D. Broster - The Vision Splendid (D. K. Broster) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

But his course was plain. He rode on up the hill.

(1)

Tristram's plain course was to lead him, and he knew it, into the waste places of the spirit. In such a desert he wrestled, two days later, with a radiant Horatia, himself miserably conscious both of the interpretation that the world would put upon his action, and of the futility of his effort, and stabbed to the heart by her transfigured personality, to him the surest evidence of what had happened.

Yet she was the same Horatia, as kind, as generous as ever. She listened very patiently to his exposition of the difficulties attendant on a marriage with a man of a different race, of a different creed; she seemed even to do homage to the motive which had prompted him to speech. A lesser woman, so much in love as she, would, he thought, have sent him about his business.

She smiled at him divinely when he had finished.

"Dear, dear Tristram," she said, and she put her hand on his. "You are indeed, as you have always been, the best of friends. Everything you say is true, and I know you have not liked to say it. But you see that it is no good, and so I want you to be on my side in the fight I am afraid that I am going to have with dearest Papa. Will you?"

"I have already told him," said Tristram, "that if I thought the match was for your happiness, I should uphold it."

" My happiness ! You cannot doubt that, can you, Tristram?"

He did not answer.

"Papa is in his study," she suggested. "Suppose you were to go now and see what you can do with him?"

"I will try," he answered.

She came after him to the door, thanking him. He could not have borne much more.

(2)

The Rector was sitting at his study table. "Well," he said, as the envoy entered. "What does she say? You have been my last hope of persuading her to see things sensibly."

Tristram crossed the room, and did not immediately answer. He had already professed himself convinced of Horatia's determination, but hope will lurk in such odd corners of the heart, that not till this moment did he know how the frail thing had really ceased to flutter in him.

"I am afraid," he said at last, "that I have been worse than useless, for I have promised to try to persuade you ."

The Rector veered round in his chair to face him. "You, you , Tristram, support her! Then the world has gone crazy!" He took off his glasses and for a full half-minute gazed at the figure standing rather rigidly before him. "You really mean to tell me that, knowing Horatia as you do, you think I ought to take seriously this passing fancy?"

"I'm afraid I do, Sir," said Tristram steadily; "but, then, I cannot think it a passing fancy now that I have seen her and talked to her. Horatia does not have whims. If she changes, she changes whole-heartedly, and I confess I have never seen anyone so altered." His voice wavered for a moment. "She has put her whole happiness in Armand de la Roche-Guyon, and if you thwart her, you will be taking a very heavy responsibility."

"All the same," said the Rector stubbornly, "I shall take it. As you probably know, under French law my consent is a very important matter, and I shall certainly not give it. Allow my daughter to marry a foreigner, and a Papist – a Papist, Tristram, do you realise that?"

Tristram gave a little sigh. "I do, indeed, only too well. That is what clinched the matter for me. I mean I thought, of course, that it would be a serious obstacle to Horatia's mind, yet when I suggested it as a difficulty, she only said, 'But I love him, what else matters?' For Horatia, with her upbringing and her views that means a great deal. I confess I hardly understand it."

"Nor I," returned Mr. Grenville. "She has said the same to me, and even when I told her that her children would have to be brought up as Roman Catholics, she said that she did not like the idea, but she supposed that people always had to pay for happiness. He has bewitched her! But I shall save her from herself, Tristram. To throw herself away on the first wandering foreigner!"

"His father is a peer of France," said Tristram very quietly, "and Horatia will be a great lady. She is not throwing herself away in that sense."

The Rector gave an impatient exclamation, and brought his hands down violently on his knees. "To hear you talk, Tristram, anyone might suppose that you had something to gain from her marriage! 'Pon my soul, the young men of the present day are beyond me! A fortnight ago, in this very room, you were telling me about your own feelings for Horatia, and now here you are, as calm and cool as any lawyer, trying to argue me into letting her marry this organ-grinder! Really I find it hard to remember that not long ago you were a boy yourself, and a boy, too, whom I had hoped to call my son!"

It was the final turn of the screw. Tristram left him and went over to the window.

"I can't speak of that side of it," he said brokenly. "I have loved her distractedly ... I still love her ... but there is her happiness to think of, and if she ... if the Comte de la Roche-Guyon..." He could get no further, but laid his head against the cold glass.

"My dear boy, forgive me," exclaimed Mr. Grenville remorsefully. "I am so upset I don't know what I am saying. I'm a selfish old man, and you put me to shame ... you put me to shame...."

Sighing heavily, he turned round his chair to the table. He felt himself suddenly what he had often mendaciously declared himself to be, an old man. Perhaps it was wrong to struggle against the young – to play Providence overmuch. Yet this was Horatia's whole life at stake. Still, the man who stood silent there at the window, in what bitter pain he could guess, was able to see her go. He put out his hand, and took up the brass of Allectus, lying neglected among a disarray of papers, and, in the silence studied the galley on the reverse. At last he said miserably:

"What do you know about this young man?"

Tristram told him about the family, while the Rector turned the coin over and over.

"Yes, that's all right, I suppose, but what about the young man himself?"

"Frankly, I don't know any more than you do."

"But you have your suspicions, eh? Young Frenchmen don't bear a very good character, and you know that."

"Nor do all young Englishmen."

Mr. Grenville refused to be drawn off. "When you were in Paris, or wherever it was, Tristram, staying with his family, surely you must have heard something about him."

"No, not a rumour of the kind you mean."

"And yet," said the Rector, "you share my feelings about him. I know you do!"

"We have not either of us any right to have 'feelings' about him," retorted Tristram from the window. "We merely do not know. I would tell you if there had been anything. He may be a blackguard or he may be a hero. We don't know."

"Very well, then," said the Rector judicially, laying down the coin with precision. "I'll put it in another way. Do you consider him a fit husband for Horatia?"

Tristram started forward. "Mr. Grenville, don't drive me mad! You are putting me in a horrible position. Armand confides his interests to my hands; the first thing I do is to try to persuade Horatia not to marry him. Now you want to make me blacken his character ... I beg your pardon, Sir!"

The Rector was on his feet. "It is for me to beg yours. My dear, dear boy, do forgive me! I am behaving abominably; I am not only selfish but mean – but if I do seem to have been trying to get you to say things against a rival (as I suppose I have), remember I am also trying to save Horatia from this ... this calamitous marriage, and you from your own fantastic principles. It is all such a confusion, but I am really trying for your own happiness as well as hers ... You know, Tristram, I'm sure you could still have her if you tried, when she has forgotten him.... But do say that you forgive me!"