A Lost Cause Part 21

"Now, then," Poyntz said, "we'll go and have tea on the terrace at the Sardinia. There will be a band, a really good band, and the embankment will look beautiful just now. Come along, young ladies; we'll walk, shall we? It won't take us five minutes." They left the theatre.

"Ah!" Lucy said with a sudden gasp of relief, "how good the air is after that dark place and the stage. My eyes feel as if they had been actually burnt."

The long lights of the summer afternoon irradiated everything. There are moments in summer when the busiest London street seems like a street in fairy-land. It was so now as they walked to the great riverside hotel; a tender haze of gold lay over all the vast buildings, the sky began to be as if it were hung with banners.

They pa.s.sed from the roar of the street to the great courtyard, with its gay awnings of white and red, its palms and tree-ferns in green tubs, its little tables like the tables of a continental cafe. Little groups of people of all nationalities sat about there. The party heard the tw.a.n.ging accent of the United States, the guttural German, the purring, spitting Russian.

They entered the hotel, walked down a corridor, descended some steps, and came out upon the terrace.

Lucy had a finely developed social instinct. She knew what was going on instinctively, and it was plain to her at once that the moment had come.

Agatha Poyntz and her cousin had disappeared as she sat down at a small table with James, hidden by shrubs from the rest of the terrace.

Below and beyond were gardens in which children were playing, the wide embankment, and the silver Thames itself, all glowing under the lengthening sun rays.

What did she feel at that moment? She found that she was calm, her pulses were quiet, her breathing untroubled and slow.

He leaned forward and took her hands strongly in both of his. At first, his words came haltingly to him, but then, gathering courage, he made her a pa.s.sionate declaration.

Her heart cried out vaguely to some outside power for guidance; her inarticulate appeal was hardly a prayer, it was the supreme expression of perplexity and doubt.

"For months, all my work and life have been coloured by thoughts of you, have had reference to you. I can conceive, since I have been writing to you, and you to me, I have had hopes and dreams that have become part of my life! If you could accept this, this devotion, this strong feeling of love which has grown up in me, I feel that our companions.h.i.+p would be a beautiful thing. Lucy, I am not eloquent in love as some men are said to be, I can only tell you that I love and admire you dearly and have no greater hope than to share everything with you, my lady, my love!"

The strong, self-contained young man was deeply moved. He continued, in a monologue of singular delicacy and high feeling, to pour out the repressed feelings of the past year, to offer her a life that was more stainless--she knew it well--than that of most young men.

She was deeply touched, interested, and rather overawed. But there was no thrill of pa.s.sion in her that could answer to the notes of it that were coming into his voice and shaking it from its firmness, sending tremulous waves quivering through it.

Her hand shook in his hold, but it was pa.s.sive. Emotion rushed over her, but it was a cool emotion, so to say; she was touched, but her blood did not race and leap at his touch, she felt no wish to rest in his arms, to find her home there!

At last she was able to speak. There was a pause in his pleading, his eyes remained fixed upon her face in anxious scrutiny.

She withdrew her hand gently.

"You have touched me very deeply," she said. "But I can't, oh, I _can't_ answer you now. This is such a great thing. There is so much to think over, so much self-examination. It might all look quite different to one to-morrow! Let me wait, give me time. I will write to you."

His ear found the lack of what he sought in her voice. Even to herself her tones sounded cold and conventional after his impa.s.sioned pleading.

But she found herself mistress neither of reason nor of feeling as she spoke. She was bewildered, though not taken by surprise.

He seemed to understand something of her state of mind. If his disappointment was keen, he showed nothing of it, realising with the pertinacity of a strong, vigorous nature that nothing really worth having was won easily, thankful, perhaps, that he had won as much as he had--her consideration.

"You know how great a thing this is to me," he said. "You would never be unkind or hard to me and it would be an unkindness to prolong my suspense. When will you give me my answer?"

"Oh, soon, soon! But I must have time. I will write to you soon, in a fortnight I will write."

"That is so long a time!"

"It will pa.s.s very swiftly."

"Then I accept your decree. But I shall write to you, even if you don't answer me until I get the letter, oh, happy day! on which you tell me what my whole heart longs to hear. You will read my letters during the time of waiting? Promise me that, Lucy."

"Yes, yes, I promise," she said hastily, seeing that Agatha and Adelaide Lelant were coming towards them.

Her brain was whirling; James himself was agitated and unstrung by the vehemence of feeling, the nerve storm, that he had just pa.s.sed through.

And in the minds of Miss Poyntz and Lady Lelant the liveliest curiosity and interest reigned, as it naturally would reign, under such circ.u.mstances, in the minds of any normal young women, gentle or simple, with blue blood or crimson.

But the four people had learned the lessons their life-long environment had taught. Their faces were masks, their talk was trivial.

When at length Lucy rose to go, declining to drive home with Lady Lelant, they all came into the big, quiet courtyard of the hotel, "to help her choose her hansom." Every unit of the little party felt her departure would be a relief, she felt it herself. The two girls did not know what had happened and were eager to know. James wanted to be alone, to go through the interview step by step in his brain, reconstructing it for the better surveyal of his chances, and to plan an epistolary campaign, or bombardment rather.

Lucy felt the desire, a great and pressing desire, for home and rest.

She arrived at the vicarage an hour or so after. As the cab had turned into the familiar, sordid streets she had felt glad! She smiled at her own sensations, but they were very real. This place, this "unutterable North London slum," as she used to call it, was more like home than Park Lane had ever been.

How tired she felt as she went up-stairs to her room! Her face was pale, dark circles had come out under her eyes, she bore every evidence of having pa.s.sed through some mental strain.

After a bath she felt better, more herself, after these experiences of the afternoon. And to change every article of clothing was in itself a restorative and a tonic. It was an old trick of hers, and she had always found it answer. When she went down-stairs again she was still pale, but had that freshness and dainty completeness that have such enormous charm, that she always had, and that her poorer sisters are so unable to achieve in the _va et vient_ of a hard, work-a-day life.

She wanted to see Bernard, she hungered for her brother. With a pang of self-reproach, she remembered, as she came down-stairs, that this had been the afternoon of the public debate with Hamlyn's people. It was an important event in the parish. And from her start from the clergy-house to her arrival back at its doors, she had quite forgotten the whole thing! In the absorption with her own affairs, it had pa.s.sed completely from her brain and she was sorry. Of late, she had identified herself so greatly with the affairs and hopes of the little St. Elwyn's community, that she felt selfish and ashamed as she knocked at the door of the study. She waited for a moment to hear the invitation to enter. It was never safe to go into Bernard's room without that precaution. Some tragic history might be in the very article of relation, some weary soul might be there seeking ghostly guidance in its abyss of sorrow and despair.

Some one bade her enter. She did so. The room was dark, filled with the evening shadows. For a moment or two, she could distinguish nothing.

"Are you here, Ber?" she said.

"The vicar is up-stairs, Miss Blantyre," came the answer in King's voice, as he rose from his seat. "I'm here with Stephens."

"Well, let me sit down for a little while and talk," Lucy said. "May I?--please go on smoking. I can stand Bob's pipe, so I can certainly stand _yours_. I want to hear all about the meeting in the Victoria Hall."

They found a chair for her; she refused to have lights brought, saying that she preferred this soft gloom that enveloped them.

Her question about the meeting was not immediately responded to. The men seemed collecting their thoughts. By this time, she was really upon something that resembled a true sisterly footing with these two. Both were well-bred men, incapable of any slackening of the cords of courtesy, but there was a mutual understanding between them and her which allowed deliberation in talk, which, in fact, dispensed with the necessity of conventional chatter.

King spoke at length. "Go on, young 'un," he said to Stephens, waving his pipe at him, as Lucy could see by the red glow in the bowl. "You tell her."

"No, _you_ tell her, old chap."

Lucy wanted to laugh at the odd pair with whom she was in such sympathy.

They were just like two boys.

King sighed. Conversation of any sort, unless it was actually in the course of his priestly ministrations, was always painful to him. He was a man who _thought_. But he could be eloquent and incisive enough when he chose.

"Well, look here, Miss Blantyre," he said, "to begin with, the whole thing has been an unqualified success for the other side! That is to say that the people in the hall--and it was crammed--have gone away in the firm conviction and belief that the Luther Lecturers have got the best of the priests, that, in short, the Protestants have won all along the line."

"Good gracious! Mr. King, do you really mean to say that one of these vulgar, half-educated men was able to beat Bernard in argument, to enlist the sympathies of the audience against _Bernard_?"

"That's exactly what has happened," King answered. "The vicar is up-stairs now, utterly dejected and worn out, trying to get some sleep."

"But I don't understand how it could be so."

"It is difficult to understand for a moment, Miss Blantyre. But it's easily explained. One good thing has happened: Every priest in the kingdom will have his warning now----"

"Of what?"