A Lost Cause Part 25

"What is that?" she whispered.

"The prayers for the commendation of a departing soul; she is going. G.o.d rest her and give her peace."

"Amen," said Lucy.

They came down into the hall, where they stood for a moment quite alone.

Both were greatly agitated, both felt drawn together by some great power.

"How beautiful it is!" Carr said at length. "Our Lord is with her. May we all die so."

"Poor, dear woman!"

"In a few moments she will be in the supreme and ineffable glory of Paradise. I want to see trees and flowers, to think happily of the wonderful mercy and goodness of G.o.d among the things He has made. I should like to walk in the park for an hour, to hear the birds and see the children play. Will you come with me?"

"Yes, I will come."

He took her hand and bowed low over it.

"I have a great thing to ask of you," he said.

They walked soberly together until they came to the railed-in open s.p.a.ce. To each the air seemed thick with unspoken thoughts.

The park was a poor place enough. But flowers grew there, the gra.s.s was green, it was not quite Hornham. They sat upon a bench and for a minute or two both were silent. Lucy knew a serenity at this moment such as she had hardly ever known. She was as some mariner who, at the close of a long and tempestuous voyage, comes at even-tide towards harbour over a still sea. The coastwise lights begin to glimmer, the haven is near.

In her mind and heart, at that moment, she was reconciled to and in tune with all that is beautiful in human and Divine.

She sat there, this well-known society girl, who, all her life, had lived with the great and wealthy of the world, in great content. In the "park" of Hornham, with the poor clergyman, she knew supreme content.

In a low voice that shook with the intensity of his feeling and yet was resolute and informed with strength, Carr asked Lucy to be his wife.

She gave him her hand very simply and happily. A river that had long been weary had at last wound safe to sea. That she should be the wife of this man was, she knew, one of the gladdest and most merciful ordinances of G.o.d.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ARCHBISHOP AND THE HAMLYNS

"Gussie Davies says that she's sure that Miss Pritchett hasn't added a codicil," said Mr. Sam Hamlyn, coming into the inner room at the offices of the Luther League.

Mr. Hamlyn, Senior, had been at work for some hours, but his son had only just arrived in the Strand. It was the day after Miss Pritchett's death, and Sam had remained in North London to make a few inquiries.

"What a blessing of Providence," said the secretary. "There's something to be said for a ritualistic way of dying, after all! If it 'adn't been for her messing about with the oil and that, she'd have sent for her solicitor and cut the League out of her will! The priests have been 'oist with their own petard this time."

"I wonder how much it'll be," Sam said reflectively.

"I don't antic.i.p.ate a penny less than two thousand pound," said Mr.

Hamlyn, triumphantly. "P'raps a good bit over. You see, we got 'er just at the last moment. It was me taking the consecrated wafer did it. She woke up as pleased as Punch, it gave her strength for the afternoon, and had the lawyer round at once. I never thought she'd go off so sudden, though."

"Nor did I, Pa. Well, it's a blessing that she was able to contribute her mite towards Protestant Truth before she went."

"What?" said Mr. Hamlyn sharply; "mite?--has Gussie Davies any idea of 'ow much the legacy is, then?"

"I only spoke figuratively like, Father."

"How you startled me, Sam!" said the secretary, his face resuming its wonted expression of impudent good humour.

"How's the cash list to-day?" Sam asked.

"Pretty fair," answered his father, "matter of five pound odd. It's me getting hold of that wafer, it's sent the subscriptions up wonderful. I wouldn't part----"

Sam, who was sitting with his back to the door of the room, saw his father's jaw drop suddenly. His voice died away with a murmur, his face went pale, his eyes protruded.

The younger man wheeled round his chair. Then he started up, with an exclamation of surprise and fear.

Both the Protestant champions, indeed, behaved as if they had been discovered in some fraud by an agent of the law.

Two people had come suddenly into the room, without knocking or being announced. The secretaries saw the blanched face of a clerk behind them.

During its existence, the Luther League had welcomed some fairly well-known folk within its doors.

This afternoon, however, a most unexpected honour had been paid to it--probably the reason of Hamlyn's extreme uneasiness.

A broad, square man of considerable height, with a stern, furrowed face, wearing an ap.r.o.n and gaiters, stood there, with a thunder-cloud of anger on his face.

It was His Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Lord Huddersfield was with him.

The Archbishop looked steadfastly at Hamlyn for a few seconds. His face was terrible.

In the presence of the great spiritual lord who is next to the royal family in the precedence of the realm, the famous scholar, the caustic wit, the utter force and _power_ of intellect, the two champions were dumb. Hamlyn had never known anything like it before. The fellow's bounce and impudence utterly deserted him.

The Archbishop spoke. His naturally rather harsh and strident voice was rendered tenfold more penetrating and terrifying by his wrath.

"Sir," he said, in a torrent of menacing sound, "you have profaned the Eucharist, you have mocked the holy things of G.o.d, you have made the most sacred ordinance of our Lord a mountebank show. You boast that you have purloined the Consecrated Bread from church, you have exhibited it.

Restore it to me, wretched man that you are. By the authority of G.o.d, I demand you to restore it; by my authority as head of the English Church, I order you."

Hamlyn shrank from the terrible old man clothed in the power of his great office and the majesty of his holy anger, shrank as a man shrinks from a flame.

With shaking hands he took a bunch of keys from his pocket. He dropped them upon the floor, unable to open the lock of the safe.

Young Hamlyn picked them up. He turned the key in the wards with a loud click and pulled at the ma.s.sive door until it slowly swung open.

Lord Huddersfield knelt down.

Hamlyn took from a shelf a little box that had held elastic bands.