A Lost Cause

During the year of travel, she was also in regular communication with James Poyntz. Insensibly his letters to her had become the letters of a lover. He told her all his thoughts and the details of his work and hopes, and, mingling with what were in fact a series of brilliant personal confessions, there began to be a high note of personal devotion to her. One does not need the simple alphabet of lover's words to write love letters. Poyntz used no terms of endearment, and as yet had made her no definite proposal of marriage. But the girl knew, quite certainly, exactly how he felt towards her. There was no disguise in his letters, and the time was drawing near when he would definitely ask her to share his life.

She had not yet definitely summed up her attitude towards him. She was at the crossing of the roads; new influences, new ideas were pouring into her brain from every side. It was necessary to readjust herself to life completely before she could settle upon any course.

She knew that to be Lady Huddersfield was to take a high seat in Vanity Fair. The Huddersfields belonged to the old order of society, to that inner circle of the great who never open their door indiscriminately to the Jew and the mining millionaire. People laughed at them and called them pompous and dull, but there was a high serenity among them nevertheless. She might have married half a dozen times had she so chosen. Her income was large enough to make her a small heiress, at any rate to be an appreciable factor in the case, besides which her birth was unexceptionable. It was known that when Lady Linquest fluttered away to another world, the old lady's money would come to her niece. But position merely, rank rather, did not attract a girl who already went wherever she chose. And among the men in society who had offered her marriage, or were prepared to do so, she found no one capable of satisfying her brain. Poyntz did this. She found power in him, strength, purpose. She knew that, in whatever station of life he was, the man was finely tempered, high in that aristocracy of intellect which some people say is the only aristocracy there is.

She was conscious of all this, but, especially since she had been settled in the vicarage as a home, she was becoming conscious of many other influences at work upon her. Religion, the personal giving of one's self to God, was tinging all her life and actions now. Hour by hour, she found herself drawing nearer to the Cross. Her progress had become a matter of practical experience. It was impossible to live with the people she was among, to watch every detail of their lives, to find exactly where the motive power and the sustaining power came from, without casting in her lot with them in greater or less degree. Every day she found some hold upon the outside world was loosened, something she had imagined had great value in her eyes suddenly seemed quite worthless! Looked at in the light that was beginning to shine upon her, she was frequently surprised beyond measure to find how worthless most things were! Her brain was keen, cool, and logical. Hitherto she had refused to draw an inference – no proof, by the way, of any want of logical skill; – now she was drawing it.

She was great and intimate friends with the two assistant priests, Stephens and King. Stephens was engaged to a girl in the country, King belonged to some confraternity of celibates. Both were high-minded men, who appreciated to the full the charm of cultured feminine society and found her drawing-room a most pleasant oasis now and then. And every one at the clergy-house began to see a great deal of Mr. Carr. The lonely man found companionship and sympathy there. He found intellectual men, university men like himself, with whom he could talk. He had been intellectually starving in Hornham, and good brains rust unless they have some measure of intercourse with their kind.

He was constantly with his new friends. One Sunday Father Blantyre preached at St. Luke's. The church was crowded, to hear a man whom a great many there believed capable of almost any form of casuistry and sly dealing. But when the little Irishman got into the pulpit he gave them a simple, forcible discourse on some points of conduct, delivered with all his personal charm, his native raciness and wit; many wagging tongues were silenced in the parish. Carr's experiment was a bold one, but it succeeded. An ounce of fact is worth a pound of hearsay. Blantyre was so transparently honest, so obviously incapable of any of the things imputed to him by the Luther Leaguers, that the most prejudiced folk at St. Luke's said no more than that it was a pity such a decent fellow, who could preach such a good sermon, wasted so much of his time over unnecessary fads!

For some reason or other, – she could not quite explain it to herself, – Lucy looked on Carr with different eyes from those with which she viewed Stephens or King. He seemed less set apart from the ordinary lot of men than they were. His ordinary clerical costume may have had something to do with it, the contrast between his clothes and those of the laymen not being so marked as in the case of the High Church clergy. And his manner also was different in a subtle way. Lucy liked the manner of King and she liked the manner of Carr, but they were markedly unlike each other. The former spoke of everything from the Church's point of view, the latter more from the point of view of an ordinary layman who loves and serves our Lord.

Lucy had no fault to find with the ecclesiastical attitude. She had long before realised what were the spiritual results of rebellion and schism; they were too patent in Hornham. She was definitely Catholic. Therefore she approved of King as a priest and liked him as a man. But Carr seemed to be more upon her own level, not set apart in any way. She knew he was just as much a priest as the other, but he came into her consciousness from a purely human standpoint, while the other did not.

Viewing him thus, she had come to find she liked him very much indeed. He was a very "manly" man, she found, with a virile intellect which had had too little play of late years. She came to know of his life and found it as full of good works as her brother's. The methods differed, the Church and its services took an altogether secondary place in these ministrations; the charities of a poor man were necessarily more circumscribed than those of his rich neighbour, but the spiritual fervour was as great.

Lucy could not help wondering why a man who had such abundant means to his hand of holding and influencing his people used so few of them. Why was his church not beautiful? How did he exist spiritually without the sacramental grace so abundantly vouchsafed at St. Elwyn's?

She had a glimpse deep down into the man once. One evening at St. Elwyn's, when Carr had come to supper, the conversation turned upon a rather serious epidemic of typhoid fever that had only just been overcome in Hornham and which had caused a widespread distress among the poorer classes.

"I'm getting up a fund," Father Blantyre said, "to relieve some of the worst cases and to send as many as possible of the convalescents off to the seaside. Now, Lucy, my dear, what will you stump up? This girl's rolling in money, Carr! She's more than she knows what to do with!"

Lucy noticed – no one else did – that Mr. Carr flushed a little and started as Blantyre finished speaking.

She turned to her brother. "I'll give you a hundred pounds, dear," she said.

"Good girl!" he shouted in high good humour.

Lucy turned to Carr. "I suppose you've a great many destitute cases in St. Luke's?" she asked.

"Very many, I'm sorry to say," he answered sadly. "I've done what I could, but I've hardly any money myself until next quarter-day, and our people are nearly all of them poor." He thought with gentle envy of these wealthy folk who were able to do so much, while he, alas! could do so little.

"I'll subscribe something to St. Luke's, too," Lucy said. "I'll give you the same, Mr. Carr. I'll write you a cheque after supper."

"That's a sportswoman!" said Father Blantyre; "good for you, Lucy!"

Carr flushed up. The destitution in his parish had been a constant grief to him during the last few weeks. He had not known where to turn to relieve it. He had prayed constantly that help might be forthcoming. He broke out into a nervous torrent of thanks which came from his very heart, becoming eloquent as he went on and revealing, unconsciously enough, much of his inward self to them. They were all touched and charmed by the man's simplicity and earnestness. He showed a great love for the poor as he talked. Sympathy for suffering and kindness towards it are not rare things in England. We are a charitable folk, take us in the mass. But this quality of personal love for the outcast and down-trodden is not so often met with. It is a talent, and Carr possessed it in a high degree.

A step in their intimacy was marked that night; all felt drawn more closely to the Evangelical vicar. He stood alone; his life seemed cheerless to them all and their sympathy was his – though he had never made the least parade of his troubles. Moreover, the three clergy of St. Elwyn's were beginning to find out, with pleased surprise, how near he was to them in the great essentials, how Catholic his views were. Already much of Carr's dislike to the ceremonial of St. Elwyn's was fading away. He had witnessed it, found that there was absolutely no harm in it, that it did not stand between the soul and God, but even sometimes assisted in the journey upwards. He did not endorse it as yet, he did not contemplate anything of the sort for himself or his people, but he saw the good there and found nothing to disgust or harm.

Later on that evening, Dr. Hibbert came in, and there was music. Lucy played and sang to them, and Carr, who had a fine baritone, sang an old favourite or two, college songs, Gaudeamus Igitur, John Peel, and the like.

Then, while the four other men took a hand at whist – if only Mr. Hamlyn could have seen the "devil's picture books" upon the table! – Carr had a long, quiet talk with Lucy Blantyre. He found himself telling her much of his work and hopes, of his early life in a bleak Northumberland vicarage, of Cambridge, and the joyous days when he rowed three in the King's boat and all the skies were fair.

Now and then, when he would have withdrawn into himself again, fearing that he was boring her, she encouraged him to go on. With her cheque in his pocket, he went home in a glow that night. He thought constantly of her, and when he went to bed, he looked curiously in the mirror, turning away from it with a sigh, a shake of the head, and the chilling memory that the girl was rich, allied to great families, a personage in London society, and that a poor gentleman toiling in Hornham could never be a mate for such as she was.

Three or four days after the incident of the subscription, Lucy received a letter from Agatha Poyntz, who was staying with the St. Justs in Berkeley Square. The letter begged Lucy to "come up to town" for an afternoon. A theatre party had been formed, which was to consist of Agatha herself, Lady Lelant, a young married cousin of hers, and James Poyntz. Lucy was begged to come and complete the party. They were to go to tea afterwards at the Savoy or somewhere, and Lucy could drive home in the evening. The letter was quite imperative in its demand for Lucy's presence, and the girl had a shrewd suspicion who it was that had inspired it. Her last few letters from Poyntz had been almost, so she fancied, leading up to just some such occasion as this which was now proposed.

She thought it all over during the morning of that day. Her mind wavered. A few weeks ago she knew that she would not have hesitated for a moment. Whatever her answer might eventually be to what James Poyntz had to say, she would have gone to the tryst and listened to him. To hear him pleading, to see this scion of an ancient and honourable house, this big-brained man, pleading for her, would be sweet. Every woman would feel that. But now she hesitated very much. She hardly owned it to herself, but a very different figure was coming to have a continual place in her thoughts. A graver figure, a less complex figure, and one invested with a dignity that was not of this world, a dignity that the peer's son had not.

For now, most indubitably, a new element was coming into her life, one that had not been there before.

And there was yet another cause for her hesitation. She had come to see that the supremely important thing in life was religion; she knew that it was going to be so for her. She wasn't bigoted, she realised the blameless life that many people who did not believe in our Lord appeared to live. But that was not the point. Works were good, they were a necessary concomitant of any life that was to be bound up with hers. But faith was a paramount necessity also. She had no illusions about James Poyntz. She did not think, as less keen-sighted girls have thought of atheist lovers, that she could ever bring him to the Faith. She knew quite well that it would be impossible, that he was one of those folk to whom the "talent" of faith does not seem to have been given, and who will have to begin all over again in the next world, learning the truths of Christianity like children.

While she was thinking out the question of acceptance or refusal, her eye caught a date on her tablets. It was the date of the theatre party and also of a meeting to be held during the afternoon in the public hall at Hornham, at which Father Blantyre had consented to hold public argument upon the legalities of ritual and the truth of Catholic dogma with some of the Luther Lecturers.

Hamlyn had intended that this meeting should take place in the evening, for two reasons. In the first place, during the afternoon he was himself to address a great meeting in London, to which all the "red-hot Protestants" on the lists of the League had been specially invited by ticket, and at which a great sensation was hinted at, in much the same way as music-hall managers announce the forthcoming appearance of some entirely new spectacle, trick, or performer.

Mr. Hamlyn had hoped to arrive in Hornham from the Strand flushed with a great victory, the news of which would have preceded him during the afternoon.

Moreover, in the evening an audience would assemble with which the Luther Lecturers would be thoroughly at home – Mr. Sam Hamlyn would have seen to that – and the place would be packed by rowdy non-churchgoers who would come with the intention of witnessing a row, even if they themselves had to create it. Thus a "great Protestant demonstration of North London" would be absolutely assured.

Unfortunately, Mr. Hamlyn received the plainest of plain hints from the local chief of police that he would get himself into particularly hot water if he proceeded with his little scheme, and that the words of one of his men – the ingenuous Mr. Moffatt indeed, who, locked out of every church in England, had lately returned to his parental roof for a holiday – to a certain rough section of the community, in connection with this very meeting, would be brought up against him.

The police had no objection to a meeting during the afternoon. The dangerous element would still be pushing their barrows of plums and pears through the city streets, and though the meeting would, no doubt, be skilfully packed with partisans, many women would be present and nothing more than a wordy war would be likely to result.

Lucy saw the date and considered that the question of the matinée was decided for her. She mentioned the invitation at lunch, and was very much surprised to find that her brother strongly deprecated her intention of being present at the discussion and welcomed this invitation.

"I don't want you to go, dear," he said; "I beg of you not. It will be rough and bitter. I know it. I shrink from it myself, but I must show them that we are not afraid to meet them openly. But it would do nothing but distress you. Write to Miss Poyntz this afternoon and say you'll go. Then you can hear all about the meeting in the evening when you get back." He was so obviously in earnest that Lucy could not but agree.

It seemed fate sent her to meet James. Well, it must be, that was all. Circumstances must be faced, and if she did not know her own mind now, it was possible that the event itself would decide it for her.

But she addressed the letter with marked nervous excitement, and the "Hon. Agatha Poyntz" was more tremulous than her writing was wont to be.

There were two days more to wait, a Sunday intervened, and she hardly left the church during the whole day, seeking counsel and help where only they are to be found.

On Monday, she arrived at the theatre at about two. She had refused to lunch with her friends and drove from Hornham in a hansom cab, meeting them at the door of the building.

They went at once to their box and found that there were some five minutes to wait before the rise of the curtain.

The theatre was curious after the glare of the sun outside, fantastic and unreal. Hardly anybody talked, though there was a good house, and the strange quiet of a matinée audience seemed to pervade the four people in the box also.

Lucy leaned back in her chair with the sensation of dreaming. This morning she had knelt in the side chapel at St. Elwyn's! A moment before she had been alone in the cab, among the roar and bustle of Trafalgar Square. Now she was in a dream. Agatha and Adelaide Lelant smiled at her without speaking – just like odd dream people. James Poyntz sat just behind her. She was acutely conscious of his presence. Now and then he bent forward and made some remark or other in a low voice. That also seemed to come from a distance. She seemed to have left all the real things behind in Hornham.

The scents, the dresses of the fashionable people in the stalls, the dim, apricot light, seemed alien to her life now, a reminder of experiences and days long since put away and forgotten.

The little band below had been playing a waltz of Weber's, a regret which was strangled into a sob as the curtain rose suddenly upon the first act of the play.

How acutely conscious one was at first of the artificial light! The big frame of the proscenium enclosed a rich garden scene, beautifully painted. But it was full of hot yellow light, until the eye forgot the outside day it had lately quitted. Lucy thought that for the sake of illusion it was a mistake to come to the play in the afternoon. She said so to James.

"Well," he whispered, "for my part, there is never any illusion in the stage for me. It is a way of passing an idle hour now and then. That is all. I came here not to see the play, but to see you."

She turned towards the stage again with a slight flush.

Behind the footlights the perfectly dressed men and women went through their parts. All appeared as if they had put on for the first time the clothes they wore; both men and women had the complexion of young children – peaches and cream – unless the light fell on the face at an awkward angle. Then it glistened.

And all the people on the stage talked alike, too. They did not speak quite like ladies or gentlemen, but imitated the speech of ladies and gentlemen wonderfully! The play did not interest Lucy. It was a successful play, it was played by people who were celebrated actors, but she was out of tune with the whole thing. It wasn't amusing. Between the acts, Lady Lelant chatted merrily, of such news as there was to be gleaned during a passage through town. She spoke of the movements of this or that acquaintance, whom this girl was engaged to, why Lord Dawlish had quarrelled with the Duke of Dover. Lucy had no interest in these matters any more. She realised that with astonished certainty. She didn't care a bit. After all, these smart people and their doings were not, as she had thought in the past, any more interesting than the group of church people at St. Elwyn's. Indeed they were less so. Dr. Hibbert, one or two of the nursing sisters, some of the choir men, King, Stephens, Carr – all these people had more individuality, lived, thought, felt, prayed more intensely than Lady Lelant's set, Lady Linquest's set, any purely fashionable set. There was not a doubt that in the mere worldly economy of things, in the state politic, every one of these Hornham people mattered more than those others. And, where hearts and wills are weighed, to the critical Unseen eyes, their value was greater still. Lucy was glad when the play began again, and she was relieved of the necessity for a simulated interest in things she had long since put away from her.