, and I do not think it will be hard to manage, if you will only be good and conformable.”

“I don’t promise, if that means that you are to do everything and I nothing.  When did Worth see him?”

“Not till five o’clock: and he would not have come at all, if Anne had not sent in some one from the Hall when she saw how anxious I was.  He would not have come otherwise; he is so horribly busy, with lots of cases at Wil’sboro’.  Now, if you have done, you may come and see my boy.”

Julius did see a flushed sleeping face that did not waken at his entrance; and as his wife settled herself for her watch, he felt as if he could not leave her after such a day as she had had, but an indefinable apprehension made him ask whether she would spare him to run up to the Hall to see his mother and ask after Raymond, whose looks had haunted him all day.  She saw he would not rest otherwise, and did not show how unwilling was her consent, for though she knew little, her mind misgave her.