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

"Don't argue with her, Tristram," said the Rector. "She is only teasing you."

"Not at all," returned Horatia. "My sympathies are with the Provost; and so are yours, Papa. Speak up now, and tell the truth. Did your tutor at Christ Church consider himself responsible for your soul?"

"Well, no, I can't say that he did," admitted Mr. Grenville, remembering that port-drinking divine.

"There you are!" exclaimed his daughter. "And look at the result; could it be better? Now these Oriel people want to make their pupils into horrid prigs, and all the parents in England ought to be grateful to the Provost for preventing it."

"Horatia," said the Rector, "this levity is not at all becoming. I don't myself agree entirely with either side. I have a great respect for the Provost, and at the same time I admire the spirit and high sense of duty of your friends, Tristram. Mr. Keble is of their opinion, and although I cannot go as far as he does, I am bound to say that the Christian Year seems to me to combine sound scholarship with a proper appreciation of our historic Church. Yes, they are good men, and I am sorry they have been defeated."

"And I," remarked Horatia impenitently, "am looking forward to seeing each with his one ewe lamb. How they will cherish their last pupil!"

(2)

When Tristram went, according to custom, into the Rector's study for a talk after dinner, the door was hardly shut behind them before Mr. Grenville said:

"I had a feeling this afternoon, when it was too late, that I interrupted you with Horatia at an unfortunate moment."

"No, Sir," replied the young man. "I think, on the contrary, that you saved me from making a blunder. One shock is enough for one afternoon."

"Ah," said Mr. Grenville, making his way towards his favourite chair. "You have told her then that you mean to take Orders?"

"I told her that I had practically made up my mind to do so."

"And what did she say?"

"I gathered that she wasn't surprised, and that she wasn't altogether pleased," returned Tristram with half a smile.

"She is out of sympathy with your views," commented the Rector, tapping with his foot. "And of course, as you know, I deplore extremes myself. But in time you would settle down. Still, I know quite well Horatia's dislike to what seem to be the growing views of the Oriel Common Room, and she appears to me to be quite unable to discuss the matter on its merits. She always says, 'Papa, dear, I do dislike Mr. Dormer so much, and I'm not fond of any of those Oriel people. I cannot understand what Tristram sees in them.' But I'll tell you what I think, my boy," concluded the Rector mysteriously, "and that is, this dislike is a very hopeful sign."

"Why?" asked Tristram with gloom.

"Well, to begin with, Horatia, unlike most women, can generally discuss a subject impersonally, but in this matter she makes a personal application, and she always attacks your friend Dormer, when she might just as well select Mr. Newman or Mr. Froude. Why? Because I verily believe she is jealous of him!" And the Honourable and Reverend Stephen Grenville sat back in his chair to make the full effect of his words.

"You don't really think that she cares – that she could ever...?"

"I don't know, my dear boy; I can't say. Perhaps I oughtn't to raise your hopes. Horatia is a very extraordinary young woman. Sometimes I blame myself; I blame myself very severely. I gave her an education out of the common."

"You did everything that was right," interjected Tristram.

"I hope so, Tristram, I hope so. Did I ever tell you that her aunt once assured me she would either die an old maid or make a fool of herself? Well, I did my best. Your mother, Tristram, was very fond of my girl, and she told me more than once that she believed she had the makings of a fine woman. If she had been here now, she would have advised us; for I can't help feeling that we are at a parting of the ways. If we had had her help these last few years it might have been different. I have thought that you made a mistake in not trying again when you came back from abroad. Persistence sometimes works wonders."

"I cannot bear the idea of pestering a girl until she accepts an offer out of sheer weariness," said Tristram with some heat.

"No, I know, and I respect you, my dear fellow," said the Rector, looking at him affectionately. Continuing to look at him, he went on: "Of course, too, I have doubted whether I have been right to allow you to see so much of her. But sometimes I thought you were getting over it, and Horatia is so entirely at her ease with you that I feared to interrupt a friendship which I always hoped might become something else. But I believe it has been a strain on you, Tristram. I can see it all now, and it must not go on. It is not fair to you. How long is it since she refused you?"

"Five years. I asked her in 1825, the summer before my mother died."

"Well, well," said the Rector, sighing gently, "the sooner you try your luck again the better. The child strikes me as unsettled, and a little depressed perhaps. Anyhow, for your own sake, I do not think you ought to wait. I could wish that this young friend of yours were not coming, for it means that nothing can be done for a week or two. However, there is the autumn before you, and if Horatia won't have you, you will soon be taking Orders and wanting to settle down, and perhaps you will see someone else. You are not the sort of man to have to wait long for a living, and you will be lonely without a wife. If my girl is so foolish as to refuse you again, well – – "

Tristram shook his head. "There is no 'well,' Mr. Grenville. It is Horatia or nobody for me."

(1)

One of Tristram Hungerford's earliest recollections was of the smell of sealskin, of its delicious softness, and of its singular utility, when rubbed the wrong way, as a medium for tracing the journeys of the children of Israel during Mr. Venn's long sermons in Clapham parish church. His Mamma, as he sat snuggled up against her, never reproved him for this ingenious use of her attire, and the stern, sad, greyhaired man, on the other side of her, could not see his small son's occupation, and would not have realised its significance if he had. For if at any given moment John Hungerford was not attending to Mr. Venn, he was thinking of the cause to which he had given his whole life and the greater part of his substance – the abolition of the slave-trade – thinking too, perhaps, of his English childhood, of his youth and young manhood spent in Barbados as manager to that very rich planter, his uncle, of his return to England a convinced champion of the freedom of the negro, his untiring labours to that end, in Parliament and out of it, his friendship with the like-minded group that held Wilberforce and Stephen, the Thorntons, Lord Teignmouth and Hannah More, and finally the meeting with Selina Heathcote, who now sat by his side, and the healing of that fierce loneliness which had cut the lines in his face that made people somewhat afraid of him.

Tristram, however, was not one of these persons, though he had early realised that Papa was not quite the same on Sundays as on other days, connecting the fact with his known study of prophecy and with the puzzling distinction that was drawn between walking across the Common to church (which was permissible) and walking on the same portion of the earth's surface after church (which was not).

But, after all, Sunday (with its sealskin alleviations in winter) was soon over, and thereafter Tristram was free, with his special friends Robert Wilberforce, little John Venn, and Tom Macaulay, to play by the Mount Pond and to explore the mysteries of the Common, or, if it was wet, reinforced by other Wilberforces and Venns, to engage in endless games of hide and seek up and down the big house, with its spreading lawns and aged elms, to which, three years before the old century had run out, John Hungerford had brought his bride. Mrs. Hungerford's chief characteristic was a charity that knew no bounds, so that it was in her drawing-room that Mr. Venn propounded his novel scheme of district visiting, and in her spare bedrooms that the unfortunate African lads, who were being educated as an experiment at Mr. Graves's school on the Common, were nursed back to life after having nearly died of pneumonia. And on a day in May, 1800, Tristram had made his own appearance under its roof, and now he himself, clad in a blue coat with white collar and ruffles, attended that academy with his small friends.