GOD ONLY
 
 StacR 
 Annex 
 
 HE FOR 
 GOD ONLY 
 
 BY 
 
 KATHLEEN CAFFYN 
 ("Job"} 
 
 Author of 
 
 "A Yellow Aster/' 
 "Anne Mauleverer," 
 Poor Max," . '. . 
 . . etc., etc. . . 
 
 44 He for God only; she for 
 
 God and him/' MILTON, 
 
 LONDON & j* ^ jx # 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED 
 13, Great Maryborough Street j* 
 
 19O3 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 PRINTED BY KELLY'S DIRECTORIES LTD. 
 LONDON AND KINGSTON,
 
 T 
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ALTHOUGH the natural diffidence of Miss Rebecca Westcar 
 might deprecate any conscious emulation upon her part of 
 the methods of Julius Caesar, as labelled in her early lesson 
 books, yet after her own humble fashion did she follow hot 
 upon the heels of that energetic man. 
 
 To attack less than three definite occupations at the one 
 time, irrespective of any indefinite ones each teeming 
 moment might upheave, would have struck Miss Westcar 
 as a flaccid waste of the gifts a discriminating Providence 
 had seen fit to place in capable hands. 
 
 Upon this brilliant morning in mid May she was carefully 
 weighing out little brown powders, full of groans and wail- 
 ing, with Hope, we can but trust and believe, at the bottom 
 of each buff pot; jotting down notes for a new system of 
 village recruiting ; studying a flamboyant diagram of a horse 
 with a view to reassuring herself upon a matter in which 
 she and her veterinary surgeon had diametrically opposed 
 views; thinking of marriage in a general sort of way, and 
 in particular of the imminent espousals of little Joan West- 
 car a far-off cousin she had seen yesterday for the first 
 time with young George Winnington, Curate, but what 
 was of vastly more importance to her, as to all the other 
 ladies in the sorrowing Parish, son of old Jasper Winning- 
 ton, of Thryng; a gentleman with many satanic gifts and 
 an inexhaustible fund of electric surprises. 
 
 She was keeping a relentless eye, moreover, upon a bevy 
 of neat maids flitting with self-conscious alacrity to and forth 
 in the house opposite. 
 
 In the intervals of thought and action, in a lenient and
 
 2 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 unexacting way, Miss Rebecca admired Nature. Applaud- 
 ing the efforts of this somewhat skittish maiden, condoning 
 her offences, sifting any incongruities apparent in her ways 
 and means by the canons of a sane and mellow intelligence ; 
 succeeding generally, therefore, in reducing irritating con- 
 tradictions to a decent and workable order. The last touch 
 of an expert hand, Miss Westcar found, did much for 
 Nature, whilst a free interpretation of the vagaries in all 
 things mutable, is, to be sure, the privilege of the thoughtful. 
 
 " Marriage " began Miss Rebecca, then paused to 
 
 loosen a grey sun-bonnet from its moorings. When she 
 desired to taste the air or look around her, Miss Rebecca 
 was obliged to wear her bonnet on the back of her neck, 
 since it was fashioned in the form of blinkers joined in the 
 centre, and built upon a foundation of stout cardboard; 
 but the unostentatious simplicity of the structure had 
 appealed to her now for five-and-thirty years. 
 
 " Marriage," she resumed, " at best is but an empiric 
 state, and will remain so till the day of judgment, when 
 we may, perhaps, hope for some reasonable summing up 
 of the evidence on both sides." She paused upon a white 
 powder. 
 
 " Let me see," she murmured, glancing up at a list of 
 names pinned to a text, "this is for Smith, the carrier an 
 impregnable constitution. I'd better double it. The girl's 
 nothing in particular amiable and insular. Ah, well ! for 
 a man of his figure, George can stand a deal of dullness. 
 It's that marvellous uplifted spirit of his the apotheosis I 
 take it of the Winnington temper. The high falutin' 
 tantrums of that Spanish great-grandmother of his refined 
 in the crucible of the sufferings they brought upon her and 
 her descendants. The oaths of the lady they say rang 
 with poetry. Her prayer was an idyll." 
 
 With a sudden dropping of her face, Miss Rebecca 
 wavered between two powders, her depression, as she 
 gazed, obviously increasing. 
 
 It was noticeable that upon her drug morning, Miss 
 Westcar frequently took gloomy views of life. 
 
 The science of drugs, as well she knew, like marriage, 
 was also in an empiric state, and she liked certainty. 
 
 She found a weird pleasure, indeed, in tracking the work- 
 ings of incongruous elements in the human frame. Patient
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 3 
 
 observation she was aware tended to widen a mind already 
 attuned to benevolence, and to circumvent the local doctor 
 was a perennial delight. 
 
 Twenty-seven, this Dr. Baker, a stack of vain theory and 
 vaunting experiment, who defied, with arrogant presump- 
 tion, all established authority, together with every ancient 
 observance that made for respectability. 
 
 Dr. Baker's inroads upon the village faith stirred Miss 
 Rebecca to her depths. 
 
 At the same time, young Nell Hone's life hung upon a 
 thread, and drugs can be as tricky as doctors. 
 
 Miss Rebecca looked up, heavily frowning, to see Joan 
 Westcar running lightly towards her down the shining path. 
 
 " Goodness gracious ! " muttered Miss Westcar, forgetting 
 Baker, and scattering an expensive powder ; " now is that 
 ridiculous face of hers due to George or the spirit of God? 
 An inspiration it certainly is," she pondered, staring in her 
 leisurely way, "founded, I shrewdly suspect, upon in- 
 experience and carnal affection. We'll have trouble here. 
 And I flattering myself we'd caught a nice tame domestic 
 hen that'd be clucking round comfortably in a week or so, 
 causing no inconvenience to anyone. Instead, another 
 empiric state on my hands, as though I hadn't enough 
 without it ! A girl with all her points before her to marry 
 an apostolic diathesis, with the digestion of an ostrich ! " 
 
 " You seem amazingly happy, child," she said in her fine 
 guttural voice, stifling a sigh. 
 
 " Oh ! It's all been so beautiful," Joan said. " I I am 
 so happy that I had to run all the way home. I'm glad I 
 did," she cried, pulling off her gloves, " for now I can help 
 you. George said I'd be late." 
 
 With a tragic air, Miss Rebecca fished a handful of 
 brown blobs from out the depths of a cavernous jar, and 
 plunged them into a great white mortar. 
 
 " You can grind these," said she. " The smell is pungent, 
 but wholesome." 
 
 The next minute Joan was coughing and sneezing 
 violently, but she ground on undaunted, and her face 
 delicately glanced and glowed like a little clove-pink in 
 the morning sun. 
 
 "It was perfect," she said breathlessly, between her 
 sneezes. "The people's faces, the old shepherd in his 
 
 T*
 
 4 HE FOE GOD ONLY. 
 
 smock, the big, moon-faced men, there were tears tears 
 in their eyes. Oh! there were," she protested to Miss 
 Rebecca's primmed mouth. "And the stillness all full of 
 melody, and the big bed of lilies outside, and the birds 
 singing in the trees, and and George's face." 
 
 " Dear me ! Where did you sit ? " 
 
 " In the front pew." 
 
 " So I thought, right under George's nose." 
 
 Joan flushed, but once started she could not now stop. 
 
 " George was so pleased. That young Dr. Baker was 
 there." 
 
 " Bless my soul ! " 
 
 "He said he'd come if he could, since its George's last 
 week-day service. But George was afraid. He's so extra- 
 ordinarily honest." 
 
 "Who? George?" 
 
 " No, no, Dr. Baker. He'd never have come unless he 
 could feel everything, just oh ! just as he ought to." 
 
 " Very satisfactory, certainly, and a marked departure. 
 I've had dealings with Dr. Baker every day these twelve 
 months, and never yet have known him to feel anything 
 whatsoever, just as he ought to. He is about the most 
 perverse and wrong-thinking person its been my lot yet to 
 encounter." 
 
 The lamps behind Joan's eyes flickered, her mouth 
 trembled. 
 
 " I wish you'd seen him to-day." 
 
 " Did he also sit in the front pew ? " 
 
 "No. In the chancel." 
 
 " Better still for purposes of observation." 
 
 Miss Rebecca flicked the lid from off a steaming pot and 
 the shed reeked with horrors. But in no sort of a way did 
 this disturb the lady; the odour was a healing one, and 
 she was in no mood for compromise. 
 
 Joan thought with all her might of Peter and the cloth 
 of common things, but she screwed up her nose. 
 
 Miss Rebecca grasping in their fell import these mixed 
 symptoms raked round in search of an illustration from 
 Nature to point' the moral. 
 
 The dispensary was a summer-house full of light, set in 
 an old garden, for Miss Rebecca made it her rule of life 
 to combine beauty with pills.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 5 
 
 A thrush was singing passionately in a tulip tree. Roses, 
 lilies, and a thousand herbs, flung sweet incense to Heaven ; 
 with honey-like dew upon the leaves, the bees lolled drowsy 
 in the cool hearts of the flower cups. Earth, sky, and air 
 were bright with joy and promise. Joan's spirit refused to 
 be dashed. Flinging the lessons of gross smell and subtle 
 reason to a dusty earth, it shot up again to the jewelled 
 Heaven of the hymns. 
 
 Lifting her eyes to peer into an upper window, Miss 
 Rebecca noticed the thrush mad with melody, break off his 
 song with a gurgle, suddenly dart to earth and bury him- 
 self bodily in a clump of blue forget-me-nots. Presently 
 with another gurgle he threw up his head, and in his beak 
 there waggled a mighty worm. " Joan," cried Miss Rebecca. 
 " Look ! " 
 
 Joan dropped from Heaven to the worm with a shudder. 
 
 " Now there's a parable from Nature exactly fitted to 
 3'our case," said Miss Rebecca. " That thrush singing not 
 five minutes ago like a choir of Angels is now choking 
 himself with a fat worm, which brings us down at once to 
 the bed-rock of common sense and the idiocv of permitting 
 yourself to become the shuttlecock of accessories. The 
 hand of God," she pursued, pounding a sickly-looking yellow 
 root between two towels, " is just as apparent in that nourish- 
 ing worm as in the rapturous song of the thrush. There is 
 a vast deal of the fat worm in all true religion, that is, in 
 the religion which will wear sufficiently well to stand the 
 strain of custom. To maintain a sane outlook you must 
 work up from the bottom. George, youth, change of air, 
 the spectacular effect of the altar this morning, and its 
 flowers and candlesticks have spurred you to a rapture not 
 unlike the thrush's, but tempered and relieved by none of 
 the thrush's homely tastes. It's a rapture that'll starve 
 itself. You can't live upon white flame. I, for my part, 
 not being in love with George, knowing, likewise, that old 
 Tabitha Storm worked that altar cloth for 10, and spent 
 the proceeds upon linen for the workhouse, so coarse that 
 it gave the poor paupers a rash ; also that the candlesticks 
 made the late Rector and all the old maids in the Parish 
 squabble like cats, can preserve my wonted calm. And yet 
 this knowledge interferes as little with my prayers as do the 
 flecks in the sun dim his potent glory. I am a good
 
 6 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Church-woman, I hope, and yet I can Joan take that 
 pencil, your hands are dry, and put down in that note- 
 book Memo. Martial music and the question of treating 
 recruits and now turn that diagram so. As I was say- 
 ing, I am a good Church-woman, and yet I can imagine 
 Church work, when it becomes an inevitable part of the 
 day's work, growing worse than any Chinese torture. The 
 devotion of a wife is another thing altogether from the 
 fervour of first love. You won't always be seeing George 
 in every petal much more likely, indeed, in time you'll be 
 forgetting the flowers, and just see the tarnished tin vessels 
 that hold them." 
 
 Joan's hand trembled on the pestle. Miss Re- 
 becca nodded at the book. " Write down. Query. 
 How far is one justified in making duty to country secon- 
 dary to duty to neighbour? The waste of material in 
 flunkies makes me sick! Goodness, child, that's not to be 
 entered." 
 
 " I, I've loved the Church ever since I've had the chance 
 to do so," said Joan, resuming her pestle. 
 
 " No doubt you have, my child. It's been the one touch 
 of poetry in your dull life. It's been your one haven of 
 rest. Did you ever feel free while your father lived save 
 in Church ? answer me that ! " 
 
 " No ! " she said meekly. 
 
 " Where did you generally see George ? " 
 
 " Oh ! it wasn't that " 
 
 " That was the foundation stone. It is not the one we 
 are told to select." 
 
 "Have I done enough of these things?" said Joan, in 
 dull despair. 
 
 Miss Rebecca craned over to look, and tossed some 
 berries into the bowl. 
 
 And at the first turn of Joan's hand the place smelt like 
 a sepulchre. 
 
 " Play what pranks you please with the others," said Miss 
 Rebecca, emerging suddenly from her private reflections, 
 " but never make a god of the parson you mean to marry. 
 It ends in speedy disillusion, or means hanging a millstone 
 around your neck." 
 
 " Cousin Rebecca, you're cutting every single thing from 
 under my feet."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 7 
 
 " On the contrary, Joan, I'm doing my level best to get 
 you out of the clouds on to firm ground." 
 
 " Must everything then be common and unclean ? Must 
 we never look up ? " 
 
 " I'm doing my best to prove to you that there's nothing 
 in all this wide earth either common or unclean. Nor is 
 it always necessary to be staring into the skies to find God. 
 But I see what you're after," said she, with a deep bass 
 sigh, " I might as well be whistling to the winds." 
 
 She broke off to ponder upon the back muscle of the 
 horse, then turned again to Joan. 
 
 "The danger of starting life in a country peopled with 
 unearthly cherubs, is that you are apt to grow so deadly 
 sick of spirit, you'll be running next to the opposite extreme 
 and wanting all sense." 
 
 In her agitation, Miss Rebecca here began to tick the 
 situation off upon the tips of her handsome, drug-stained 
 fingers. 
 
 " Tour religion, founded upon the dullness of life and 
 the picturesqueness of George, George's upon the Rock of 
 Ages, George's own reflection shining in your eyes, your 
 eyes are charming, girl George taking it for the light of 
 Heaven. A pretty kettle of fish to be sure." 
 
 "And I," groaned Miss Rebecca, "am the biggest fool 
 of the three, for shedding round unasked advice." 
 
 She gazed fixedly at the singular look of youth in Joan's 
 every gesture, and again groaned. 
 
 " No woman," she murmured, after a pause, " save one 
 in sore need of repentance, or who, having exhausted every 
 other amusement wants a new sensation, should marry a 
 man with the spirit of a martyr in him. He'll be judging 
 her from the martyr-crown point of view, and she'll have a 
 life of it! her soul stretched day and night on a rack. 
 Good gracious, but won't she suffer ? " 
 
 " Oh ! What do you want ? What am I to do ? " 
 
 " Do ? The only thing you can do in the circumstances 
 is to continue to reflect George," said Miss Rebecca, hitch- 
 ing up her sun-bonnet. " It will be a perennial source of 
 satisfaction to him. No amount of holiness will damp the 
 egoism of a healthy man. And remember that a man 
 expects a lot from his glorified self. He gets used likewise 
 to that form of stimulant provided by her," she said,
 
 8 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 solemnly, "and is quite likely to become in time a sort of 
 spiritual vampire." 
 
 Joan's eyes uttered a mute cry. 
 
 " Once you've created a demand for this supply," pro- 
 ceeded Miss Rebecca ; " you can't cut it off. Don't forget 
 that Dear me ! There's George." 
 
 Joan's quivering lips grew still. 
 
 As she freed her fingers of the brown powder, Miss 
 Rebecca's eyes shone proudly upon the tall young man. 
 
 "You'll have to see also that he has good nourishing 
 meals," she commanded, with a stern nod at Joan. " These 
 early services are wearing." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 GEORGE WINNINGTON'S brown, irregular face frequently set 
 his friends speculating. In all its traits and lineaments so 
 comfortably did the lion lie down with the lamb that one 
 wondered whether, indeed, that fierce ravener had not been 
 imbibing the leading characteristics of the weaker beast, a 
 theory contradicted by a muzzled look about George. And 
 to muzzle anything, to be sure, is neither to subdue instinct, 
 nor yet modify species. 
 
 A great practical nose notwithstanding the delicate 
 carving of its fine nostrils, went oddly with the brow of a 
 poet, and visions lurk but whimsically in the keen, clear, 
 decisive eye of a soldier. 
 
 The methods of George partook of the unprofessional 
 variety in his brown face, and although they might not have 
 seemed the best preparation for a successful clerical career, 
 he had found them to answer very well. 
 
 For example, he took the divine patience of woman with 
 her inexhaustible power of work with a great stoop of the 
 spirit, whilst her flutterings of heart and hereditary leanings 
 towards the cassock he dismissed with a blasphemously light 
 laugh. In short, the Rev. George Winnington used the 
 devout feminine mind largely, but constrained it to the best 
 of his ability well understood to revolve around the Christ 
 and not the curate. 
 
 There were, indeed, enough incongruities in George to
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 9 
 
 scatter and disperse any career, but these marshalled and 
 disciplined by a military outlook, sincerity, and a zeal, 
 dread, amazing, as tireless as it was untirable, made on the 
 whole for progress in a difficult path. 
 
 And even if a three years' curacy, full of passionate 
 labours, well winnowed with family tempests not devoid of 
 a grim humour, may have left George still at the portals of 
 the true inwardness of things as regarded both himself, 
 woman and man, he had grown neither morbid, sleek, nor 
 cock-sure, nor was he unfair toward any but himself, and the 
 inevitable one he would be certain to exalt far above him- 
 self. 
 
 It is alone for him who has fallen by the way, or is a 
 much better saint than ever poor George could hope to be, 
 to reach man more especially woman or his own depths, 
 saving through much tribulation, whilst, to give unquench- 
 able Spirit a free hand over Sense, as quenchless, will throw 
 any man a trie out of gear, so long as he brings to the 
 mighty conflict, only the simple weapons of a pure youth. 
 
 This stern grappling with Nature, to give George his due, 
 he applied only to himself, however; with those made in 
 like fashion to him he used more reasonable methods ; and 
 could seemingly discern herbs most sweet and delicate, grow- 
 ing in and around the very roots of their grosser growths, 
 which stayed the violence of his pruning knife. 
 
 However much her eyes may have betrayed her, there 
 was but little love in Miss Rebecca's voice when it broke 
 presently the silence of George's content, Joan's worship, 
 and her own scientific absorption in the preparation of her 
 exquisite coffee. 
 
 " Upon my word, George, I can't believe my eyes," said 
 she. " You've gulped down every morsel of your curry as 
 though it were Irish stew, and are now starting on the 
 Bombay duck. It really is too bad. It's those sort of 
 things that keep reminding one after all that you are no 
 more than a curate." 
 
 George passed up his plate promptly. 
 
 " Awfully sorry for bringing up the shameless fact. Give 
 me some more, and don't tell Hughes." 
 
 " A man who forgets himself in the small things will be 
 sure to forget every one else in them also. Selfishness with 
 a touch of religion about it is as double-faced as it's
 
 io HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 mawkish. If the truth were known, I daresay you were 
 thinking of Baker." 
 
 " I'm afraid I was. Joan, don't you want some Bombay 
 duck?" 
 
 " Yes, please," said Joan, with a shy look at Miss Rebecca. 
 " I'm used to good curries." 
 
 " Your father with all his faults was a soldier," boomed 
 the lady. " I'm glad you weren't brought up amidst women 
 and bread-and-butter. Nothing makes such pulp of the 
 moralities. Have you never reflected, George, that there 
 are people fools enough to go to Church for love of you or 
 curiosity as to what you're going to say next ? " 
 
 " Soldiers enlist for as reasonless reasons," said George, 
 " and yet they make fine regiments." 
 
 " If you fought for carnal glory and not for the glory of 
 God, there's the making of a Napoleon, possibly a Napoleon 
 and water you're too inchoate as yet to decide in you. 
 Even now to gain your ends I believe you would wade as 
 deep in blood as your rascally prototype, and make shift 
 with as blind a following of riff-raff. Staring at the goal, 
 George, you see, the blood would never put you off. Your 
 humanity, it strikes me, has a leak in it. I wonder how 
 Joan will fare in the Juggernaut procession. I hope, any- 
 how, she has a taste for the wilderness and locusts. The 
 modern apostle is sure to want to go one better than his 
 model there won't be any wild honey, Joan, take my word 
 for that. And from the extremely sensible way in which 
 you manage that curry, I doubt if you have much natural 
 taste for ungarmished locusts. An acquired taste for that 
 sort of thing wrings the withers. Let's hear about the new 
 recruit, George." 
 
 " Oh ! Baker ! He's a recruit of whom any sergeant might 
 be proud." 
 
 " Inability to pass any known medical test does not 
 unfortunately apply to the Church's recruits," sniffed Miss 
 Rebecca. " I myself like Christianity without the trail of 
 pathology upon it. It's so easy to be good if you're sickly. 
 Now you've got him couldn't you convert Baker into a lay- 
 reader, and let the village have a chance to recover some 
 of its lost faith. My tenants, poor creatures, have souls as 
 well as Dr. Baker." 
 
 " But it's to their bodies he applies his doubts."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 11 
 
 " George ! ground ginger is put on the table to be eaten 
 with melon. A curate of three years' standing ought to be 
 aware that the poor judge of everything from an absolutely 
 material point of view. If you fill the minds of a purely 
 agricultural people, two hundred and fifty words to their 
 vocabulary, with doubts as to the methods applied for 
 generations by their betters to their insides, you under- 
 mine any faith they're capable of. To my mind there's a 
 heartless levity in putting people, used to bulk and glaring 
 effects, off with scientific explanations, indecent plans of 
 their persons and ridiculous, niggardly doses with all the 
 flavour refined out of them. I don't say the man's explana- 
 tions may not be reasonable to a mellowed intelligence, 
 just as his diagrams may be possibly even his doses. But 
 you've got to earn the right to doubt, even as you've got 
 to earn the right to believe believe, I mean, in your way, 
 with understanding. The meanest intelligence is capable 
 of holding tight to Tradition. Baker is casting pearls 
 before swine and undermining the foundations of the British 
 Constitution. Unless he mend his ways we'll have every 
 man Jack in the place voting radical the next Election, and 
 the recruiting-sergeant may whistle when he comes our way. 
 They'll be all maundering of pruning-hooks, plough-shares, 
 and yard measures, too utterly debased for honest ambition. 
 
 Joan's eyes uttered great " Oh's ! " but George chuckled. 
 
 " Still there are two sides to every question," he pleaded, 
 "and as Baker's been slaving at medicine now for eight 
 years or so, it's only natural he'd like to apply some of his 
 conclusions. If they don't happen to be the conclusions 
 of old Johnson, and the interminable line of Johnsons who 
 went before him, it's not Baker's fault, anyway ; it's the fault 
 of his day and generation." 
 
 " Baker," sharply rejoined the lady, " has been striving 
 might and main for seven years to pick holes in the know- 
 ledge of a glorious past, however you may try to vilify 
 it in order to erect an arrogant structure of letters behind 
 his own undistinguished name. 7 have been studying 
 medicine for upwards of forty years with no hope of earthly 
 reward. I have grown my own herbs, and can honestly say 
 that never in all these years have I presumed to prescribe 
 anything the effects of which I have not first carefully 
 registered in my own person."
 
 12 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Joan gasped unobtrusively. 
 
 " I'd like," pursued Miss Rebecca, " to ask you if Baker 
 would know a growing herb if he saw one." 
 
 " Botany " 
 
 " Don't talk to me of medical Botany. Dog Latin and 
 the presumptions of atheists. Haven't I been through it 
 all ? Baker knows nothing of herbs except from books and 
 salesmen's catalogues. And in the whole course of his life 
 do you think he's offered up his own body as the field of 
 his experiments ? " 
 
 '' The fields already open to him," pleaded George, " are 
 so wide. Besides, how can you expect a man to take notes 
 upon drugs when he's undergoing the tortures just let loose 
 by them ? " 
 
 "At least, it is honest torture," said the lady grimly, 
 " and may resolve into certainty many a doubt now undoing 
 this wretched generation. I have my own doubts about 
 many a thing," she sighed, " but thank God I have some 
 respect for the human nature in those beneath me. I have 
 studied their tastes, their requirements and their limitations. 
 I know them. Set up doubts in a village inside, and it's 
 the beginning of the end. Better start at once to con- 
 vert the Church into a laundry, the village library into a 
 Temple of Reason." 
 
 " Baker," said George mildly, " seems to have let loose 
 other things besides doubts in the East End." 
 
 " Oh ! no doubt ! They're thankful for anything in the 
 East End. They're used to want of consideration, poor 
 wretches, and have not had the advantage of generations of 
 civilizing contact with the thinking classes, and, at least, if 
 they're swelling themselves out with doubts, they can't be 
 burgling and wife-beating. I daresay Baker did well enough 
 in the East End. Why didn't he stay there ? " 
 
 "Don't you know?" 
 
 " I don't, but I have my suspicions." 
 
 " And I have facts to give them the lie and leave to tell 
 them to you, but to no one else. Joan? Oh! Joan's my- 
 self! Isn't she?" 
 
 "Humph! Well?" 
 
 " He's got an aneurism which must kill him in a couple of 
 years." 
 
 " Who says so, pray ? "
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 13 
 
 " Every specialist in England, France, and Germany. 
 Baker has no mawkish leaning towards death. The 
 question was then, how to make the most of the life at 
 his disposal. Working amongst masses of men seems to 
 be his ruling passion; but he has a lesser one inventing 
 things. He has an invention on the stocks now, a 
 marvellous thing in Physics, that must have time and quiet 
 for its perfecting. He found he could get these here, and 
 make a living for his mother and himself as well she 
 spent every penny she had on his education, you see. 
 And it seems there's money in this thing he's working at. 
 If he can get it through in the time he'll be able to see 
 her independent before he dies. She lives abroad, as you 
 know, and knows nothing of the aneurism, thinks he's 
 immersed in discovery for pure love of science, and is 
 delighted to have him out of the East End, on account of 
 infectious diseases and want of society. She's a haughty 
 old dame with notions. Meanwhile, he'd give his soul to be 
 back in the maelstrom." George's eyes lighted. " One can 
 so easily understand the overmastering attraction, once 
 you've been in it," said he. 
 
 " Oh, George ! " said Joan, with rapt eyes. " I'm so glad 
 he came this morning." 
 
 Joan's face was like wine to George. He remembered 
 with a thrill Baker's eyes as he had watched her in Church. 
 
 " We'll have Dick over to Thryng, and make him take 
 care of himself," he said. 
 
 " Unless you alter very considerably," said Miss Rebecca 
 promptly, " Joan will find her hands quite full enough with- 
 out Baker. Heart patients are always crochetty. The 
 exigencies of professional etiquette would cramp the intellect 
 of a giant, but the man has wit enough, it seems, to couple 
 a scientific invention with hard cash. I wonder if he'd have 
 enough by any chance to allow something to the experience 
 of one old enough to be his grandmother. I have gone with 
 particular thoroughness into Aneurism. We had several 
 cases here, and I've studied every conceivable authority on 
 the subject with a mind uncramped by professional pre- 
 judice, and I've my own opinion on the subject. Three 
 died in Johnson's hands. One that he relinquished to me, 
 under the name of indigestion, oddly enough lived. It 
 yielded after months of patient treatment to diet and a
 
 14 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 decoction of simples I first discovered in a Basque village, 
 and dinned for five years into Johnson's deaf ears. Do you 
 think," she demanded, "that Baker could be induced to 
 try this draught ? " 
 
 " He couldn't very well refuse, if you asked him." 
 
 " No," she said grimly, " but he could throw it behind 
 the fire directly I'd turned my back." 
 
 "He wouldn't do that. But he's not the man to take 
 any draught regularly." 
 
 Miss Rebecca's natural acuteness paled before her turn 
 for medicine. Like less redoubtable ladies, she had to pay 
 for her passions. 
 
 " Oh, I'd see to that ! " She lifted her proud head. 
 " The aims and the independence of the young people of 
 the present day make it exceedingly difficult to be of any 
 service to them in their hour of need, and scientific airs seem 
 to me the most odious. Although Science, if anything 
 could, should preserve man, that according to expert 
 scientific opinion has begun in the worm and is likely to 
 end in him, from assuming the manners and customs of the 
 Immortal there's Carr come about his bandage. Pity," 
 she said, rising, " there's so much of the carpenter and 
 joiner in surgery ; it puts one at a disadvantage, and in my 
 opinion, the bones of anatomy and those of human beings 
 have but the faintest likeness one to the other." 
 
 " She's thinking," explained George, " of the time she 
 rigged up a leg down in the marshes out of First Aid to 
 the Wounded, and set old Johnson swearing for a month." 
 
 " Oh ! George ! " cried Joan, with a little jump on her 
 chair, " being with you is like being out in the sun. You 
 do things so joyfully. In one minute you've given Dr. Baker 
 a friend some one to feed him and care for him and amuse 
 him, and you've given Cousin Rebecca a little bit of conso- 
 lation for the loss of you. I've been wondering how she 
 could possibly manage without something. You seem to 
 come in to every hour of her life. George ! what should I 
 have done if you hadn't loved me ? " 
 
 " Found some one else." 
 
 " Some one else ! The very thought makes me cold." 
 
 " We're a pair of fools, Joan, but that's just exactly how 
 I too feel about it. It's because we can walk hand in 
 hand to the gate, we two, and together keep weariness at
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 15 
 
 bay, and defy the paralysis of custom that traitor in the 
 gate, that vampire which sucks the blood of us all, from 
 Archbishop to curate. Let me look at you with your face 
 like that oh ! with you I could do anything anything. 
 
 " I steadier step when I recall 
 That when I slip thou dost not fall." 
 
 " Quoting poetry, eh ? " boomed Miss Rebecca from the 
 door, " and in the full light of the morning ! Let us hope 
 that in ten years from now you may be as glib." 
 
 " That," said George, " will depend on Joan." 
 
 " Or," observed Miss Rebecca, " on Joan's constitution. 
 It's time we began to test it, by the way. I shall take 
 her to see your mother this afternoon." 
 
 "And while you're getting through the preliminaries, 
 clearing the course, so to speak, I'll show Joan the Vicar- 
 age." 
 
 " I'll be at the cross roads at four," he said, with a laugh, 
 " so you'll have to get things through by tea-time." 
 
 Miss Rebecca's large, round eyes a feature she attributed 
 to a Polish grandmother why it would be hard to say 
 rested mildly on the girl, to pounce sharp as a knife back 
 to the man. 
 
 "I wonder if Joan has got anything in the shape of a 
 constitution," she mused. " I once knew a man, a good 
 man and great, in his way. Anyway, he was a great 
 surgeon, and his wife was his inspiration. He could not 
 bear her out of his sight. If ever he did an important 
 operation, he liked to know that she was as near as circum- 
 stances would permit. It was quite a poem. One day he 
 had some terrible thing to do to some poor wretch. It was 
 out in the country, and there was a black frost. His wife 
 was utterly unfit for the jaunt, but a look in his eyes 
 wonderful, blue eyes they were, too made her insist upon 
 going, and a woman, even at her last gasp, can always per- 
 suade man that she's throbbing with rude health. She got 
 out at the park gates, and crouched down somewhere in the 
 frost to pray. The operation was successful, but the wife 
 died there's nothing to grin at, George." 
 
 " Lucky for Joan, in that case, that I'm not a great 
 surgeon," said George.
 
 16 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 "There are many ways of undermining the constitution 
 of a woman who throws all her power of belief and all her 
 emotions on trust into one man before she's investigated 
 any of the others. Another adaptation of a homely proverb, 
 ' Never put all your eggs into one basket.' " 
 
 In moments of intensity, Miss Rebecca did not always 
 pause to consider the full significance of her utterances. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 JOAN lifted her pretty eyes to Heaven and thought of 
 George and a golden future. 
 
 Miss Rebecca flung hers upon the cholera belt she was 
 engaged in knitting and thought of George's father and 
 a leaden past, whilst the two fat old horses ambled drowsily 
 on towards Thryng, and the burly coachman, inspired by 
 the memory of ecstatic draughts he had whilom enjoyed 
 in the Squire's kitchen, thought mainly of beer. " And 
 four years," he reflected with a plaintive sigh, " sence I 
 druv her to Thryng. Gentle or simple there's no fathomin' 
 the female mind." 
 
 Until time and Heaven had brought George, Joan's re- 
 collections partook but little of the earthen joys of coach- 
 man Brown. 
 
 Her father, an officer of Engineers, perhaps to show 
 the world that his vitals were fashioned, after all, of flesh 
 and blood, not cast in the best English steel, suddenly 
 one day, when he was thirty and she eighteen, married a 
 wife. A hasty act of which he promptly repented. ' 
 
 Mrs. Westcar was a pretty, silly, slight creature, who, 
 given enough lawful fruit to keep her quiet, had no natural 
 hankerings after the forbidden. She would have danced 
 herself innocently enough into a fatigued sobriety ; the 
 rest might well have been left to time and babies, had 
 not the dreadful silence of suspicion wherewith her hus- 
 band tracked her merry windings, roused to an artfulness 
 and audacity, not its own, the small dancing devil that 
 sometimes possesses her kind. 
 
 One day Mrs. Westcar turned upon a pirouetting toe and 
 calmly laughed in her sleuth-hound's face, and from that
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 17 
 
 moment the desperate man had ample opportunities of 
 studying the minor ways of minor women with their 
 peculiar range and insistence. The antics of the wife and 
 the investigations of the husband, were interrupted one 
 day by a bolt from the blue in the shape of an expected 
 baby. 
 
 Two people more singularly unfitted for the role of 
 parent it were hard to conceive. 
 
 Mrs. Westcar fell together at the mere thought of 
 domestic joys and an enlarged waist. 
 
 Her husband, when he discovered that, by his own act, 
 he had introduced another instrument of wrath into a 
 groaning world laid waste perhaps the lives of whole 
 generations of Thinking Men felt as though branded 
 with the brand of Cain. 
 
 He made no comment, but when Joan was eight weeks 
 old, he packed her off to England, there to wail up and 
 down the whole gamut of the griefs of Indian children. 
 
 Directly she was relieved of her baby, Mrs. Westcar 
 began, in her wilful way, to ache all over for the loss of 
 it. 
 
 To assuage her horrid pain and console herself for 
 her mistake in marrying into the Scientific Corps, she 
 danced merrily with every Cavalry man who came to 
 Simla, and snapped her pretty fingers at the women 
 whose dances she had taken. One brilliant night she 
 danced herself into a fever and subsequently died, having 
 done nothing much worse than annoy a husband for seven 
 solid years, and do violence to what might have been 
 the makings of a good woman. 
 
 Every man she danced with swore, however, that she 
 was as good a little woman as ever wore French shoes. 
 Probably he knew. 
 
 What the women said were best not repeated. 
 
 Deprived of his favourite pursuit Colonel Westcar felt 
 restless and returned to England. 
 
 He took a Staff appointment and fell to looking after 
 his daughter. 
 
 In silence did he track the thoughts of the child and 
 search her reins. In season and out did his haunting 
 solicitude pursue her. No moment was safe from his 
 passion of parental solicitude. Neither work nor play
 
 i8 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 proved any protection. He was liable to swoop down at 
 any time and lay Joan open. 
 
 How Colonel Westcar managed to combine his private 
 with his public duties was a marvel, but in neither did he 
 falter or flinch. Incomparable always was he, both as 
 soldier and parent. 
 
 If the mother had eluded him, never should the 
 daughter do so, of that he was firmly resolved. 
 
 To simplify matters, the instructors selected for Joan 
 were non-resident, carefully dehumanized machines, and 
 friendships, save under his personal observation, were 
 strictly forbidden. 
 
 Dreadful bi-monthly tea-parties were indeed arranged 
 by the anxious father, for the purposes of social culture ; 
 when a selection of small quaking creatures ate cakes 
 and cream in the full blaze of his monocle. 
 
 Upon these occasions it was his wont to unhook his 
 mind, grappling ever with some imperial problem, and 
 let it come clinking down genially amongst his writhing 
 guests. 
 
 It was in truth an instructive spectacle to watch this 
 man of steel and figures devising games of strategic skill 
 for the alarmed squad. 
 
 When he could no longer endure the utter absence of 
 anything like spring or spontaneity in the movements of 
 the paralyzed atoms, or of intelligence in their counten- 
 ances, with a metallic groan but half suppressed, he would 
 try what the narration of historical events, flavoured by 
 an ordered romance, would do for such nebulous fatuity. 
 
 When Joan was sixteen, with a pale face, a mind groan- 
 ing with hard fact, a spirit bowed with obedience, Colonel 
 Westcar quarrelled with his Chief, and went to live in a 
 gloomy old house in Thryng, left him by an uncle. 
 
 He brought with him his Indian servants ; his own 
 man, more silent than himself; Joan's Ayah, a babbling, 
 kind, irresponsible creature ; and a venerable cook as loyal 
 as a pole-star to the stomach of her owner's, but who 
 regarded not their lesser parts. 
 
 Sentiment and gossip were thus alike excluded from 
 Joan's path. 
 
 The year of their arrival at Thryng was a tumultuous, 
 not to say a riotous, epoch in the life of that leafy hamlet.
 
 HE FOR GODi ONLY. 19 
 
 Young George Winnington had just returned from Ox- 
 ford, and with a steady look about his fresh young mouth, 
 had announced his intention of entering the Church. 
 
 His mother, the daughter of a Law Lord, knowing how 
 cordially her husband detested both the Law and her 
 relatives who gave distinction to it, from his very birth 
 had destined George to the Woolsack. His decision 
 smote her to the soul. She threatened her family with 
 paralysis and a broken heart ; to revive a little at the 
 suggestion that there are ecclesiastical as well as legal 
 Peers. 
 
 But finding that the proposed choice of profession did 
 not contain common sense enough to admit an archdeacon 
 upon the mental horizon, much less a bishop, that it was 
 a call, a low dissenting call, just like young Syd Clarke's, 
 the Postmaster's son, who got the County Court scholar- 
 ship and scented himself with white rose, she collapsed 
 completely, fell sick of a liver complaint, and went for a 
 cure. 
 
 The Squire, a godless old man with some wit and more 
 blasphemy, felt the blow as keenly as did his wife. Had 
 it not carried her mercifully off to Germany for a spell, 
 he too might have lost heart and weakly sickened. 
 
 For six generations every son of his lusty house had 
 been soldier or sailor, and with but two of his own to 
 make men of, this choice of George's was a heavy stroke. 
 A parson on one's own hearth may, in certain conditions, 
 prove but a destroying dispensation. Jasper felt out- 
 raged. 
 
 To keep himself from dwelling morbidly upon the sub- 
 ject, he drank harder that autumn and winter than he had 
 been known to do since the year following George's birth, 
 when he had first broken out. That memorable year when 
 old Holt, the butler, young then, had gone out one morn- 
 ing to find Ralph Wynne, face downwards under a tree, 
 a bullet in his heart, a shock that had turned madam 
 silent in a day and put an end for good to her passion 
 for magnificent entertaining. 
 
 With the horror of a somewhat compromising tragedy 
 burnt into her soul, Mrs. Winnington permanently lost her 
 taste for the flesh-pots of Egypt. 
 
 Throughout their childhood Ralph Wynne and Isabella
 
 20 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Cockburn had continually quarrelled for the sheer joy of 
 making up again, and the moment they found out what 
 loving meant, Jhey had straightway adored each other. 
 
 In those early days it had been a discreet affection, hal- 
 lowed by the smiles of two families. Isabella's portion 
 was indeed slender, but her position was undeniable. In 
 rank and prospects Wynne was also entirely desirable. 
 An uncle, however, who should have died decently, 
 scurvily married, and launched a superfluous heir upon 
 an astonished world. Ralph was left with expensive tastes, 
 a subaltern's pay, and a younger son's pittance. 
 
 Isabella had hot blood in her veins, and loved him in 
 fierce and fervent gusts, but in her passion for income and 
 standing there lurked a more coherent solidity. More- 
 over, she had always detested Rebecca Westcar, then en- 
 gaged to big Jasper Wilmington. 
 
 Even when her own affair had gone with a fine swing, 
 Isabella had found it odious that this black-browed hoy- 
 den should have secured the best match in the country- 
 side, a man whom the very night of her coming out she 
 had, Jo the best of her belief, annexed as a personal 
 asset. 
 
 To give her her due, Isabella waited for a quite reason- 
 able time (always skilfully undermining Rebecca) in order 
 to give Ralph the benefit of any stray doubt. But the 
 moment his impossibility became absolute, she started 
 operations upon Jasper in earnest. Her manreuvres were 
 masterly, and were ably seconded by Rebecca's imperious 
 temper and unchastened tongue. The lies and slanders 
 of Isabella were indeed of an order to convince the foolish- 
 ness of man, and set all his pride ablaze, and Rebecca, if 
 the truth must be told, was in those days a spit-fire. And 
 so, outraged and betrayed, as he thought, by Rebecca, in 
 a boyish tempest of wounded vanity and chivalrous admira- 
 tion, he married the other girl off-hand. For, maddened, 
 poor fool, by the taunts of Rebecca and the deprecations of 
 Isabella, he would brook no delay. 
 
 The Isabella of that period was of a constitution 
 eminently adapted to make the best of both worlds. She 
 felt quite equal, indeed, to managing both her husband 
 and Ralph in an ordered and correct fashion; to running 
 them in the same team, in short, yet without offence.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 21 
 
 But love such as Ralph's could find no decent reaction ; 
 it burnt out soul and sense. 
 
 To babble at Isabella's table, and go in and out at 
 Jasper's side, drove him mad, and one dark night, after 
 a despairing interview with Isabella, in which her conduct 
 was monumental, his a disgrace, he took his foolish life 
 at her very gates. 
 
 To suspect his wife had never struck Jasper, and he had 
 liked Ralph Wynne as boy and man. Now the suicide and 
 a hideous mass of post-mortem testimony, supplied by letters 
 and candid friends, told him everything hitherto unknown. 
 How he had been tricked, Rebecca wronged, and their lives 
 spoilt. 
 
 But revenge still lay sweet at the bottom of the bitter 
 cup, and Jasper hugged it tight. 
 
 In his first agony he turned and denounced his wife, 
 but her horrible stony silence froze the words in his 
 throat. 
 
 He turned away in impotent despair; what can a man 
 say to the glacial silence of a woman ? 
 
 But every deadly passion within Jasper was stung to 
 a wild life. His nature was wried and wrung. The only 
 cool thing left him was an indomitable brain, steadied and 
 hardened to a crude maturity. 
 
 That of conventional guilt Isabella was wholly free, he 
 was quite aware. " She knew better," he grimly com- 
 mented, and stood staunchly by her before the world. 
 It was her own awful silence that condemned her. But 
 in private he had another game to play ; his silent accept- 
 ance of her criminality became soon as sinister a factor 
 in their miserable lives as her silence of remorse. 
 
 In the intervals of his fiendish game Jasper drifted into 
 hard drinking Isabella into good works. 
 
 Jasper drank, not to efface himself; no amount of 
 spirituous liquor could blot out the squire, but alcohol threw 
 a veil of humour and of mercy over his wife, jogged his 
 inventive faculty, and suggested new and whimsical methods 
 of bringing things home to her. Brought back, in short, 
 some of the wild joy in living which her treachery had 
 destroyed. 
 
 A full and unstinted delight in the powers his abominable 
 habits let loose became in time an overwhelming tempta-
 
 22 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 tion to Jasper, to which, it is needless to say, he yielded 
 with a grace most debonnair. 
 
 Since then he had often been the centre of some wild 
 scandal vigirous with the open air, and wicked with 
 humour; but in this present outbreak there was the 
 satanic insolence of that which had then alarmed and 
 entranced the County. His achievements were indeed 
 monumental, and underlying their unholy levity, there lay 
 the ghastly coherence of a Monte Christo. The cup that 
 destroys had no morose or enervating effect upon Jasper 
 Winnington at any time, now it seemed diabolically to 
 inspire him. 
 
 If, however, he hoped to bring his folly home to his 
 son, as he had once in his agony broken Isabella his wife, 
 by the subtle and invincible weapons of ridicule, 
 or to lower George's pride in his high calling, he 
 was vastly mistaken. George was neither prig nor prophet ; 
 he was a sorely tried, chafing boy, but through all hindrance 
 he kept both his head and his dignity, and never budged 
 from his place beside his father. 
 
 He loved his wonderful father possibly with more faith 
 and hope than common carnal affection and fulfilled with 
 zeal and sincerity all sweet and fresh, and full of living 
 sap, could have removed mountains to save his father's 
 soul. To be continually interrupted in his divinity studies 
 in order to track that vagrant body upon its amazing 
 enterprises, was certainly a trial, but George honestly 
 faced it. 
 
 Even when Jasper stood up in smiling bulk to render 
 account of himself before his peers at the Quarter Sessions, 
 upon the occasion of the stringing up of a poacher on a 
 high gate the better part of a frosty night, explaining the 
 motives and ground-work of his action, till the Court 
 howled with laughter, the very victim sniggering feebly on 
 his bench, George sat by sturdily amidst the rollicking 
 crowd. 
 
 And being a manly gentleman he even laughed with the 
 rest at the volleys of thunderous wit. Such laughter could 
 bring ridicule neither upon his resolve, nor his ideals. He 
 knew well, moreover, that his presence there kept his 
 father's wit from degenerating into license, and when he 
 glanced at the giggling tinker, felt a comfortable convic-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 23 
 
 tion that but for his timely intervention the wretch would 
 now be food for worms. 
 
 When Jasper recovered from this particular bout, he 
 threw no further gibes at the Church as a career for a 
 man with his proper complement of blood, brain and 
 sinew. But from thenceforth he was a little afraid of 
 his son. And his son, being as yet new to grace, and 
 fermenting with zeal, could discern no pathos in this un- 
 toward dread. 
 
 George's sisters, absorbed in looking out for establish- 
 ments under the capable wings of their mother's rela- 
 tives, yet found time to give him their views upon 
 curates. 
 
 Miss Rebecca, being the godmother of George, a boon 
 she had wrested at the point of the sword from Isabella, 
 had destined him from his birth for the Army, and did not 
 spare him in the matter of argument. George's choice of 
 a profession, therefore, on the whole tried both the nerves 
 of the young man and the foundations of his faith, but 
 amongst many fleeting pains it brought him one everlast- 
 ing joy. 
 
 An old and invincible grudge harboured by Colonel 
 Westcar against Jasper Winnington, which he hoped 
 one day to pay off, had been largely instrumental in 
 attracting the former gentleman to Thryng, otherwise he 
 would have let the house. 
 
 When a self-righteous prig of eighteen, the pride of his 
 instructors and their despair, the Squire one baleful night 
 had tried to make young Westcar " drink like a gentle- 
 man, sir," and the noble resistance of the heroic youth 
 had fallen flat in the face of the wit of his wicked 
 tempter. 
 
 There are some things no man can ever forgive. To 
 the day of his death Colonel Westcar felt cold when he 
 recalled the giggles that swamped his solemn testimony. 
 
 To see a son of his a drivelling parson would be gall 
 and wormwood to this slayer of youthful virtue. Colonel 
 Westcar, directly George's leanings became known, scented 
 blood from afar, girded up his loins, and feeling that he 
 had not waited in vain, at the first call to arms forsook his 
 retirement and lurked round in the wake of the cam- 
 paign, which the Squire took good care should be con-
 
 24 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 ducted square in the eye of the public. So rapt and 
 enthralled indeed grew the old soldier, that he broke 
 one day the silence of years and set forth in fiery speech 
 to Joan's awe-stricken ears, the details of the agreeable 
 contest. 
 
 It was the first human occurrence he had ever inti- 
 mately discussed with the girl, having hitherto con- 
 fined himself to History, the moral cause and effect of 
 woman, and the levity underlying modern warfare. 
 
 While during the stated portion of each day wherein 
 his daughter was called upon to help him in his work- 
 shop, where he laboured without ceasing to undermine 
 the inventions of his enemies, Colonel Westcar some- 
 times launched forth upon the staying capacity inherent 
 in a cog. 
 
 But that an eminently unscientific young man of peace 
 should have succeeded in storming an intelligence so re- 
 mote from ordinary things, had made George, from the 
 very start, a dominant and imposing figure in the eyes of 
 innocent Joan. 
 
 The behaviour of the young aspirant for spiritual 
 honours, moreover, throughout the conflict, militarism 
 tempered with scholarship, really did appeal even to the 
 vengeful Colonel, wherefore he grew a little human when 
 he spoke of George. 
 
 When the first shock of awe had worn off, and she beheld 
 George eating at her very own table, Joan might possibly 
 have discerned him as man, had he not squared up to her 
 father upon four different occasions, each time got the better 
 of him, yet left them both smiling. 
 
 With effect so startling, what but reverence was possible 
 to the crushed coerced mind of so young a damsel? 
 And so the fear in regard to all men wherewith her 
 father had filled Joan gave way gradually to a sweet 
 reverence for one. 
 
 Having first given wings to her imagination, George 
 now set it off thrilling artlessly about holy things. 
 
 But his early training in the ways of men pro- 
 tected him from many of the antics of curates. Lest 
 he should fall into mawkishness, quite unconsciously he 
 grew into a half-shy, wholly fearless boy, and in his 
 touch there was cleansing.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 25 
 
 He reminded Joan of Christ amidst the elders; to 
 couple him with love or silliness would, to her simple 
 mind, have been blasphemy most vulgar and rank, and 
 yet being a boy kept him easy, the air sunny and fresh. 
 
 Joan learnt to breathe, and hope, and believe, and to 
 do beautifully all that she did. She was making ready 
 to think even, when one morning George woke up a man, 
 to know that he loved her. 
 
 It was a blow to George. He yearned always for the 
 intellectual grasp of St. Paul, and in his time had suffered 
 promptings of celibacy. 
 
 He was in a sore dilemma ; and yet had too much work 
 on his hands to wrap himself up in his own affairs and 
 emotions. His holiday was still a month off and here 
 was love staring him imperiously in the face. 
 
 George was quite human ; he had already met and 
 hob-nobbed with love. But what Love ! a shadow in 
 the twilight that must inevitably have melted in his grasp. 
 It had nothing to do with the force that now moved him. 
 This fire that warmed him was fire from Heaven. In 
 the spirit that inspired him was there the spirit of the 
 Lord of Hosts. 
 
 He plunged into his clothes and went swiftly to Church, 
 and in the next half-hour no man ever strove harder than 
 George to fix his heart and eyes upon God, but he was 
 four-and-twenty, and they both ran off to Joan, sweet 
 white little Joan; her undisturbed eyes turned gently to 
 his shocked ones. 
 
 Beaten at one breach, in his straight way, George 
 marched up to another. The lambent mystery behind 
 those chesnut eyes was of God's making, and for his help. 
 He would call upon it. So he looked down at her frankly, 
 his face full of a great demand, and Joan, her thoughts 
 from some hurt in George's face, circling round the Christ 
 boy puzzled by an Elder's subtlety, not knowing what she 
 did, or why she did it, smiled up at the appeal. 
 
 The prayers lost nothing by the unseemly meeting 
 of those honest young eyes, for George's heart was sing- 
 ing praises to God in that He had made Joan, and Joan 
 was glad to be alive that she might follow in George's 
 steps to Church. 
 
 George went home to think it all out, and forgetting
 
 26 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 his breakfast; celibacy, a vegetable diet and the apostle 
 Paul, came down upon him like a damp vapour. Shaking 
 himself he went out amongst his people and came home 
 through the woods, and tried by the ordeal of the hearts 
 of men, the soul of the woods and the waters, the sun 
 and air, the earth and all things above and below it. 
 Joan stood the test. 
 
 She was fresh from God's hands ; George saw that she 
 was good. St. Paul and celibacy fled screaming; a 
 vegetable diet suggested deadly sins. Joan and deadly 
 sins ! George swept the suggestion from his mind and 
 ate an enormous dinner. 
 
 But he kept all these things in his heart, borrowed 
 faith from Joan's eyes which begat faith in himself ; from 
 faith came strength, and from strength sweetness. 
 
 As for Joan, her love and all things good and gracious 
 advanced in bounds, and they all seemed to be narrowed 
 into the compass of the little pink granite Church upon 
 Ripley Rise. 
 
 Meanwhile Colonel Westcar had not been napping. 
 From the beginning of the acquaintance he had re- 
 cognised the possibility of the result. Given a mother 
 such as Joan's he had at least absoluteness to reckon 
 with. He looked upon the whole sacerdotal tribe in- 
 deed as feminine, but there was a certain sense of security 
 attached to an alliance with it. 
 
 If Joan were married, at an early age, to a curate, she 
 would be extremely unlikely, at any age, to be dancing 
 with cavalry men, whilst the marriage would be poisonously 
 distasteful to Jasper Winnington. 
 
 Although hating society, in order to harry an enemy, 
 or clip the wings of vanity, Colonel Westcar could yet 
 make sacrifices upon its altar. He told Joan it was full 
 time she began to return calls. He bought her an 
 abominable brown frock, told her to put her hair up, 
 and Mrs. Winnington having lately left her tri-yearly 
 tribute of cards at his gloomy house, whisked her up to 
 the Hall. 
 
 Joan was too sweet and quiet a little lady to be clumsy 
 under the fearless stare of smartness, but she wondered 
 as she drank her tea what miracle had brought forth 
 George from such a household, and prayed mutely that
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 27 
 
 the squire might not be moved to sit very close to 
 her. 
 
 " She hasn't a point one can hang on to," said Beatrice 
 yawning, as soon as the door had closed upon Joan. 
 " Awfully good of George to look after her.' 
 
 " Yes," murmured Cora. 
 
 " Full to the brim of Church decorations altar shining 
 in every inch of her. Even a curate couldn't stand that, 
 he'd want some change of diet, and George after all was 
 once a man." 
 
 Thus they dismissed Joan. 
 
 Colonel Westcar, however, was satisfied. 
 
 He had now brought out Joan sufficiently for all practi- 
 cal purposes. No one could accuse him of having kept 
 the girl up his sleeve in order to entrap the Church. 
 Nature would do the rest. 
 
 When weeks went on, however, and silence still reigned, 
 it struck this wise and fond father that too heavenly a love 
 may eventually lose sight altogether of marriage. 
 
 He knew himself to be suffering from a fatal complaint, 
 and was anxious before he died to see the Squire con- 
 founded. So one day he put a light to the mine. And 
 late in the falling twilight there leapt from George's 
 heart wonderful words; into Joan's eyes a wonderful 
 light ; and they set forth together, George's eyes upon 
 Heaven, Joan's upon George's. 
 
 And now the holes in the Vicarage roof were being 
 filled up, and the two were to be married in a month. 
 
 But Colonel Westcar had died, his revenge still un- 
 completed. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Miss REBECCA'S past held no illusions, and could be summed 
 up in a few simple words. " Only for the devilish lies of 
 one woman, and the devilish temper of another, I'd be up 
 there now," she reflected, with sombre eyes, as they left the 
 marshes and the heath beyond, and turned round by the 
 boundaries of Thryng. " And with me there, catch Jasper 
 blaspheming round the country like an ill-conditioned
 
 28 HE FOE GOD ONLY. 
 
 lunatic; wasting good breath, good intellect, and a heart 
 of gold, poor fool. H'd be at Westminster hectoring into 
 coherence that silly crew of wobblers now misruling the 
 land." 
 
 "Joan, how much do you know of your now imminent 
 people-in-law ? " she demanded, with startling distinctness. 
 
 Joan started. 
 
 " Hardly anything." 
 
 " Define that." 
 
 " I've called three times since I I wore long dresses, 
 and they've called four." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " The first two visits they yawned chiefly," said Joan, with 
 some hesitation. " The third they answered all their own 
 questions. But since I've heard them talk more, I can 
 understand how dull I must seem to them." 
 
 " It will be better, perhaps," said Miss Rebecca virtuously, 
 " that you should hear of your future connections from a 
 friend." 
 
 "Yes," said Joan, meekly. 
 
 "As for dullness, they were as dull at eighteen as you; 
 dullness is the privilege of extreme youth. Even now they're 
 as shallow as duck-ponds. Indeed, there's something of the 
 duck-pond, to my mind, in all modern smartness, the 
 phosphorus of the swamp, a suggestion of malaria about 
 it, so frequently is it a harbinger of decay the last throw 
 of the pass&e." 
 
 She paused, with a kindlier tolerance, and sighed. 
 
 "After all, it's in the divine order, perhaps. Look 
 at the heroic efforts of Nature to beautify decay, and smart- 
 ness, I'll not deny, is useful in settling girls whom youth 
 has left stranded. The lamp of your wise virgin throws, I 
 fear, too pale and chaste a gleam for young men dazzled 
 with electric light and the garishness of the new life. 
 Nowadays they like a suggestion of brimstone, even about 
 their virgins. At the same time," she wandered on, harking 
 back to her own centre of thought, " smartness won't teach 
 a girl to know a man when she sees one. Cora is hovering 
 on the verge of a scabbard with a tailor's sword inside it, 
 and calls the construction a soldier, while Beatrice is 
 engaged to a jockey with half-moon legs. Had these girls 
 cultivated the acquaintance of their father it would have
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 29 
 
 given them a glimpse into the things that go to the making 
 of men." 
 
 " But but " 
 
 Miss Rebecca's chin was in the air. " My dear child, you 
 remind me of the ' Maiden's Prayer.' A vicarage hen," she 
 reflected under her breath, " with an inherited taste for 
 olives. But, dear me! You're quite right. There's 
 nothing you have heard that isn't true : Jasper Winnington 
 drinks with shameless persistence; he makes hay of the 
 proprieties; he outrages his wife, and annoys his children. 
 He is the despair of the Church and the perennial delight 
 of old maids' tea-parties." 
 
 " But " 
 
 " I can ' but,' too, my girl," said Miss Rebecca, with 
 dignity, " and I defy anyone to say that Jasper Winnington 
 has ever made a beast of himself in his cups or has ever 
 maundered. He drinks, at least, like a man." 
 
 Miss Rebecca reared herself up like a cask on end, and 
 snorted audibly. Joan was horribly impressed. Her con- 
 science smote her, but her eyes flashed. The hot breath 
 of battle was in her face, and there was a spice of the 
 South wind in it. 
 
 And though a challenge had been thrown down on behalf 
 of the piggish sin of drunkenness, there yet lurked justice in 
 the glove. 
 
 The faint disgust wherewith, up to this moment, the 
 shouting notoriety of George's father had infected Joan, 
 yielded all at once to a sense of excited interest. 
 
 Miss Rebecca felt satisfied. " Nor is there a trace of the 
 slimy reptile in this old reprobate," she resumed. " Nor 
 yet the down-at-heels sloven. Jasper is clean, body and 
 mind. There is nothing in him," she said proudly, " to 
 hurt a girl." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Joan. In her state of mental confusion 
 hardly an unnatural remark, as both reason and conscience 
 assured Miss Rebecca, but what in the name of goodness 
 had either reason or conscience to do with Jasper? She 
 flushed wrathfully, but bit down upon direct rebuke. 
 
 " Jasper Winnington," she explained haughtily, " is no 
 injured lamb, but he's not a wolf in sheep's clothing, at 
 least Thank God for that," she muttered. " If either of 
 those young women had had the sense to tackle the man,
 
 30 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 she could have wound him round her finger I see doubt 
 in your heart and George in your eyes, Joan. George 
 couldn't do it; sons are clumsy and conventional creatures 
 in the face of their father's sins, and George is tarred with 
 the clerical tar-brush. He can't look at his father without 
 thinking of conversion. Jasper, poor soul, and conversion 
 are miles apart. I don't blame George for his yearnings, 
 but it puts him out of the running. Moreover, I understand 
 and appreciate George's attitude in the matter. It's a con- 
 flict between spirit and good taste; spirit urging him to 
 action ; good taste suggesting that he may be about to take 
 an unwarrantable liberty. There's a certain indecency in a 
 son, ordained or not, hankering to convert his father, but 
 a girl can slip into a lonely heart and work there." 
 
 " Lonely ? " said Joan sharply, out of the silence. Lonely 
 and languishing under the disapproval of George ! The sin 
 shrank before its punishment, a pink wave of sympathy rose 
 to her cheeks ; there were tears at the bottom of her chest- 
 nut eyes. 
 
 " Lonely ? Yes, lonely. And why not, pray ? Stringing 
 up poachers, sousing yourself in whisky, and scandalising 
 the County, won't prevent a man's carrying an empty heart 
 in his body." 
 
 Of a sudden Miss Rebecca rose in her seat, and craned 
 her head so as to look firmly at a clump of bright-leaved 
 beeches, with one tall oak to the right of them. " The 
 tree," she muttered, " the tree, where Ralph lay dead and 
 to see it every time she goes in and out. God help the 
 woman ! " She dropped back, silent and a little grey. 
 
 Joan saw neither the movement nor the old woman's face. 
 She was making up her mind hard, and when at last she 
 spoke her eyes winced away from Miss Rebecca's, and fell 
 upon her clasped hands. 
 
 " George's brother and and the little boy ? " she 
 faltered. 
 
 " Ah ! ah ! " It was a little odd, hunted cry. " So you've 
 heard it, then ? " said Rebecca, her hands falling idle on the 
 knitting. " Dick is a good lad," she began, in a patient 
 tired voice, " with his mother's pride and horror of public 
 betrayal. He has always kept himself well out of the way. 
 He's in a Hussar regiment, as you know, and has exchanged 
 three times to avoid England and his home. And, and
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 31 
 
 he who used to be a fiery boy is now a grave, cold man. 
 His wife, a nice little unoriginal goose, has caught his tone 
 and carefully feminised it. They never came to the house 
 till the child was eight, and from the moment Mrs. Dick 
 entered it she was a hen with outstretched wings protecting 
 the boy from a hawk." Miss Rebecca paused, and moved 
 uneasily. " She did it badly she cackled. Jasper Win- 
 nington was fairly beside himself during the visit, and one 
 night, the mother's back turned, he made the poor white 
 weakling half drunk with champagne. She found him 
 capering amongst the glasses howling " 
 
 " Oh ! Stop ! " 
 
 Miss Westcar coughed hoarsely. 
 
 " I said just now that Jasper Winnington had never made 
 a beast of himself; I'll retract that. He did then. That 
 night he sank lower than any beast. 
 
 " It's an awful thing," she resumed presently, " when a 
 man takes it into his own hands to do justice upon the 
 mother of his children. It's an awful thing to see the 
 pride of a proud woman brought low. She hasn't given a 
 dinner-party, poor creature, since just after George's birth. 
 
 " She married mainly to make the County stare. It's 
 stared for twenty years, but hardly in the way she proposed 
 that it should stare. In my time," said Miss Rebecca, with 
 a queer break in her voice, " I've cried for Isabella Winning- 
 ton. Give you my word I have," she repeated vehemently, 
 "but now that she whimpers" she threw up her white 
 head " I'm blest if I can. You may bring human nature 
 to a dish of hyssop, but you can't make it drink. I never 
 see Isabella Winnington but I thank God that in Heaven 
 there are many mansions. Hullo ! There's George on the 
 prowl. Thank God you've had the luck to find a man in 
 spite of many things and that you haven't the temper of 
 seven devils yourself. There, child ! Jump out. For your 
 sake I'll try to behave decently to your mother-in-law."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MRS. WINNINGTON was gazing with weary eyes through 
 the deep-set wide windows of her drawing-room at a 
 Nature she frankly detested, when, with a precipitancy 
 singularly unlike her habitual role of imperial delibera- 
 tion, she rose to her feet. " Beatrice ! Cora ! " she cried, 
 " Isn't that the Purley carriage ? " 
 
 Cora huddled back in her chair feebly; Beatrice 
 plunged to the window, and, with a little shriek of de- 
 light and the agility of a professional, calmly performed 
 the high kick. 
 
 " Beatrice ! " wailed her mother, " if only you would 
 have a little consideration for me, and disgrace yourself 
 in your own bed-room, if you must do so. That insuffer- 
 able woman, with the manners and customs of the stable 
 yard ! I wish you'd both been out. Her language isn't 
 fit for girls." 
 
 " Keep your hair on, mother, dear. We're not eighteen, 
 like Joan. As for language " 
 
 " You can restrain yourself on occasion, Beatrice. She 
 is incapable in any condition of restraint. Assafoetida and 
 the stable ! Cora, give me my smelling bottle." 
 
 " Cora looks bashed. Here you are. Pah ! I'd rather 
 smell Miss Rebecca." 
 
 Beatrice ran a superb physique for all it was worth, and 
 steered clear of scented sins. " Besides," said she, " you 
 can't sniff at stables and at the same time be engaged to 
 a pair of legs like Billy's." 
 
 Billy " 
 
 " Has four thousand a year," said Bee, with a blithe 
 laugh, " and he firmly believes I'm twenty-three ; that
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 33 
 
 makes you twenty-one, Cora. You ought to appreciate 
 Billy more keenly than you do." 
 
 " And with the Peerage and women in his house ! " 
 murmured Cora. " Billy is odd, certainly, but he has 
 all his wits about him surely ? " 
 
 " Billy's a sportsman, you see," sweetly rejoined Bea- 
 trice, " not a toy soldier ; he doesn't go poking a col- 
 lapsible little sword into the chronological flights of 
 women." 
 
 Cora flushed delicately. The Honourable Henry Ger- 
 vase, as was well known, had not disdained to profit by 
 the researches of a feminine friend, and to smile palely 
 at the innocent anachronisms of his betrothed. Hence 
 Cora's melancholy acceptance of the penalties of a name. 
 
 Beatrice was now frankly smoothing out a wrinkle, before 
 a mirror. 
 
 " Being Lower Middle has screaming advantages," she 
 said good-naturedly, but with a sigh. 
 
 Cora, still faintly pink, bit her small lips. She was a 
 frail, fearful little thing, of those who fade young. The 
 mere thought of age made her teeth want to chatter. 
 
 " Miss Rebecca, even in the distance, makes me shiver," 
 she murmured with apologetic mendacity. 
 
 " So it Would me," laughed Beatrice, " if there was 
 anyone about. She's so fiendishly accurate as to dates, 
 and will go stumping back to pre-natal periods. Buck up, 
 Cora, the men won't be back these three hours." 
 
 " She'll be certain to do something outrageous," said 
 Mrs. Wilmington, with stony eyes, " and before the ser- 
 vants." 
 
 " Take her easy, mother jolly old recruiting sergeant ! 
 If she'd wear a bunch of ribbons on her bonnet and twirl 
 her moustaches she'd be perfect." 
 
 " Not one redeeming point," wailed the sad mother, 
 passing a delicately-powdered handkerchief over her 
 stately nose. " Every acre she has is entailed, otherwise 
 
 that girl " Her eyes fell upon Beatrice's jovial grin. 
 
 " There's vulgarity in the woman's very atmosphere," she 
 cried. " You become impossible at her approach, Beatrice. 
 Thank God, marriage may save you." 
 
 " Marriage with Billy ! Dear me ! What's keeping 
 the old woman ? "
 
 34 HE FOE GOD iONLY. 
 
 " Beatrice ! My dear Rebecca, this is delightful, and 
 so unexpected." 
 
 " Sorry to startle you, but since Joan's a kinswoman 
 I thought I'd better come to pay my respects upon the 
 humph interesting occasion to congratulate or condole 
 as the case may be." With discomposing agility she 
 swung round upon the girls. " You didn't expect George 
 to make a fool of himself quite so young," she demanded, 
 " and if he did, you'd have been glad if he'd shown more 
 of the wisdom of the serpent in his folly, eh, girls ? " 
 
 " Oh ! we've long given up hoping for accountable be- 
 haviour so far as George is concerned," said Beatrice, with 
 cheerful defiance. 
 
 " My dear Rebecca ! " Isabella interposed hastily, " do 
 sit down." Rebecca turned and paused, and for one in- 
 stant the old enemies, rigid and cold with memory, stood 
 facing one another. 
 
 They were both erect, unbending, big women, but there 
 the resemblance ceased. 
 
 In the days of her glory Mrs. Winnington had been 
 beautiful in an imperial style, and through her desolation 
 she clung hard both to frame and feature. There was 
 pathos in the hard long lines of the lonely waist, the 
 padded breast, the cold unyielding shoulders, that could 
 never have crouched amongst children. But it was all 
 wonderfully fine and majestic; a palatial scaffolding 
 from which an artist suggested all things. Mrs. Win- 
 nington was thankful to have saved so much from 
 a wreck so mighty, and in the sombre magnificence 
 of her apparel there was a hint of a Phoenix arising from 
 the ashes. 
 
 Miss Rebecca, on the contrary, let the years work their 
 will upon her. She could discern no indecency, in fact 
 and accentuated the meagreness of a knot of grisled hair, 
 hrjf-way up her head, by generous bulwarks of ancient 
 tortoise-shell. 
 
 She wore the best corded silk, well off the ground; a 
 small white tucker about her neck, and an iron-grey 
 moustache; an untoward adornment that afflicted her 
 friends and gave an handle unto her enemies, but she 
 had long accepted it with a proud humility. 
 
 In her hours of hard despair it was a visible and abiding
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 35 
 
 monument to the death of Hope. In softer intervals, an 
 irrefragable protest against feminine duplicity. 
 
 Miss Rebecca's sack-like vastness caused a stirring of 
 warmth in the frozen veins of her slim supplanter. This 
 the black-eyed toast of four Counties? This? 
 
 Isabella had indeed prevailed. Her enemy had become 
 as naught before her. 
 
 " Sit down, Rebecca," she said again, a note of solemn 
 joy in her spent voice. 
 
 Miss Rebecca thumped down upon a chair. 
 
 " Don't let me disturb you, girls," she boomed. " I 
 know I've broken into a conversation." 
 
 " Oh ! well ! " said Mrs. Winnington sweetly, " with mar- 
 riage bells in the air, it's natural " 
 
 " To be braying fools in their folly. It certainly is. 
 I've been at it myself these two days. I'm very angry 
 with Joan, plunging into the depths before she's learnt 
 to swim." 
 
 " Ah ! I know marriage is a subject you object to 
 discussing." 
 
 " I object ! You're entirely mistaken ; I'm no faddist, 
 and believe in the free discussion of everything. Mar- 
 riage to my mind is a dispensation, not unlike vaccina- 
 tion; in preserving those who experiment in it from cer- 
 tain gross and definite dangers, it may land them in others 
 less obvious, perhaps, but far more subtle. Because I 
 have not chosen to provide data for the thing, and so 
 put myself at the mercy of the reckless speculation of 
 fools, is no reason that others should not do so." She 
 paused to fling a pellet of benevolence at the young 
 people. " I can only hope for your sakes, girls, that the 
 practice of the state may be less dull than all the theories 
 in regard to it I have so far come across." 
 
 " You've been so kind to little Joan," cooed Isabella, " I 
 can't think what she'd have done without you." 
 
 All the way up the drive Miss Rebecca had been 
 striving mightily after meekness ; an exercise so abhorrent 
 that in order to lighten the strain she had been totting up 
 the sins of Isabella, together with the excuses possible 
 for an honest mind to make for Jasper. The complica- 
 tions resulting had been making hay of her temper. Now 
 the suffering-saint expression overspreading Isabella's
 
 36 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 eagle, bedaubed nose was the last straw. Forbearance 
 strolled off smiling. Miss Rebecca humped her back like 
 a cat. 
 
 " She managed to do without me for upwards of eighteen 
 years," she snapped. 
 
 " That wasn't your fault." 
 
 " In family squabbles the blame doesn't usually rest with 
 one side." 
 
 Beatrice chuckled softly in her chair. 
 
 Resolved to oppose to the grossness of brute force the 
 sublime restraint of noblesse oblige, Mrs. Winnington gently 
 sighed. 
 
 " You're so frank and honest, Rebecca," she purred. 
 
 " It's no use to try to mince matters, George's 
 marriage has been rather a shock; he's so young, dear 
 fellow, so unpractical, and dear little Joan " 
 
 " Has neither position, features, nor a stiver," affably 
 observed Miss Rebecca. " I quite understand, Isabella ; 
 it's been a facer." 
 
 " The old lady's too much for mother," reflected Bee, 
 rising slowly from her comfortable lounge, " and being 
 engaged to Billy makes you glad of any splutter any stir 
 in a dull pool is a boon." 
 
 " So far as I can see," she said lazily, her hand grace- 
 fully enough posed on her hip, " instead of weeping and 
 gnashing our teeth, we ought to be thanking our stars 
 that George is comparatively safe, and won't be dis- 
 gracing us in some weird way " 
 
 " Beatrice ! " 
 
 " You never know," she pursued unmoved, " what George 
 would be at next. Rabid Spirituality will drive a man 
 to anything. He might have married a Bruised Reed 
 a social reformer the brand plucked from the burning 
 business anything." 
 
 Miss Rebecca glanced at the girl. Had her eyes not 
 been as hard as flints they'd have been Jasper's, and 
 you could see him in her wide and comely shoulders. 
 Miss Westcar paused a moment to peer closer. Her 
 mother's selfishness lurked like fiends in those sunny 
 dimples. Miss Rebecca's eyes, which had strangely 
 melted, jerked away from the girl. 
 
 She was better, however, than the mawkish mother,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 37 
 
 and after a conscientious study of Jasper's womenkind 
 one could feel more gently towards Jasper. 
 
 " Well, Beatrice, pray continue," she commanded. 
 
 " Well, you see, George's temptations are so varied and 
 extraordinary, and being man as well as curate, and having 
 no need to hitch himself up by a woman's petticoats, he'd 
 be certain to be attracted by beauty under a cloud. 
 George has given us a lot of anxiety. It's quite pleasant 
 to be able to breathe again." 
 
 " My dear Beatrice " 
 
 " But, mother, you know how we've suffered. Last year, 
 for example, that rescued widow " 
 
 " Oh ! Bee ! " bleated Cora. 
 
 "Who gave gin-parties," said Miss Rebecca, encourag- 
 ingly. 
 
 " But she profited by her knowledge of man. She fed 
 George. The one he picked up fainting at the Docks 
 was both respectable and sincerely religious, remember 
 her hymns, Cora? but she gave George ptomaine poison- 
 ing with a pie made out of a block ornament. She had 
 a sense of humour you'd never have expected of her. You 
 see, she'd been saving up two-thirds of the weekly allow- 
 ance to send to the Distressed Curates' Fund. As for Dis- 
 trict Visitors, with snub noses and relatives, they'd spring 
 up in a desert with a curate within scent. On the whole, 
 Miss Rebecca," concluded Bee, " I think you'd better con- 
 gratulate us, not condole with us." 
 
 " My dear girl," cried her mother, " that's neither a 
 pretty nor ahem quite a fair way of putting things." 
 
 " Pray don't distress yourself, Isabella. I don't dislike 
 Beatrice's methods of being rude. They're to the point." 
 
 With the courage born of fear, Cora flung herself into 
 the breach. 
 
 " But you're so just and quick at seeing things, dear 
 Miss Rebecca, you can understand our relief. It's not as 
 though we'd no stake in the Parish and George were at 
 some distance. Now he's coming so close it would be 
 dreadful if if he were to play fast and loose with a 
 family living. So Joan being so exactly right will make 
 us feel ever so much more comfortable; she really 
 will." 
 
 Miss Rebecca's round eyes goggled. " My dear young
 
 38 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 lady, pray don't apologise for your resignation in accept- 
 ing with meekness the undeserved cross of my young 
 kinswoman. Your unflinching fortitude in the matter 
 does you the highest honour." 
 
 Beatrice grinned complacently in her sister's face. The 
 door opened, and a gigantic footman tip-toed across the 
 room, a flimsy parcel laid delicately across his great arms. 
 The coming of Matthew was at the same moment a relief 
 and a bomb-shell. 
 
 In a flash, Miss Rebecca had risen to her legs. " Isa- 
 bella," said she, swift and decisive, " will you permit me 
 to speak to Matthew Jones? He belongs to Purley." 
 
 By Purley Miss Rebecca meant ME. 
 
 " Certainly, Rebecca," said Mrs. Winnington faintly. 
 
 " So, Matthew Jones," said Miss Rebecca, " you're here 
 then in domestic service ? " She shot up her tortoise-shell- 
 handled glasses, and carefully inspected the man. " A 
 great over-fed house-rabbit," she murmured, absently, 
 " with the makings of a soldier in him. And the letter I 
 got from you, from Kinglake Barracks, Matthew Jones? 
 What about that ? " 
 
 " I I Ma'am " 
 
 " You lied ; yes. And the money for incidental ex- 
 penses? And the letter to the Colonel? I've been 
 wondering at getting no reply Didn't I put you through 
 your drill-book till you could say it backward? Speak 
 up, man ! " 
 
 " Yes'm." 
 
 " Didn't I dose you into hard condition till your own 
 mother wouldn't know you. What ? " 
 
 " Yes'm." 
 
 " Has the man no sense of shame ? Why you were 
 the decentist hum proposed recruit in looks thanks to 
 the trouble I took with you we've sent up these five 
 years, and Purley noted through the County for well-set-up 
 men. Miss Rebecca glanced vindictively at a pug de- 
 risively regarding the scene. " And now I find you nurse- 
 maiding a lap-dog. But if you forget your duty, Matthew 
 Jones, I don't forget mine. You'll be fighting for your 
 Queen and England's glory yet or my name isn't Rebecca 
 Westcar. Meanwhile, take the bottle I'll send you, and 
 don't forget your physical exercises. Never till this
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 39 
 
 moment have I ever blushed for Purley. I'll explain this 
 matter to your mistress. Go." 
 
 " I must apologise, Isabella," she resumed when the 
 man had vanished, " for what may strike you as unwarrant- 
 able interference, but I daresay you didn't know that 
 the fellow belongs root and branch to Purley. I can say 
 without vain-glory that I saved his life as a child croup, 
 that penalty of lusty infants and, seeing what possibilities 
 his shoulders promised, I kept my eye on him. I never 
 gave the boy a dose, but I had his Country in view. Size, 
 physique, everything, and the authorities thanking you for 
 miserable five-foot-fives ! I don't want to do anything 
 underhand, Isabella, but we must arrange this matter." 
 
 Knowing that whoso openly entered the lists against 
 Miss Rebecca when her overmastering passion took the 
 field must inevitably emerge stripped of every rag of 
 dignity, Mrs. Winnington during this trying scene had 
 maintained a proud silence. Now with calm magnificence 
 she demanded what dear Rebecca proposed to do, while 
 Beatrice broke in with pleased excitement, " Dear me ! 
 Matthew a soldier ! But has he any courage ? " 
 
 " Courage ! Not the courage of a week-old calf. That's 
 a detail. He'll acquire the courage of custom, shame, and 
 imitation after a bit. Isabella, we must put this through. 
 For everybody's sake the Army should absorb that mass 
 of undisciplined brute force a potential besom of 
 iniquity and riddle it into coherent power. You're 
 going to be a soldier's wife, Cora, I wonder you can stand 
 the sight of wasted bulk like that littering the premises. 
 Isabella, if you let me have Matthew before he's too far 
 gone, I'll see you don't suffer. Is he much of a servant? " 
 
 " Now, mother, there's a sporting offer for you," 
 counselled Beatrice promptly. " Take it ; Matthew's a 
 lout." 
 
 " I can't say that he's very efficient," admitted her 
 mother. 
 
 " Come now," said Miss Rebecca softening, " that's fair 
 and satisfactory. Just what you'd expect. A bull in a 
 china shop. I can do better for you than that. Plenty 
 of medical unfits for purposes of house decoration and 
 the County." She pondered, frowning, to consult her 
 tablets. " I have now on my hands a six-foot-two thing
 
 40 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 who's been straining his heart at blacksmithing. Good- 
 looking, but bloated; great flabby calves, will grow stable 
 with good food. Heart not weak enough to interfere with 
 house-work. A nice mild manner; very thing for a foot- 
 man, I'll send him over to-morrow." 
 
 Miss Rebecca, forgetting her tablets, whipped out her 
 handkerchief and thoughtfully tied a knot in it. 
 
 Mrs. Winnington smiled faintly. " And we thought the 
 Feudal System an exploded dream," said she. 
 
 " That's just as one likes to make it. Catch it being 
 an exploded dream civilised, of course, and tempered to 
 a reformed Christianity, so long as I have a breath in 
 my body, or an acre to my name, I'll have no under-paid 
 clerks or emasculated flunkeys in my village, except, of 
 course, Nature chooses to exempt them from their duty. 
 Now let us get back to clerical affairs." 
 
 " But," pleaded poor Isabella in dismay, " let us first 
 ask Beatrice what her parcel contains." 
 
 " Clerical affairs," said Beatrice promptly. " You're all 
 giving Joan things to make her house decent, but I found 
 out that she's lived eighteen years in this vale of tears 
 without one lace petticoat, so I got her two, and one silk, 
 opal-tinted ; see ! she can wear it with anything. One 
 has to consider the servants." 
 
 " Oh ! Bee ! How thoughtful you are," cried Cora, 
 who really admired the broader point of view of her 
 sister. 
 
 " It was sweet of you, Beatrice," said her mother. 
 " But dear little Joan is so quiet in her dress, one doesn't 
 associate her with that sort of thing." 
 
 " Servants will. They expect the decencies of civilisa- 
 tion from visitors, vicars' wives or not. These will carry 
 her over a year. Afterwards she can assume the privileges 
 of her kind- The Church is as good, I suppose, as any 
 other cloak of charity. Meantime I thought I'd be on 
 the safe side and choose the petticoats myself." She 
 flicked up the lace flounces and wickedly laughed in Miss 
 Rebecca's flaming face. 
 
 " She has her father's taste for audacity seemingly," 
 thought that lady, with unwilling appreciation. 
 
 " I can't follow you, Beatrice," she remarked calmly. 
 "Your subtleties are beyond me."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 41 
 
 "Such a comfort," nervously threw in Mrs. Winnington, 
 " that little Joan and George are so entirely of one mind 
 in all things. My one fear is lest Joan's fervent religious 
 feeling may accentuate dear George's unpracticality. 
 George's tastes," she sighed, " leave unfortunately no mar- 
 gin in his cheque-book for further eccentricities." 
 
 "And since she's never tasted any flesh-pots," mused 
 Beatrice, " she can't very well be hankering after them." 
 
 Miss Rebecca was preserving an observant silence, but 
 her face jerked Cora's attitude of mute deprecation into 
 unwise words. 
 
 " How angelic to be above that sort of thing amusing 
 yourself, you know, and frocks," she murmured. 
 
 " Ripping," admitted Beatrice cordially. " Especially 
 about quarter-day." 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Winnington, with an anxious glance at 
 the brooding Rebecca. " Thank God, Joan is simply cut 
 out for a clergyman's wife." 
 
 Miss Rebecca smoothed her twitching moustache 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 " She chose my best Chambertin yesterday at luncheon," 
 she observed, " in preference to a fruity wholesome Port I 
 keep for curates not George, of course." 
 
 Beatrice softly whistled. 
 
 " I really can't see, Rebecca," said Mrs. Winnington, 
 " why ! " 
 
 " Beatrice can." 
 
 " It isn't after all," said Cora, in her inconsequent 
 way, " as though Joan were a great beauty or " 
 
 " Joan's a pencil sketch at present," said Miss Rebecca, 
 "what she will be none of us knows, until character has 
 filled her in." 
 
 " Sweet, gentle, unambitious. I am abundantly satis- 
 fied," protested Mrs. Winnington. 
 
 " A good deal of ambition may go with a decent enough 
 temper," commented her adversary. "We're none of 
 us in a position to judge of Joan as the wife of a vicar 
 devoured with holy zeal. George's goings-on make me 
 sick, but he's faithful and single-minded to his finger-tips. 
 He has that true and unfailing devotion to a lofty aim 
 which makes for greatness, which is greatness," she said, 
 her eyes and voice full of sincere feeling. " However far
 
 42 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 he may fall short of wordly wisdom. George will be a 
 force in the land." 
 
 Mrs. Winnington was after all the mother of George; 
 she flushed with a sweet pleasure she had not known these 
 many years, and Beatrice's eyes shot out friendliness, but 
 Cora only wished petulantly that tea would come and 
 relieve them of the odious woman. 
 
 "I don't want either side to be hampered by an un- 
 deserved martyrdom," pursued Miss Rebecca in absent- 
 minded jerks. " A vicar's wife with one brace of petti- 
 coats, and those her first," she nicked her head at the 
 foam of white against Beatrice's sea-green blouse. " You 
 don't know what you may be doing. Beatrice ; you may 
 be laying the seeds of a taste for Nottingham lace in 
 Joan," (" I'll get out some of my lace for the other petti- 
 coats," she mentally decided, " and confound their im- 
 pudence.") " and revolutionising plans and prophecies. 
 I was capable myself at eighteen of being an impassioned 
 vicar's wife for a month or so." 
 
 Beatrice chuckled. 
 
 "Weren't you? " demanded Miss Rebecca. 
 
 " Well, no." 
 
 " I think too well of you to believe it. You were as 
 capable of a flutter of purblind devotion as any other 
 young fool. Why, Cora there ! " she wagged her head at 
 that vision of languid protest, " at seventeen wanted to 
 go out to India to harry honest men's harems, and look 
 at her now. With such object lessons to teach us wisr 
 dom, which of us can prophesy of Joan? George has no 
 business to go shelving a girl before she's looked round 
 her. It's like a man's filling up a girl's programme a 
 week before the ball. When I gave dances, if any one 
 ventured to play that scurvy trick I took the liberty of 
 drawing my pencil through his entries." 
 
 Here an onimous silence fell upon the circle. Miss 
 Rebecca looked up to see Mrs. Winnington, with the look 
 of one who has borne so much that now she feels ready 
 for anything, gazing prayerfully at her clasped hands. 
 
 A stubborn look of sulk was spoiling the frank audacity 
 of Beatrice's handsome face, and Cora on the sofa looked 
 like a broken flower. 
 
 Miss Rebecca's eyes flashed past them all to see Jasper,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 43 
 
 George, and Joan coming rapidly across the terrace. 
 With a prick of despair she sat back solidly in her chair. 
 " Two women to contend against and one tragic cat," she 
 mused, " a saint, and your own vile propensities. Ah ! 
 Jasper, Jasper ! it's only God Himself who can help 
 you ! " 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IT was after a hallowed and unforgettable hour with Joan 
 that the Squire first hove in sight, and George's thrilling 
 face fell dull as lead. 
 
 From his father's stride there was no prophesying any- 
 thing in regard to this wonderful man's condition. Two 
 steps to the left and he could keep the beautiful moment 
 fair and fresh for ever. It was theirs their own, his and 
 Joan's. It was defrauding no one if they went quickly 
 and unperceived. Without a moment's hesitation George 
 struck out for the leafy lane. 
 
 "It's quicker, if anything, to go home by the fir grove," 
 he muttered, without a blush. 
 
 Her habit of prompt obedience turned Joan's face also, 
 but conscience hung hard upon her heels. 
 
 She was frankly afraid of George's father. When she 
 prayed for him, invariably she shivered, but his condition 
 deeply moved her. 
 
 To be lonely with wife and children warm about you! 
 To be disapproved of by George ! 
 
 The shadow upon George's face certainly brought 
 avalanches of his father's strange explosive iniquities clatter- 
 ing down upon Joan; but with another shy glance came a 
 sweet wave of sympathy. 
 
 The sins paled before their punishment. If George said 
 absolutely nothing, his effect, even then, was very much 
 like that of Church, saving that Church made you re- 
 member your sins, whilst George made you forget them. 
 
 To make it possible for so vast a sinner as that magnifi- 
 cent figure upon the horizon to forget his unutterable sins 
 even for ten minutes to snatch one little spell of ease
 
 44 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 from an everlasting ache simply by the application of 
 George, was surely worth any sacrifice of self. A blurred 
 vision of Dives thirsting fierily for a drop of cold water, 
 flitted through the sweet changes of Joan's eyes. She 
 halted shyly upon one leg. 
 
 "George," she faltered, "couldn't we catch your father? 
 See, he's just turned back up the hill." 
 
 George looked frankly dumbfounded. But although he 
 failed to fathom the meaning in her puzzling eyes, in a way 
 he had lately fallen into, still staring, he answered blindly 
 to their demand. 
 
 " I wanted you to myself, horribly," he grumbled 
 
 smiling. " However ! I say, did you ever see such a 
 
 stride?" 
 
 " No," she panted. " I, I'm glad he's just like that." 
 
 Jasper seemed somewhat startled at sight of the pursuing 
 pair. As he halted he slightly gasped. 
 
 " Hullo ! George, by Jove, and the little bride ! Been 
 round to look at your drawing-room?" "Odd choice for 
 George," he thought rapidly, squinting at her across his 
 son. " Deuce take it, why didn't I go back by the pad- 
 dock? Better have that vault under the Chancel seen to, 
 George," he hurriedly observed. " Smells clammy. Pity 
 our ancestors hadn't some consideration for those that came 
 after 'em. Now you'll be filling the old place with all the 
 old worn the ahem the Church people of the county side, 
 you must see they're not wiped out with typhoid." 
 
 " Yes, sir. But Morris says it's the farm drain that smells, 
 not the vaults." 
 
 " Oh ! Afraid of interfering with the altar. That's the 
 game, is it? Have it your own way, then, but remember I 
 warned you." 
 
 Hereupon the conversation seemed to languish. 
 
 The effect of George was less uplifting than Joan had 
 hoped, and George himself did not seem happy. 
 
 Jasper looked down at the slight figure beside him taking 
 two steps to his one, and carefully shortened his stride. 
 
 " Poor little weed," he sighed, " I hope she won't be 
 bringing a race of pigmies into a fine family." 
 
 " Nice weather," he remarked, involuntarily lowering his 
 tone. Being with the pair of them made him feel somehow 
 as though he were in a sick room. " And to be living from
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 45 
 
 now on," he reflected, restively, " under the very shadow of 
 the Church feminine! Bad enough, surely, to be raked 
 spiritually from stem to stern by a son of your own." 
 
 He felt a distressing certainty that George, " from the 
 look of the fellow," knew perfectly well all about certain 
 late events which he'd have been glad enough now had 
 never taken place.' 
 
 He glanced again at George's remarkable choice and 
 went on with the weather. 
 
 That squeezed to the last drop, he showed Joan the 
 point from whence once or twice within the memory of 
 man, the sea had been reported as distinctly visible, but 
 there was a strain in the situation. 
 
 " You've been looking up the Holmes's, sir," said George 
 suddenly. 
 
 " Yes," said Jasper, with some precipitation, " most 
 amiable family, stock, lock and barrel, all taking a keen 
 and intelligent interest in one another's complaints, and so 
 far as I can gather, in nothing else. Now," reflected Jasper 
 nervously, " he'll be thinking I helped the poor devils by 
 way of a penance. The cloven hoof will out in George, 
 and 'pon my soul I'm hanged if 'twas that altogether not 
 but what one does feel like it after a bad turn," he sighed. 
 
 To the blank astonishment of both men, Joan fetched up 
 short, with an excited little jump. 
 
 " But was it of you they were speaking," she cried, " they 
 were so excited, and sobbing, you know and George 
 seemed to be calming them down, I thought I really 
 thought they meant God, and I felt dreadfully in the way. 
 But now now I wish I had listened properly." 
 
 George laughed. 
 
 " I thought you were listening properly, else I'd have 
 explained." 
 
 " Well, you see, it felt rather like listening at the door, so 
 I thought I'd better think of something else, but, at least, I 
 heard something." 
 
 She sidled nearer to the stately sinner, and struck out so 
 eagerly that he had no longer to consider her weakness. 
 Her short steps marched boldly with his long ones. 
 
 To be actively proud of George's father was a sensation 
 so novel and exhilarating, that Joan felt quite equal to 
 flying.
 
 46 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Good Lord," thought the embarrassed man, " what's up 
 now. Will this whey-faced chit be wanting to whitewash 
 me next? This is what comes of letting the Church in on 
 your chimney corner." 
 
 " What are you at with those stables, George ? " Joan's 
 ecstasy weakened ; she caught her breath. 
 
 " We're so awfully short of room, sir, just yet, for schools 
 and things, I thought we'd utilize those loose boxes, until we 
 can look round us." 
 
 " Where are the horses to go, then ? You'll want two." 
 
 " I can manage the Parish all right on my bicycle, I 
 find." 
 
 Jasper ground his stick hard into a mole hill. The veins 
 on his shapely hands stood out like cords. The devilish 
 bane of a family living buzzed in his brain. 
 
 " Bicycle ! " he hissed. " Didn't know you put hunting 
 amongst the offences." 
 
 " I don't, but I can't see where the time for it comes in." 
 
 "You don't propose to be stumping the country all day 
 and every day of the week, do you ? Even bishops so I'm 
 told, take Monday. And look at 'em at shooting-parties, 
 sitting round among the women and the cold pies. Sorry 
 sight it is, too, though if all was known, daresay they'd be 
 glad enough to whip off their aprons, poor devils, and get 
 hold of a gun." 
 
 " I haven't the strength of mind of a bishop, sir. If I 
 hunted on Monday, I'd want to be hunting Wednesday, and 
 Friday as well, and if I went to a shooting-party, I couldn't 
 for the life of me sit harmless among the pies. Bishops, 
 you see, have had more time to get over that sort of thing. 
 I have it all before me, and you know I never could do 
 more than one thing at a time. Any ideas I happen to 
 have will keep hanging round the particular thing I have in 
 hand." 
 
 Jasper grunted. 
 
 " Just now I want to make a good thing out of a parson's 
 life, if I can," said George, flushing. " I believe there's 
 really a lot in it, if you can only get hold of it, and to try 
 to do that will take all my time." 
 
 " Bally rot ! There's classical truth in the virtue of 
 sport. Centuries ago, when priests were men, they spoke 
 of sport as the best antidote to the seven deadly sins."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 47 
 
 " It's a difficult matter for us to thresh out, sir," said 
 George, laughing. " Nothing I like better than sport, but 
 I think this game more worth the candle than any other, 
 and you don't, and if we were to batter at one another from 
 this till Christmas, we'd get no farther. After all, I couldn't 
 hunt and work when I was at Oxford. I had to give up 
 horses the minute I put the pace on. 
 
 " Oxford," blurted Jasper, " was a a preparation." 
 
 " So is this," said his son. 
 
 '' Oh ! hang it all ! Tell me fresh air and exercise won't 
 benefit the Church as stuffy and stale as a woman's 
 boudoir. What the Church wants is a good, downright 
 fellow like Peter, with a whip of small cords to sweep the 
 maggots out of all your brains. Back yourself up with 
 wholesome exercise, and then go rip round among the 
 squabbling old maids in the Church Congress. That's 
 what will sweeten the air and attract sinners to your shop 
 male sinners, I mean, with muscle on 'em." 
 
 " Peter stuck to his own business, sir " 
 
 " Wonder if he kept his wife's nose to the grindstone as 
 well. Is the little bride to tramp the roads, too ? or return 
 her calls on a bicycle ? " 
 
 " My mother will take her round, sir, won't she ? " 
 
 " My son's wife should have a carriage of her own. You 
 have ample means for it." 
 
 " Mr. Winnington ! oh, Mr. Winnington ! " The words 
 leapt out through Joan's shy distress, and fell about them 
 in a soft shower. "We've talked it all over George and 
 I every single thing. George likes being a clergyman 
 better than anything else in the whole world. And I want 
 him to be the best clergyman that ever lived and we don't 
 mind either of us, one single little atom what we do with- 
 out, so that the thing we most care for is done well. It's 
 it's a great thing to us. You couldn't stand seeing a 
 great thing done meanly. Oh ! Mr. Winnington, now could 
 you? Don't you see " 
 
 " I see that my son has got hold of a girl who loves him ! 
 How old are you ? " 
 
 " Eighteen." 
 
 " And you may live till eighty. God bless my soul ! To 
 be doing without things till you are eighty." 
 
 " But but I shall have George ! "
 
 48 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Sure enough you'll have George ! Were you ever on a 
 horse's back in your life?" 
 
 " I I've sometimes ridden a donkey," she murmured with 
 shame. 
 
 " That was, indeed, hilarity ! It's not fair play, can't you 
 see, either of you to renounce the dev hem the usual 
 things before you've given 'em a fair trial." 
 
 " It makes it easier," she cried, her face alight. 
 
 " Your time, my girl, may come yet," said Jasper, his face 
 like a tomb-stone. 
 
 " But there's no time now for my time," she said, with her 
 sweet humorous young laugh. " I'm glad though, that 
 George did all the usual things beautifully the things," 
 she said softly, " that make it hard." 
 
 " Dear me, yes. All goes to give George a leg up no 
 efforts lost. Daresay I ought to be thanking God this 
 minute that my good cattle went to pave the way to George's 
 canonization. I had, however, other views." 
 
 They were now crossing the lawn. The squire glanced at 
 his wife's superb profile, immovable in the window. " Let 
 us get in and have some tea," said he, with courteous hope- 
 lessness. 
 
 Having greeted Rebecca cheerfully, he brought his big 
 body to a halt in a roomy chair, and amidst the frozen 
 silence of his family, called for whiskey and soda water. 
 Joan felt sorry to her toes, yet glad that in no sort of way, 
 had sin spoilt the sublimity of the exterior of George's 
 father. 
 
 Had he looked in the least like some of those for whom 
 George was about to give up everything, despair had over- 
 taken her. 
 
 Presently Billy came in full of honest devotion, and a 
 spiffing run. His trim pink, and inspired excitement, made 
 freckled little Billy, for the moment actually handsome. 
 
 Joan glanced from him to George's picture in all the 
 pomp and circumstances of pink also, just above her head. 
 George, there was no denying, looked extremely well. 
 And, oh ! to see him just once in those brilliant trappings, 
 transfigured by a fox ! 
 
 Beatific vision, but one she could never now behold! 
 There was a sharp twitch in Joan's heart, that came and 
 came, and came again, hurting oddly.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 49 
 
 And all at once she felt as though she, too, were giving 
 up these things, and that they were very great. 
 
 Jasper meanwhile moved his chair unobtrusively near 
 Rebecca's, and so as to shut his wife's patient profile from 
 out his field of vision, whilst he appreciatively sipped his 
 peg. 
 
 " Fine eyes," he remarked, jerking a shoulder towards 
 Joan. " Pity she don't learn to use 'em before becoming 
 a door-keeper in the House of the Lord." 
 
 " It's not my fault, anyway," said Miss Westcar. 
 
 " My dear lady, I don't accuse you. Too much of the 
 confounded impudence of innocence about the business for 
 either you or me. Bent on letting George, with his pro- 
 fession on his back, walk hobnailed over her bare body 
 that girl. Thought that sort of thing had gone out." 
 
 " You'll find it still in the pictures in nursery fires." 
 
 " Humph ! Never look at the girl, but I see her mapping 
 out her life and George's at one side of the fire, and her 
 father at the other, hoping that Hell is doing its duty by his 
 poor little wife ! " 
 
 "Rather a nice taste in wine though," suggested Miss 
 Rebecca, " and it's a pleasure to put decent food before her." 
 
 Jasper groaned. 
 
 " With George turning the loose boxes into a creche, and 
 the coach-house into a kindergarten ! He's to beat the 
 Parish on a bicycle; she to foot it, unless for an odd lift 
 from Isabella. Pleasant jaunts ahead of the poor innocent, 
 eh?" 
 
 " She has courage." 
 
 " She has. Her eye, I give you my word, is on my soul 
 already." 
 
 " She will fix it soon upon something more tangible. Joan 
 is not devoid of understanding. She'll be wanting a leg-up 
 presently that girl, and upon my word I don't see who is 
 to give it to her, but you." Rebecca glanced with serene 
 thoughtfulness at Jasper's family circle. 
 
 "I? God bless my soul ! I?" 
 
 " There's no one else. I'll depend on you, Jasper. It's 
 a trust, remember," she added, with a hoarse laugh, moving 
 as though to rise. 
 
 " Not going yet ? Sit down, Rebecca, and don't let it be 
 five years and a fortnight before you come again." 
 
 4
 
 50 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 She flushed with flashing eyes, but nodded sternly at the 
 decanter. 
 
 " What matter visits or visitors with that at hand ? " 
 
 " Other fools besides our two young ones like seeing 
 pictures in the fire. Only in my case it requires a more 
 biting fillip than George to set them going." 
 
 " Hold your impious tongue, Jasper, and remember you've 
 got to see that Joan isn't etherealised to Heaven before her 
 feet have touched the earth. Things here have been going 
 from bad to worse in these five years. That's plain enough. 
 There used to be a genial side to you, Jasper. Can't you 
 show it in your own family?" 
 
 " Family don't appreciate it. Have no sense of humour, 
 my family." 
 
 " Hem ! " 
 
 " Of my peculiar form of humour, then. Think it's all 
 due to strong waters. Never saw a family so singularly 
 sensitive to sin. Been brought up to abhor it, you see, 
 more especially when it interferes with entertaining and 
 their prospects in life. Sin shrivels 'em up, and, oh, well ! 
 they shrivel me up. The girls are a lot away, you see, and 
 can't get used to me. You need'nt glare, my dear lady. I 
 know. But with one thing or another, I'm a bit afraid of 
 'em all, girls and boys. Puts you off, when they shrink if 
 you touch 'em. Uncanny in flesh and blood of your own. 
 Eh? I tell you, Rebecca, you've done well to stick to the 
 recruiting business." 
 
 " Don't gloss ugly fact with sickly sentiment, Jasper. It's 
 never been your way. Yes, you've certainly gone off in five 
 years. Come, put me into my carriage, and remember I 
 give Joan into your hands." 
 
 " It's a proposal I'm not likely to forget," said Jasper, 
 with his mighty laugh. 
 
 " He'll look after her," thought Rebecca, huddling up in 
 her corner, miserably, "so far one can trust him. After 
 another decade of hard drinking, God only knows."
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 JUST a week later, Beatrice and Cora were married on 
 the same day. There was less pomp connected with the 
 ceremony than they could have wished, but more re- 
 spectability than they had dared to hope for. 
 
 Their father gave them sumptuous presents, behaved 
 with unswerving propriety, and looked all that he ought 
 to have been. 
 
 He was at a loss, indeed, to account for the astonish- 
 ing selections of his girls ; and since he seemed to be 
 accountable for most of the family affliction, concluded, 
 that in the natural course of things, Billy and the toy 
 Soldier would also be put down to his score. He 
 shrugged his great shoulders, with a whimsical smile, felt 
 profoundly unhappy, and a good deal of an outsider. 
 
 But ever when sad and sober Jasper could show a 
 brave front to the World. He might have been the 
 stately Head of his House these forty years so well did 
 he play up to the character. 
 
 His speech was admirable. As a father he triumphed. 
 
 Beatrice and Cora solemnly thanked their stars. 
 
 This, however, was not the first time that Mrs. Winning- 
 ton had beholden Jasper in this model mood, and she re- 
 membered sequels. Her heart failed her for fear. 
 
 Whilst George, who also had memories, threw many an 
 anxious glance at Joan. He could see clearly enough 
 through all the painful farce, and behind all the regal 
 posturing a profound and sore disdain. Only too well 
 did he know that under his fine sonorous sentences the 
 old man's tongue was in his cheek. 
 
 It was impossible to predict at what moment his wild 
 
 4*
 
 52 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 wit might not burst its bonds and scatter that goodly 
 company ; and George longed to keep the day perfect for 
 his betrothed. 
 
 The sole representative of Miss Rebecca at the feast 
 was her Crown Derby dinner set. It had been packed 
 up that morning, in a barrel, and sent post haste off to 
 Beatrice, to Joan's blank surprise, for it had been partly 
 promised to herself. 
 
 Miss Rebecca had been indeed that morning full of 
 surprises. At the last moment, to Joan's mute distress, 
 she had dispatched her alone to the festivity, hitched up 
 her best silk and gone recruiting, only just pausing to 
 call out over her shoulder : 
 
 " My absence will cause neither surprise nor heart-burn- 
 ing, and I only accepted provisionally. Tell Isabella Win- 
 nington what your conscience and your kindness may sug- 
 gest." Of a sudden she swung round and lowered her 
 tones : " And listen, child ! Hold up your head and 
 think of George. That'll give you courage ; and re- 
 member, moreover, that a Westcar is equal to any Win- 
 nington born, and that you invariably look clean. I'd 
 only be telling Jasper what I think of him," she said as 
 she stumped off, " and it's such waste of reason. Now 
 directly he sees Joan amidst that heartless crowd, he'll 
 take care that she don't suffer either in feelings or in 
 position, and shepherding her will keep him out of mischief. 
 I feel in my bones the girl's more to the point alone, and 
 done quickly like this she'll have no time to be dis- 
 appointed at my defection. And after all to be with 
 Jasper is to be hating Isabella all the time like the very 
 devil. Isabella is a temptation to be avoided." 
 
 Joan, however, did feel forlorn and deserted, and the 
 alienation of the Crown Derby set hurt her keenly. It 
 was so very commentless a switching away of a promised 
 boon. She could feel the snapping of Miss Rebecca's lips 
 as she mentally transferred the beautiful dishes. 
 
 There was coherence, however, underlying the vagrancy 
 in the high-handed procedure. 
 
 It was symbolical of the workings of progressive affec- 
 tion in Miss Rebecca, and of the Spirit in George. 
 
 Her duty to Joan Miss Rebecca had been finding 
 out, somewhat to her dismay, could no longer be wiped
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 53 
 
 out with a dinner set, and with George in his present 
 phase, one she could but fear, with destroying staying 
 powers, she saw before her an uninterrupted vista of 
 village hussies in course of reformation, smashing her 
 ancestral china. Beatrice would never err on the side 
 of domestic benevolence, she would inevitably choose her 
 servants for what they could do for her, not for what she 
 could do for them. The china in Beatrice's possession 
 would endure. For Joan she designed other and mightier 
 
 things ; " If only she could bring her mind to it " she 
 
 added with an odd grey doubt. 
 
 The first brilliant clash of excitement past, the healths 
 all drunken, the speeches all made, the jokes grown chill, 
 the brides tired of wreaths, and longing for the fresher 
 glories of going-away dresses, with the cold air 
 of every day at dull play again amongst the 
 broken meats, and the women softly comparing chrono- 
 logical notes on the two brides ; in this perilous moment 
 of satiety the usual sousing wave of sad cold cynicism 
 swept over Jasper Winnington. He grinned a Pagan 
 grin, and got hold of an all too handy magnum, but in 
 turning, he caught sight of Joan wedged in between two 
 Divines. 
 
 They had been glad of the opportunity of seeing some- 
 thing of young Winnington's future wife, these anxious 
 gentlemen, and had been plying her with weird wit of 
 a professional flavour, throwing in by the way certain 
 leading questions wherewith they were used to probe 
 the feminine mind. To the questions Joan had made 
 obedient reply, but the wit dismayed her. She could only 
 smile faintly and " wonder how they possibly could." 
 
 With a general impression on their minds of a deplorable 
 lack of humour, and much indeterminate youth, the one 
 provided her with salt, the other gently poured water into 
 her champagne, and returned to the discreeter joys of the 
 table. 
 
 They were good, spare-living men as a rule, with a 
 sound enjoyment of permitted things, quite capable, more- 
 over, of high-thinking when the occasion arose. Joan, 
 however, where the Church was concerned, was capable 
 of nothing else. She hoped no one would notice the frank 
 enjoyment of the great and good men, and tried to see
 
 54 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 George clearly through the mist of flowers that obscured 
 her vision. But Jasper's chuckling enjoyment of the 
 watered wine, relaxed his grasp on the magnum. 
 
 "To bury her in the Church before her time," he 
 muttered, " just like Isabella ! I'll see to this." 
 
 Only too glad to snatch the privileges of his exceptional 
 notoriety Jasper called down the table in his pleasant 
 rolling voice : " Now we've scattered all our available 
 incense before the two brides that are, it's quite time we 
 began to think of the one that is to be. Come up here, 
 Joan; there is just room for you beside me. Jones, 
 champagne to Mr. Dean. Since we've got the Church in 
 the midst of us for good," he explained to the blushing 
 Joan, " we must take care of it. How did the watered 
 champagne strike you ? " 
 
 " It it was rather horrid, but it it showed a nice 
 spirit, don't you think ? " 
 
 " It did. Try some of this to take the taste off." 
 
 Relieved of ecclesiastical pressure and with an unin- 
 terrupted view of George, Joan's face now kindled with 
 interest, and soon her eyes were drinking in, with sur- 
 prised wonder, the impersonally amused serenity of the 
 modern bride. It was a thing beyond her. She re- 
 turned to George and from him travelled thoughtfully to 
 his spiritual superiors. 
 
 " Don't distress yourself," counselled Jasper, " George 
 will have learnt many things and unlearnt more before 
 lies an Archdeacon." 
 
 ' He'll be George still," she murmured resolutely. 
 
 ' In that case he'll never be an Archdeacon." 
 
 ' There are plenty of Archdeacons ! " 
 
 ' And only one George, there I quite agree with you. 
 But you're missing opportunities. Get back to your under- 
 study." He nodded in the direction of his daughters. 
 " Both types are worthy of attention. It's difficult to pre- 
 dict from Beatrice's face whether she's more amused at 
 herself Billy, BILLY " Jasper could throw a volume into 
 a tone " or the accessories. That's your dashing type. 
 Whatever comes, Beatrice will foot it merrily to the end, 
 and she'll foot it honestly, I believe. Cora's bored already, 
 and shows it. The soldier, poor devil, has been bored 
 from his birth. I hope they won't yawn each other into
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 55 
 
 looking out for antidotes," he added under his breath. 
 " The girls, both of 'em, were," he proceeded, narrowing 
 his eyes to throw them up and down the smiling brides, 
 " naturally enough, more interested in the process of 
 getting engaged, than in the objects. Robbed of their 
 occupation life will fall confoundedly flat. A bad quarter 
 of an hour in a woman's life when she's time to look 
 round her and find she's burnt every boat, eh, Joan ! " 
 
 " But," said Joan, with alarmed eyes, " didn't you say 
 anything before the marriages ? " 
 
 " Say anything to a woman with an exceptional establish- 
 ment in view once her back teeth have begun to go! 
 You can read the better part of a woman's mind in her 
 dentist's bill. My child, you under-rate my sanity; be- 
 sides, I've lost the privilege of being didactic in my own 
 family. You must experience the virtuous life before you 
 can slate it. A shocking example, if he is to be of any 
 service, must hold his peace. A thing to be observed, 
 you'll understand, not hearkened to. An amiable blind- 
 ness on the part of women, by the way. There's the 
 seed of good advice in every sin, pity it should dry up for 
 want of culture. I once advised Beatrice to marry a 
 subaltern of Dragoons ; a man she honestly loved. She's 
 never thought much of my intelligence since." 
 
 " Mr. Winnington ! Oh ! " There were no words for 
 the painful surprises in the face of George's father. Her 
 troubled eyes turned to George. 
 
 " She adores," mused Jasper, " and is a fool. And yet 
 she's not altogether a confounded snivelling pap-howl. 
 And after all it's something now-a-days to come slick 
 upon true love, and a confounded brace of fools. I've seen 
 enough wisdom to-day to put me off it for a month of 
 Sundays, and yet I suppose I'd better be trying some on 
 the poor girl. Supposing now," he said, his eyes bent 
 upon Joan, " supposing I were to advise you to let George 
 sail off to Heaven on his own account, and choose a fellow 
 with more of the archdeacon in him? excellent man, 
 large and increasing family; has made a clean sweep 
 of all the drunkards in his parish ; is the terror of loafers ; 
 fills his church ; can set all the women crying with a turn 
 of an eyelid, and overflow the plate. Well ! what would 
 you say ? "
 
 56 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " I shouldn't say anything," said Joan, with spirit, " for 
 I know you couldn't possibly mean it." 
 
 At this point, with a soft murmur and a swish of skirts, 
 they all rose. 
 
 Jasper had been meaning to spread himself for a 
 moment in the gun-room before tackling the final scene, 
 but he thought better of it, and followed Joan. 
 
 As Joan passed Mrs. Winnington, the lady caught her 
 arm in a nerveless clutch, and her eyes, a little kindness 
 struggling through their grey gloom, rested thankfully 
 upon her, and there were worlds of tenderness in George's 
 glance. 
 
 Joan felt very happy, but was at a loss to account for 
 such poignancy of loving kindness. But, little as she 
 knew it, she had saved a delicate situation, and earned the 
 gratitude of a quaking family. 
 
 Three weeks later she was married herself, in Miss 
 Rebecca's cobwebby lace, her face lifted to a fine sig- 
 nificance by the touch of a blind and beautiful love. 
 
 The Bishop married them. Miss Rebecca, having 
 fallen foul of George's late rector, insisted upon his Lord- 
 ship's rushing down from Leeds to perform the cere- 
 mony. He could discern no cause for congratulation in 
 the untoward jaunt. It was on the eve of the Church 
 Congress, and extremely inconvenient. 
 
 Rendered cynical by his forced march, and from having 
 tied the knots at some three hundred fashionable mar- 
 riages, yet even he stifled his natural feeling, stayed his 
 wit, and bowed his head before the two young faces lit 
 up by the light of some wonderful elsewhere known only 
 to a holy youth. 
 
 It was a fixed principle with the Bishop to swing the 
 Tangible like a censer under the proud noses of his 
 curates. He distrusted, good practical man, aerial flights 
 and foreign illuminations upon the ingenuous countenances 
 of the minor clergy; they were productive mostly of 
 antics and women's chatter. He had never permitted him- 
 self such indulgences, and could feel, without vanity, that 
 the result justified the self-denial. But there was that in 
 the faces of young George Winnington and his wife 
 which subdued criticism, and brought back the freshness 
 of youth to a tired world.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 57 
 
 The burly Bishop swung out of the Church, a light- 
 footed curate again, mapping out a noble life beside 
 Coelia Graves, a young creature who had loved much, 
 dead these twenty years. His present help-meet, 
 christened Amelia, was a lady temperate in all things as 
 befitted the wife of one of the Higher Clergy. 
 
 She was predestined to her post, Coelia Graves would 
 probably have made hay of it, and yet the Bishop sighed. 
 
 " There are some marriages in regard to which one 
 may venture to prophesy," he said presently to Miss 
 Rebecca, casting a benignant glance at the bridal pair. 
 
 " You have more temerity then than I can pretend to. 
 She's eminently elementary and just as likely to be a 
 clerical hen, as a martyr." She marched on to where 
 the two were standing firm under the usual broadsides of 
 congratulations, and put a great case into Joan's hands. 
 
 " I waited till you were a Winnington to give you these, 
 Joan," said she. " I'm glad to know you'll never disgrace 
 them." She touched a secret spring and the wonderful 
 Westcar diamonds, after a seclusion of five-and-thirty years, 
 flashed into the light of day. 
 
 There were tears in Miss Rebecca's heart as she had 
 made the transfer, but now she had more practical matters 
 to deal with. 
 
 " You will note, George, that the things are settled upon 
 you and upon your heirs for ever," said she, in her most 
 impressive voice, " as unconvertible property. I'll take 
 good care you don't go pawning them for parish repairs." 
 
 " My dear, generous Rebecca ! " cried Isabella, pro- 
 foundly moved, " but how quaint you are, dear old friend ! 
 Pawning ! " 
 
 " A sailor who loves his ship, or a Priest who loves his 
 Church, are equally impervious to the promptings of 
 common morality," said Miss Rebecca crossly. 
 
 Seeing Dr. Baker staring at her, with a sickly look of 
 sentiment on his face, and Jasper with an unhealthy long- 
 ing upon his, she clutched hold of the younger man's 
 arm, glad to have anything, even partially human, to hold 
 on to. " Come," she commanded, " I want you both." 
 
 She carried them off and stood over them while they 
 swallowed a bumper apiece of brandy and eggs, carefully 
 compounded by her own hands.
 
 58 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " They're off to Palestine, of all places in the world," 
 she told the Bishop presently, with a vast sigh, " and will 
 come back with their ridiculous faces shining worse than 
 ever." 
 
 Which indeed they did, back to a Vicarage pink with 
 old roses, and a world grey with old woes. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DIRECTLY the Winningtons were settled in their Vicarage, 
 the Bishop's wife made it a point to ask them to a mixed 
 dinner. 
 
 It would have been more convenient and a great saving 
 of expense in the matter of wines, to have made the dinner 
 purely clerical, but with the Winnington connection and 
 Miss Rebecca's tongue this was quite out of the question. 
 
 Mrs. Mercer was really extremely uneasy in her mind. 
 When a man of Gregory's age and position begins to talk 
 in his sleep of shining faces in connection with the wife of 
 one of his Vicars, one naturally thinks of Jezebel, and feels 
 that the time has come when the man must be protected 
 against himself. Visions may prepare the way to anything. 
 They very certainly show the direction in which the wind is 
 blowing. But until she could behold with her bodily eyes 
 the source of his untimely excitement, Mrs. Mercer found it 
 difficult to proceed. 
 
 She was immensely relieved when she saw Joan. With 
 her mother's reputation raked up in the course of con- 
 scientious investigations and the Bishop's symptoms, she 
 had been prepared for anything. The minute Joan 
 appeared, she felt that she was precisely the wife she could 
 herself have chosen for a rising young vicar. Quiet, 
 amiable, unassuming. No beauty, but quite good looks 
 enough for a vicar. Not a trace of mawkish Madonna airs 
 about the poor little thing! It must have been pure in- 
 digestion on the part of the Bishop ! 
 
 Here she again pressed Joan's hands. " Jezebel ! " she 
 thought, a motherly, amused smile playing on her lips; 
 " Jezebel ! " she repeated, with a glance at Joan's dress, 
 strong in quality, and of the best silk, but somewhat feeble
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 59 
 
 in cut. With a kindly touch on her shoulder, Mrs. Mercer 
 pressed the girl down into a padded chair, reserved usually 
 for rectors' wives. 
 
 " Since she's so quite what she ought to be," she mused, 
 
 " I wish she'd worn that lovely Westcar lace, and " she 
 
 hesitated, pondering, "well, why not, after all? and some 
 of the diamonds. It would be an oasis in this desert." She 
 threw a melancholy glance around her sober guests, the 
 wordly contingent not having yet arrived, and passed on, 
 dropping words of wisdom as she went. 
 
 She kept Joan well in her mind, however, and introduced 
 her to the County, a ceremony she omitted in the case of 
 the other clerical ladies, and in a hundred ways showed the 
 girl that upon the light of her episcopal countenance she 
 might always firmly depend. 
 
 But Joan, perceiving presently that she shone a star 
 amongst glow-worms, not because George was George, but 
 because he happened to be a Winnington, of Thryng, felt 
 all twitching and horrid. She turned to look with half-shy, 
 wholly appreciative eyes at the alight, luminous faces of those 
 well-groomed women above the salt, to listen to their voices, 
 and catch the meanings in the quick quiver of repartee in 
 the air. She sat up straight, and words and laughter came 
 rippling up in herself. Then suddenly she looked at 
 George, and slipped quietly down amongst the less-favoured 
 ladies, glowering round in their dim circle in black dresses 
 with weird relievings. 
 
 The next minute she regretted it bitterly. Still, it did 
 not seem to her that she could have done otherwise. It was 
 right, and George was witness. 
 
 The clerical ladies were, on the whole, kind to the new 
 recruit, and lenient to her practical incapacity, and to the 
 sudden odd radiances that would break out now and then 
 all over her face at quite ordinary parochial allusions. 
 
 Joan found them rather dull and unresponsive. She 
 wondered what sort of things they did like, and wriggled 
 round so that she could see George within his circle of 
 men. 
 
 His smile jogged her faltering wits. She was young and 
 full of enterprise, and upon further diggings found that 
 every woman present had a baby upon her hearthstone, and 
 that, howsoever locked to all other influences a woman's
 
 60 HE FOE GOD ONLY. 
 
 face may be, it will yet open always to the magic key 
 of her own baby. So that you may read there all her 
 heart, and every height and every depth of which she is 
 capable. 
 
 George was immensely proud and pleased as he watched 
 Joan's gentle little manoeuvre conducted for all its gentle- 
 ness with a touch of the grand air. " Joan can afford to go 
 her own quiet way without any ecclesiastical patronage," 
 he reflected, with lifted head, the soldier in him wholly 
 swamping the saint. 
 
 In short, Joan was then and afterwards rather a success 
 in clerical circles, but she found them wearing. 
 
 The minor attributes of other people's babies, and the 
 sufferings they entail upon their mothers, when carefully 
 edited and gone into by the happy sufferers, will in time 
 weigh upon a babyless woman still in her teens, howsoever 
 anxious she may be to be worthy of a George. Of other 
 society Joan soon found she could have just as much as she 
 liked. 
 
 To draw Mrs. Winnington from her proud seclusion had 
 long since been given up as hopeless. The Squire was en- 
 chanting, imperial, and impossible. Moreover, he snapped 
 his fingers gaily in their faces, and would have none of 
 them. 
 
 The County would have welcomed gladly, therefore, any 
 Winnington, but the prospect of a saintly one with an 
 adoring wife was absolutely exciting in its naive rarity. 
 
 The Vicarage of Thryng was noted for its old-world 
 roses, sweet with the fragrance of the ages, blooming bravely 
 throughout nine months of the year. They were the joy of 
 Joan's heart, and every minute of every day being quite full, 
 she used to get up at unearthly hours to fill the house with 
 them, for, to her ordered, anxious mind, a withered rose 
 would have been a serious reproach. 
 
 The rose-filled drawing-room with its atmosphere of living 
 peace became quite soon rather the vogue. It often now 
 throbbed with callers. Stately and kind matrons, sick to 
 death of stifling airs, liked to breathe there as they used to 
 breathe at twenty; and girls were anxious to look upon 
 love amongst the roses outside the book covers of a past 
 age. 
 
 And sometimes George came in for tea so he said, but
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 61 
 
 really in order to gather new belief and strength from the 
 sight of Joan's faithful face. Her own words seemed 
 clumsy, dull things when George came in, so then she 
 spoke in smiles. 
 
 George, however, spoke pleasantly about everything. He 
 could be gentle, alert, sharp, decisive. He could laugh 
 with the best, and deride on occasion with a fine wit, and 
 upon sacred things he was silent. He breathed out his 
 religion, however ; it made its mark in the very air. 
 
 " George is a man and a soldier, thank Heaven," said 
 Miss Rebecca one day as she looked round the room, " and 
 yet this is the Pool of Bethesda. Odd anomaly! Ifs a 
 sort of general manhood, moreover, that distinguishes 
 George. There's even a fine manly tramp in the dauntless, 
 wholesale manner of his selfishness." Joan glared. Miss 
 Rebecca serenely proceeded, " No mawkish apology there ! 
 He doesn't have to hustle round proving his manhood 
 with cricket or boxing manias. In my private opinion 
 curates frequently plunge boisterously into games just to 
 prove to the public that despite all testimony to the con- 
 trary, they really are men. Methinks they do protest too 
 much. I hate blatant manhood. If George spent his 
 leisure in knitting garters for the heathen he'd yet be a 
 man." 
 
 One day three invitations to two dinners and one dance 
 arrived by the midday post. Hitherto, Joan's taste of the new 
 order had consisted in visits paid and returned. At sight of 
 the invitations, her heart began to riot in a ridiculous sort 
 of way; then by some unaccountable impulse she ran up- 
 stairs, took out Miss Rebecca's diamonds excitedly, and 
 with a quick catch in her breath, opened her dress and 
 held up a pendant against her neck. She wondered if her 
 skin really was extraordinarily white, or if she only thought 
 so because of having seen so few necks. The front door 
 opened, and she ran down again to find George reading 
 the invitations. 
 
 "I say, here's dissipation," was all he said, but he was 
 silent all through luncheon. His silence silenced her, and 
 when she thought of her late foolishness she blushed. 
 
 " Suppose we take a holiday for an hour," he said, as 
 soon as they had finished. " Come along to the den." 
 
 He put her into a chair near the open window. " Sit
 
 62 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 here where you can see the roses comfortably," said he 
 laughing, " or you'll be craning your neck to look at them, 
 and I want you to attend to me. Of course, one expected 
 invitations, they would come as a matter of course. And 
 now we've got to arrange what to do about them." 
 
 He paused, half startled. Could it be possible that Joan 
 had got a little white? Joan saw his puzzled doubt and it 
 roused her. 
 
 " Do you disapprove of going out ? " she asked, in her 
 clear, young voice. 
 
 " Disapprove ? No, of course, it's not that, but we've 
 got so little time. Everything's been going to seed here 
 this long time, and in all the outlying hamlets there's work 
 
 waiting. But it's not only that " He broke off sharply, 
 
 stood up, and walked restlessly to the door and back to 
 Joan. " Directly I got to know you properly," he said, 
 looking down at her, " and to find out new things about 
 you, everything in and about me seemed to be new, too. 
 Ideas I'd never had before began to creep into me at 
 first, but soon they fairly pelted me. I was rather afraid 
 of them at the start. They were bigger than myself as 
 big as you! They were too .good for me. I didn't care 
 to tackle them yet. I thought I'd wait, as I had waited for 
 you! But they wouldn't let me; they kept pegging away 
 at me till I had to set them down on paper and see what 
 could be done with them, and then, somehow, germs 
 seemed to spread into sentences, and in the rush of words 
 one seemed to get hold of the right one at a glance, and 
 one wrote and wrote. But it wouldn't do. The next day 
 I invariably burnt it; no words were good enough for the 
 thoughts which all seemed to be the best of you. But one 
 day I couldn't burn the thing; there was altogether too 
 much of you in it, and of the heart of things, even in the 
 words. Do you remember Kipling's 'Finest story in the 
 World ' ? Something like that was going on in me. And 
 now now you're to judge if it's good. You're as true as 
 truth, my Joan, so you'll know if the truth is in it. If I'm 
 an ass being brayed in my own folly," he said, flushing pain- 
 fully, and she saw on his forehead little beads of sweat, " I 
 don't think, I don't think not truly that I'm a self-com- 
 placent ass. It all hurt horribly, and folly's not painful as 
 a rule, so they say. If if this thing is good for the
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 63 
 
 next few years, I'll have to give my life to it." He was 
 walking up and down the room again, his eyes blazing. " I 
 want to make man's passion for God as entrancing, as 
 moving, as sweet, as sublime, as man's passion for woman. 
 I want to to move the hearts of men as poets have moved 
 their senses," he jerked out, as shy as a boy in the presence 
 of fine language, whilst yet the words came racing. " I 
 want to make the higher love human human, throbbing, 
 intoxicating, as natural as the other, as inexhaustible and 
 all-compelling. So far England has never given of her best 
 to the Church in Literature. We've not come yet within 
 cry of Pascal. It's a vast, an illimitable field if one could 
 only get one's foot upon it. 
 
 " I know all the arguments, dear," said he, " I'm clear- 
 headed sometimes at night. I've had it out with my youth 
 and ignorance and inexperience," he cried, a great entreaty 
 in his voice, " and even that won't stop me ! Nothing can 
 stop me, but you ! And if you give the forward order, then 
 it will take all our time. 
 
 " It's a thing to be done while we're young together, 
 young and warm with love. It's not data one wants, you 
 see, or knowledge, or theology, or sound doctrine," he 
 cried, in eager deprecation. " It really isn't. What I'm 
 trying to do comes from within somehow. One winds it out 
 of one like a spider. Your one fear is lest you snap the 
 thread as it comes. Last night when I stumbled over you 
 in the passage, I'd been running from Taddler's Hollow 
 lest I'd lose something before it got written down, I'd for- 
 gotten my pencil. Now listen, and judge and I'll know 
 that your verdict is true " 
 
 "Yes," she said faintly, suddenly feeling a little sick. 
 " Go on." 
 
 He took some papers out of a drawer. " I wonder if I 
 shall feel in as big a funk at the last day," he said, with a 
 laugh, as he spread out his MS. He began slowly, and his 
 voice, rather wobbly and halting at first, seemed suddenly 
 to hurry thickly in and out of sentences leading apparently 
 nowhither, or so it seemed to Joan. Her hands twitched 
 cold in her lap. Her heart fell like lead in her body; her 
 ears were strained to bursting point. She could catch 
 nothing but George's harsh, strained, altered voice jerking 
 through senseless thronging words.
 
 64 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 He wanted truth truth ! " And to break a man's heart 
 with truth like this ! " she thought. 
 
 Shivering, the wretched critic hid her face in her hands. 
 George looked up sharply, and threw down the papers. 
 
 " The Judgment Day is a fool to this ! Wait, Joan ! 
 Let me see your face. It's got to be read. Talk of funk ! 
 Didn't know what it meant till now not properly. Don't 
 hide your face again, dear. It puts me off. And don't 
 begin to judge yet, wait do ! It's part of your poem. It 
 can't be humbug. It hurt, it hurt vilely while they wrote it ; 
 it worked like madness in one's veins, and the most raging 
 neuralgia, and the the joys of a thousand Heavens." 
 
 He caught his breath, he stumbled on, half-blind with 
 nervousness. He missed words, slurred whole sentences, 
 and Joan sat holding herself quite still. 
 
 Of a sudden he threw the book on the table, white, des- 
 pairing. " Don't you see," he said, " it's like reading your 
 own death-warrant. It's a lot worse, it's like reading 
 yours." 
 
 Joan rose and went slowly to the table, wondering 
 drearily if it would make things any better were she to 
 read the death-warrant, but it seemed, somehow, the only 
 thing left her to do. 
 
 For a minute the words jigged before her hot eyes. She 
 leant hard on the table and steadied herself, and presently 
 the writing grew clearer. Joan hated shivering on the 
 brink of anything. She plunged in boldly, but voicelessly. 
 
 She must rehearse this death-warrant first in her own 
 heart. Down the page she went, and up again, down and 
 up, breathless and amazed, and at last she broke into a 
 wonderful laugh. 
 
 <( Sit down sit down and listen. It's it's all right. 
 Ah ! " she cried, " it frightens me." 
 
 He sprang to her. 
 
 " Don't ! " she threw up her hands like a barrier. " Don't ! 
 Can't you see ? I must get it read. Listen ! " 
 
 She tried once twice. Then the power came, and she 
 began to read. 
 
 To Joan it seemed that the spirit of God ran through 
 the poem like a white flame a white, quenchless, exulting 
 flame that carried all before it. It was the passion born 
 from the religion of all the worlds, touched by genius. It
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 65 
 
 throbbed with the hearts of all the children and of all the 
 wise. 
 
 To Joan's excited imagination very God and very man 
 stood there together almost comprehensible, and the lines 
 swung forward in a fine majestic simplicity, with a happy 
 young joyousness of surety so infinitely alluring that even 
 wiser heads than Joan's might have been carried away. 
 
 A theologian, had he heard it, might, cough discreetly 
 when the glamour had gone off. A logician reserve his 
 judgment, but there was genius in the poem, strength and 
 sincerity, and it would sink into the hearts of men and 
 work there. 
 
 George was leaning on the table, his head in his hands. 
 
 "Oh! George! Oh! George!" she cried. Then she 
 huddled down beside him, and of a sudden, like a child 
 crying in the night, she broke into terrified sobbing. 
 
 She was broken down with greatness, and a bright world 
 seemed to be shutting its golden doors in her face. 
 
 And George in his loving, single heart blessed her for her 
 passionate sympathy. 
 
 In frantic haste she dried her eyes, sat up, and with an 
 extraordinary effort steadied her face and voice. 
 
 " Oh ! George ! " said she, " it certainly will want all your 
 
 time; but the other work the Parish " She paused. 
 
 " It's suddenly all got so common-place," she cried, her 
 eyes widening. 
 
 " That's only just for the minute. I used to feel it so 
 at first, and thinking of you brought things right again. 
 Now I couldn't do this without the Parish, and I don't 
 think I could do the Parish without this." 
 
 " How shall we manage about the invitations ? What 
 shall we say ? " said Joan, picking up a crested sheet slowly. 
 
 George's sensitive face flushed, but his eyes were steady. 
 "That's the horrible part of the business. One can't ex- 
 plain. Any explanation would suggest inevitably the 
 mountain in travail with the mouse. I'm nothing, and I've 
 done nothing to earn the right to airs, and I don't want in 
 any way to prejudice people against this thing in advance. 
 It would be like injuring the prospects of an unborn child, 
 don't you see? Besides, one doesn't like being looked on 
 as a prig, or an ass either. After all," he faltered, " we may 
 be wrong you and I this may be worthless. At any rate,
 
 66 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 I don't see why the onus of refusing should rest on you. 
 We might go to these three, of course." 
 
 Joan's heart gave a big jump, and her feet were aching to 
 dance. 
 
 George went to the window, and after a minute swung back 
 to her. " That would complicate things all round, though, 
 and offend everyone," said he. " I say, Joan, it's a lovely 
 day ; go and put on your things and we'll go to see them, and 
 explain that just for the present we've got such lots to do 
 
 unless " Joan's eyes disturbed him, her brave, bright 
 
 eyes looked afraid. " Unless you'd like to go out with any 
 of these three ladies," he said, touching the letters. 
 
 " No," said Joan. 
 
 " They'd gladly take you," said George half-nervously. 
 " It's not the slightest use depending on Miss Rebecca, you 
 know." 
 
 " Go out ? Without you ? George, are you crazy ? " 
 
 " I didn't think you'd like it," he said hesitating, not yet 
 satisfied ; there was a new spell in the air. " And but it 
 won't be for long, you know why, in ten years time we'll 
 still be quite young." 
 
 " Oh, yes, we'll still be quite young quite young," she 
 repeated mechanically. 
 
 But to nineteen nothing but nineteen is quite, quite 
 young, and with a world bright with dew at its feet, nine- 
 teen wants to be picking its flowers to-day, to-day, and not 
 to-morrow. 
 
 " George," called back Joan, in a voice that struck her as 
 already old and croaking, " please pump up my front wheel." 
 
 " Yes, dear," he said absently, and seized with a lovely 
 metaphor, he flew to write it down and clean forgot the 
 bicycle. 
 
 Joan looked at the jewel case still open upon her bed, and 
 hustled it away in a drawer. The jewels were too dazzling ; 
 they brought the tears to her eyes, which since she was 
 just going out for a ride with George was altogether too 
 ridiculous. 
 
 His metaphor right to its uttermost syllable, and the lion 
 of Joan's verdict chased from his path, George was filled 
 to the brim with hope and courage, and fulfilled his mission 
 finely. Arguments melted like wax before his proud and 
 merry youth. In his fight for his own time there was the
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 67 
 
 vigour of a man, the eager deprecation of a boy. Less 
 lenient hearts than Joan's were moved and stirred that day 
 by his stubborn laughing resistance to their cajolements, and 
 even the defeated hostesses raised no jeer at the Church; 
 that scapegoat of the witty modern. 
 
 For a ripple of singularly agreeable humanity played 
 lightly upon George's spirituality, and held his name fragrant, 
 his profession of good report. 
 
 There was wit, however, as well as wisdom amongst these 
 ladies who joined hands against George, and in their ways 
 over all a power of persuasion. 
 
 And like the rich young man, Joan went away sorrowful. 
 
 A pathetic figure of a man, I take it, this dead deserter, 
 deserving of more tenderness than ever he is likely to get. 
 A man's reputation once blown upon, it comes always so 
 easy to us others to put the black cap on ! 
 
 " Now I've plunged and told you everything," said George, 
 when he came in late that night tired with work, but teem- 
 ing with ideas. He had trudged a good five miles through 
 drizzling showers, and given two cottage lectures ; but on 
 his way he had beholden Heaven in the eyes of a dying 
 Christian, and made a drunkard, savable and worthy of 
 salvation, take the pledge ; and even seven years to a mighty 
 love is but as a span. 
 
 " Now I've made a clean breast of it, won't you stay with 
 me, Joan, when I write? I can't tell you what your near- 
 ness doesn't do for me, and your perfect sympathy. You're 
 a never failing counsel of perfection." 
 
 Joan was tired also to her very heart, and though her love 
 for George was mighty also, teaching the elements of a 
 bleak morality to friendly girls fretted her; and cutting 
 thirty chemises out of unbleached calico seemed to have 
 shorn her of all enthusiasm. She wanted to be alone, more- 
 over, to contend with her worldly desires ; but she looked up 
 bright and alert. 
 
 ' George ! Of course ! And I can be getting on with 
 that surplice at the same time." 
 
 " You're a melodious sort of woman, Joan," he said, as he 
 arranged his papers ; " I don't believe you could make a 
 false note if you tried. Now, as you sit there, you and 
 that white cloudy effecUare just exactly right." 
 
 Joan dug her needle into her finger and flushed horribly. 
 
 r*
 
 68 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 fine linen, and, for all her quietness, when she hated things 
 she hated them after a passionate, violent, and wholly un- 
 expected fashion. 
 
 To punish herself she now threw all her powers fiercely 
 into every stitch, and the seams of that surplice were indeed 
 a work of art. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " IT'S been a perfect night," said George, after three solid 
 hours of mute and enraptured labour. " I'll never forget it." 
 
 " Neither shall I," thought Joan. The thought, how- 
 ever, leapt out unbidden and startled her. 
 
 " And the surplice is finished," she said hurriedly. 
 
 " What sermons I'll preach in that surplice ! " said her 
 husband, with honest pleasure. 
 
 Joan said nothing. She was folding up the abhorred 
 garment and hoping that she wouldn't fall asleep on her 
 feet. 
 
 " It's been a red letter day, without one flaw in it," pro- 
 ceeded George, nursing his happiness. "We've arranged 
 comfortably about the going-out business and the secret 
 is still our own." 
 
 Joan roused herself with an effort. 
 
 " Oh ! George ! " she cried ; " I don't think I can help 
 telling Cousin Rebecca and I want you to let me tell 
 your father." 
 
 " My father ? my father ? " repeated George blankly. 
 That genial besom of destruction it were vain to deny was 
 an abiding canker in his son's heart, and had lately been 
 sweeping lustily across the Parish with most melancholy 
 results. 
 
 Joan was aware of the fact, and she held down her 
 head. 
 
 The resolute appeal in her drooping figure moved 
 George, however, more than a score of arguments could 
 have done. 
 
 " I wish," said he, with a human enough sigh, although 
 he laughed, " I wish I didn't feel that on the whole you're 
 right."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 69 
 
 " George," said she, after a pause, " don't be thinking 
 that this has spoilt the day. It hasn't truly. It it's 
 saved it," she murmured, too sleepy now to choose her 
 words. 
 
 George, as he put away his tools, smiled at the quaint 
 confusion of ideas, for in spite of his poetic turn, he 
 was a man of a neat habit. 
 
 The Squire, who even if he did happen to be drinking 
 lustily at midnight, was always up at six, and with any 
 poachers about never went to bed at all, and was none 
 the worse for it, being abroad early next morning, thought 
 he'd stroll round and see what the parson was up to. 
 
 He had been having a rousing time of it lately, and was 
 now suffering the pangs of a cold reaction. He was 
 thoroughly disgusted therefore with himself and every 
 one else. At the same time, for the very life of him, he 
 could not refrain from recalling with genuine delight cer- 
 tain of the lighter savageries amidst the blacker episodes 
 of his late outrageous outburst. 
 
 There were many hours in Jasper's mad career wherein 
 had he not been able to chuckle heartily over the hilarious 
 quantity in his unseemly pranks, he had undoubtedly sent 
 a bullet through his brain. 
 
 Now, as he passed in unworthy review the latest re- 
 grettable occurrences, he smiled with fiendish glee as 
 he thought of the terror of a haughty and supercilious 
 town-maid whom, when out upon the track of malefac- 
 tors, he had discovered entertaining a hawker of known 
 sporting proclivities with his best whiskey. How he had 
 carried the kicking damsel to the topmost branch of 
 the trysting tree, wedged her firmly in a snug crook, 
 wherein, being town-bred, and a fool, she screeched till 
 the morning, whilst the hawker, securely hobbled with a 
 dog-chain, groaned beneath. 
 
 He remembered consolingly his recent raid upon the 
 fine Public House lately set up in Thryng the host for- 
 ever snivelling of the Law to honest late labourers, and 
 so soon as the blinds were down, filling his bar with 
 fuddled idiots playing losing Poker. 
 
 " I scattered 'em, I scattered 'em," the Squire crowed. 
 " And did thereby more good in twenty minutes than 
 George would do in a year."
 
 70 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 He now awoke from his reverie to find himself on the 
 knoll above the Church, whence from his great height he 
 could look sheer into the edifice, where George was read- 
 ing Daily Prayers to Joan and six others. 
 
 " Six foot two in his stockings, forty-two inches round 
 the chest, muscles on him like whipcords, and to be 
 smiling like a seraph above as one-horse a show as that," 
 groaned Jasper. " A fellow with size, health and intellect 
 to turn on you in that sort of way. It takes your breath 
 away. And Isabella Isabella, as large as life in the 
 second pew, tragic to her toes ! " 
 
 The suppressed maddening irritation in every nerve 
 in Jasper's great body leapt out in a wild rush. His ruddy 
 face whitened. " She lied she slandered a good woman," 
 he muttered, glaring down upon his praying wife " she 
 betrayed a decent enough man and all to be mistress 
 of Thryng and look at her now ! It was no take-all and 
 give nothing business," he continued, with a vicious stare. 
 " All she's got she's deserved. And she's had her re- 
 venge. She's brought my girls up to despise me, and 
 robbed me of my sons. 'Twas her doing," he said 
 fiercely " hers. Ha ! Woman ! You may well pray." 
 
 His eyes flung away from her and fetched up on Joan 
 in the front pew, her profound attentive eyes fixed upon 
 George, with the look of one searching diligently. 
 
 " That little girl that little girl," said the Squire, after 
 a long stare, " has a way of of taking the gilt off the 
 gingerbread, so to speak." 
 
 His uneasy eyes somehow refused to detach themselves 
 from Joan. He sighed, left sophistry, and turned with a 
 wry face to fact. 
 
 " From her own point of view Isabella no doubt has 
 had rather a life of it, poor soul ! " he ruefully admitted. 
 " It's been a bad business altogether for her. 'Pon my 
 soul, I could be sorry enough for her if if, hang it all, if 
 she wasn't false to the core, and could think an inch or 
 so above the earth. If a woman can't think high some- 
 times, God in Heaven, what's a man to do? The very 
 sight of her, strive as you will, sends a chill down your 
 back." The contemplation of Isabella lifting her voice to 
 praise God filled him with a deeper dejection. 
 
 " She's honest, too, and zealous," he admitted with a
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 71 
 
 sigh, " but with the best intentions it's Mrs. Grundy she 
 serves and sings to, not the Lord of Hosts. What the 
 women are thinking of her, that's the tune, and how 
 she'll best hush me up ! Dear, dear ! A pretty pass to 
 come to to be a mere slur on your family a thing to be 
 hushed up, by Gad ! " 
 
 Being reverent by nature he here ordered his medi- 
 tations, but at the third verse his sorrows sent him 
 crashing back upon their source. 
 
 " Isabella singing a hymn," he muttered, " and hand- 
 some still, while poor Rebecca has a moustache ! Queer 
 decree of Providence that ! Can't see Rebecca deserved 
 it. Oh, well ! Isabella's scored. Perhaps it's a com- 
 fort to her. Morning," he continued wearily, " morn- 
 ing plays the deuce with your your courage." He 
 leant his chin on his tall gold-headed malacca. " An 
 early service," he mused, " must be a wonderful outlet 
 for injured wives, sort of pick-me-up, so to speak. Can 
 quite understand Isabella's fancy for it. She can chuck 
 all she's got to say about me off her chest in prayer, 
 and feel all the better for it. Hullo, here they come 
 and George looks as though he was going to breakfast at 
 Drew's ! By Jove ! Well, I'll drop in on the little girl 
 daresay George has got some beer in the house." 
 
 When he came face to face with Joan in the laurel walk, 
 her face startled him. 
 
 " Little girl might have been having a night of it too. 
 Egad ! Sins all about her ears also," he reflected, with 
 raised eyebrows. " Morning, my girl, will you give me 
 some breakfast ? " 
 
 " Oh ! Won't I ? " she cried. " But George's out ! " 
 
 " George is out is he ? " said his artful father ; " never 
 mind, you're in." 
 
 She seized him as though he might escape her, brought 
 him in, set him in the sun, and went about her pre- 
 parations in a quick noiseless way, that soothed his jump- 
 ing nerves. 
 
 The breath of Heaven was blowing through the room. 
 Isabella sealed up every air-hole, as though it would let 
 in rats. The place seemed to be chock full of roses and 
 innocence. 
 
 Jasper felt a diffidence in mentioning the beer; but
 
 72 HE FOR GOD ONLY.: 
 
 there was a consuming thirst upon him. The girl, he 
 noticed, was obviously proud of her coffee he'd have 
 been glad to oblige her but and after all if a man 
 couldn't own up to a little beer, he'd better be cutting his 
 throat at once ! " No doubt George has some bitter 
 beer," said Jasper, mildly. 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried, aghast. " He hasn't, not one single 
 
 bottle. Don't you know " she halted. Jasper slowly 
 
 groaned. 
 
 " Taken to the blue ribbon. Ah ! I see. Didn't think 
 it was as bad as that. Do you sport the token too, my 
 dear?" 
 
 " No, and neither does George, but Winty's promised 
 not to have any wine or whiskey or beer in his house for 
 a year if George doesn't either." 
 
 " Honest fellow, Winty, pays his rent to the day." 
 " But he beats his wife to a jelly." 
 
 " Oh ! Wives " 
 
 " She's not that sort of wife." 
 " Meek wisp, if I remember aright." 
 " After five years beating one naturally would cringe," 
 pleaded Joan. 
 
 " Humph ! I distrust overbearing morality. George 
 making promises for a delicate girl he ought to be feed- 
 ing up with red wine ! " 
 
 " I'm not delicate, it's my pale skin." 
 " No such thing. Nice clean skin of your own. What 
 do you take George for do you suppose he's all spiritual 
 eyes ? But to be picking and choosing other people's sins 
 for them, and then sitting down to judge 'em ! " 
 " Any way, George doesn't judge harshly." 
 " I don't say he does," said Jasper gloomily. " George 
 is full of consideration for sinners (confound him)," he 
 muttered " when his mind is disengaged." 
 He glanced sharply at Joan. 
 
 " If George had a spark of common sense you'd be 
 enjoying yourself this minute, as light and happy as a 
 grig," he rapped out. 
 
 A whole flock of amazed questions flew at him from 
 Joan's eyes, but for a minute she said not a word. " Truth- 
 ful girl that," mused Jasper. 
 
 " But," she said at last, deeply flushed, " if George
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 73 
 
 wasn't happy if he wasn't radiantly, beautifully happy 
 
 as he is now if " 
 
 " You can be happy enough on a kindly earth if you 
 haven't a bee in your bonnet." 
 
 Joan went over and poured some cream into his coffee. 
 
 " This is my first party," she said, laughing sweetly, 
 
 her hand on the back of his chair. " If you're longing 
 
 all the time for bitter beer and making remarks in your 
 
 own mind about George, you'll quite spoil it." 
 
 "Well, indeed, my girl, I'd be sorry to spoil anything 
 so agreeable," he said kindly. " You're a rare hostess, and 
 I haven't had such a breakfast for a twelve month." 
 
 His upturned face looked wrecked, blood-shot, and 
 extremely sinful. 
 
 That he must inevitably must be an abiding blister 
 upon such a heart as George's, who could wonder ? 
 
 Withal it comforted her to see him so clean and straight 
 and with so royal a head. So she made a firm resolution 
 sooner or later to open his sealed eyes to the full beauty 
 of George. 
 
 But in the meantime she sat down again and talked 
 brightly of roses and their weird visitors, her cooking 
 experiments and the crops, carefully excising all irritants 
 from her speech. 
 
 " Now I suppose you'll be busy," he said at last, moving 
 regretfully, " and I'll have to go." 
 
 " I'll be busy, but you needn't go for ever so long yet. 
 I'll sew and you can smoke see ! I'll fill your pipe. 
 Now are you comfortable ? " 
 
 And so for a long time they talked and were silent, like 
 trusty friends, and presently Joan looked up out of a long 
 silence. 
 
 " I was reading the other day," she said, " about Fra 
 Angelico and the pictures he used to paint and put every- 
 where in the cells and corridors of St. Mark's. Nothing 
 would induce him to take money for his pictures or to 
 seek for fame by them. He just worked for the glory 
 of God, and to point the way to God. He wanted to 
 make the way to Him so lovely and shining and com- 
 pelling that people simply had to follow it." 
 " Hem ! " said the Squire. 
 " He had the most extraordinary notions about things,"
 
 74 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 said Joan, her eyes fixed to her neat stitches. " He 
 wouldn't paint from models because he thought it wrong 
 to paint from the human body. And looking at God he 
 seems to have forgotten rather to look at Nature, for lots 
 of the things he painted were wrong and out of drawing ; 
 some of his mistakes seem to have been rather ludicrous. 
 But when Michael Angelo saw his pictures hidden away 
 in dim passages, he said that this man must surely have 
 seen the faces of the Saints in Paradise." 
 
 Jasper had taken his pipe out of his mouth, and Joan 
 grew hot under his astounded eyes. 
 
 " I'm going to tell you a secret," she said, sewing 
 diligently. " It's George's, but he said I might tell you. 
 He's been writing some poems now for a long time one 
 long one, and several shorter. I don't know enough of 
 things to be quite sure but I know enough not to be 
 the least surprised if George has made just the same sort 
 of mistakes that Fra Angelico did in another sort of way, 
 of course. But when men men like Michael Angelo, 
 with hearts and brains and knowledge," she said, an odd 
 stillness in her voice and face and breathing nothing 
 seemed to move except her quick ceaseless fingers 
 " when they read the the things, they'll say too that 
 George must have seen the faces of the Saints in Paradise." 
 
 " God bless my soul ! " ejaculated George's father feebly. 
 
 " That sort of writing wants time and quietness," said 
 Joan with quaking heart, " so we've decided that as we 
 couldn't keep going out, we'd better say so at once, and 
 not begin. So we went the other day to those three " 
 she nodded at the invitations. Jasper had seen them, 
 well-pleased, and meant to let the children have the small 
 brougham for their routs " and told them." 
 
 Jasper lifted himself to his legs. 
 
 " But you you're not writing a poem, too, are you ? " 
 His big voice rose to a chastened roar. 
 
 Joan shook her head mutely. 
 
 It seemed to her that one poem in a family was quite 
 enough. 
 
 Jasper struggled frankly with his receding courtesy. 
 
 " You've entertained me finely, my girl, as one to the 
 manner born. I'd be sorry to offend ye. But the the 
 hysteria of the frocked man has an unpleasant savour in
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 75 
 
 the nostrils of healthy persons. I'll take a ride on it 
 and see what that does. George throwing up position, 
 neighbourliness, every spark of right feeling for the sake 
 of a batch of snivelling Hymns ! Lord, Lord, if George 
 is in want of a mortification of the flesh which certainly 
 
 surprises me " he paused to beat a tattoo on the mat 
 
 with his elegant malacca, " why not wear a hair shirt 
 three days a week, or do without gravy? I've known that 
 last experiment tried, apparently to the entire satisfaction 
 of the modern martyr, to judge by his slithery air of self- 
 satisfaction. Two wholesome young people making ex- 
 hibitions of themselves before the County. Anchorite 
 antics ! Pshaw ! " 
 
 " When you read the things you'll know they're worth 
 everything." 
 
 " I've met poets, God help me ! child, before- you were 
 born, and suffered from 'em. Damned if a man can be 
 biting down on things till his teeth crack," he muttered. 
 " Good-bye, my girl, good-bye," he said, seizing his hat. 
 
 Joan put down her work, and followed, to find him 
 bolt upright on the door-step gulping down language. 
 " You're feeding George out of a pap-bowl, the lot of you," 
 ha cried, swinging round on her accusingly. " Giving up 
 everything for poetry ! Damn selfishness, I call it. Poetry ! 
 How's a girl in love to judge. Who's to say it's not tommy- 
 rot Damn presumption ! " 
 
 " David was just as presumptuous when he wrote the 
 Psalms." 
 
 " David ! " he roared, " comparing him with David, is 
 she ? Good Lord ! David, I would have you to know, 
 had a very different record from George's. You're for- 
 getting your history, my girl. So far as I ever heard, 
 David didn't begin to preach and prophecy with a boy's 
 pink still on his cheeks. He slung stones at giants, and 
 played the fiddle. And did things he'd best have left 
 undone perhaps. Any way he took a thorough good 
 look round before he sat down to sift his experiences and 
 turn the lessons learnt from them to the glory of God. 
 You must experience before you can explain. David 
 suffered and why, yes, sinned in a manly reasonable way 
 before he took to poetry. He honestly enjoyed himself 
 in fact.
 
 76 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " That's it," murmured this aged moralist dreamily under 
 his breath, but Joan heard him transfixed and awed. 
 
 " That's the secret," he pursued. " If you sin like a 
 grave-digger, of course, or for profit, why might as well 
 be totting up figures on a stool. Land wants manuring, 
 I tell you, before it will give out of its best." 
 
 " I've heard of wonderful things growing in virgin soil," 
 said Joan, softly. 
 
 " Slovenly profusion red-hot adjectives high falutin' 
 femininity I know the thing. Hullo, girl ! Sit down, 
 you look tired. Slim as a willow wand," he muttered, 
 " and to be bucketting after George. Here, sit on this 
 bench." 
 
 " I'm not the least atom tired." 
 
 " You soon will be then. I can see George's game. 
 Don't tell me," he groaned, " that it's all spirit with 
 George, there's there's a lot of solid muscle under it. 
 There's nothing but the Army that'd cool George's heels, 
 he should be teaching a squad of Tommies six o'clock 
 drill, after he had 'em up all night cleaning buttons; 
 poor devils ! But you. Why it's like an eagle putting 
 a poor little wren through her paces." 
 
 Joan laughed shakily. She stood up still half laugh- 
 ing, her arms crossed quaintly over her breast. 
 
 " I think we're getting to understand each other rather 
 well, you and I," she said in a pretty straight way she 
 
 had, " but " she paused, with a little swallowing sound, 
 
 "but I don't, think either of us altogether understands 
 George. We're not Michael Angelos exactly you and 
 I. His religion is a a grand epic poem and he can 
 always march to it. Sometimes now I wonder how he 
 
 can always " she stopped for a minute. " I usen't 
 
 to wonder. I think once I did understand. But," she 
 said hurriedly, her eyes still steady upon Jasper's, " even 
 if we don't understand him, we're prouder of George than 
 of anyone else in the whole wide world. If I couldn't be 
 as proud of George as I am and just in the way that 
 I am I don't know I don't really know what I should 
 do." 
 
 " Good-bye, my little girl, good-bye," said Jasper. 
 
 And for a full five minutes he felt as though he hadn't 
 a swear in him.
 
 77 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SIN, pathetic in its unsuggestive dullness, no spring in 
 it, no growth-producing recoil, had been trodden now 
 for many generations into the souls and bodies of George's 
 scattered flock. They had lived for many generations 
 sheltered from any poignant Public opinion ; they had 
 few wants and many amenities the common for cows, the 
 right to grow potatoes upon the peaty soil by the edges 
 of a great marsh. And sodden were they all with a 
 base content. 
 
 A long succession of vicars wrapped in cloaks of charity 
 had winked mildly at many a sordid scandal and gone a 
 junketting. And then George came, and plunged like a 
 young god into the dead waters. 
 
 Nothing daunted him, neither sloth nor slumber, nor 
 content not even the cramping pettiness of the area that 
 comprised his duty the mere handful of souls it was for 
 him to arouse from their comfortable sleep and set a-soldier- 
 ing. He was after all only a subaltern in the field, and must 
 be content with the paltriness of his command. So far he 
 had found it quite enough for his patience and his powers, 
 for even from clods he chose to demand at least mechanical 
 perfection, and obedience, promptness, discipline are hard 
 nuts to crack for the minds of clods; but such perfection 
 George would have. Poet he might be in the red of the 
 dawn and the black of midnight; saint as he stood before 
 the Altar or alas ! looked at Joan. But stout soldier was he 
 amongst his wobbling squad. There was no uncertain 
 sound in George's commands; they could, on the contrary,
 
 78 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 snap like pistol shots. " Once get their shoulders up and 
 their chests out, and I'll think of the rest ! " he said. And 
 so he drilled them, drilled them, drilled them, spared 
 nothing, condoned nothing, throwing his heart broad 
 cast into the crowd, surprised after its long torpor into 
 a gaping attention. 
 
 Nor did George cast pearls before swine; he knew 
 better. These he kept for the three hours wherein he 
 lived, high up on Pegasus, Joan's breath upon his cheek. 
 
 But the Parish was his recruiting ground ; Church the 
 grand Parade ; God the highest in Command. 
 
 As a spur to honest effort on the part of his startled 
 recruits George spent every penny he could lay hold upon 
 in lighting Thryng and the outlying hamlets, and in re- 
 volutionizing the quality of the beer. Oil lamps glared 
 everywhere upon youth agog for sin there were no dark 
 corners any longer to hide skulkers and the madness bred 
 of bad malt. 
 
 The astute old Squire in his secret soul applauded these 
 moves of George's. But he was too proud to help, and 
 George being too proud to ask for help, the Vicarage 
 household often went next to penniless for a month of 
 Sundays. 
 
 Theoretically the political economy of George was 
 sound to the core. He had read wide and\deep on the 
 subject, and held the result stored and labelled in the 
 business corner of his brain to be applied to erring vestry- 
 men drastically. The people, it was clear enough, should 
 pay for these spurs to a higher morality. But while he 
 was battering proven theories into wooden heads, the 
 Church would be filling with hasty marriages and a few 
 more women set a-weeping. 
 
 George could break audaciously through any theory to 
 make a point. The theory would be working itself to- 
 wards perfection in the leisurely way of theories, but 
 he must be getting on and himself pay the piper until 
 those whose business it was were stung to action. 
 
 Being constantly short of cash George frankly admitted 
 wasn't especially agreeable, but it was all in the day's 
 work, and no matter what fell short his goal was always 
 ahead of him ; a star by night, a pillar of cloud by day. 
 
 It was this this and Joan that made George scent
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 79 
 
 sweetness in a cess-pool of iniquity sight wisdom through 
 a forest of folly. 
 
 Moreover, he had a mighty constitution. Although he 
 despised nothing, and had an hereditary palate for wine, 
 he could laugh at a bare board and eat cheese like any 
 ploughman. 
 
 Joan on the contrary could boast of no particular 
 physique. She had been brought up under the wing 
 of a gentleman with chilled passions but a warm palate, 
 and had acquired an ineradicable distaste for cheese. 
 But since the very maids smiled indulgently as they 
 munched their beerless meals, an antipathy so gross and 
 carnal seemed to the vicar's wife to rise up and smite her 
 in the face. She hid the abhorred morsels of cheese in her 
 handkerchief and choked down her bread. 
 
 It must not be supposed that George took either priggish 
 or gloomy views in regard to the pleasures of common 
 mortals. Any delight that came his way he took with 
 zest for the moment, and straightway forgot it. 
 
 His real living was elsewhere, and could at any moment 
 throw any other memory into shade ; as the red victorious, 
 ardent sun will shine back into obscurity the pale cold 
 glimmer of the moon. 
 
 George had the spark of genius to buoy him up, more- 
 over, and the magnetic fascination of a great and growing 
 personal influence and he had Joan ! 
 
 When he went forth amongst his people or came back 
 laden with sheaves for the building up of his High Altar 
 there she was ready and right. 
 
 Her very presence set him alight with a spiritual passion, 
 and when sometimes the great Darkness fell 'even upon 
 his bright soul Joan's luminous face could soon light it 
 up again. 
 
 Above all the imagination of George was safe in 
 Heaven. 
 
 It was quite different with Joan. When any pleasures 
 came her way she ardently longed for more, and her 
 imagination roved from Dan to Beersheba all along the 
 pleasant earth. She loved her friends, thought gently 
 of her enemies, and was anxious to do her best for 
 everyone, but to Influence anyone would seem quite 
 beyond her beat.
 
 8o HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Before George's amazing dependence upon her, indeed, 
 she sometimes stood aghast, wondering wide-eyed how 
 he could possibly accredit her with such powers. At the 
 same time she knew that by looking at George she really 
 did often make quite swift sure little runs to the truth. 
 So with emphatic gravity she accepted the situation. 
 
 She unflinchingly adored George, but it seemed to her 
 that she had really no natural taste for doing good, and 
 she loved amusing herself. 
 
 There was no murmur of discontent in Joan, but she 
 suffered badly from a great sense of unworthiness. 
 
 And even now when the excitement and glamour of 
 her engagement, with all its sacro-sweet accessories, had 
 sifted down into matrimony, she had plenty of pleasures 
 in a quiet way apart from George. George's father en- 
 thralled her; his wife's vague melancholy attracted and 
 repelled her : to be in a fir wood was a perennial delight 
 she would run half a mile out of her way to drink in the 
 fragrance of the great pines, and yet not keep a mother's 
 meeting waiting ! 
 
 And the roses ! Ah ! the roses were the joy of Joan's 
 heart. Her pure creamy, quiet face seemed most at home 
 amongst her roses. There seemed the oddest, quaintest 
 fellowship between the living coolness of her face and 
 the living warmth in their red hearts. She touched roses 
 as though they were babies. And although outside visitors 
 soon slacked a little in their fruitless attentions, Beatrice 
 had fallen into the habit of bouncing in at odd hours. 
 Joan was rather nice in the way she could always account 
 for Billy. When that gentleman became really too awful 
 for words Joan somehow made him more bearable 
 generally by what she didn't say. And when there was 
 nothing else going on, Beatrice found it a distraction 
 to watch the way in which good works were put through. 
 George's wife was so practical and matter of fact, so 
 eminently cut out for the business, and yet not devoid of 
 points. Her eyes would light up in the most amusing 
 way about the most trivial things. 
 
 " Heaven and George and all that ! " said Beatrice, 
 with a spasm of good-natured envy, " are awfully be- 
 coming wish to goodness we could do it. Being in the 
 world but not of it has enormous advantages reallv."
 
 HE FOE GOD ONLY. 81 
 
 Beatrice, as time went on, began rather to enjoy show- 
 ing her little sister-in-law off in character. She would 
 burst in on her way back from hunting with a crowd of 
 healthy, laughing young people clamouring for tea, and 
 Joan's eyes would dance fairly out of her head as she 
 looked out from the porch upon the careless light- 
 hearted crowd, shouting gaily as they went. They seemed 
 not to trouble under any circumstances to lower their 
 merry voices. 
 
 Beatrice upon these occasions always took it upon her 
 to assume the office of show-woman to the family Church 
 Property. 
 
 " She's ripping amongst under-linen," she explained one 
 day airily to a mixed audience, as Joan poured out the 
 tea. " Fearfully and wonderfully made things that set 
 your flesh creeping to touch them. And you should see 
 her at a mother's meeting ! Any man-jack of us would 
 give her eyes for Joan's way with the creatures, you'd 
 think it wicked waste to be lavishing such gifts on old 
 women if you didn't see how awfully they like it like it, 
 anyway as much as the poor luke-warm beasts can like 
 anything." 
 
 " Think of being tepid for eighty years," interrupted a 
 resonant young voice. 
 
 " And then to be tucked away on the weather side of the 
 Churchyard under those sodden Alders," screamed another. 
 
 " It does sound hopeless," Beatrice admitted cheerfully, 
 pausing to glance at Joan. " But if you go into it heart 
 and soul it really seems to go with a swing and it's 
 awfully interesting to watch. Loving your neighbour as 
 yourself is very becoming too, and lets loose all sorts of 
 hidden graces. It's hating him like poison that makes 
 hay of your manners." 
 
 To interrupt Beatrice till she had done was hopeless, but 
 here she seemed to halt, so Joan struck in, " Beatrice," she 
 implored, " your tea is getting cold and so are the cakes." 
 
 " Isn't she practical ? " demanded Beatrice, in a general 
 sort of way. 
 
 Joan had seen Mrs. Jarley's wax-works once at a Parish 
 Tea and felt dreadfully like one of the figures. She 
 laughed, but her eyes flashed out a protest. 
 
 " I don't think it's fair to any of us," pursued Beatrice, 
 
 6
 
 82 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " that you should be lost as an object-lesson I'll bring 
 them some day to one of the old women's teas or some- 
 thing." 
 
 " I don't perform for the public," said Joan, with an 
 effort retaining her serenity. 
 
 Beatrice clapped her hands delightedly. 
 
 " She won't have her old women laughed at, won't 
 she ? But, Joan, even if we wanted to we couldn't laugh," 
 she said. " It's quite like a prayer to watch you, it really 
 is. One wants to walk on tip-toe you know, or go out 
 in the twilight with Browning's poems, you know or 
 look at the moon by yourself, that sort of thing, you 
 understand." 
 
 " Here are more hot cakes," pleaded Joan. 
 
 " The other night I came home full to the brim of 
 good resolutions," said Beatrice, her mouth full of hot 
 cake. " I was firmly set on doing something for some- 
 body. I couldn't find anyone else so I fell upon Billy. 
 He said he had a headache, and I daresay it was true. 
 Just now he's smoking the vilest tobacco. I made him 
 lie down, and I read him a story of Bret Harte's that 
 Joan had been reading to the old women. When she 
 read it, it sounded like a blessing you know. When I 
 read it, if you'll believe me it began to swear ! And in- 
 deed so did Billy. Then I tried the Bible; it's like a 
 poem to hear Joan read the Bible. I found a piece 
 the most beautiful sonorous language you ever heard, 
 about burying a man with the burial of an ass outside 
 the City walls, and Billy snored." 
 
 " I'm thankful to say I did," said Billy scornfully. 
 
 " And yet you've been at Oxford, and Joan's old women 
 can't read. Oxford seems a hopeless place to send a 
 primitive intellect to. In sweeping in a smattering of 
 knowledge it apparently sweeps out every vestige of 
 faculty for appreciating it. I wonder, Billy, how you'd 
 have shown up as an unlettered pauper ? " 
 
 Billy grunted. His wife's words never disturbed him 
 so long as her voice was genial, but he cast an awe- 
 stricken glance at the Parochial Figure-head seething 
 with foreign emotions, a knowledge of the real nature of 
 which would have turned him grey on the spot, his notions 
 of Joan being wholly transcendental.
 
 HE FOR.. GOD ONLY. 83 
 
 " The poor would make me limp in no time, I know," 
 mused Beatrice. " I wonder what makes the difference 
 in people. Really, you'd think sometimes to look at 
 Joan that she had an electric light in her inside." 
 
 " Oh ! Beatrice, don't ! It sounds like a disease," cried 
 distracted Joan. 
 
 " It is too bad," admitted Beatrice, " but I really didn't 
 intend to be flippant. It's too horribly interesting to have 
 that Middle-Ages sort of enthusiasm at work actively in 
 your own family. You can't do justice to it in common 
 words somehow. I never think of you and George but 
 I want to be talking Chaucerise after journalise you 
 know." 
 
 " Won't any one have some more tea ? " said Joan 
 desperately. 
 
 " Girls," cried the omnivorous Beatrice, plunging back 
 upon the world. " Suppose we arrange finally now about 
 the tableaux. Billy, we don't want you. Your generaliza- 
 tions are of too violent a type. Details fly like chickens 
 before your great stable-broom of a mind. Go and tell 
 Joan about those diagrams you're going to give her 
 for the Infant School. Just for five minutes we'll be 
 wallowing in pure worldliness." 
 
 " It's like being a leper," thought Joan. " It makes you 
 feel so so ugly." 
 
 Billy mumbled along gingerly about the Infant School, 
 but Joan's ears listened only for the laughter of the 
 others. 
 
 That very morning for three destroying hours, had the 
 infants been choking her with their own peculiar fumes. 
 She was deadly, deadly, deadly sick of infants. 
 
 She liked the poor little things she did truly like them, 
 she protested mutely, till their scent seemed regularly 
 to settle down in her, and even then she tried to be 
 nice to them, truly, truly she did. 
 
 But the laughter and colour of the girls excited her, 
 their audacity, their flashing rings, the wicked waste in 
 their clothes, even their reckless adjectives attracted her 
 immensely ; and she seemed to be most horribly alive, to 
 be burning up with life ; and she was to live, it would 
 appear, only just in little permitted bits. She wanted 
 to shout out everything as those girls did, not just the 
 
 6*
 
 84 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 little right things. Her tongue was just as sharp with 
 merriment as theirs. And here they were all fencing her in 
 and expecting her to perform miracles for their entertain- 
 ment. 
 
 " They're snipping little bits off me," she thought, " and 
 if they go much longer like this there will be nothing 
 left but a pair of cutting-out scissors and and a prayer," 
 she added. A hasty trip of which she repented at bitter 
 leisure. 
 
 " It's not fair even to the infants," she thought catching 
 the gist of Billy's discourse vaguely. " I do love the poor 
 little things whenever I possibly can." 
 
 A rich, rolling peal of laughter drove Billy and the 
 infants clean out of her mind ; she gave out a little sharp 
 cry. 
 
 " By Jove ! " said Billy, stepping back horrified. 
 Joan looked at him, and all at once it struck her that 
 it would be a real comfort to speak out to something 
 human that couldn't possibly understand her. 
 
 " It's a horrid way I've got into when I've been think- 
 ing about anything violently, you know " she said, 
 laughing half nervously, "it's so much harder to think 
 under your breath than to act under it," she explained 
 apologetically, " and sometimes before I know what I'm 
 at I find myself shouting." 
 
 " Yes," said Billy doubtfully, " like us when we swear, 
 only I couldn't imagine you swearin'." 
 
 "I could," said Joan thoughtfully. "But I don't 
 always want to be swearing. I just want to get rid of 
 a lot of abominable silence that seems to be clogging 
 me up." 
 
 Words were silly things, and yet she could not be 
 silent any longer, and any more infants were absolutely 
 out of the question. 
 
 " Listening to people laughing is rather exciting, don't 
 you think ? " she ventured tentatively. 
 
 He glanced dubiously at the hilarious group. 
 " Women laugh at such fooleries." 
 " But fooleries are part of real living ? " 
 There was some struggle going on in Billy's kind dog's 
 eyes. It resulted in a painfully sincere stammer. 
 
 " I say, you're a real good sort, don't y' know. I've sus-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 85 
 
 pected as much this long time, only naturally one " Billy 
 swallowed what seemed to be a tidy mouthful of some- 
 thing. " You see one fights shy of another saint in the 
 family. George pretty nearly did for us when he started ; 
 but now I'm beginnin' to understand you better, you 
 see. You're such miles ahead of the lot of us in that 
 sort of way that you can afford to be lenient. It's like 
 this, you know. If a fellow's legs have no grip in 'em, you 
 understand? and he gives at the wrists some chaps are 
 made like that," he said apologetically ; " you wouldn't 
 think of deridin' him, you know, because he can't ride 
 like one that has the right make." 
 
 Billy left the application and completion of his illustra- 
 tion to the lady's superior intelligence, and mopped his 
 brow. 
 
 " Oh ! Billy," she cried, with a shy, merry laugh ; 
 " you don't understand one bit. That's not it in the very 
 least. I have the make. My legs have got grip in 'em. 
 That's just it ! I'm just exactly like everyone else only 
 only more so. Do you understand ? " 
 
 " By Jove ! " He stared at her thoughtfully. " I'm 
 hanged if I do but I'm not afraid of you any longer, any 
 way and it's a blessin' I can tell you. Been somethin' 
 awful often." 
 
 She seized his arm and shook it. " If you ever dare 
 to be afraid of me I'll I'll Oh ! never mind ! Shall 
 we go back to the infants now ? " 
 
 " Hang the infants ! " said Billy, encouraged by such 
 unhoped for urbanity, his dreamy gaze still fixed upon 
 her. 
 
 " Wasn't it an odd thing that I was the first to suspect 
 what George was after," he hazarded. "We were out 
 schoolin' one day, and he let the Squire's brown mare 
 down in a rabbit hole. I saw then that George was up 
 to no good. You can't handle blood and be nagging at 
 your own soul at the same time. Good Lord ! I forgot 
 I'm most awfully sorry." 
 
 Joan laughed. " You can always forget when I come 
 in," said she, " but I don't think you need forget that 
 George put you all in the shade when he went hunting." 
 
 " Forget," he groaned, " I wish to the Lord one could, 
 then the other thing wouldn't make you feel so bad."
 
 86 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Joan grinned inwardly, but a feeling of guilt surged 
 up within her. 
 
 " The Infants," she murmured meekly. 
 
 " Infants ! " he paused to go over her carefully. " I 
 
 say, you'd look well mounted. I'd like to teach you ridin', 
 and to show 'em what you can do." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Joan, her face like a pale flame. " But 
 the time ? I have so little." 
 
 " Can you get up early ? " 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 " I'm trainin' now, and up at five, mornings lengthenin' 
 out you see, to be after the men. Can you meet me at 
 half past six in the paddock at the back of the Vicar- 
 age bottom? Any skirt will do, you know. Let me 
 see Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. I say, don't 
 tell George. When I've put you through your paces he'll 
 be as proud as anyone of you in a new sort of way." A 
 glimmer of intelligence broke mildly through his admiring 
 gaze. " Women like a change," he reflected, with a sigh, 
 " even in the way you admire 'em. You should have 
 seen George ride a steeple chase," he murmured, with 
 sincere sympathy, " when he was all right, you know 
 Monday then, six-thirty sharp." 
 
 And so for weeks after that, for three delicious hours 
 in every week, every atom of Joan tingled with life. 
 
 Cora, after her milder, more languid fashion, was also 
 attracted by the unknown quantity in the Family Living. 
 She had come down to recruit with Beatrice, and the 
 exigencies of her situation required that she should swim 
 round in tea-gowns, a dispensation against which her 
 sister's robustness frequently struck. Upon these occa- 
 sions the plaintive matron took refuge at the Vicarage. 
 " Dearest Joan's mind," she said, " isn't full of worldly 
 self-seeking, nor her house of irreverent tattling 
 vipers ! 
 
 " It really is a comfort to be with you, Joan just now," 
 murmured the injured lady one day. " At a time like this 
 one does want religion. It makes me feel somehow right 
 to watch you busy with good works." She picked up a
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 87 
 
 piece of coarse work that Joan was hurrying to get finished, 
 and laid it down with a slight shiver. " And I'm per- 
 fectly sure it's extremely good for the baby. I told 
 Eustace so the other day and he laughed in such a horrid 
 way I don't believe Eustace has even the beginnings of 
 a soul. He said you had ripping eyes and were a deal 
 too good to be put to such uses, why didn't I look at the 
 curate's wife. She squints dreadfully, poor thing, so I am 
 always careful to be out when she calls, and if I meet her 
 to look away. It's one's duty to think of the future, you 
 know. But Eustace," she said, dabbing powder upon 
 rather a red and forlorn little nose, " Eustace thinks of 
 nothing but himself. It must feel nice to be really good. 
 You have the best of it, dear, really. I often feel so 
 hollow." 
 
 Joan herringboned her petticoat without comment. She 
 was thinking that at that moment she felt rather hollow 
 herself. They had had a most delightful leg of mutton 
 for luncheon, so fragrant and juicy ; the gross reflection 
 stabbed Joan to the heart, but it recurred with fiendish 
 pertinacity. The servants had other things, so George 
 had collected the mutton and everything else on the table 
 for a miserable burnt out family, and sent it off in a 
 basket. 
 
 He was absolutely right ; had he not done so she would 
 have been bitterly disappointed in George. At the same 
 time she did feel hollow in her own way, and could not 
 help reflecting that on the whole she would greatly have 
 preferred Cora's. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE subtle progressive relentless change going on in Joan's 
 quiet personality in regard to the mechanical acts of devo- 
 tion was, in a sort of way, a variation of Miss Rebecca's 
 parable ; she seemed to see the worm everywhere, but often 
 now failed to hear the song. 
 
 It was an incredible bruising, mute sorrow to the girl,
 
 88 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 and she seemed powerless to prevail against the forces 
 which opposed her. 
 
 Her enthusiasm was the first stronghold to give way to 
 the great enemy; her interest fell next to his battering 
 blows; finally, even her indifference yielded. She now 
 hated with her whole strong young heart every one of the 
 little pottering offices that swallowed up her time. The 
 flowers set stiffly in flat sconces, stripped of religious 
 glamour, were a parody on Nature. The reverent dustings 
 and polishings and sweepings, formerly each a separate act 
 of prayer, were now back-breaking toil, all smeared with 
 the trail of a feeble and giggling femininity, introduced, 
 too, by her own excess of zeal. This partition of holy 
 labour had been one of her first acts of self-sacrifice. Who 
 was she, after all, to monopolize such divine tasks? Now 
 the slovenliness in the quality of her assistants' work appalled 
 her; their points of view struck her dumb. 
 
 A sad and munificent lady, herself thrice widowed, by 
 way of a wedding gift to George, had presented three palls 
 to his parish, for the aged, the middle-aged, and the young. 
 George, to give him his due, whilst accepting them, had 
 grinned. 
 
 Joan, however, had adopted the things, so to speak, upon 
 her knees. 
 
 To shake and air the sumptuous trappings of woe, seemed 
 then to her a solemn joy unbefitting the powers of apprecia- 
 tion of a sexton. 
 
 Yet, alack and alack, she was weary now to her very heart 
 of palls. 
 
 To relinquish, nevertheless, any duty assumed with such 
 lofty beatings of heart, would have seemed to her a hideous 
 lapse ; she clung hard to her funereal labours, and to combat 
 the wily and destroying moth in her inroads upon the rich 
 velvet, if it no longer caused Joan's heart to quicken, at 
 least made it very frequently burn. 
 
 This change came not through any morbid thinking out 
 of anything, nor was it complicated with any religious doubt 
 whatsover. The tasks had lost their savour, but to do 
 them perfectly left her, during the day, no time for mor- 
 bidity. 
 
 In the evening, for George's sake, she had to keep her 
 mind alert and ready for all his needs.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 89 
 
 When she went to bed she was only too thankful to sleep, 
 and the only thing in regard to which she presumed to 
 doubt was her own unworthy unfitness to be the handmaiden 
 of holy things. 
 
 Had she known that her patient, reverent, exquisite hand- 
 ling of her dull chores impressed her giggling helpers con- 
 siderably more than George's best sermons a living picture 
 touching certain temperaments a deal more than any winged 
 word, she had perhaps been less despairing. 
 
 And those hallowed hours with George ; those midnight 
 vigils of joy, when he cast aside the Parish and lived ! No 
 one knew George, really, but herself, no one ! He was 
 making ready beautifully, steadily, in unself-conscious sim- 
 plicity for some unknowable greatness. Joan's belief in the 
 ultimate George was absolute, unswerving, but into the 
 nature of his great designs she did not dare now even to 
 penetrate. She had lost her way. What she had to do was 
 to watch each step of George's faithfully, so that she should 
 be ready to answer to his every demand. 
 
 For a young woman already rather spent in multifarious 
 labours to be every night of the week the inspiration of a 
 man, with a great song to sing, of one whose spirit at a 
 moment's notice can always mount and master his body, 
 must of necessity have been a fatiguing process. 
 
 But Joan, if her foolish eyes began, owl-like, to blink, 
 thought she was being disloyal to George. 
 
 And so she seemed all day long to be chasing dissolving 
 views. 
 
 Whilst still in hot pursuit of a cold scent, merciful Nature 
 sent, however, a little spell wherein to rest and a baby. An 
 exquisite new edition of George, and oddly enough of 
 George's father, without a thought beyond love and 
 warmth. 
 
 Idleness, a baby, and petted luxury combined, were almost 
 too much for Joan. She was bewildered with joy. The 
 baby, moreover, was the beginning of a number of new 
 things. 
 
 Directly the Squire had become fully aware of the damned 
 slave-driving tricks of George and had waxed audible, 
 George's resolute young wife, without a moment's hesita- 
 tion had jockeyed him into mute acquiescence. She 
 appeared to find out all he thought and intended, and
 
 90 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 then calmly to balk him. So Jasper had of late avoided 
 the Vicarage, and with a view to console himself for the 
 abstention, had been drinking lustily. He was thus in- 
 decorously occupied when the child's birth awed him into 
 sobriety only to be cast back presently into the pit of 
 forgetfulness by consuming anxiety upon the mother's 
 behalf. 
 
 George, as it happened, had sent his father no direct news 
 of the girl, and he was far too stubbornly proud to call 
 and ascertain for himself. All the news he got filtered out 
 through Isabella, who used the flail thus delivered into her 
 hands with skill and discretion. Jasper's nervous irrit- 
 ability under the lash knew no bounds. He drank abomin- 
 ably, but nothing seemed to ease him. 
 
 Whilst having ruled her husband out of the field, Isabella 
 took pleased possession of the sick-room. Her solicitude 
 took the form mostly of warnings against acquired squint 
 and detailed instruction in regard to the whole tale of the 
 more usual infantile diseases. She brought chill and stress 
 into the idle warmth, and Joan wondered wistfully why the 
 family sinner failed to come. 
 
 " Drinking, no doubt," she thought, sad but unaccusing. 
 " He'd better see the baby as soon as possible." 
 
 She insisted forthwith upon the nurse's bringing her pencil 
 and paper, and scrawled weakly across the sheet : " The 
 baby is the funniest little copy of you. Please come at 
 once." 
 
 " George," she cried, directly he came in, " will you send 
 this to your father. I want him to see the baby." 
 
 " My dearest " 
 
 " Oh ! not now, but to-night. He'll have time to get ready 
 then, you see. He'll come to-morrow afternoon. George, 
 did you send word about us, baby and me ? " 
 
 " He had word, of course." 
 
 " But not direct. That wasn't the same. He's so under- 
 standing, you see," she said, returning from a short flight of 
 memory, " that it makes him get rather hurt at things." 
 
 George said nothing; he thought somewhat dejectedly 
 that he could wish to see his father acting more up to his 
 reputed understanding. 
 
 " It's hard to say what you wouldn't do," said Joan, staring 
 into the fire, " if you'd lost everything nearly, and had
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 91 
 
 lost even the wish to get it back that's the worst of all 
 and kept on all the time being most wonderfully under- 
 standing." 
 
 " My father certainly understands your loving kindness," 
 said George, after a long look at her. 
 
 " He understands a great deal more than that," said Joan. 
 " One can say so many things when one is ill," she thought, 
 " I think I'll go on." " He understands just exactly why you 
 feel wrong, you know, and knows just where you'd like to 
 go wrong only of course you don't. It's more or less the 
 result of being sinful, don't you think?" George started. 
 " Oh, well ! I mean when the sin doesn't somehow go 
 through you. I don't think I could ever give way to 
 drink," she said dreamily, after a long pause which George 
 left undisturbed, " but, there are other things." Her wistful 
 eyes turned to George. 
 
 George laughed amusedly. 
 
 " Several," he admitted, " but I can't couple you with any 
 of them." 
 
 Lying there in the fragant warmth, no need to keep her 
 wits in leash so that they could spring at any moment to 
 George's help with the one right suggestion, the one right 
 word, a host of vague thoughts were taking firm hold upon 
 Joan. She could set George straight about several things 
 in regard to her foolish self, without disturbing one single 
 delicate beautiful thought of his or interfering with an idea. 
 It was just the right moment the one opportunity. She 
 laughed softly to herself, and her eyes were full of tears. 
 She could confess and get absolution. And then, never 
 again could she feel lonely and outcast, or so hopelessly 
 wrong. There was no human creature but George could 
 put right, and this was the one single circumstance, the one 
 single mood in which she could tell him things. If she 
 could begin even he could go on, and get things right 
 and get things right," she repeated, catching her breath 
 softly. She shut her eyes for the plunge, and opened them 
 upon George, pocket-book and pencil in hand, watching 
 her tenderly. 
 
 " I don't suppose you're the least pretty, really, but you're 
 more beautiful than beauty," he said, laughing, " and sweeter 
 than sweetness, and stronger than strength, and I don't 
 believe any one in the whole world understands you but
 
 92 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 me. And if you lie there disabled much longer there's no 
 knowing what folly I may not wobble into. I've got to 
 preach a sermon on Thursday at Troom, and it's got to be 
 as near perfect as I can make it, it's got to come right, and 
 if your face won't put it right, nothing will. This in the 
 
 one opportunity I'll have so " He snapped off short, 
 
 and in a minute the world was forgotten, his face was 
 rapt. 
 
 Joan huddled down in the sheets with a little gasp. " But 
 I thought it was I that wanted putting right," she said. " I 
 thought it was myself, and now the sermon has got my 
 moment." 
 
 Joan hated letting things go, and it was a moment in a 
 life-time, she thought, with odd persistence ; she half lifted 
 her head, but let it fall again limply. " To tell a man with 
 a face like that things, that sometimes you fairly detest 
 the the altar one simply couldn't," she said. " Besides 
 how could one interrupt him now ? " 
 
 She huddled down again tiredly. 
 
 When George threw back his head, the sermon right, she 
 said with firm distinctness, " George, I want baby to be a 
 soldier I'm extremely anxious he should be a soldier. You 
 won't mind, will you ? " 
 
 " One parson in the family enough, eh ? Oh, no ! I 
 won't mind. Miss Rebecca can drill him." He stood up 
 and looked down at her. " When did you decide upon his 
 profession ? " 
 
 " I've been thinking for some time, but just now I felt 
 quite sure." 
 
 "You you look different, Joan. You seem to be look- 
 ing through the firelight past me at some special horizon of 
 your own. You're not going to cut me out of any new 
 horizon that may arise, are you, Joan ? " he asked lightly, 
 but with an odd doubt. " It would be sure to have some 
 new tone of blue in it that one couldn't afford to miss." 
 
 " I haven't any horizon, I leave all that to you." 
 
 There was still an anxious doubt in George's face. She 
 laughed a little faintly up at him. 
 
 " I'll tell you directly I feel one coming on. I'm I'm 
 tired now. Is it quite settled about baby ? " she asked, 
 with sudden energy." 
 
 " Quite ! "
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 93 
 
 Joan tried to spin out her smile, but it seemed to break 
 off in the middle. George was elsewhere. 
 
 " I think," she whispered at last " I think I want some- 
 thing " 
 
 " My dearest ! " cried George, his hand on the bell, his 
 horror-stricken eyes upon Joan. 
 
 When the nurse came, she flung a look at him that 
 shrieked with the myriad thoughts of an experienced woman 
 upon husbands. 
 
 Joan's mandate to the hall had the desired effect. 
 
 Jasper, not yet too far gone to decipher the feeble scrawl 
 and divine its import, gave orders for his horse to be brought 
 round by six next morning, and stumbled off to his room, 
 the spirit-stand in his embrace. He liked to repent with a 
 free hand. With a virtue-breathing oath, disdaining lock 
 and key, he set it upon the table, and plunged recklessly 
 into a cold bath. 
 
 Early the next afternoon he presented himself before 
 Joan, erect but haggard, and took his place as worshipper 
 before the sacred shrine, scattering Isabella. 
 
 The flight of Isabella was coeval with the advent of Miss 
 Rebecca. 
 
 Her bearded presence was the finishing touch to Jasper's 
 content. But for George's righteous eye he could have 
 believed himself translated without a jerk from hell to 
 heaven. 
 
 " The fellow's eye, however, rights the balance," he re- 
 flected humbly, "keeps my memory fresh. Needn't em- 
 phasis the value of the reminder, though, in the way he 
 does." 
 
 George, as a matter of fact, having noticed his father's 
 wince at sight of him, had with a most zealous effort ex- 
 punged every spark of expression from his countenance, 
 and was quite as nervous and embarrassed as the perennial 
 prodigal himself. 
 
 Directly she had made her last protest in regard to the 
 sacerdotal character of the wedding tour, Miss Rebecca had 
 snapped her lips, and delivered Joan into the hands of 
 Providence. 
 
 " A bride," she had informed Dr. Davis while he swallowed 
 his beef -tea, " should be left to the guidance of Nature, 
 until after the birth of her first child. Watching two human
 
 94 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 beings making fools of themselves will never give them 
 wisdom." 
 
 And so staunch to her principles, upon those rare occa- 
 sions when Miss Rebecca bore down upon the Vicarage, 
 she crossed her hands and controlled her temper, until she 
 seemed frequently to be tottering on the verge of imbecility. 
 Joan had often been seriously alarmed, and had done her 
 best to allay the distressing symptoms. But. the lady refused 
 to budge an inch from her convictions; she sat on 
 during her visits like a stuck pig, and permitted the creatures 
 under observation to show their preposterous hands. 
 
 Even Joan's breathless disclosure of George's projected 
 master-piece had elicited no more from this inexorable 
 theorist than one ungovernable inarticulate splutter of what 
 Joan took to be impotent wrath. 
 
 The baby, however, terminating the vow, broke the ice. 
 The bride had now, presumably, disappeared in the mother, 
 and Miss Rebecca, in all her pristine vigour, charged down 
 upon the ridiculous innocents. 
 
 She would sit for hours, if permitted, the child across 
 her arms, like an umbrella, making irreverent remarks. 
 But in the midst of her wildest blasphemy her traitorous 
 moustache would sometimes twitch sharply. And when 
 Joan or the baby called for rest, she was a dragon on the 
 hearth. 
 
 Above all she kept the cloven hoof of the parish, and 
 higher interests outside Joan's door. Directly an echo of 
 either appeared in George's tone, a remark as irrelevant as 
 it was importunate, lightened the threatened air. 
 
 " Another privilege filched from you, my friend," she in- 
 formed Jasper in a whisper. " Can't drink like a fish, my 
 good man, and put down your foot on your son's soul when 
 the occasion requires it." 
 
 Joan wandered awe-stricken whether this grateful vigilance 
 were of accident or design, but she was too happy and lazy 
 to track the windings of Miss Rebecca's mind. 
 
 Her circle was complete. The world went round with a 
 soft song, and Joan lorded it finely over them all. 
 
 As Miss Rebecca and her old friend went one day down 
 the Vicarage path, Jasper sighed deeply 
 
 " Unless I'm vastly mistaken, Rebecca, the devil's not so 
 very far down in that poor little girl," he remarked diffi-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 95 
 
 dently. " She's seen visions with more purple and fine 
 linen in 'em than hair shirts. That face of hers is a bare- 
 faced blab. The girl's instincts are promising only too 
 promising," he hastened to add sadly. " It's hard on a 
 woman to have to go shares in a man's heart, even with 
 Heaven, eh, Rebecca ? " 
 
 " A man may require a woman to go shares in his heart 
 with more disastrous and less respectable things than 
 Heaven," boomed Rebecca. 
 
 " She's not the girl to be fed on pure soul," he sighed. 
 " She'll starve on the diet, like dogs on jelly. Why even 
 when he looks at that innocent child there's a baptismal 
 expression about him." 
 
 " Control yourself, Jasper." 
 
 " You know as well as I that a woman must have some 
 compensation for grinding labours, and a rapt husband. If 
 religion fail her," he groaned, " what's left, I'll ask you ? " 
 
 " Philosophy or a lover." 
 
 " How in Heaven's name is she to evolve a philosophy 
 out of George and calico smocks? As for the other thing, 
 if George won't amuse her, no one else shall. That's plain 
 enough in her honest eyes." 
 
 " In the interests of common decency, it's time to change 
 the subject," said Miss Westcar. 
 
 " Oh ! if you go putting on airs and graces of righteous- 
 ness, Rebecca, when a man's heart is already in his boots, 
 I'd better be cutting my throat at once. By the way, the 
 girl knows what she's talking about. There's the the 
 making of a Bishop in that poem." 
 
 Joan had that very day insisted upon reading it aloud 
 from beginning to end. 
 
 " If anyone but George had written it." 
 
 He lifted a deprecating stick. "Do I ever lose sight of 
 the hopelessness of George ? I feel this minute," he pursued 
 musingly, " as though I'd been all the afternoon in the ex- 
 cellent and improving company of saints, angels and apostles 
 with backbone behind 'em. Give George his due, he's not 
 all wings, and it wasn't her reading either that made that 
 poem poetry. Very fine and impressive to be sure, and 
 damn good poetry, too, all of it ; made you think of your 
 death-bed. And want to take that poor girl to a ball." 
 
 " Were I you, Jasper," counselled Rebecca suavely, " I
 
 96 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 should permit my death-bed reflections to swallow those on 
 the ball." 
 
 " The girl's not twenty," protested Jasper. 
 
 "Look here, Jasper. You're not wholly soddened by 
 drink yet. Can't you see that the girl is being driven by 
 two conflicting forces? Intense love and devotion for 
 George's person and boundless faith in the greatness of 
 his aims, with no stomach whatsoever for the details of the 
 Heavenly path. Had he been a soldier or a sailor, or any- 
 thing else upon earth it wouldn't have mattered. A man 
 can manage his company or touts for briefs without the 
 co-operation of his wife's soul; even an ordinary parson 
 can do very well on his own. So long as the drudgery 
 peculiar to clerical women is done to his satisfaction, and 
 no especial mischief made in the parish by her tongue, he's 
 content, good soul ! " 
 
 " But what has George to do with the ordinary parson ? " 
 said Jasper irritably. 
 
 " What, indeed ! There's a natural sort of holiness about 
 George, an exhalation, so to speak ; always was, due neither 
 to ignorance nor exclusive society. He's been through the 
 usual fires," Miss Rebecca lifted her nose, "and has lived 
 under the shadow of your wing. With his father and his 
 opportunities, it stumps me to find out whence George 
 derived his peculiar form of spirituality rank, dogged, jew 
 at the bottom of it, not a trace of pagan grace. His very 
 love had its origin in pure spirit " 
 
 "Rotten foundation," muttered Jasper, meaning no irre- 
 verence. 
 
 " From the very start," pursued Miss Rebecca unmoved. 
 " He's mixed Joan up so inextricably with sacred things 
 and his highest emotions that now she's the most sacred 
 thing of the lot. It's a misfortune for the girl; she has 
 vast powers of enjoyment outside the legitimate domain of 
 altars, and would appreciate immensely being the wife of a 
 budding bishop. At the same time, in her present position 
 she's supreme. We're all absurdly proud of George. Don't 
 glare ; the reservations surely don't need recounting. We're 
 very proud of our boy, and without Joan at his back a 
 faithful well-spring of good things upon which he draws 
 fearlessly and without stint, I doubt if we'd have quite the 
 same cause we now have for our artless vanity. The ques-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 97 
 
 lion for the present is, who is to suffer ? George or Joan ? " 
 She had been speaking throughout with a calmness that 
 terrified Jasper, now her voice grew even more poignantly 
 serene. " I don't think that George is in a condition to 
 understand the sub-play going on in his wife. I don't think 
 it desirable that he should understand it. It must dim the 
 extraordinary brightness of his mind. It might spoil his 
 work; it's wonderful work. Jasper," she said solemnly, 
 " don't be a hypocrite. It's throbbing this minute in your 
 rank old soul, and if it touches you, you, Heaven only 
 knows what it may not attain to. And after all," she said, 
 lifting her shaggy old head proudly, " when it's a question 
 of the man's or the woman's suffering, and there's a 
 choice in the matter, no woman worth her salt would 
 think twice about it, it's she who must ' dree her weird.' 
 It's her right and her heritage. Supposing Joan got all 
 her youth wants, and George, or George's outlook, or 
 George's career were hurt thereby, how do you imagine 
 she'd feel?" 
 
 "How the devil will George feel if he wears her out 
 before her time ? " 
 
 " George won't know. We won't tell him." 
 " I'm hanged if there is not more selfishness in the spirit 
 than in the flesh." 
 
 " It's on the surface in the spirit, so we see more of it. 
 It's worked into the warp and woof of the flesh into every 
 part of the body corporate." 
 
 " A man with the fervour of an early Christian should 
 remain celibate till it works itself out." 
 
 " But since marriage has overtaken George ? " 
 " Faugh ! To enjoy peace of spirit at such a price ! " 
 " Better than to sell it for a mess of potage as is the way 
 of man in the flesh. Did I want her to marry either George 
 or Heaven? One and the same thing in her ridiculous 
 mind. But since she's done it she must play the straight 
 game." 
 
 " Trust a woman to give the hard job to the woman ! " 
 " Men don't always spare them. Do you suppose I like 
 to look at youth withering at the foot of the pulpit? At 
 the same time, Joan may win her way to a sainthood of her 
 own in the process." 
 The Squire groaned.
 
 98 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Or fall into a consumption," said Rebecca, " or become 
 ultimately merged in George." 
 
 " Merciful Lord ! " 
 
 " Or be the mother of an immense family." 
 
 " For God's sake, Rebecca " 
 
 " Or she may be just a bird with a broken wing about 
 the house. She's not the only girl who has been lifted to 
 Heaven by the love of a man, and dropped to earth by 
 the demands of her youth and the details of clerical matri- 
 mony. 
 
 " And then," growled the squire, " to be called upon to 
 aid and abet George and a whole choir of angels in tor- 
 menting one poor little girl." 
 
 " So far, Jasper, you've contributed nothing but folly to 
 this regrettable business. Supposing you now try a little 
 sense." 
 
 " Supposing you suggest some." 
 
 " Jasper ! you're like ashes, as you richly deserve to 
 be upon George's teeth. For this reason the girl has a 
 real sympathetic attachment for you. You're contraband, 
 so to speak, yet permitted. A mental pursuit enthral- 
 ling, yet terrifying; a sort of coquetting with family 
 sin. She wants a safety valve. Turn yourself into 
 one." 
 
 " I ? My dear Rebecca " 
 
 " You may well look astonished." 
 
 " But you, my dear Rebecca " 
 
 "A woman's unspoken confidence and unspeakable han- 
 kerings will naturally drift towards a man. Happy she 
 whose father-in-law may gather in the weird harvest." 
 
 Jasper had a scared look, but Miss Rebecca's eye showed 
 no yielding. 
 
 " She'll take her duty, however dull it may be, keenly," 
 she resumed. " I hope she'll take it kindly. One harsh 
 note may undo the self-sacrifice of a life-time. I hate to 
 see a virtue spoilt in the doing. We're the worst sinners in 
 that respect." 
 
 " You are," said Jasper, plaintively thinking, it were hard 
 to say why, of the moustache. 
 
 Possibly Rebecca divined the thought. Her tongue 
 sharpened. 
 
 " Man, on the contrary, can sin with so gay a swing that
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 99 
 
 the ordinary woman, never a very keen observer, will feel 
 sure he's being virtuous in his own way." 
 
 It was thus it came to pass that two shameless Pagans 
 undertook to cherish the interest of a saint. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 JASPER was still standing aghast before the new duty im- 
 posed upon him, when another still more soul-searching 
 fell crashing upon his unregenerate head. 
 
 Isabella Winnington had laboured ungrudgingly for the 
 advancement and amusement of her girls, and had in no 
 sort of way, in this regard, failed her boys. What their 
 father's vices deprived them of in their own home, she 
 had taken good care should be made up to them in the 
 houses of those more worthy though less picturesque 
 than that terrible parent. 
 
 She had been consistent, shrewd, and just, so far as 
 she knew justice, in her unenthusiastic handling of her 
 children, and had never spared herself. 
 
 But as for love she had buried all the love of which 
 she was capable in the heart of young Ralph Wynne the 
 day he was brought back to her husband's house, a little 
 blue hole in his white forehead, his clothes unruffled, a 
 smile that seemed still alive around his handsome mouth, 
 for he had died as gracefully and ineffectively as he had 
 lived. Isabella had then put away from her also all the 
 sweet ways of sympathy. 
 
 Any outward display of affection filled her from hence- 
 forth with a strange ungovernable panic. A peculiarity 
 her children had not been slow to discover. 
 
 Her girls, though not especially sensitive either to love 
 or caress, when they thought at night of this strange 
 thing, cuddled up in each other's arms. Her boys, when 
 they had choked down the first grim acceptance of the 
 fact, never dared to think of it at all. They got instead 
 into the way of totting up and cataloguing the virtues of 
 their mother. 
 
 Joan did not know enough of her virtues to tot them 
 up, and she had a wholesome dread of the unsmiling 
 
 7*
 
 ioo HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 barrenness of her mother-in-law's nature. But whilst she 
 lay and watched her from her bed, she had noticed an 
 odd tottering look about the woman and her most pathetic 
 efforts to conceal it. She had seen Mrs. Winnington go 
 suddenly slack and as suddenly harden herself; her head 
 drop wearily and shoot up again with a jerk, and behind 
 her eyes there had often skulked some horrid thing that 
 filled Joan with grisly apprehension. And all the time 
 this sub-play went on in most insistent silence. Joan 
 wondered drearily why she alone of them all should see 
 and understand. 
 
 The thing haunted her, but Mrs. Winnington's horror 
 of publicity was so pathetic, so importunate, that Joan 
 could not betray her. Then, presently she began to 
 wonder if, in the silence, this echoing shell of a woman, 
 who had thrown her whole cargo of love into one old 
 grave, might not perhaps find out her unutterable empti- 
 ness, and with that the thought of her loneliness took firm 
 possession of Joan. 
 
 Joan's pride and confidence in her young son as a 
 Power-house of beneficent influence was as sublime as it 
 was staunch ; no other baby born of woman had ever such 
 miraculous gifts. If the baby couldn't help the miserable 
 woman nothing could. 
 
 So directly she was able to walk, Joan set one hour 
 in the day rigorously aside to carry up her small apostle 
 to the Hall for the express purpose of regenerating his 
 grandmother. And when she grew stronger she worked 
 double time in order to spin this hour sometimes into 
 two, and during her whole monotonous, silent visit was 
 Joan uplifted with the spirit of a crusader. Her baby 
 as Cross seemed to call forth all her forces; to awaken 
 her to a joy in living and to a tumultuous grief. For in 
 no sort of way, apply him as she would, could he kindle 
 again the frozen flame of Joan herself as the official hand- 
 maiden of Heaven. 
 
 And now the Parish held a new terror, for measles and 
 diphtheria raged within its bounds. Joan's heart, as she 
 stepped across each infected threshold, fell like lead, and 
 she was fairly chevied by a faithless-shepherdess sensa- 
 tion of a most distressing order. In this matter George 
 held himself entirely aloof. He had watched the struggle
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 101 
 
 going on in the unquiet eyes of the quiet mother with 
 tender sympathy, and when he sighted victory, in silence 
 he blest God and his incomparable wife. George's 
 oneness with the spiritual part of Joan had become so 
 much second nature with him that to speak out of his 
 pride in her would have savoured of pride in himself. 
 Besides that Joan should fail where he would prevail, did 
 not enter into George's conception of things. It would 
 have been an insult to Joan. 
 
 There was beauty in so proud a reticence, so staunch a 
 belief, but in the case of a young mother with a first child 
 such loftiness of emotion were, perhaps, better fitted to 
 a deathless Heaven than a mortal earth. 
 
 To give George his due his heart revealed itself often 
 at night in certain exquisite, tender suggestions, quick 
 with strong humanity, which he set like jewels in the Great 
 Work. But it never struck Joan to associate this delicate, 
 radiant genius of deathless thought with herself and 
 diseases. 
 
 George saw all her struggles; the quiet fight of the 
 strong, sweet, transparent soul was one of the object 
 lessons of his life. Nothing escaped him. Where he 
 went hopelessly wrong was in the resulting exaltation of 
 spirit which he made sure so exquisitely matched his own. 
 The exaltation in his pure mind being the natural sequence 
 to the struggle. 
 
 George, in the contemplation of his own privileges, ex- 
 perienced a throbbing pity for those unequally yoked 
 wretches with wives standing contented amongst pots 
 and pans outside the closed portals of their lonely hus- 
 bands' spirits and minds. 
 
 But what can one expect ? After all even a fleshly man 
 half intoxicated with creative power is half blind. 
 
 And what the wives of the prophets may not have 
 suffered during those great men's periods of inspiration 
 can only be imagined. 
 
 Joan, meanwhile, after a hard and inadequate morn- 
 ing, amidst Altar decorations, the Poor, Schools and under- 
 linen, often longed for the time when she could sit 
 down idle and watch her wonderful infant doing Tier work. 
 
 She could see the spread of his unparalleled influence 
 in the loveless Subject's every feature.
 
 102 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 It cannot be denied that at the outset of this unparalleled 
 onslaught upon her buried heart the Subject had restively 
 wondered and fumed. This persistent visitation struck a 
 proud spirit as being somewhat of a liberty. She had not 
 invited the presence either of mother or child, her black 
 eyes shot out imperious questions ; but the odd storm of 
 eagerness behind Joan's chestnut ones, as they glanced 
 from her to the baby, faintly interested Mrs. Winnington, 
 and in the end disarmed her. 
 
 It must, moreover, be a daily annoyance to Jasper to 
 know the girl to be in the house and yet be debarred, 
 through his satanic pride, from the enjoyment of her 
 society. 
 
 His liking for George's wife had always exasperated 
 Isabella, and it was nice to feel again the clasp of a child's 
 hand. 
 
 Joan made neither demand nor demonstration; still- 
 ness and silence seemed part of her atmosphere; so 
 presently Mrs. Winnington, on whom there often came 
 now a curious apathy, a cloudiness, left her daughter- 
 in-law and fixed all her attention upon the baby. 
 He seemed easy, restful, free of the veriest shadow of a 
 suspicion. 
 
 For the first time since that day which broke her, Mrs. 
 Winnington seemed to escape from the dead, cold, im- 
 prisoned air that had slowly been choking her. Curious 
 little stirrings began to flutter about her weary breast, 
 little pangs and pricks and queer promptings of small 
 things now but dimly remembered, took hold of her and 
 held her. Sometimes she straightened herself, took up 
 her knitting, and tried to sort these things out. But they 
 grew confused in her mind, she had to beat her way 
 through them, she grew tired. Counting stitches was 
 becoming difficult, her deft fingers clumsy. Baffled and 
 a little mortified she always threw down her work and 
 went back to the baby. He was easy easy. 
 
 She had never been happy enough to suffer foolish- 
 ness, and had strongly repressed it in her own children, 
 but now it seemed to come to her. Odd, gay little follies 
 came dancing up whence only God knows, and having 
 uttered them she would smile a little and throw a glance 
 at Joan, half challenge, half enquiry; but Joan was
 
 HE FOE GOD ONLY. 103 
 
 obviously engaged with other things. With a sigh of 
 relief Mrs. Winnington would go back to the baby. 
 
 The oddest thing of all was the way in which the tired 
 woman lost her weariness and grew young. 
 
 Joan was breathless with interest, and prouder than ever 
 of her baby. 
 
 One day Mrs. Winnington was playing as usual with 
 the child, his little fingers pattering her palm, when 
 suddenly she clutched the little fist in a fierce clasp, 
 stopped half way in a rhyme, her mouth rigid and drawn. 
 Her moveless eyes glittered like glass balls, then slowly 
 dulled. 
 
 Joan lifted her clenched fingers from the little hand 
 tenderly, and they carried poor twisted Boadicea to bed. 
 
 And now came Jasper's turn. He was horribly com- 
 punctious, remained rigorously sober, and did solemnly 
 all that he was ordered to do. And when she got up 
 again, all in knots, dumb, but with sharpened hearing and 
 her intelligence by no means blotted out, by gesture and 
 gesticulation, she gave her family to understand that when 
 Joan and the baby arrived as usual, Jasper must also 
 answer to the roll. Jasper, only too painfully anxious 
 to oblige, appeared prompt to the moment. By another 
 effort of will Isabella called for the Bible, laboured 
 patiently with twisted elbow and one sad clawed hand in 
 and out the sacred pages, picking upon divers passages, 
 stringent with judgment and red-hot with the perils of strong 
 waters and the hideous sin of revenge. These she gave 
 Joan distinctly to understand were to be read aloud un- 
 swervingly. And as Joan read the poor palsied head 
 wagged in emphasis. 
 
 Day after day did this dreary farce go on. The in- 
 genuity of the woman in choosing poignant portions 
 appeared to grow with use. Her selections had a fiendish 
 adaptability and evinced a deathly wit. There was a 
 significance, grotesque, amazing in the punctuation of the 
 wagging head. 
 
 Joan read in agony, with a hideous disposition to laugh. 
 George and the rest stood around in horrid inaction with 
 flushed faces and breaking hearts. Jasper wilted visibly 
 under the strain. 
 
 But the baby chuckled and crowed on merrily, and one
 
 104 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 day he again caught and held the attention of the sick 
 woman. Of a sudden she forgot her vengeance and 
 turned all that was left of her to the child. 
 
 But the horrid exaltation removed, she now kept 
 dropping back into apathy; jerking herself with fierce 
 tenacity into semi-consciousness, till once after a long, close 
 look at the child a flash of lucidity glittered in her dulled 
 eyes. 
 
 She made frantic half-animal gestures for a pencil and 
 scrawled some words on the fly leaf of the Bible. It was 
 the nearest paper available, and the hurry of the woman 
 was maniacal. 
 
 Forthwith an unspeakable look of disgust spread slowly 
 upon her dreadful face, and when the night fell she 
 died. 
 
 When Joan put the Bible into Jasper's hands, she was 
 slipping hurriedly away, but an inextinguishable groan 
 brought her timidly back. 
 
 " Read it," said he, clutching her hand. 
 
 " Tell the child I was innocent." Joan read out after a 
 close look. 
 
 " My God ! I never thought she was anything else 
 in that regard," groaned the old man, " though every one 
 else did. God help her. I tried to tell her once that I 
 believed in her so far but she shut me up. She's re- 
 fused to open the subject for six-and-twenty years to me 
 or to any other human being, and silence in a woman 
 spells guilt to all the other women. 
 
 " I did my best to clear her before the world," he cried, 
 jumping to his feet. " By God, I did. Where was the 
 use? She shut her lips and defied the world. Her pride 
 broke her. Silent for six-and-twenty years and a baby to 
 open her lips at last ! " 
 
 The old man rocked to and fro, blanched, and broken. 
 
 " My girl," he began, " my girl my girl " The 
 
 words came thick and halting. The veins swelled and 
 blackened in his livid forehead. 
 
 Then with a supreme call upon his great strength he 
 forced himself to his feet, and erect, and in a clear voice 
 made humble confession to the little white girl trembling 
 before him. He told her how Isabella, having broken 
 his life, he had broken hers. Broken it by a silence as
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 105 
 
 implacable as her own. " She died of silence," he said, 
 " of her own silence and mine. And I've been thinking 
 things over lately. I meant to tell her again that I 
 believed in her after all and to make her understand too. 
 And now ! " 
 
 " Sit down," said Joan, pulling him back to his seat. 
 
 He was old now and livid ; she dared not leave him. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said at last huskily. " Think of a silence of 
 six-and-twenty years for one poor woman ! I wonder if 
 it's impious to thank God that her soul is at last at 
 rest" 
 
 " It's not impious in the least," said Joan in her prosaic 
 way. " It's common humanity." 
 
 " For a woman to go under and leave nothing but a 
 bad taste in the mouth, and yourself the cause of it ! " he 
 groaned. 
 
 " There were other causes at work," said Joan sturdily. 
 
 Jasper mused on mournfully. " They were a cruel dis- 
 pensation for the lot of us, those readings," he muttered, 
 " for you above all; you're a little brick, girl. And don't 
 mistake me, I don't regret them. She enjoyed herself 
 thoroughly these last few days. Seems a pity she should 
 be cut off in the midst of it. I doubt if she'd enjoyed 
 herself properly for six-and-twenty years. And she rabid 
 for every pleasure she could snatch ! " 
 
 " You haven't eaten a thing, to-day," said Joan quietly. 
 " I'm going to get you something, and afterwards you 
 wouldn't feel half so awful, if you'd come into the drawing- 
 room where we're all sitting. Some sorts of sorrow," she 
 said shyly, " make one want to huddle together like sheep 
 so as to get warm again. And and, oh ! aren't you glad 
 I brought baby ? " 
 
 " I think I must stay a little longer alone," said Jasper 
 sadly. "It's time, I think, you'll allow, my girl, that I 
 did begin to think a bit."
 
 io6 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 JASPER'S thinking being honest, straight, and simple, re- 
 sulted in action that made on the whole for righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 To hold himself in constant readiness for clerical society 
 now called forth all his powers. He shut his teeth upon 
 his gnawings and, puffing and blaspheming, as he only too 
 audibly resisted the devil, frequently performed prodigies 
 of valour. 
 
 There were indeed lapses. 
 
 Occasionally he stumbled in upon Joan with flushed 
 face, every thought a whir, and in his language a tendency 
 to the picturesque. But the calm, unaccusing, resolute 
 way in which Joan plied him with coffee and went on 
 with whatsoever she happened to have in hand, had an 
 amazingly sobering effect upon Jasper. 
 
 Joan's calm upon these distressing occasions, was, how- 
 ever, only a surface one. During the whole processes of 
 the Squire's recovery she sat on tenterhooks lest George 
 should come in and be jarred by so gross a spectacle. 
 
 Oddly enough Jasper's feelings in regard to the im- 
 portance of saving George's feelings were in theory pre- 
 cisely similar to those of Joan. 
 
 For days following upon any misadventure Jasper would 
 appear upon the scenes baldly, blatantly sober, a sub- 
 scription which he invariably lacked courage to present 
 until long after the sacrificial period had elapsed, tucked 
 carefully away upon his person. 
 
 Joan's methods of bringing retribution to the aged 
 sinner were peculiarly her own. 
 
 " The little girl says nothing," thought miserable Jasper,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 107 
 
 " but she keeps the child away. No one but a woman 
 knows how to punish sin properly." 
 
 Since nothing, however, but a sight of Joan would keep 
 his dead wife's dreadful, silent acceptance of her reputed 
 guilt at bay, he spent long hours at the Vicarage, and 
 bitterly as he resented George, was fast becoming possessed 
 of Joan's passionate admiration of his son's really re- 
 markable influence upon any one he came across. There 
 seemed to be cleansing in the very touch of George, and 
 as Jasper shrewdly discerned by the help of Joan he was 
 now, day by day, untying the bands of a multitude of new 
 powers. 
 
 George's sermons had always been suffered gladly by 
 his congregation, whom the precariousness of crops and 
 huntin gprospect preserved from the sin of criticism, but 
 they had been for a long time past now a steady torment 
 to himself. He gave out the worst of the things in him, 
 he guiltily reflected, in those barren discourses, powerless 
 for good or for evil. Set against the thoughts and words 
 that lived, groaning and rejoicing in his evening's work, 
 they were hopeless, these sermons. 
 
 George was inexorable in regard to himself, practising 
 unselfishness as he understood it. He had honest and 
 anguished intentions of throwing up the one exultant joy 
 of his life, his literary work, and falling back upon the 
 claims of grinding duty. True he was quite wide-eyed 
 enough to know perfectly well that the sermons were well 
 up to the locality's mark, and eminently suited to the 
 understanding of his hearers, but they were good enough 
 neither for God nor for him. They fell short in fact of 
 being as good as he could make them. 
 
 George could be as reticent about his own struggles 
 as he was about Joan's. But being a woman Joan followed 
 his fight through all its windings, and when the right 
 emotional moment seemed to her to have arrived, plunged 
 headlong into its midst. 
 
 She chose the time when George was making ready 
 for his night's work, and she herself was not yet tired. 
 
 " George," said she, nodding at the MSS. upon which 
 George's eyes were gloating, " you're thinking of giving 
 up that for the sermons. If you do you'll only be spoiling 
 both."
 
 io8 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " I've been swearing aloud then after all ? " said George, 
 laughing. 
 
 " No, you've been wonderfully artful, but I've been 
 watching you, and I do believe I've found out where the 
 things go wrong," said Joan, struggling with the inverte- 
 brate back of a very odorous school-book. " You see 
 you oughtn't to write down the things you say. Just think 
 them out and then say them. When you write them down 
 you keep trying to make them suit the place and the people, 
 and your conscience and common-sense. There's not flame 
 or fire enough about common-sense to take the the, oh, 
 you know, the chillness out of spiritual things." 
 
 George's startled eyes anxiously raked her; she looked 
 even more right than usual. 
 
 " You must throw spiritual things into a song, you know, 
 so that they make melody in people's hearts; or you 
 might just as well," she said prosaically, " be reading ex- 
 tracts from the Times. You cut all the bits of you out 
 of the written sermons, don't you see, because you think 
 they're egotistical and impertinent. They may not be 
 common sense," said Joan serenely, " those bits of you, 
 but they're the bits of genius that make the difference 
 they truly are. But I can't explain it, I get mixed. 
 There ! Stand up now, and preach to me! " cried Joan, 
 with a laugh and a flash from her ruddy eyes. 
 
 " But " he hesitated, laughing also in his boyish 
 
 sensitive way. 
 
 " Go on," she commanded, sitting erect in her chair. 
 
 A sudden eager resolve not to disappoint her luminous 
 laughing face surged up in George. He struck out boldly 
 and the words that had baffled him that morning, and left 
 Joan wondering that a man and his words should be such 
 worlds apart, now grew gradually out into an idyll to 
 pierce hearts. When he had finished Joan stood up 
 slowly, and threw out her arms as she always did in 
 moments of ungovernable emotion. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! That's it, now you can do anything not 
 with the people here they're content, but now you can 
 do anything with people who aren't content." 
 
 " But but I could always preach to you if you looked 
 like that." 
 
 She sat down and paused to daub a back on a book
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 109 
 
 and then said with outward composure, and a mighty 
 tempest of revolt within, " Then I'll always look like that ! " 
 And in the most ridiculous way in the world she felt as 
 though she were signing her soul away. She patted and 
 coaxed the linen in her prim way into the crinkly crevices 
 of the wobbling book back, then suddenly, with a swift 
 bird-like movement, she threw down the book and jumped 
 up. 
 
 " George ! George ! George ! " she cried, seizing his 
 arm. " This is all very well for you, but think of me. 
 You'll not go leaving me behind, will you ? You'll not go 
 standing on hill-tops, oh ! you know alone with God, and 
 leaving me at the bottom alone in that case it would be 
 alone with the devil, I think." 
 
 " My very dearest " 
 
 " If I can't keep in step with you if some day I got 
 deadly, deadly, deadly sick of the whole business I do 
 seem to have an absolutely furious way of getting to hate 
 things yet, if I'm still able to to trim your lamp, you 
 know, you'll keep on loving me in this sort of way? 
 George ! you will ? It seems to be the very Tightest thing 
 about me, don't you see, this way of loving me? It 
 keeps us together and it it terrifies me to death." 
 
 " My darling Joan." cried poor George. 
 
 " If something happened and I couldn't even trim 
 your lamp? If I lost the way; or you got above it 
 Oh! George, then " 
 
 " My heart of hearts, you're the well-spring of all the 
 good there is in me. Sometimes, God forgive me, I put 
 you before Him. When I seem most to be serving Him, 
 I'm beset with a doubt lest it's you I'm trying to be 
 worthy of." For a moment or two he anxiously watched 
 her face, but as usual it restored all his confidence. This 
 passion underlying Joan's calm, was so profound, so 
 self-controlled, so rare and human. 
 
 He was all at once filled with a radiant prophetic 
 promise that in such a presence there was no growing cold 
 for ever. Her very doubt of herself was but the earnest 
 of the abiding force that lay so deep and staunch in her. 
 Save as now, when it burst forth, swept silence aside and 
 disclosed to him all the sweet hesitation of her youth. 
 
 " Had ever man such a wife ? " cried George. " I at the
 
 i io HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 top, you at the bottom, and with you my guiding star ! 
 Rot simply ! Who could look at you and be anything less 
 than invincible? Don't you see?" 
 
 " I see," said Joan. She got out of his arms and took 
 up her work again. " And it's eleven o'clock, and you 
 haven't done a stroke of work," said she. 
 
 In two minutes, his doubts dispersed, George was 
 absorbed body and soul in the Book, and Joan pasting 
 backs upon books patiently. 
 
 Presently there quivered out upon the silence a little 
 fretful cry. It came from the room above them, where 
 the wonderful baby slept, and his mother's hands shook 
 upon the drab linen. She stirred impatiently and half 
 rose ; but the nurse was trustworthy, and to move now 
 was the one single thing that must disturb George irre- 
 trievably. She might snap some delicate thread, she 
 might put him back. At first, once when the child's cry 
 had simply compelled her, she had run to him and run 
 down again to see George's uncomplaining, baffled, search- 
 ing face labouring back upon his broken thread of 
 thought. An operation she was miserably conscious 
 that took him the better part of an evening. Having 
 no creative power herself this sweetly controlled 
 anguish of George's was a thing she did not pretend 
 to understand, but it made her feel extremely 
 criminal. 
 
 Domestic terrors unsuspected by the young lurk in- 
 deed within all inspired documents. 
 
 The wail rose and held, then jerked off into a little tired 
 sobbing, and Joan sat on quietly and shivered. Just at 
 this time she often grew cold about the child. He was a 
 highly strung, sensitive creature, full of irrepressible life, 
 and swift delicate changes. The sort of creature a woman 
 likes to keep close to her, that through the great mystery 
 of inarticulate growth nothing may escape her. 
 
 But, oh ! the shortness of the time and the amount that 
 must be packed into it! And the baby was growing, 
 growing, growing under the kind common eyes of the 
 nurse, and with a sense as of a general dismemberment 
 going on within her, loves cooling, hates gathering, doubts 
 leering from every corner, nothing holding fair and square 
 but her absolute unflinching love for George ; her pas-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. in 
 
 sionate adoration of the truth that lay in him, Joan 
 beautifully did all her work. To have slurred one thing 
 that she could still do for George would have struck 
 his wife as an abject sort of defection. If she could no 
 longer feel right she could at least do things in the right 
 way. 
 
 She had an immense conception of the joys of the 
 earthly life and an ungovernable longing to share in 
 them, but once to lose touch with George in the life for 
 which he lived, spelt chaos to Joan. And yet she often 
 felt broken under the strain of the enthusiasm that had 
 all petered out of her own heart, and ascetic living was 
 having its effect upon her. 
 
 Of this material factor in her dismemberment Jasper 
 knew nothing. Much as, under Joan's adroit guidance, he 
 grew in veneration for his remarkable son, George was 
 yet too aloof from common clay, too ethereal and re- 
 miniscent, so to speak, to go well with the processes of 
 digestion. 
 
 His father preferred to lunch and dine in solitary ease 
 and to contemplate George during tea-time, and in his 
 intervals of relaxation when even Tie occasionally yawned 
 and stretched like a human being. 
 
 At these times Jasper could think of poor George as he 
 was before the blight had fallen upon him. 
 
 Thus, that the abundance of game and poultry he 
 lavished upon the little girl went mostly to feed the sick, 
 Jasper had no conception. 
 
 The eye-sore of George's broad parish was a dismal 
 marsh where lived a seething colony of osier workers; 
 dulled wretches, malarious, ague-stricken, impossible to 
 move or mould. It was debatable land, and Jasper and 
 the other claimant having been for thirty years at bitter 
 feud, neither would do anything for the miserable natives. 
 
 George did what he could ; half-breaking his heart at 
 his failure to do anything. The place was weary with 
 groaning old age ; upon whom neither theory nor practice 
 had the slightest effect but who enjoyed delicacies ; and 
 most of the nourishing diet of the Vicarage found its way 
 to the unspeakable swamp. 
 
 If Jasper knew little of the Vicarage meals, he could, 
 however, guess a good deal in regard to Joan's moods,
 
 ii2 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 and egged on by Rebecca resolved to take up his re- 
 sponsibilities. When sober, Jasper rarely went forth 
 without some agricultural implement; when drunk he 
 carried his crop. 
 
 So, thistle-spud or pruning knife in hand, he now prowled 
 round often upon the track of Joan. 
 
 It soon became evident to his impatient observation that 
 Joan's feelings for herself invariably gave way to any 
 momentary feeling that moved her for her fellow. A 
 natural gift due to nothing especially worthy in her. She 
 fairly loathed, for example, the smell of the sick poor, 
 yet when she caught the abhorred odour, so sorry did 
 she feel that anyone could be so poignant a source of 
 horror to any other creature that forthwith her face put 
 on a wondrous air of compassion. The poor little pagan 
 was fast becoming a most wily deceiver. Jasper, there- 
 fore, had to seek her coming out alone from her holy 
 ministrations to find out what really was toward; and 
 then the cold, dead weariness of her face pricked at his 
 heart. One day he waylaid her in the laurel walk. 
 
 " Come," said he, " let the other things wait for once ; 
 and we'll go look at the plantations. 
 
 " Any man that respects himself," said Jasper, pausing 
 on the hill to throw a loving glance over the sea of tassels, 
 tender and pale with youth, tossing onthelight breeze, 
 " will plant spruce and pine on any stray bit of land that'll 
 grow it. They're kindly things and smell sweet in the 
 nostrils. You may be a curse to yourself and your family," 
 said he, with a gusty sigh. It was becoming quite a 
 luxury to humble himself before one so understanding as 
 Joan. " But you like to think that the birds any way 
 will be blessing you on the cold nights and in the hard 
 days. There are queer virtues in pine woods. I tell you 
 I'm often in and out of 'em and I see things. Not a tree 
 that grows has the healing comfort in it of a fir. There's 
 not a grief in this parish that doesn't turn in here at 
 one time or another. A half-made thing, this conifer," 
 said Jasper, spinning his words out nervously, " but it's 
 wonderfully friendly to sorrow and love and the follies 
 generally. Faith," said he, lifting his handsome head 
 to sniff, " faith, I believe that smell would disinfect sin 
 itself if the iniquity wasn't too rotten, you know.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 113 
 
 " And the amount of lovers that skulk round here when 
 they should be digging potatoes by the day on my own 
 land ! It's trespassing too, but I don't interfere with the 
 poor fools. I hope Eustace won't be putting his oar in. 
 Chock full of military exactingness, Eustace ! You might 
 remind him, Joan if he goes prying where'd he'd better be 
 blind. But these woods are no place for girls to go in 
 alone ; too full of silence and mystery and undesirable secrets 
 for hem unattended youth, you know. If I catch a 
 girl on the prowl I take care to disturb her meditations by 
 a shout or a remark. She'll get hold of a better thread 
 next time." He turned accusingly upon Joan. " You 
 come here too often, little maid." 
 
 Joan looked up flushing. 
 
 " Now look here, my girl," said he, quaking but valiant, 
 " you've a dull life and a lot of sniggering duties with use 
 rubbing the bloom off 'em. You've a husband you adore 
 with a sort of Heavenly bloom on him that," he said sadly, 
 " nothing will move. Oh, I don't deny that George is an 
 astonishing fellow; strikes derision dumb, puts a check 
 on criticism for God's sake don't interrupt me there's 
 something above the like of you and me in George ; 
 keeps you living in a sort of shock, you know, does George, 
 makes you see stars burning bush business have to 
 take off your shoes; oil yourself generally; shave your 
 head, you know, and all the rest. Pshaw ! it won't yield 
 to words, but there it is confounding the lot of us." Jasper 
 took out his handkerchief. 
 
 At first the peculiar originality evident in George's 
 father's summing-up of her husband hurt Joan, but rind- 
 ing that allegorical language may hide a respectful heart 
 she took the greater with the less and refrained from 
 comment. Moreover she always found a difficulty her- 
 self in finding the words that would quite do justice to 
 George. 
 
 Jasper took up his parable again. " And so between 
 George and Altar trimmings and the destroying patience 
 of the agricultural labourer there's some splutter being 
 set up in you natural enough, too ; George is enough to 
 set volcanoes sprouting in a bed of sweet peas. In short 
 you're living under exhausting conditions " ; he paused to 
 
 8
 
 ii4 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 congratulate himself upon this phrase. It expressed much 
 in language pre-eminently delicate. 
 
 " But," said Joan, breaking off with an odd laugh. 
 
 " Oh, I expect nothing," he observed plaintively, " being 
 a woman, catch you taking advice, even of the simplest 
 merely to sit tight with your weather eye open. Not you ! 
 You must be thinking things out. Fatal gift that of yours. 
 A brooding woman will turn the sweetness of honey sour 
 can't help it, poor soul the way she's made. And now 
 instead of running a mile round so as to get home through 
 these woods a place you're too young for why not get 
 into the way you know ahem of thinking aloud into 
 me. I'm a drunken old sweep," sighed Jasper, " as all 
 the world knows, but I'm a safer outlet than a fir grove 
 for a girl with a maggot in her brain." 
 
 Jasper halted, puffing slightly, carefully to scan the far 
 horizon, a glory now of delicate purples and greens. 
 
 Joan stood still to look at him, then she gave out a 
 broken laugh. 
 
 " I felt you'd been finding me out. I'm glad it's 
 you." 
 
 They were standing under a clump of trees upon the 
 edge of the wood. Joan's feet moved softly amongst the 
 golden needles, unloosening sweetest incense. Her skirt 
 flickered darkly against the shadowed green of the pine 
 trunks ; the red reflection of the sunset lit up her quiet, 
 white, young face. The youth in her appalled Jasper, 
 but he meant to see this thing through. 
 
 " I think," she said slowly, " it all comes of an earthen 
 vessel floating along side by side with a golden one. You 
 have to be doing all sorts of things, you know, to keep 
 yourself from cracking. So long as you're whole, earth 
 will hold just as much as gold, and that's really the 
 first thing to be thought of, don't you think ? " she asked 
 abruptly. 
 
 " My dear, yes," he stumbled, now feeling very much 
 flushed. 
 
 " And George thinks I'm golden. Once I used to think 
 I was myself. I used to feel just as George feels about 
 the very dullest things. I I used to feel fairly heavenly 
 with joy. You never felt such joy. It, it really was in- 
 toxicating," she said excitedly. " I could have done any-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 115 
 
 thing then, I believe I could have been boiled in oil with- 
 out a groan." 
 
 " So long as George was looking on," mused Jasper. 
 
 " He's looking on now," she said sharply, " and yet the 
 interest in the thing that sort of interest is dead. Simply 
 it died. You might as well try to revive a corpse. Now I 
 just wonder how on earth George can feel as he does, 
 and and hate Church work like poison." 
 
 She turned up her face to search Jasper's. He stood 
 opposite to her, confused, pitiful, dumb. 
 
 " I really do think," she said entreatingly, " I'd like good 
 things in a mild way, you know, if they were on the edges 
 of life, not life itself, and all the rest edges. It's being 
 jaded with goodness I sometimes think." 
 
 " You don't happen to have any doubts my girl," en- 
 quired Jasper with a nervous cough. 
 
 " Doubts ! I haven't the ghost of a doubt. I believe 
 in it all just as I do in the goodness of bread; but it 
 doesn't touch me any more keenly ; and yet one would 
 feel would feel hungry without it. I think sometimes 
 it must be like just ordinary husbands. Their socks and 
 their buttons are a terror, and yet you couldn't do without 
 them. There's nothing to put in their place." 
 
 " Good Lord ! " remarked Jasper. 
 
 " I'd feel better," pursued Joan, " if I had a doubt ; not 
 so dead, you know." 
 
 " There come times of depression to all of us," said the 
 unhappy man. 
 
 " Oh, I know ; we get bored with things to go back to 
 them quite happy again, when the weather changes or 
 your mood. It's not that. Don't you see, it died ? Now 
 I loathe Parish." 
 
 " But you love George ? " 
 
 " Love George ! If I didn't nothing would matter. But 
 since the things have grown difficult, sometimes I feel like 
 a dog dancing on his hind paws. Suppose I got to look 
 like that and George saw me ? " said she, her grave at- 
 tentive eyes fixed upon him. 
 
 " But God bless my soul ! " cried Jasper, struck with a 
 new notion, " this is in George's own particular line. He'd 
 know directly how to deal with you what to recommend." 
 
 " If if George knew, he might get a chill himself." 
 
 8*
 
 ii6 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " And if he did ? " cried Jasper driven reckless, " if he 
 did drop a feather or two off his wings they'd sprout 
 again, take your oath of that. His religion is part of 
 him." 
 
 " So was mine," said Joan drearily. " It was me. I don't 
 think George is is ready to find me out yet. It would 
 interrupt him dreadfully. He's not ready," she repeated, 
 her eyes obviously tracking George's needs. 
 
 " How's a man to help her if she goes off like that ? " 
 thought Jasper irritably. " Can't she stay below ? " 
 
 " You're doing an injustice to George, my girl. This is 
 a mere bolstering up of damned selfishness selfishness 
 of a most colossal order vast amazing. A millstone of 
 selfishness. Hanged if any one could stand it." 
 
 " But seeing that George hasn't the remotest notion of 
 the fraud that's being practised on him. Since he firmly 
 believes I still delight in all these things," she said, laugh- 
 ing. " Aren't you getting damp ? Shall we go on ? I 
 know just exactly what George would feel if he knew. 
 He hasn't time for the thing. It would be a most horrid 
 nuisance for George." 
 
 " Men rise on difficulties," said the fuming philosopher. 
 
 " Yes," said she, with a restive sigh, " I suppose they 
 do. But one doesn't want oneself to be the difficulty. 
 It's the absolute simplicity in George's faith in me and 
 everything else that's so so nice. I don't want to be the 
 one to jar it. And George," she cried, with sudden 
 vehemence, " isn't ready to rise on the loss of me. I 
 know he isn't. He gets on better with me about him than 
 he'd do with all the spiritual things in the world rolled 
 into one," said she, too much in earnest to choose her 
 words. " It's being young together," she added apologeti- 
 cally. 
 
 Amazement was growing steadily upon Jasper's counten- 
 ance. 
 
 " Besides oh, I know well enough if he did find out 
 and suffer on account of me, he'd get through it in 
 the end ; through me and everything else we'd all be 
 stepping stones in George's progress ; it would be all for 
 his good ; and he'd begin to depend upon stepping stones. 
 And then," cried this young heathen, with a break in her 
 voice not unlike a sob, " where should I be ? "
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 117 
 
 " Good Lord," muttered Jasper, " where indeed ? a pro- 
 fession, this Church of England, complicated beyond the 
 grasp of any plain man ! " 
 
 " And at the bottom of my heart," said Joan hurriedly, 
 " I feel I'm a coward. If I thought I wasn't really wanted 
 I might get so sick of things,, so deadly sick, you know, 
 that I might do something idiotic." 
 
 Her face was wan with fright. 
 
 " A riddle at the best of times," muttered Jasper, " this 
 marriage, but when the Church creeps into it a bottom- 
 less pit, that's what it is. Only He who made fools can 
 judge of 'em." 
 
 " As if any God that George gives his life to serve isn't 
 worth serving," cried Joan, oblivious to relevant observa- 
 tions, " and I giving my little miserable serving grudg- 
 ingly ! It is so low and vile and disloyal." 
 
 " Many men, many manners," said Jasper kindly, patting 
 her hand, " and we can't all be boiling ourselves in cru- 
 cibles and enjoying it." 
 
 " There have been thousands of vicars' wives before me, 
 good women, sufficient to their husbands and everything 
 else, who've lived contented and died happy." 
 
 " Cut out for the dispensation, my dear ! Substantial 
 useful creatures without points. You have to rack your 
 memory to remember 'em. Pass off, most of 'em, leaving 
 no mark on anything nothing behind in fact, but a big 
 family." 
 
 " I don't know about that," said Joan, with a sudden 
 laugh. " If she's got a hobby the misdemeanours in hus- 
 bands or the laying quality in hens the mark she leaves 
 on you, has a most fiendish staying power. And, oh ! I've 
 forgotten, I've three coming to tea to-day. Can you 
 run ? " 
 
 When they reached the Vicarage gate, both breathless, 
 Joan pulled up. 
 
 " And think, after all," she panted, " if George was the 
 least, least, least atom like any of these ladies' husbands ! " 
 
 " No such luck ! " growled George's father. " George, 
 a common-sense Englishman, indeed ! " 
 
 " It would be the death of us if he was, that's all," said 
 Joan, " of you and Miss Rebecca and me ! "
 
 n8 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MRS. WORRALL, one of Joan's expected guests, when glancing 
 out of the window she beheld the squire, underwent an odd 
 transformation, her eyes rolled in pleasurable excitement, 
 her cheek bones glittered roseate with hope. " I wonder," 
 she thought breathlessly, " I wonder if he's sober." 
 
 She scurried to a chair, grabbed for her breath, put on 
 that air of ineffable leisure reserved by her for the County, 
 and beamed creaking from out a steel-plated bodice. 
 
 " Perfectly sober, thank God," she murmured, the radiance 
 slipping from her face. 
 
 But even sober, the aged sinner was bringing his son's 
 head with sorrow to the grave, and his wife's death had in 
 no definite way what after all are family rumours ? solved 
 the problem as to her guilt or innocence. One was still at 
 liberty to fear the worst. The Winnington family pro- 
 foundedly interested Mrs. Worrall. 
 
 Her wait, moreover, had been both fruitful and improv- 
 ing. She had had time to range undisturbed through the 
 room, and could tell you to a penny the price of every 
 article in it. She had always had her own opinion as to 
 the snobbish over-estimation on the part of the neighbour- 
 hood of Mrs. George Winnington's taste in house decoration, 
 now it was happily confirmed. 
 
 A collection of job lots just saved by chintz and flowers. 
 Any woman with her first baby, every stitch it wore brand 
 new, and her own clothes it was to be hoped in good order, 
 could do as much. 
 
 So Mrs. Peter Worrall girded up her loins again, and 
 when Joan and her father-in-law came in, placed her gifts, 
 which were many, wholly at the service of the drunken 
 squire. 
 
 There was positive genius in the way in which, without
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 119 
 
 apparent foresight, limitation, stress or strain upon 
 herself Mrs. Worrall could blend parish cuttings fraught 
 with despair, the revolutions of her own domestic wheels, 
 the sins of her neighbours; the incomes of her relations 
 and the spiritual short-comings of her diocese, with the 
 prominent virtues of her own docile little husband. 
 
 And in a relentless, rolling, pauseless strain the informa- 
 tion flowed forth. 
 
 Jasper upon his part beamed also. After toiling in the 
 wake of eagles the clucking of a hen may soothe. He 
 prepared to enjoy a well-earned respite. Moreover, no 
 matter how sunken in repentance Jasper might be, he could 
 yet find a chuckling satisfaction in catching in a lady's 
 chaste mind the lurid reflection of his own bottomless-pit 
 reputation. 
 
 To this chronic outcast it had become a privilege to be 
 the source to the elect of any joy so profound and satisfying. 
 
 " Never do I spend an afternoon in the society of the 
 local British matron," he had once, in an unguarded 
 moment, confessed to his friend, Joan, " but I feel as oily 
 as a philanthropist." 
 
 Joan's smile was noteworthy, a source of much subsequent 
 consolation to her mentor. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Winnington," said Mrs. Worrall, nodding 
 at large at the garden, " how thankful you should be to 
 live in a rural parish. Ours is Country, of course, but 
 marred by factories and factory girls ! A canker spot upon 
 the earth those poor factory girls. We've a mission now 
 amongst them. A most holy young man from London, 
 tall, slender, dark, racking cough, poor fellow; fifteen 
 thousand pounds, I understand, in good securities, and the 
 nicest connections. Such powers of eloquence, such daunt- 
 less courage; such a gift of getting to the point, devoured 
 with holy zeal, really. He'll say anything, only sometimes, 
 dear fellow, his voice gives out. He reminds me often of 
 Mr. Winnington." 
 
 " Oh ! " murmured Joan feebly, avoiding Jasper's eyes. 
 
 " Exceptional men quite, both of them. Only last night 
 he made my flesh creep as he exhorted these heart-breaking 
 
 girls to flee from Sodom " She paused to choose a 
 
 cake. 
 
 " But, my dear lady," struck in Jasper, " don't you think
 
 120 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 it unwise to emphasise the natural leanings of such young 
 persons for these notorious resorts. The modern factory 
 girl, I'm credibly informed, is nothing if not enterprising. 
 If she's not laying heel to ground to get to Sodom, sure to 
 be peeping at it through a glass. Wouldn't it be as well 
 for this ahem ! hectic and apostolic young man, instead 
 of directing her attention to such undesirable localities, to 
 be introducing something different into her mind for her 
 imagination to work on? To give her something to amuse 
 herself with, in short? We leave buffooning and specta- 
 cular effects, Mr. Winnington, to the Dissenters. Had 
 you been with me to-day on my rounds you'd be satisfied, 
 I think, that Mr. Sprowl had succeeded in touching 
 the imaginations of the poor creatures in the right 
 direction. It was a most impressive sight. I positively 
 assure you they were limp. I noticed the absence of 
 several false fringes, and one girl had fits," said the Vicar's 
 lady, proudly. 
 
 " I don't think Mr. Sprowl can be the very least like 
 George," remarked Joan feebly. 
 
 " So far, dear Mr. Winnington's sphere of ministration 
 has lain in rural parishes," said her visitor encouragingly. 
 "At present he is free to cultivate that sweet and gracious 
 demeanour which, indeed, we all love. Agricultural sins, 
 dear Mrs. Winnington, are nothing compared to ours. They 
 require less urgent measures. We do not crush butterflies 
 with traction engines. As we all know, the Country is full 
 of smoking flax which must not be quenched. Our hard 
 workers, those bathed, alas, in bloody sweat " Mrs. Worrall 
 was finding inspiration in this close intimacy with a notorious 
 scoffer, she kept her eyes fixed upon him and her face 
 shone. " Those stern labourers in the Lord's vineyard have 
 often discussed Mr. Winnington, and we all agree in think- 
 ing that in an active field of labour where sin stalks naked, 
 so to speak, he could be as grand in divine wrath as he is 
 now sweet in charity. By the way " she shifted her large 
 person so as more directly to face the sinner " my young 
 cousin, Guy Curling your son will remember him, Mr. 
 Winnington, has just come in for his property. A nice 
 little place in Wiltshire; three thousand a year, just half 
 what it used to be ; he is travelling with his valet in Japan, 
 and is bringing us home cases of presents.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 121 
 
 " Such a tragic love affair. Relation of our dear Bishop's, 
 and he married, you'll remember, a Peer's grand-daughter. 
 Oh, well! They parted, and, crushed by the blow" she 
 was now approaching delicate ground, she clasped her hands 
 therefore, and lowered her modest eyes, " I grieve to say he 
 forgot that he was made in the image of God, and went 
 down hem amongst the swine. He he took to 
 Drink." 
 
 " Poor lad ! " said Jasper sympathetically. " Love is 
 very wearing." 
 
 She glared unwinkingly. 
 
 " He is now travelling with a valet " 
 
 " Ha ! On the cure racket," Jasper thrust out his lip 
 reflectively. " Don't believe myself in these modern fads." 
 
 " My cousin having over-come his degrading vice is travel- 
 ling for pleasure and profit, Mr. Winnington. He is, in 
 fact, finishing his education with a view to contest the 
 County." 
 
 Jasper seemed to have fallen into impersonal abstraction. 
 
 " Learning to govern England by sampling foreign drinks. 
 It won't work, my dear lady, it will never work. Radical 
 innovations sure to follow." 
 
 " You have apparently misunderstood me, Mr. Winning- 
 ton." 
 
 Her bursting cell of urgent information was scarce 
 tapped, however, and she had no notion of being deterred 
 by any senile scoffer. She turned to Joan, and glanced at a 
 small Italian saint on a bracket. 
 
 " How sweet," she said, " and how foreign. Another 
 cousin dreadfully rich, poor boy; I only hope he'll steady 
 down presently and grow more worthy of his responsi- 
 bilities. Horse Racing" she whispered hoarsely, looking 
 round in a general sort of way, " Monte Carlo, and I fear 
 an Actress " ; her voice faltered with emotion. 
 
 " Good Lord," murmured Jasper modestly. 
 
 Mrs. Worrall threw him a fleeting glance with some 
 enquiry in it, and now having sufficiently proved her family's 
 kinship with the Great in its diversions, passed on to 
 appraise it domestically; her point, shift it though she 
 might, still hard in her grasp. 
 
 " I'll show him," she thought haughtily, " I'll show him 
 the position we hold in spite of his late wife's impudence.
 
 122 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 And even if she had called," she jeered in her mocking 
 heart, " it wouldn't have resulted in so much as a garden 
 party ! " 
 
 " The luxury of these great houses ! " she wailed. " The 
 prodigal waste! I was fortunate enough to secure one of 
 Horace's under-cooks attended solely to the upper ser- 
 vants' mess. Entrees, hors d'ceuvres, soups, fish, wine, 
 everything of the best Daily. Luxury, I assure you, 
 quite painful to witness, your thoughts flew back inevitably 
 to the last days of the Roman Empire. As for the parties, 
 the fetes, the balls, Peter was deeply concerned and in 
 one's own family, you know. This cousin is also travelling 
 with his valet on the Continent, and means to bring us all 
 presents." Again her eyes sought the plaster saint. 
 " Presently I shall hope to rival even your sweet room, Mrs. 
 Winnington. By the way, your other friends have not 
 arrived. I didn't myself see how Mrs. Close possibly could 
 come. Can't keep her servants, poor thing, no one in the 
 house now but her cook; though that doesn't excuse her 
 to my mind in sending out her husband with the peram- 
 bulator." 
 
 " God bless my soul, not Kelly ! " roared the squire, whose 
 attention had wandered. 
 
 Mrs. Worrall turned her stunned eyes upon him. 
 
 " No," said she with deliberation. " I allude to Mr. 
 Close. Mr. Kelly pins up his coat-tails, I believe, and goes 
 hunting." 
 
 " And takes his fences like a bird." 
 
 " He excels in sport, I believe. The last time I heard of 
 him he was engaged in conducting a rat hunt in his own 
 Church." 
 
 A horrid memory of scurrying green eyes across a dim 
 aisle, a bi-weekly occurrence that spoilt twilight, got hold 
 of Joan. 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried impulsively, " I wish he'd come here." 
 
 " We'll have him over, my girl, we'll have him over," said 
 Jasper cheerily. 
 
 " He would at least have the opportunity of witnessing 
 true spirituality," said Mrs. Worrall reprovingly. " I regret 
 to say he persists in avoiding Peter. That is, if Mr. Win- 
 nington did not absent himself during the proceedings." 
 
 The lady's studious habit of sinking her voice when she
 
 HE FOE GOD ONLY. 123 
 
 mentioned George exasperated Joan, and the grotesque 
 coupling of rats and spirituality twinkled fiendishly in 
 Jasper's eyes. 
 
 " I daresay George could manage the rats as well as Mr. 
 Kelly," said Joan loftily. " I suggested Mr. Kelly because 
 he seems to enjoy the thing. One doesn't like to see en- 
 joyments going to waste." 
 
 " Especially if they're rational," chuckled Jasper, " and at 
 the same time connected with the Church." 
 
 Mrs. Worrall's eyes rested sadly upon the scoffer, then 
 fixed Joan. 
 
 " It is a great mistake upon his wife's part don't you think, 
 Mrs. Winnington ? " she demanded sternly. 
 
 Joan having forgotten the context had nothing to say 
 upon this dark interjection. Jasper more quick, hurled 
 himself into the pause. 
 
 " Damp sort of fellow, Close ; be all the better for the 
 airing never sit near that sort of man, but I'm afraid he'll 
 set up blue mould in me." 
 
 Mrs. Winnington rose. 
 
 " Ah, good-bye, Mr. Winnington. Do come to see me 
 soon, Mrs. Winnington, and do " her voice sank to a thrill- 
 ing coo " do tell Mr. George Winnington that Peter and 
 you know what Peter is what his standard is well, Peter 
 came home the other day rigid rigid with what I can 
 only call holy joy after hearing that sermon at Wyncote. 
 Dear Mrs. Winnington," she screamed with startling sudden- 
 ness, halting at the hall window, " you don't mean to say 
 you keep Wyandottes, a disastrous breed for a small family ; 
 so bad for table. Table and egg-producing combined is 
 what we want, and non-sitters. Do take my advice, and 
 have Orpingtons or Orpington crossed with Houdens." Her 
 voice quivered back to a thin minor. " Don't forget my 
 message. Your husband's growing reputation lies, I assure 
 you, very close to our hearts." She took an appraising 
 glance round. " So fortunate he can nurse and perfect his 
 gifts in so sweet and hallowed a spot, remote from harrassing 
 scenes of sin; from grinding, dreadful strength-sapping 
 labour. You know how amusing Peter is," she smiled 
 benignly, " he always calls Mr. Winnington ' The gilt pill 
 of the Diocese.' Good-bye again, and don't forget Orping- 
 tons are the birds to breed from. How young you look, to
 
 124 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 be sure, and cool and untired. You make me feel such a 
 working woman." She laughed with an arch nod. " I've 
 got two classes before me now, a Bible reading, and a 
 maternity bag. Ah well! I mustn't keep you from your 
 graceful leisure." When safe outside the gate, the lady 
 turned again, her face quite motherly, and bent it towards 
 the house significantly. " That is a great responsibility you 
 have assumed, and a solemn one. I do so wish you could 
 hear Peter on the subject. Perhaps some day at lun- 
 cheon " Joan's face counselled haste. " May God 
 
 direct you," cried Mrs. Worrall, striking out precipitately 
 for the hill. 
 
 Joan flushed scarlet, then laughed. She clicked the gate 
 sharply to ; fled up the path, and in two jumps was beside 
 Jasper, half raging, half laughing. 
 
 " I wish George was the hunt whip or a jockey, or on the 
 comic stage. There's no middle course in this life, no 
 compromise can't you see there's not, if you're honest? 
 You must love it or loathe it, or be a sort of hurdy-gurdy 
 that can turn out duty by the piece." 
 
 " My child," recommended Jasper, " be calm. You don't 
 take things in the right spirit." 
 
 " Don't mention the word." 
 
 His eye-brows jerked together. This was speaking into 
 him with a vengeance. 
 
 " George to be bandied about in that sort of way ! It's 
 like coming upon a black-beetle in the middle of a plum 
 cake ! Talk of casting pearls before swine ! " 
 
 " My girl ! There's a trace of pig in the best of us," said 
 Jasper sadly. " What we've got to do is to make the most 
 of the material at our disposal both in ourselves and others. 
 Each of us we're led to suppose is created for some good 
 purpose. What we've got to do in regard to our neighbours 
 is to discover this purpose. It's obscure at times but then, 
 to be sure," he sighed indulgently, " all life is a riddle. Now 
 poor Peter Worrall's wife is a woman we should be thank- 
 ing God for in a dull neighbourhood, and not swearing at. 
 Enjoy her, my girl. You'll never enjoy her younger." 
 
 " I could enjoy her well enough if that was all," said Joan 
 mournfully, " but that's entirely the wrong way of looking 
 at human beings with souls, can't you see? It's a sort of 
 point of honour to "
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 125 
 
 " We've reason to reckon with as well as honour. The 
 point of view I suggest is the only one to make the lady 
 endurable to reasonable beings." 
 
 " Reasonable beings ! " commented Joan, with uncommit- 
 ting eyes. 
 
 Unused to avalanches save of his own making, Jasper's 
 distracted senses seemed to him to bulge. 
 
 "You'll hardly believe it, but it's true," said Joan, 
 suddenly grown quite gentle. " If George had that 
 woman to entertain for half an hour he'd say some- 
 thing quite simple and natural without a word of 
 of cant in it or priggishness or any other abomination, 
 that would just alter her face. I've seen him with 
 worse cases, you know. I try to make her comfortable 
 as to tea and things. And so long as she keeps away 
 from George I'd be sorry to see her different. If she 
 grew either coherent or truthful her dullness would fairly 
 suffocate you." 
 
 Jasper had now reached the end of his tether, and was 
 perishing for a peg. 
 
 " Damn it all ! I really beg your pardon, my dear 
 but deuce take it, we can't all be atmospheres, and the 
 world barking and snivelling in a whirl-wind of cross cur- 
 rents." 
 
 Joan laughed merrily. 
 
 " That's not George's effect so far." 
 
 " Lord, no ! He slips past all the dangers, and through 
 it all, strange to say, remains a man. The fellow has a 
 genius for sanctity. It would be sheer impudence on the 
 part of amateurs like ourselves to attempt any rivalry with 
 a specialist." 
 
 " Ho ! teaching Joan the wisdom of the aged." 
 
 The bland satire in the bassoon-like voice brought the 
 Squire to his feet. 
 
 "Hallo! Rebecca! You?" 
 
 " I, and full of news." 
 
 " Will it affect us ? " cried Joan. 
 
 " Affect you quite pleasantly. Buck you up ; exorcise 
 any fiends of morbidity there may be about. Tom 
 Thryng and a friend are to stop in the village with his com- 
 pany for a day or so ; he met George, so he tells me, and in- 
 vited himself for dinner and the night. Fourth cousin, isn't
 
 126 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 he, Jasper? And I presume you'll invite your father-in-law 
 and me, Joan." 
 
 " Six ! " cried Joan, " a little dinner-party. Can I 
 manage ? What do you think ? " 
 
 " Quite time you tried. I'll send things over, and, Jasper, 
 you look to the wine." 
 
 Jasper groaned. 
 
 " We've promised " Joan began to explain. 
 
 " Promised who ? what ? " 
 
 " Promised Winty to have nothing in the house for a 
 year if he won't either. There are months still to run." 
 
 Miss Rebecca vulgarly whistled. 
 
 " Make themselves ill with lemonade disgrace the 
 family. Wish George had sent 'em to me," jerked out 
 Jasper. 
 
 " George didn't think " 
 
 " Thought of his father's sins, anyway." 
 
 " Don't be maudlin, Jasper," said Rebecca from out a 
 dream, " as though you ever gave him the chance to 
 forget." 
 
 "At least it's Thursday. The right night," said Joan, 
 considering. 
 
 " Right night ? " demanded Miss Westcar. 
 
 " The only one quite free. We needn't stir out," said 
 Joan gleefuly. 
 
 " No cloud apparently without some silver lining ! You 
 won't get liver complaint, either of you, for want of 
 exercise. That reminds me that Carr wants podophyllin," 
 she muttered, whipping out her tablets. " Joan, why did 
 you give up riding with Billy? No function, surely, at 
 half -past six ? " she demanded magisterially. 
 
 " Oh ! you see there's Baby ! I haven't much time, and 
 then I can have him all to myself. I can ride," she said 
 proudly. " I went on till I could. Billy says I could hunt. 
 We have the loveliest times," she added, and broke off 
 flushing under the challenge of the great black eyes. 
 
 " Where was George now, dust to his eyes and dog- 
 tired? Stop, let me count this one, two, three, four 
 ha! that's it. Well?" 
 
 "At Aiken. He does a great deal there now at off 
 times." 
 
 " Humph ! "
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 127 
 
 " Mr. Abel," explained Joan, " is so old and there are 
 perfect mountains of work to be got through, so George 
 says." 
 
 " Memo," muttered Rebecca " Mr. Lynn ; I promised 
 him some Gregory. Hem one, two, three and " 
 
 " Catch him," cried George, tossing his great baby. His 
 fine, radiant, manly presence smiling happily from the door- 
 way set carping objection at defiance. 
 
 Joan, Jasper, and Rebecca were ready on the instant to 
 sacrifice themselves upon the dullest altar for George's 
 slightest spiritual advancement. 
 
 " Wonderful baby, don't you think, Miss Rebecca ? " 
 said George. " Seems to be all back-bone. The usual , 
 run wobble mostly." 
 
 " Healthiest village in England. We don't breed weeds 
 here. Look at your father. Oh, well, look at yourself." 
 
 " The child," said Jasper, " is as fresh as paint ; alive 
 every inch of him. The sight of a poor devil of a town 
 baby gravels me." 
 
 " But," said George, with suspicious haste, " it's wonder- 
 ful how towns can grow babies. I've been astonished 
 lately at the specimens I've come across." 
 
 " Pah ! blown out with patent foods," explained Miss 
 Rebecca. " Look at young Jasper's condition. You can't 
 pinch the boy. See ? " 
 
 George looked from the child to Joan, glowing above him, 
 too young to be the mother of the strapping boy, and an 
 extremely odd look came into the vicar's face. With a 
 resolute effort he swept it off, and his usual bright, pleasant 
 one met Joan's serenely. 
 
 " So we're going to entertain soldier men. How does 
 it strike you, Joan ? ; ' 
 
 " It's lovely ; it's altogether delightful," said Joan in 
 honest ecstasy. 
 
 " I wondered if you'd mind. You're such a busy small 
 person," he said half doubtfully. 
 
 " But to see people people that couldn't tire you. To 
 have a real live dinner-party of your own," she cried breath- 
 lessly. " Oh ! George, the change of it ! " Of a sudden 
 her face shrank back apologetically from his start. " One 
 can use some of the presents now," she said lamely. 
 
 In George's pure passionate eyes there was an unmistak-
 
 128 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 able, visible shock and an odd suggestion of compassion, 
 whilst Joan fell lower in her own estimation than any 
 beast. 
 
 " One, two, three," counted Miss Rebecca, in an ex- 
 asperated tone. " Spirit," she said inwardly, " is more 
 cruel than the grave; but if he begins to pity her it will 
 upset the apple-cart completely. What he's got to do 
 wants courage with a swing in it or I'm vastly mistaken. 
 You can't save them both. I'd better stick to George 
 and throw a bomb of practicality into that spiritual pother. 
 Joan," said she in a tone of startling distinctness, " put 
 the child on that sofa on his back, so stretch him out. 
 Good gracious ! earthquakes are fools to babies. In that 
 cross-light one leg had a wasted look. I have a rooted 
 horror of infantile paralysis." 
 
 A series of breathless experiments having removed all 
 cause of anxiety, grandfather, father, and mother stood 
 absorbed in idol worship. The spell in the air was 
 broken, and Miss Rebecca shut out of the game. So 
 she watched the comely group, but her eyes rested longest 
 upon Jasper. 
 
 George's father undeniably lay heavy upon his son, and 
 the underlying anxiety in some sort throttled spontaneous 
 intercourse. But when innocently worshipping " Ours," 
 the generic term by which Jasper the younger was known, 
 George insensibly fell into Joan's way with the old man. 
 It was soothing, very different from the unnecessary 
 silences under which on occasion he had been called 
 upon to wilt, yet it worried Jasper. It seemed to be lay- 
 ing him under still another obligation to the fellow, as 
 though he were not already beholden enough. This 
 sub-current of irritation now prompted him to a suave 
 remark. 
 
 " What do you propose to give 'em to drink, George ? " 
 
 " Drink ! I never thought of that," said George, 
 honestly aghast. " I wish Winty had stuck to good beer, 
 it was bad brandy that floored him." 
 
 " Oh, well ! There's the village pub.," said Jasper 
 kindly, detecting an unexpected spark of right feeling in 
 George. " They can fortify themselves." 
 
 " Yes," said George drily, " and Blanche has secured the 
 Colonel, so she'll save the family honour."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 129 
 
 Jasper tried to look as though he were not saying, 
 " Thank God." 
 
 " Ah, well ! they're all normal again now, anyhow," 
 thought Miss Rebecca miserably, " and Jasper's as happy 
 as a lamb with two tails, and I'm not in it ! " From 
 Jasper her sad eyes turned to Joan. 
 
 Hour by hour, day by day, the young woman was wrest- 
 ing her last hope from the old one, who yet loved on 
 doggedly, loyally, both man and woman, renegade and 
 supplanter. And in the contemplation of her own dis- 
 integration going on under her very own nose Miss 
 Rebecca found an engrossing and most bitter occupation. 
 
 " But for her," she murmured, forcing her shining 
 needles to be still, " but for her this minute I'd be safe 
 up at the house, and there would be no further lapses 
 in that quarter." She drew in her lips sharply and the 
 destroying moustache jerked at the corners. It was 
 unfortunate that Jasper should have chosen this precise 
 moment to turn to his first love. 
 
 " My dear, Rebecca," he began, with a feeling of deli- 
 cacy, understood only too well by its victim, promptly 
 averting his gaze, "what about that accident at the Rifle 
 Range ? Was that Fletcher fellow hurt ? " 
 
 Miss Rebecca hitched herself up and put aside foolery. 
 
 " Just severely enough," she pronounced, " I'm thankful 
 to say, to give him a lesson. He'll limp badly for a month. 
 An invaluable object lesson for the village. He scooted, 
 did you hear, scared by the firing? Had he got off scot 
 free, we'd have them all turning tail ; now they'll know that 
 to stand fast means saving their skins. That Rifle Corps 
 will boom, I tell you, before I'm done with it." 
 
 " Most things you touch, my dear lady, do boom," said 
 Jasper appreciatively. 
 
 " With one exception," thought the poor lady, dropping 
 feebly back upon sentiment, whilst Jasper's eyes strayed to 
 George's wife. 
 
 " Well," said Miss Rebecca at last in her cheeriest tone, 
 " I'm off." 
 
 " Where's your carriage ? " said Jasper, rising with some 
 precipitation. When he happened to remember them he 
 had now occasional twinges in regard to Rebecca. 
 
 "With poor Isabella in Heaven," he sometimes reflected
 
 130 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 resignedly, " it was full time to think of things." Thus 
 he put it. 
 
 " I came in the dogcart," said Rebecca, " and left it at the 
 Blacksmith's. I drove the new chestnut you saw her, 
 Jasper and she turned me over on a heap of stones and 
 generally disgraced herself." 
 
 " And you never said a word ! " cried Joan. " Are you 
 hurt?" 
 
 " A bruise and a twist ; nothing to speak of." 
 
 " Catch Rebecca playing the low pathetic while she has 
 a leg to stand on," said Jasper, with admiring pride. " I've 
 known her come in laughing from a cropper that would 
 have sent many a man roaring to his bed. Not another 
 woman in the county but her would drive that cross- 
 grained rip God bless my soul, my dear girl, you're as 
 lame as a duck. 
 
 " Here, take my arm," he commanded, with reckless 
 valour, as soon as they got outside the gate. 
 
 " Two derelicts wobbling together down the village 
 street," said Rebecca tartly. " Do you want us to be the 
 laughing stocks of the neighbourhood ? Have some sense, 
 man ! " 
 
 " Rebecca," said he presently, the sentiment tap now 
 well on. " We know each other too well ; we've suffered 
 too much God help us ! apart ; don't you think " 
 
 " Now that he's all swept and garnished, ready for the 
 seven new devils, what do you think George will be at 
 next ? " demanded Miss Rebecca. 
 
 " It's a choice of evils," sighed Jasper, now fully restored 
 to reason. " He might swell out into a popular preacher ; 
 I believe he's amazing in that line ; believe myself the little 
 girl coaches him." 
 
 " Popular preacher ! He's got his eye on Aiken and 
 old Abel. Directly poor old Abel drops off George will 
 be up to his neck in the submerged." 
 
 Jasper gasped in a horrid silence. " This is awful news," 
 at last he muttered. " The girl ! The child ! " 
 
 " The girl, bless you, is the guiding star in that astound- 
 ing establishment. It's she who will land him in the 
 seething pit. Talk of irony of fate ! If he'd married 
 stodge he'd end, without a doubt, in Lambeth." 
 " The child ? " said Jasper, in calm despair.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 131 
 
 " Oh, they get through a lot." 
 
 " Ours wouldn't." 
 
 " One would think you referred to a handful of rickets," 
 said Miss Rebecca angrily. " What others have done, 
 ' Ours,' I hope, will be found capable of doing." 
 
 " Look at his nerves ! " 
 
 " Look at his shoulders ! " 
 
 " Oh, well," he said soothingly, " think of the girl." 
 
 " Don't I think of her till I'm black in the face ? To 
 be called upon to spend one's old age in arguing against 
 one's conscience, indeed ! It's an absolutely indecent ex- 
 hibition, this misplaced anger of yours," said Rebecca. 
 " George is going as straight as a die." 
 
 Jasper rolled out a groan. " That's the damn ahem 
 the the cunning of the fellow. That's where he has us 
 all." 
 
 " If you had so much as one spark of religion about you, 
 Jasper, what a comfort we might now find it." 
 
 Jasper looked regretful and returned to Joan. " She's 
 not old enough to play the game, I suppose, else she 
 might be learning to make the most of both worlds," he 
 mused. 
 
 " The game that's floored more philosophy than ever 
 we'll know of till the day of judgment to be played by a 
 girl with neither experience nor opportunities ! Jasper, I 
 hope to mercy you're not bringing softening upon your- 
 self." 
 
 " It matters little to anyone, save himself and the Cen- 
 sus, whether the average parson marries or keeps single," 
 burst out Jasper after a pause, " but the celibacy of saints 
 should be enforced." 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 JOAN'S descent into the icy pit of indifference seemed to 
 be arrested on the very brink by the vague confusion of 
 joyousness let loose in her through the prospect of her first 
 wholly earthly dinner-party. 
 
 9*
 
 132 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Parochial chores lost their leaden insignificance and grew 
 purposeful. Desolating wastes of hemming gleamed silvern 
 in the lightened air, and of a sudden her needle grew tract- 
 able. 
 
 Joan's sweet leisurely ways with the poor were this morn- 
 ing full of sun and scent and pleasure, no longer a triumph 
 of perfection swathed in affliction. She really rather enjoyed 
 the dispensation. 
 
 Since neither time nor endeavour seemed able to curb 
 Joan's hurrying young senses in their wild revolt against 
 the sights and odours of the Poor, the potter inherent in the 
 uttermost parts of them, their shifty, haunting vagueness, 
 she had ceased to speculate, and had just turned her atten- 
 tion to finding out what the Poor really did want her to be 
 to them, and being it with all her might. Thus her ways 
 had grown as leisurely as any village vegetable of them all ; 
 and she had become an inimitable listener. 
 
 And to-day, blissful but perplexing miracle ! she enjoyed 
 it. Everything happily accomplished, bright, excited, smil- 
 ing, she now threw the study door open and burst in to find 
 George, amidst a chaos of melancholy social literature, as 
 full of glow and movement, and the joy and glory of life as 
 herself, firing volleys of sharp pertinent questions at Dr. 
 Baker. 
 
 Being a born enthusiast, in the throes of any new work 
 bristling with difficulty, George was at his best. 
 
 His first experience of work on a large scale at Aiken, 
 held every spur to action necessary to fire his ardent nature, 
 his own ignorance, as usual, the one and only circumstance 
 that could block his path, and that after all was surmount- 
 able. But until it was surmounted he knew no rest. He 
 worked in a frenzy, and so thoroughly did he enjoy the 
 work that he required no rest, while to draw ruthlessly upon 
 the knowledge of his friends was part of George. 
 
 Dr. Baker's talk of seething millions dejected Joan, but 
 she was truly sorry for his lungs. Her mute greeting was 
 sympathetic. 
 
 Baker was a kindly strong man who had suffered most 
 things. 
 
 The sweet directness of Joan had always interested him. 
 Her single-hearted devotion to George gave him a pleasant 
 security as to George's future.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 133 
 
 Sometimes in contemplating the pair he felt moved to 
 disagree with Bishop Taylor in regard to that divine's con- 
 clusion upon married saints. 
 
 " It's all so big, so intractable," said George ; by way of 
 greeting, nodding at Joan. " It incites one to sledge-hammer 
 attacks and haste. They've all been at that game tooth 
 and nail these many years, consequently the work, every bit 
 of it, is perfunctory. The clubs fairly reek with the im- 
 patience of estimable young men, and there's a sort of 
 grotesque pathos in Abel's own afflicting fits of breathless 
 overwhelming rejuvenation. Before you can turn in that 
 chaos you've got to get the leisure of Eternity into you and 
 go back again to beginnings, your tail between your legs. 
 But about these schools one look is worth a thousand words, 
 and your point of view bleat with ours makes an excellent 
 combination. You being a swell in these matters more- 
 over " 
 
 " Oh ! I say I'll come. But when? " 
 
 " That's the question : we're so full. Thursday, Friday, 
 Saturday, impossible all! and not a day next week." He 
 paused to consider. " What do you say to to-night ? Can 
 you manage it ? " 
 
 " But," cried Joan, " to-night ? They're coming. To- 
 night's our dinner-party. George, you haven't forgotten?" 
 
 There was a sharp, piteous note of revolt in Joan's voice 
 that turned both men's eyes upon her. 
 
 " I'd clean forgotten ! " said George remorsefully. " Of 
 course it can't be to-night. You haven't heard our news, 
 Dick. There's a detachment of Lancers coming through, 
 and Fred Thryng, a cousin, and his friend, Captain Heron, 
 are to sleep and dine here. It's Joan's first dinner-party, 
 it was a scurvy trick to forget it." 
 
 " To forget ; to forget," thought Joan, in rather a 
 frightened way, " when I can remember nothing else. It is 
 hard to be getting so different from George and trying to 
 be like him is really absolutely no good." 
 
 His thread of thought broken, George was now quite 
 ready for the luncheon his wife had come to announce. 
 
 " Poor beggars must quench their thirst upon effervescing 
 drinks as you'll have to do, Dick," he said presently, open- 
 ing soda water. 
 
 "What! Winty's contract not out yet?"
 
 134 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Dr. Baker spoke absently. Hitherto he had thought of 
 his hostess as George's wife, he was now thinking of her 
 as a woman; a quiet, delicate-moulded, extremely young 
 woman with an odd, elusive, haunting attraction of her 
 own. 
 
 Because of his chilled, cut-off life, Baker could think of 
 a woman who has everything to learn, as one of her own 
 sex who has learnt everything may think, if she think at 
 all, tenderly, oddly, kindly, a suspicion somewhere in the 
 back-ground of a smile. 
 
 " In spite of effervescing drinks, I prophesy a great success 
 for your first dinner-party, Mrs. George," said he, with a 
 kind look at her. " I wish I was there to see." 
 
 " I wish you were," said Joan, warming to his smile and 
 his infirmities. 
 
 George's thoughts were miles away tugging at a knot. 
 Something in the air brought them back. George was ex- 
 tremely sensitive to moral atmospheres, which fact spoke 
 well for his wife's persistent efforts at self-control and her 
 native power of soothing. 
 
 In a flash he perceived some subtle attraction going on 
 in his gentle Joan. His thoughts forsook knots, and upon 
 the spur of no apparent logic fell, with merry curiosity, to 
 circle around vanity. 
 
 Having been busy since his honeymoon beyond most 
 men, and finding her all sufficing as she stood a perennial 
 inspiration he had thought but little of Joan's complexion, 
 now he remembered it. The full, soft, luminous, white of 
 her cheeks, the lights and shadows in her deep dimples, the 
 new roundness in her slender figure. Her timid courage 
 and swift gracious ways seemed to give her at that moment 
 an urgent, rather a surprising right to the brilliancy of 
 things generally. All at once he was oddly proud of Joan 
 and oddly sorry for her, and he remembered Miss Rebecca's 
 diamonds. 
 
 " I say, Joan, you must wear some of the family jewels 
 to-night." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Joan ; another word must have choked her. 
 
 " Diamonds on Mrs. George will have the effect of that 
 old sparkling hock of your father's. Your dinner-party 
 won't give a thought to the missing wine, George." 
 
 loan thanked him with a glance.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 135 
 
 "I think Cousin Rebecca would like it," she added re- 
 flectively. 
 
 " Anyway, / shall. I'm going to spend the afternoon in 
 the Marshes. The thought of you in diamonds will keep 
 me going." 
 
 He threw a searching glance at the board, bare save for 
 a wealth of red roses. 
 
 " Pity," said he regretfully, " that Miss Rebecca's things 
 haven't come, I could carry some along." 
 
 The haste and dexterity wherewith Joan swept the sudden 
 aghastness from off her face was another revelation to Dr. 
 Baker. 
 
 " That marsh, I take it, absorbs more than its fair share," 
 he said dryly. " Have you any notion how much that 
 precious locality spends per annum in poisonous concoctions 
 of opium ? " 
 
 " I know to the uttermost farthing," said George shame- 
 lessly, " but when even opium fails the wretches, a change 
 of diet will sometimes pick 'em up." 
 
 " George ! " cried his remorseful wife, " there will be heaps 
 left. You know the amount she'll send." 
 
 " Miss Rebecca's contributions would need to come in 
 bulk," said the doctor, glancing with an inquiring and 
 awakened understanding at the barren board, then at its 
 mistress. 
 
 " I wonder just how much she likes this sort of thing ? " 
 mused he. " It's not conducive to high spirits, anyway, 
 whatever it may be to high thinking." 
 
 " You know I suppose that Miss Rebecca has cast the 
 marsh off since her three selected willow wands funked the 
 sergeant ? " he said, turning to George. 
 
 " I know. When are you going round there ? " 
 
 " What has science to do in that galere ? " 
 
 " To give us a leg up when we stumble." 
 
 " That you may stumble again ? " 
 
 " That we may get over the ground in spite of stumbles, 
 leaving you to fill up the pit-falls." 
 
 " Church scavengers no less." 
 
 " Dick ! The book, the small one of sonnets will be 
 ready for London in a week or so." 
 
 " Are you going up with it ? " 
 
 "Rather! We couldn't send our first book child, to
 
 136 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 face life alone, could we, Joan? It would never have got 
 written but for her," he said, turning to Baker. " When I 
 grow a bit tete-montee every man is a fool on occasion 
 after midnight," he said, with his boyish laugh, " and sees a 
 few of the fine things he thinks and knows shining out in 
 his work at these moments of exaltation, I can see some 
 of Joan's truth glancing in and out of the sentences, 
 a little river of pure gold, and I feel that I have a right 
 to hope. The truthfulness that lies in us is a fool to that 
 in women, you know. But you don't you haven't married 
 one." 
 
 " I'll take your word for it." 
 
 Joan reproached by her own illimitable power to lie 
 wriggled in extreme discomfort. 
 
 " Naturally it would be a most superior article in the 
 ethical line," pursued Baker serenely. " A woman has come 
 to her kingdom in this particular, through much tribulation, 
 conducted in her closet mostly, in the sole companionship 
 of her own driving conscience. We've been having the lies 
 actively kicked out of us for generations; generally in the 
 open air. Truth is a faculty still in the rough in us. In 
 them where it exists it's polished to a bewildering per- 
 fection. Too much truth spoils laughter, Mrs. George! 
 You mustn't be bringing weeping and gnashing of teeth into 
 George's big book. I'd like to see those diamonds," he 
 said rising, " but instead I must be off to muddle about in 
 the dark places amidst decay." 
 
 " Perhaps to rake in treasure," suggested George cheer- 
 fully. 
 
 Baker's kind, sad eyes were on Mrs. George. He threw 
 out his hollow chest and laughed gently. 
 
 " In spite of the treasures the most enthusiastic of the 
 lot of us would chuck it all often to go fool round in a 
 sunbeam." 
 
 " This from you, Dick ? " 
 
 "Truth is infectious. Mrs. George, may I come in on 
 Friday to tea? Perhaps your chronicle of folly may exor- 
 cise evil humours. Hullo ! The baby ! I say, Mrs. 
 George, he has no business with that wail. Let me see. 
 This tooth wants lancing now this minute. George, hold 
 him. Oh ! you'd rather, Mrs. Winnington. All right, then. 
 Turn your head so."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 137 
 
 The child gave a little gasping cry, and then slowly 
 whitened. 
 
 " Some brandy," said Dr. Baker, sharply. 
 
 " There is none," said the mother's low voice. 
 
 " George, nip round. There's a flask in my cart." 
 
 George was back in two minutes, and soon the odd 
 collapse was over. 
 
 " That little chap if he ever gets ill will need stimulating, 
 Mrs. George. Don't mind what any one tells you, give him 
 a few drops of whiskey, brandy, anything, and don't lose 
 any time about it. He takes after you. He's far too sen- 
 sitive and vivid and realistic in a youthful way. He pulls 
 too hard on his vitality. See ! even now, he ^an't be quiet. 
 He'll probably never have a day's illness in his life, but 
 if he does, stimulate him, even if you've got to turn the 
 doctor out to do it. Doctors go by sight not faith. They 
 won't have seen what I have, and they never put much trust 
 in mothers." 
 
 " She'll be collapsing too, some day," he thought as he 
 drove off. " She'll get too tired to lift herself up again, 
 and lose heart and grip together. It racks the life of the 
 like of her to be working double. Just the sort of woman 
 to go to pieces all at once in an unexpected sort of way. 
 Meanwhile, I hope she won't be burning herself trying to 
 rekindle dead fires. It will be interesting to see in what sort 
 of way the young soldiers will further her several tasks ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 " To disgrace us all for Winty's soul," snapped Beatrice, 
 who had flounced in to regulate Joan's dinner. 
 
 " It's not Winty's soul ; it's his wife's body," Joan 
 patiently explained. 
 
 " Catch George under any circumstances leaving out 
 soul." 
 
 " George must stick to his colours." 
 
 " Such colours ! " 
 
 "At least they're George's." 
 
 The fact was beyond argument. Beatrice flung back
 
 138 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 upon a variant of her original grievance. " If only they'd 
 been curates." 
 
 "I'm extremely glad they're not" 
 
 " They'd expect nothing." 
 
 " That's just it. They'd expect nothing. Doing with- 
 out things is part of them. I I'm tired of watching 
 people doing without things. Just for once I want to have 
 people to dinner who expect everything, who've never in 
 all their lives done without one single thing they've 
 wanted." 
 
 Beatrice stared. 
 
 " Well, really ! After all George wasn't born a curate. 
 I remember when he expected as much as other people 
 and got it too. Catch George in those days letting every 
 good thing pass him ! " 
 
 " George never lets any good thing pass him even in 
 these." 
 
 " Dear me, no ! He grabs all he can lay hold on to 
 squander it on some object." 
 
 " That's the good of it to George. At least, he doesn't 
 give that away." 
 
 "What it is to be born devote I Good gracious! Sup- 
 pose you'd married Billy ! " 
 
 " In that case I shouldn't have met George. I daresay 
 I'd have enjoyed myself immensely. Billy is very easy." 
 
 Beatrice yawned. 
 
 " Simple pleasures are less easy than they appear to be." 
 
 " Billy," said Joan suddenly, " has a very nice way of 
 loving. He has the smallest possible opinion, for in- 
 stance, of your eye for a horse " 
 
 Beatrice whisked round. " The impudence of Billy ! " 
 
 " As for dogs, you're nowhere ! " said Joan, with a merry 
 laugh. " Yet, in spite of it all, he thinks you infallible. 
 Any line in which he himself excels must, according to 
 Billy's logic, be too unimportant for your powers." 
 
 " Oh, Billy ! " sighed Beatrice pathetically. " But 
 what's the use of talking to you? You don't understand 
 worldly ambitions. You couldn't, I suppose, even con- 
 ceive of any woman, who having got a husband keeps on 
 hankering after a career for him to take the monotony 
 off?" 
 
 " A career ! " Joan looked doubtful. " If you begin to
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 139 
 
 mix yourself up in a career you'll be getting lines in your 
 face, I'm afraid, and queer panics and a horribly low 
 opinion of yourself a sort of grovelling sensation, you 
 know. Beatrice, you'd hate it." 
 
 To this Beatrice stared unconditional assent. The rest 
 of her face shot out inquiries. 
 
 " That is, of course, if it's a serious career," pursued 
 Joan dreamily, " you'd be so immensely proud of that, you 
 couldn't bear a speck or a shadow on it." 
 
 " Good gracious. You do take things at a gallop. 
 What I want to do with Billy is just to put him into 
 Parliament in a mild way." 
 
 " Oh, Parliament," said Joan more cheerfully. " Surely 
 between you you could manage that. It's not as though 
 you'd be breathless to see Billy doing things in a 
 triumphant sort of way. You could go at everything 
 quietly and help him with his speeches." 
 
 " Look at his legs," said Billy's wife tragically. " No 
 one would listen to his speeches." 
 
 " Oh, well ! If your words wouldn't very soon make 
 them forget his legs ! You could be so sure of yourself 
 with Billy, so sure of your power to serve him." 
 
 Billy's wife bridled. 
 
 " One would think you spoke of a child." 
 
 " Oh ! I don't mean that at all. But Billy is not in 
 any sort of way oh ! holy, you know, or sacred or set 
 apart. When you help him it wouldn't be necessary to sort 
 out all your words and thoughts and ideas before you'd 
 think of offering them to Billy." 
 
 " Good Heavens ! You're so creepy, Joan. As though 
 it was John the Baptist's head on a charger I was about 
 to present to poor Billy ! " 
 
 Joan started. 
 
 " I don't feel the very least like that, really. If I were 
 you," she added hastily, " I'd begin to get Billy ready for 
 Parliament at once. It would be such a comfort to be 
 absolutely sure that he couldn't get on without you at 
 all, that there's not the least danger he'll ever be shoot- 
 ing ahead and leaving you behind." 
 
 " I'd like to catch Billy at that indeed. Billy to be put- 
 ting on the airs of a comet ! You have the most extra- 
 ordinary notions of men and marriage. Joan ! Keep both
 
 HO HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 within bounds that's my idea, and you're all right ! But 
 
 once you let either overflow " Here words failed 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 She paused to reflect. 
 
 " Some don't matter. It's easy to dam them back, 
 Billy for example. But George now, once he began to 
 overflow in earnest I believe it's in him to flood every- 
 thing with the unexpected," added Beatrice upon another 
 inspiration. 
 
 " Beatrice," said Joan precipitately, " I've got all the 
 vases ready on the table. Come and look." 
 
 " Hullo ! " cried Beatrice, and she was through the 
 P'rench window at a bound. " Here they are. Catch up 
 that hat and come." 
 
 It happened to be Jasper the younger's, but its soft 
 quillings made a fair setting for an oval face. 
 
 The girls sped across the lawn and stood waiting on a 
 raised path overlooking the high road under an arched 
 wilderness of roses. 
 
 The Vicarage stood on a hill commanding the village, 
 the path rose sheer above a green trellised gate, and 
 formed a landmark in the neighbourhood. 
 
 Below in the hollow ran the stream which turned the 
 mill ; at the side of the winding road a green dimpled 
 down stretched up to the edges of the high hills. 
 
 Through the break in the hills along the white road 
 flanked by tall trees came the brave array of men and 
 horses, on and on, up and down, in sun and shadow, a 
 glimmer of burnished gold, a glint of molten silver, a 
 shimmer of dense blue in the bright air. 
 
 They rode at ease at a smart trot. The soft silvern 
 clash of a sabre; the roll of deep voices; the rhythmic 
 melody of hoofs arose, hovering upon the breeze. 
 
 There was a debonnair magnificence in the spectacle; 
 a fine barbaric earthly swing and swagger that set all 
 Joan's pulses a humming. 
 
 She had seen from her school-room window soldiers on 
 parade, at drill, but their machine-made movements and 
 wooden faces had touched her not at all. 
 
 They had seemed to assimilate too nearly to the condi- 
 tion under which she herself was stiffening into a perennial 
 " at attention " pose ; and upon the occasion of any cere-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 141 
 
 monial display of arms she and her governess were 
 despatched in search of health or dairy produce in some 
 direction where never a soldier swaggered. 
 
 Her glow of surprise therefore was absolute, her imagina- 
 tion was stirred to its depths. Her curiosity awoke, her 
 courage rose, but a doubt beset her. 
 
 She made a swift little motion, as though to get back 
 to the quiet house, but her fascinated eyes defied the bid- 
 ding of her meek feet, and Beatrice's untrammelled voice 
 fixed her. 
 
 " Indolent swagger cloaking tons of stored energy is 
 the rippingest thing on earth, and so English," screamed 
 Bee ; " nothing of the waxed-end ferocity of the Germans 
 and their waist lines half way up their abominable backs 
 of some of the other peoples, about that crowd. Joan ! 
 wouldn't you like to see 'em with the thirst of blood on 
 'em," said this gentle Christian dreamily. 
 
 " Oh," gasped Joan, but the notion seized her. " It 
 really it would take the dullness out of death," she said 
 presently, with some diffidence. 
 
 " Death ! with all that life under your nose ! Why will 
 clergy people be always bringing in some engine of de- 
 struction ? Death, or dirt, or drains, or dullness ? Living 
 in the country," she pursued, her eyes glued to the dazzling 
 pageant, " demoralises you to the bone. For the sake of 
 common decency there should be a cavalry barracks within 
 easy reach of every neighbourhood." A glittering, but 
 perplexing point of view, this ! Joan looked breathless 
 interest. 
 
 " To keep your sense of proportion right," vouchsafed 
 Bee, sweeping in with one contemptuous gesture the whole 
 county-side. " Nature and a dull neighbourhood make 
 you so sloppy. Why ! we're like a pair of housemaids this 
 minute gaping at the soldiers." 
 
 " But didn't you like soldiers in London ? " 
 
 " I liked them in reason, thrown in among a lot of other 
 appreciations. Here I could elope with one. I firmly 
 believe every scandal worth the name is hatched in the 
 country or the suburbs. Once set going, of course, it will 
 thrive anywhere," she added hopefully. 
 
 " Do do the usual things really stop amusing you 
 soon ? " asked Joan anxiously.
 
 142 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Your enjoyment gets chastened. You sort things out, 
 keep the best and look out for more." 
 
 " It sounds like a succession of longings." 
 
 " Call it gathering experience. That sounds less mor- 
 bid." 
 
 " And when it's gathered ? " 
 
 " Hem ! There's always forbidden fruit to fall back 
 upon. It's a comprehensive term, although, indeed," she 
 added sadly, " it narrows daily. Oh ! I say, don't disturb 
 yourself, Joan. It needn't necessarily refer to husbands. 
 However, all that needn't trouble you. You're better as 
 you are." She turned to bestow a hard, unconditional 
 stare upon Joan. 
 
 The egoism of Beatrice, as will the most thriving, waved 
 in the presence of the unattainable. 
 
 She was generous and cordial in her modified apprecia- 
 tion of her sister-in-law. 
 
 " You'll make a lovely old woman," said she, with a 
 gusty sigh, " while I shall be tanned leather, with a hard- 
 bitten nose. Getting ready for Heaven and a blessed old 
 age suits you down to the ground." 
 
 Joan felt too prostrate to offer either disclaimer or 
 protest. 
 
 " And to know that if circumstances hadn't, so to speak, 
 shelved you, you'd have shone all right amongst ordinary 
 sinners, you know, somehow gives you the right look. 
 You're really very attractive, Joan in a way." 
 
 " If she goes on much longer," thought Joan, " I am 
 afraid I shall have to yell." 
 
 " Your face is an influence," pursued Bee. " Directly 
 my guests see me, they'll feel easy in their minds. They'll 
 be sure of a good dinner. Yours will straightway forget 
 their dinner I hope to goodness the wine also and 
 think of mothers' knees and prayer." 
 
 " Oh ! Beatrice, Beatrice ! I'm not like that? " 
 
 " Worse luck for the like of us, you are." 
 
 " Oh ! If you only knew how hard you all make it for 
 me all of you, except Billy to be even commonly 
 good." 
 
 " That's your humility, dear. Ha ! There are my two. 
 I perceive the fatigue of over-experience in the off man's 
 eye. Won't want to be set bucketting over new ground,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 143 
 
 that gentleman. He'll prefer the known, with exceptional 
 gifts to any ungifted exception. And George ! The 
 Church militant shows up really quite creditably. He 
 looks quite human to-day." 
 
 She narrowed her gratified eyes to stare further. Joan's 
 burst of winged words, held well in check, brought colour 
 to her cheeks, spirit to her eyes; and roses and the frilled 
 hat framed her finely. 
 
 As the destined guests looked up to salute, the younger 
 experienced a thrill of great relief. Here was goodness 
 looking precisely as goodness ought to look and never 
 does. 
 
 He had been torturing his tender mind with a vague 
 chaos of splay feet, square waist, pins upon a haggard 
 bosom, a piece of tape fixed firmly between the teeth. A 
 vision that in an all too recent youth he had been fre- 
 quently called upon to kiss. 
 
 " I say, now, that's a ripping surprise," said the confiding 
 young man to his senior. "I've been having night-mares 
 of flannel petticoats and a basket, born-for-good-works-sort- 
 of-business, you know. Pity, don't you think, that piety 
 should run so often to thick ankles? Does one more good 
 when it tapers at the points and smells of roses." 
 
 " You'd better buck up, else your handful of beauties 
 will be smelling of raw gin, and we'll have the Colonel 
 raging again." 
 
 " Crumbs ! Didn't he go it yesterday ? " 
 
 " Wouldn't recommend you to let the smell of roses put 
 you off seeing yourself after Reynard's hock, either, by 
 the way. Swollen the size of your fist." 
 
 " Wonderfully nice little spot that Vicarage," mused the 
 first lieutenant. " The kid in the background ; the parson 
 at the gate. The whole outfit, you know, and that white 
 cowl of a thing on Mrs. Winnington's head. Joseph and 
 Mary business, you know, brought up to date." 
 
 "And you, the wise young man from the East also 
 brought up to date. Shut up, and go attend to your Gee."
 
 144 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 OF all the creatures of wood and water, Joan best liked 
 the birds with their dower of perennial youth, their hearts 
 all full of song and sun. Everything of which she could get 
 hold about them she seized and read delightedly. Lately 
 she had fallen upon a treasure, and suddenly she began to 
 hum it. 
 
 " New ! new ! new ! new ! Is it then so new that you must 
 carol so madly," sang she. " But oh ! The newness has got 
 into my head," cried the foolish woman in a protest, "and 
 it's all so utterly ridiculous." 
 
 With a laugh, half happy, half exasperated, she turned 
 once again to look at the flash of diamonds upon her round, 
 slim, young neck. 
 
 " And now for baby, and then for George," she murmured, 
 tearing herself from the glass. 
 
 Ten minutes later, her face still alight with its triumphant 
 surprise, she burst into George's room. 
 
 He was at his desk, his face luminous with thought, his 
 eyes glued to a great sheet of lined paper, his pen racing. 
 
 He was absorbed body, soul, and spirit in some lofty 
 utterance. 
 
 His face was indeed a wonder. This used to be the 
 sort of thing for which Joan lived. Now there seemed no 
 longer to be any room for her in the phase. She was shut 
 clean out. 
 
 She stood still and inaudibly choked. George had for- 
 gotten everything but his Master's business. She had for- 
 gotten everything but the intoxication of her own newness. 
 
 Softly she turned to go away. 
 
 George knew of no Holy of Holies, however, that could
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 145 
 
 exclude Joan. To him the most natural thing in Heaven 
 would have been Joan. For was she not part of Heaven ? 
 
 With a swift, half glance that missed the diamonds, he 
 called out to her : 
 
 " Oh, Joan ! You always come just at the right moment. 
 I've got a quotation here wrong. You can't insult a Father 
 of the Church by misquoting him. The book is there, half 
 way up the shelf, the fifth of that brown and gold row. 
 The quotation is in the first seven chapters I'm pretty sure, 
 and marked. It's low down on the left page I think." 
 
 Joan's fingers shook with the chill of disappointment as 
 she reached up for the old volume full of bewildering / /'s 
 that meant s s's, and sat down to go patiently to and forth 
 through the close printed pages, dog-eared and wedged 
 one into the other viciously, as is the way of certain old 
 tomes. But she found the lines. 
 
 " You'll like this," said George, making careful alterations. 
 " It's the paper the Bishop wants for that controversy, and 
 it must go to-night. I've been wanting to say the things for 
 years. They would never come right, but now I've got 
 'em. They'd convince a wooden-headed clam ! They must 
 see the thing, those fellows, stop wrangling like old maids, 
 and push on, push on ! " 
 
 He spoke in the low, joyous tones, sweet with a beautiful 
 sincerity, which Joan had never heard save upon a few 
 occasions, visions and landmarks all in her little life. But 
 just this one night, her own night, she wanted something 
 different. 
 
 " There ! " said George. " I can do no more ! It must 
 go. And now O ! rare domestic censor, for your turn. 
 Are you comfortable ? " With beautiful unseeing eyes he 
 glanced in her direction. 
 
 A thunderous knock crashed in upon George's fervent 
 dream, awakening him to the fact that he was expecting 
 guests; that the reason, indeed, for all his hot haste had 
 been the imminent arrival of these guests. 
 
 " How abominably provoking," he cried. " You can't 
 hear it after all ! " 
 
 Full of regret, annoyance, and disappointment, without 
 noticing a single new or memorable point about his suffer- 
 ing wife, George fled up by the back stairs to his dressing- 
 room. 
 
 10
 
 146 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Laughing whilst she wiped her eyes, Joan stole out into 
 the hall to get to her room and take off her baubles. 
 
 She was arrested upon the threshold of her resolve by 
 old Jasper's roar of delight. 
 
 " God bless my soul ! Turn round. Turn round, will 
 you ? " he repeated imperiously as Joan hesitated. 
 
 " A devilish pretty young woman. That's what you are ! 
 Cast the curatic slough now, for good and all! thank 
 Heaven ! In future, when I want to forget George's vagaries, 
 for proof of his sanity, I've only got to look at his wife. 
 
 " Wish poor Isabella could see you," he murmured plain- 
 tively, " might make her hold her tongue in future about 
 George's ahem. Oh, well ! What does George say ? " 
 
 " He's been dreadfully busy. He was writing at full 
 speed. He had to get the thing finished. Come into the 
 drawing-room." 
 
 Jasper stared and groaned. 
 
 " God help us all. Who's to stand up against iced virtue ? 
 Seven and twenty in March, George. Hang it all! What 
 will the unfortunate fellow be at fifty ? " 
 
 All Joan's thoughts ran shivering off to fifty. She gave 
 rather a scared little laugh. 
 
 " That that sort of thing won't matter at fifty. Nothing 
 will be new then any longer." 
 
 " To diet a girl who can stand diamonds like that on one 
 dish," he muttered abstractedly. 
 
 " Oh, come ! " said Joan. 
 
 She paused, caught her breath, and her dejected face 
 lighted up all at once with a brilliant resolve. 
 
 " I'll simply make George see things," she thought. " I'll 
 make him enjoy himself sensibly for once. What's the use 
 of being magnificently happy if George isn't in it?"" 
 
 " Come," said she, " and be ready for them. To-night I 
 mean to do all the things just exactly right. I mean to 
 match the family diamonds ! Come ! " 
 
 The first spark of coquetry, the desire to conquer, to 
 prove her power, was now akindle in Joan, and she really 
 was extremely new. She threw open the door, bright, 
 smiling, excited, to come sheer upon George, who, having 
 raced through his dressing, had got in by a side door. 
 
 For one instant the overmastering sense of George's 
 sacrosanctity threatened to unhorse his wife's resolution,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 147 
 
 the next she caught hold of her new strength and overcame 
 her craven spirit. 
 
 She went straight up to George, her face dimpling with 
 mute laughter. 
 
 The sight of her startled the vicar into an irritating 
 silence. 
 
 " George," she cried at last, her low voice full of laughter, 
 full of entreaty, " I feel so extraordinarily new. Just as 
 if I was being born again. Oh ! not in the right way not 
 like that in the very least But that won't matter just for 
 one night, George ! Do say it won't. And look properly, 
 do ! Doesn't it make one look really awfully nice ? " 
 
 She stepped back with a challenging face. 
 
 George laughed, but he also flushed. His wife stirred 
 him in depths so far unmoved by her. His whole being 
 was one great surprise which throbbed oddly. 
 
 In spite of all his love, his trust, his nearness, he seemed 
 only now to know Joan quite intimately. His blood raced 
 through his veins like cool bubbling wine. A great tempest 
 of youth swept him. He was a little afraid. Never till this 
 moment had any note of fear jarred the melody of his 
 pure, passionate, peaceful attachment, now the stirring of 
 some odd discord, the new fear, the new shyness, made 
 love a new delight. 
 
 " Miss Rebecca's diamonds aren't in it," said he, " it's 
 yourself." 
 
 Jasper's points of view swung round with a bang, he felt 
 immensely proud of George. 
 
 " No bread and butter miss there ! " he averred. 
 " Dashed handsome woman. By the way, George, I've 
 been looking over my part of that marsh. It's quite time 
 it was looked to. You might see to the thing. You strike 
 me as being rather more practical than you used to be." 
 
 Joan's laugh was like merry music. She was laughing 
 still when the two men came in, and in an instant the room 
 was singing with youth. George yielded completely to the 
 importunate demand in the air. Keen, subtle, vivacious, 
 strong, he was ahead of them all. Not since the day that 
 in his headlong way he had thrown his all, youth, body, 
 brain and spirit into his sad, grave work, and grown silent 
 with the silence of a strong heart rilled with a keen sense 
 of the pain of the world, an inexorable resolve to ease its
 
 148 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 throbbings, had he so forgotten everything and let life 
 swing free. 
 
 Joan with her spirited air, her joy in George's brilliancy, 
 was a charming woman for any man to watch, whilst her 
 frank admiring surprise at the sallies of the younger man 
 the odd appraising smile of the elder, seemed rather to 
 stiffen spontaniety her cordial appreciation of his glib 
 renderings of the infantile wit of his circle, his discreet 
 music-hall transposings, urged him to heights so far un- 
 attempted. Mrs. George Winnington's attitude of startled, 
 grave, delighted abandon was a tribute to which he was 
 but little used. The modern girl being generally far too 
 zealous to cap a junior's jokes to find any leisure wherein 
 to admire them. 
 
 Tom Thryng was, on the whole, a most engaging boy, 
 founded upon frivolity and reverence, who mingled dreams 
 with a healthy appetite. His passion for the Vicar's wife 
 grew like Jonah's gourd. Directly dinner was over he took 
 bodily possession of her. And George, who long before 
 he had ever met Joan, had himself gone pleasantly through 
 the pleasant phase, laughed amusedly, and fell into talk 
 with Captain Heron. 
 
 Joan stood at the threshold of a new world, and watched 
 with dazzled eyes. 
 
 " Look at her," murmured the enraptured Jasper to his 
 doughty friend, Rebecca, loyal to his love, but suffering 
 tortures from enforced abstinence. " And to-morrow she'll 
 be dumped back upon her role of dog turning a praying 
 wheel. This is a passing spasm on the part of George, but 
 there will be no real going back for that girl. She's eaten 
 of the Tree. The taste's on her palate. You can see it in 
 the turn of her neck. The pride of life is in her, and the 
 devil and all his angels." Jasper stooped forward to gaze. 
 " A devil with all his bloom upon him. Lucifer, the Morn- 
 ing Star with yearnings. He's less dangerous, believe me, 
 in a tail. Her curiosity's excited, her hankerings all agog. 
 
 Heavens only knows " He declined tacitly to complete 
 
 this dark saying. 
 
 " Hang it all," he exclaimed, after another glance. " I 
 wish I hadn't promised to clear up that swamp." 
 
 "Did you promise?" she demanded sharply. 
 
 " Why, yes," murmured he.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 149 
 
 " When did you promise ? " 
 
 " To-night," he sadly admitted. 
 
 " I've grovelled before Jasper for the sake of those 
 wretched people these twenty years, and my diamonds to 
 do it in the end ! " she reflected sadly. 
 
 " It was a sort of apology to the fellow," pursued Jasper, 
 " for looking upon him so long as a hopeless ass. There's 
 man enough about George, after all." 
 
 " Man ! Is that all you know about George ? " 
 
 He waved a comprehensive hand. 
 
 " Oh ! You're thinking of the usual things. Pah ! 
 That's all part of the stock in trade of the modern saint. 
 Why, even wine won't floor the latest brand. I've proved 
 'em; wisdom of the serpent business, don't you see? A 
 straight eye for a woman is the one sure test, and that's 
 where they wobble." He shook a sorrowful head. 
 " Flavourless devote neutral mothers in Israel you don't 
 want in your own family. George has bested the lot of us ; 
 defied our power of judgment. All the same I wish I 
 hadn't been so glib with my promises. He'll be up to his 
 neck in that swamp before the week's out. Why, his 
 honeymoon wasn't over before he was in and out of these 
 stinking vaults like a rabbit, the girl at his heels. I've 
 brought a new unpleasantness into her dull life, that's all. 
 Likely enough some malarious complaint." 
 
 Miss Rebecca shut her lips and tried with all her might 
 not to hate Joan. It was all so unnecessary a ravishing of 
 an old woman's last chance. Time was racing at full tilt 
 and she was lonely in her big house. 
 
 She was a just woman, however, and in the course of many 
 a sad vigil stood often aghast before the invincible bulwarks 
 of an ugly old age. The bleak, unveiled age of the woman 
 who has early lost the one great incentive towards mellow 
 beauty, who, moreover, for sheer righteousness sake, as in 
 the present instance, though with a wried mouth, has burnt 
 her last boat symbolised in the homely form of a corset. 
 
 " How could a woman look in the glass," Miss Rebecca 
 reflected with fierce humility, "and blame Jasper." At the 
 same time, Jasper must be preserved from mawkishness. 
 
 " Never repent a good deed, Jasper," she counselled 
 briskly. " Takes the virtue out of it. How's your gout ? " 
 
 Jasper looked hurt, and stiffly stood up.
 
 150 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Isn't confounded, flat-footed teetotalism enough for a 
 man, Rebecca ? " said he testily, " without reminding him of 
 his other afflictions. Ton my soul, that young fellow's 
 cheerfulness after a dry dinner, with no sense of religion to 
 keep him going, is a great compliment to the girl. Come ! 
 we may as well have a look at George clothed and in his 
 right mind. It isn't often we have the chance." But it 
 was George's wife at whom he looked. 
 
 So once again did Rebecca yield to the inexorable cruelty 
 of youth. She strode on beside Jasper, plumping finally 
 down upon a backless seat, which her large person forthwith 
 most destroyingly overflowed. 
 
 Miss Rebecca knew well none better the charitable 
 seclusion of a big chair to be the one and only setting 
 possible to regrettable abundance in shiny silk. Her choice 
 of the bleak perch was her grim protest against the in- 
 evitable. 
 
 The spectacle she presented upon it, however, struck 
 Jasper as being little short of indecent exposure. 
 
 He had a rooted distaste to any woman's making an ex- 
 hibition of herself, but, she who at any period of her 
 existence has touched a man's heart or flurried his emotions 
 should, even in the lesser matters, live for ever after up to 
 his former estimate of her. 
 
 Despite honest strivings it had become difficult for Jasper 
 to preserve, in this matter, a magnanimous outlook. He 
 was loyal in his way; his quarrel lay not with poor dear 
 Rebecca, but with the unkindness of an inconsiderate and 
 most inconsistent nature. 
 
 He hitched his chair within whispering distance of the 
 creaking stool, thus at the same time satisfying his con- 
 science and giving himself an opportunity of throwing out 
 further notes of admiration upon the progress of Joan. 
 
 From chattering honest nonsense the two young people 
 had now drifted into Comic Opera. Until this moment 
 Joan had never come within touch of such a thing, but she 
 was ripe for the spirit of light comedy and had been ex- 
 cellently drilled in music. She was playing, with the 
 feathery touch of a girl to whom joy is an alive, young, 
 elusive creature to be tenderly entreated, the score unearthed 
 by young Tom from his baggage; sometimes she sang. 
 And everything Joan did this wonderful evening, she did
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 151 
 
 with the sweet, quick spontaneous ways of a brown bird full 
 of gracious modesty. When they had skimmed through the 
 opera, Joan rose and turned quickly to George. 
 
 " Did you ever sing this sort of thing ? " she asked eagerly. 
 
 He took up the music and turned over the leaves, humm- 
 ing snatches here and there. 
 
 " In my days we sang the grandfather of this not a 
 family trait left out. I daresay I could manage it. Do you 
 want me to try?" 
 
 The face turned up to his puzzled George. There was 
 some odd argument openly going on in it. 
 
 Joan, in fact, was fairly panting for George to sit down 
 and wipe them all out, and get his rich resonant voice in- 
 toning the service rolled rebukingly through her frivolous 
 ears. 
 
 Suddenly, looking rather proud, she caught the music out 
 of his hand. 
 
 " On the whole, I don't think I do want you to sing 
 it." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Fred, nodding at the music with a touch of 
 disdain. " That's not up to George's form. When we were 
 at York he dined with us one night, and after dinner he 
 sang ' The Land of the Leal.' You never heard the like of 
 it. There was a rumour that the Colonel fairly blubbed. 
 Being Scotch, you know," he explained apologetically, " with 
 a groggy heart. I say, Mrs. Winnington, you get him to 
 sing now." 
 
 Joan looked blank. A new George was being unfolded 
 to her by strangers under her very nose. 
 
 She had the utmost confidence in George's power to do 
 anything, but never in all her life had she heard or imagined 
 his angelic voice save in Church music. It disturbed and 
 perplexed her. The things that to her seemed so urgent 
 and absorbing he had seemingly swept with his ungrudging 
 smile sheer out of his life. He could, it is true, pick them 
 up again in an idle moment, but only to drop them without 
 a thought, whilst every atom of her was shrieking and 
 clamouring to live amongst the things, to touch them, to 
 be one with them. 
 
 George, under no more poignant emotion than an amused 
 appreciation of Joan's unspoilt delight in things he had half 
 forgotten, laughed at the questioning of her bright face.
 
 152 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 "Joan doesn't know half my accomplishments," he said, 
 rummaging in an old portfolio. " We've been too busy since 
 our marriage to show off before each other. For instance, I 
 never heard my wife sing a comic opera catch song till ten 
 minutes ago. Here, Joan, you'll play it just right." 
 
 "I always thought that portfolio held chants," said Joan, 
 with a startled look. 
 
 George stooped as though to adjust her seat. 
 
 " You're lovely, child, to-night ! " he whispered. " We're 
 not dull, old married people at all. We're just starting out 
 in the dew on our honeymoon. You and I, and the boy. 
 Come begin ! " 
 
 There was a little hush when George had finished his 
 song. With an odd eagerness he turned to scan the faces 
 of his audience. 
 
 "I felt sure you'd like it," said he frankly. " One knows 
 when one gets things right." 
 
 "Your singing at York was a fool to this," said Fred 
 abruptly. 
 
 " I hadn't Joan to play for me then, nor the pair of you 
 to score off. One needs peculiar incentives towards the 
 attainment of the highest art." 
 
 He looked round with a laugh, but his eyes were keen 
 and searching. 
 
 " Isn't there a lot of emotion in solution in the atmos- 
 phere," he said, still laughing as he looked down at Joan. 
 " I thought that sort of thing had been cast out long 
 ago. We mustn't let our dinner-party get dowdy. Fred, 
 you take the floor, you can accompany yourself, can't 
 you?" 
 
 Then, with a soft light upon his face, he went over to 
 Joan who was now arranging a curtain so as to screen the 
 old people from a draught. 
 
 Heron's silent, masked eyes turned to watch the pair. 
 
 Fred's voice roared lustily. Their privacy was complete. 
 
 " Oh ! George ! " she cried. 
 
 " That's how you make me write," whispered George ; 
 " not one of you will ever forget that song. And when you 
 think of it you'll think straight." 
 
 His dark, warm face bent to hers a little. His eyes 
 dilated with things that no mortal man has ever yet put 
 into words, the face of a dreamer who can also fight a
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 153 
 
 face luminous with transparencies, dim with mystery, bright 
 with sympathy. 
 
 " George ! Do you always sing like that ? " 
 
 " Rather not. It's you, I tell you. As the book is you 
 as more peculiarly even, the sonnets are you. I want 
 them book and sonnets both, to ring in the hearts of men 
 like a perfect melody. I want them to seize and sway men's 
 hearts and senses as that song has done. To grip and 
 possess them; and once in heart and brain to come back 
 to nest there. They've got to do all this, too, I would 
 have you to know, before we're done with them ! Joan ! 
 There's doubt in your face and dismay ! Is it the com- 
 parative failure of David that's troubling you, or of Isaiah 
 or Daniel set against my astounding cheek? Don't you see 
 that none of the mighty dead will tickle palates rank for 
 novelty. They won't, at this hour of time, switch like a 
 comet's tail through Mudie, nor be tossed about the tables 
 of boudoirs and clubs and messes, nor be made even the 
 subject of inane, profane mawkish chatter " 
 
 " Oh ! George, don't." 
 
 " But who or what has ever escaped ? Not God, nor 
 death, nor Hell, nor the Hereafter. And who's much the 
 worse for the milling? There's a spark of truth in every 
 fool, moreover, and the breath of God has set his heart 
 beating. Anyway, folly is the sieve of truth, and the bits 
 may be caught as they fall. Besides, there's a very fair 
 average of wisdom in Mudie's customers, and in any case 
 the whole creation groaneth and travaileth beneath the yoke 
 of Mudie. It's to Mudie's customers we've got to offer our 
 wares, whether they be of the flesh or of the spirit, 
 not to saints and angels. We can only do what we 
 can. And, after all, if a thing poor as it may be isn't 
 fit to be offered to God, it's not worthy to be palmed off 
 upon the least of Mudie's guinea subscribers." 
 
 There were tears behind Joan's eyes, now very quiet ones. 
 
 " He demands nothing," she thought, " from anyone, 
 nothing except from himself and from me." 
 
 "That the jaded palate of Mudie," George eagerly pro- 
 ceeded, " has lost its taste for the moment, for the prophets 
 and the stars that sing together, is no argument. We all 
 want reminding. And a mouse, even without you to help 
 him, has done in his time what floored a lion ! "
 
 154 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Joan's eyes were fixed upon him. 
 
 " What a face ! " thought she, a perfect protest of awe 
 in hers. " What a face ! The only wonder is that he can 
 stand me at all after Heaven as he sees it." 
 
 Pride and a sense of unworthiness strove together in her 
 limpid eyes. 
 
 " Fred's at his last stave," &id George abruptly. " We've 
 been outrageously rude, only luckily he hasn't found us 
 out. Hadn't we better leave the immensities ? " 
 
 Joan's face kindled and went out. " One can't in a 
 moment," she protested. She was breathing rather quickly. 
 " I I wanted to just commonly enjoy myself this whole 
 evening." She laughed tremulously, " and make you do the 
 same and not care, not care in the very least. Now you've 
 brought in Cathedral music all at once, and fairly flooded 
 me with it. I don't feel right any more in a low-bodied 
 dress. And nothing nothing, nothing could ever explain 
 to you how happy I was when first I came down in it. I 
 spent an hour this afternoon cutting it lower." 
 
 " My dearest, what have I done ? Why, I'm lost in 
 admiration of you. Am I a prig after all ? " 
 
 " George ! You're yourself ! Oh, George ! if you'd just 
 for once sit opposite the glass and look at yourself properly, 
 and then get on with the book, you'd write things so 
 beautiful, so amazing, that you'd make the whole world 
 fairly ache." 
 
 George whistled. 
 
 " Narcissus with a vengeance ! But I don't want to make 
 the world ache, I want to make it love." 
 
 " But think of all the ache there is in loving." 
 
 " Do you know this is a dinner-party, not psychology." 
 
 Detached from the things of earth though George might 
 be, he yet knew when to change the subject. 
 
 " I wish I had you to myself to-night," he said tenderly. 
 " I have tons of work in me. However, we've got a world 
 of to-morrows before us ! " 
 
 Joan looked down and saw just what she had expected to 
 see. The fingers of his pen hand moving nervously. 
 George had all the extravagant horror of waiting of the 
 spiritual enthusiast with a gift unchecked by time or tribu- 
 lation. 
 
 The wife of the seer swallowed a sigh.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 155 
 
 " That perch," said the more adaptable George, " has 
 a disastrous effect upon bulk, and Miss Rebecca looks 
 pinched in the midst of her abundance. I must dislodge 
 her and pack her into a chair. She's certainly depressed. 
 Too bad of you to be edging her out of his faithless heart 
 in the shameless way you're doing." 
 
 " Is it that ? " said Joan, all eyes. 
 
 " It's that. Why, it's an old story." 
 
 " Oh ! George ! I know but " cried she, " we must 
 make it a new one." 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE quiet intensity and fierce fire compact in George's 
 face, the loving, adoring, admiring, impatient protest in 
 Joan's, during their stolen talk in the window, amused and 
 interested Heron. But it was the queer elusive likenesses 
 he was finding in this vicar's wife to a woman worlds apart, 
 whose faithless hand still held all the joy and the hope 
 and the despair of his life, that fixed his attention. For, 
 indeed, he had lately been himself through deep and 
 muddy waters, and had hardly yet recovered from his 
 drenching. 
 
 But for Fred's urgency he would have refused George's 
 invitation off hand, very much preferring to have put up 
 at the Inn with his quiet pipe. 
 
 He had had more than enough of love, and love amidst 
 vicarage roses did in no sort of way suit his mood. 
 
 The contradictions to these sylvan surroundings that 
 peeped subtly through the queer relations of the clerical 
 pair had now, however, aroused his curiosity. And the 
 instinct of a born sportsman to stand aside and find out 
 the rules of a game new to him, kept it alive. 
 
 The extraordinary baffling innocence of the girl's outlook 
 struck him as, so to speak, inexpedient upon the part of 
 a saint's wife. His sharp eyes had, moreover, detected 
 in her a hint of an immature violence that held possi- 
 bilities, and ousted his initial suspicion of insipidity. 
 
 " Hem ! " he thought. " How is that now ? A holy 
 well or a volcano ? Any way, to Winnington, she's ' a well 
 of sweet waters ' upon which he draws generously."
 
 156 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 He moved lazily from the door, against which he had 
 been leaning, with a vague intention of making still more 
 definite investigations, but only yawned listlessly when 
 Fred swooped down and balked him. 
 
 What did it matter after all ? He had had his fill both 
 of women and of eruptions. 
 
 He turned with sudden sharp scrutiny to look at George. 
 He at least held no volcanoes, and in the white flame ot 
 his quiet zeal there was a fine attraction. 
 
 To a man (as judged by himself) chilled, tired, sceptical, 
 experienced, such illimitable simple faith as George's ; 
 such quenchless fires of zeal ; such an undimmed power 
 of restrained emotion, offered a boundless field for specula- 
 tion. 
 
 Moreover, the dramatic instinct as strong in George as 
 his absolute unconsciousness of it amused Heron vastly. 
 
 He grinned behind his powerful nervous hand as he 
 watched George after he had finished his astonishing 
 song ; watched the proud, pure, spiritual eyes the man 
 himself coming in nowhere not at all as they went 
 round serenely, keenly, and impersonally searching each 
 listener's face in turn. 
 
 Heron felt a chuckling conviction that had the song 
 missed fire, George, without a moment's hesitation, would 
 have sung it again. The song for obvious reasons must 
 be an event, the singer mattered nothing. 
 
 Some three years before, when he was just twenty-five, 
 two events had come clattering into Heron's normal agree- 
 able life that wried many of his points of view ; shook 
 his faith in women and broke up all the other faiths so 
 pitifully dependent upon this elemental overmastering one. 
 
 The mother whom he had worshipped after an arro- 
 gant, protective, jealous fashion; with whom all his life 
 he had been half in love, had abruptly and with precipitate 
 haste run off with a man Rob knew to be a skunk, and 
 even duller at heart than his corpulent, droning, egregious 
 father. 
 
 In his intolerable proud young despair Heron turned 
 
 to the girl he was practically engaged to. Pouncing upon 
 
 the maternal escapade for her excuse, flushed, and in 
 
 tears, the young lady pleaded her religious convictions, 
 
 and the state of her mother's heart, and in order that
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY 157 
 
 there might be no falling back married forthwith into 
 another regiment. 
 
 Affections and passions unquenched and unsatisfied thus 
 thrown violently back upon him, the only thing left for 
 Rob to do was to hold his tongue and fill up the vacant 
 hours. 
 
 So a silence fell upon him and he took to work. 
 
 Not that work seemed altogether worth while, but, un- 
 like sport, it was always with you, and it shut off women. 
 That was well, but the dogged, absorbed way in which 
 Rob took his work also shut off men rather more than 
 was altogether good for him. Moreover, he exchanged 
 laughter for an inward chuckle ; a change in a man's ways 
 irritating to those of his kind with normal mothers and a 
 moveable taste in girls. 
 
 The honest suggestions of sympathy of his friends jarred 
 upon the intense pride and the deep fiery nature of Heron. 
 To be the public victim of feminine duplicity was bad 
 enough, but when a dishonoured and adored mother comes 
 into the business any touch upon it grows intolerable. 
 
 Heron's pride was far too stubborn to suggest the ad- 
 visability of an exchange and a refuge in India or else- 
 where. He declined tacitly to budge an inch. 
 
 He would avoid any suggestion of the thing as he would 
 the devil, but he'd see it out amidst his old comrades. 
 
 A reticence that holds the best part of a man's life must 
 of necessity build up a barrier between man and man. 
 
 Gradually, but surely, was Heron cutting himself out of 
 a merry life. 
 
 Fred Thryng, his distant cousin, had his own opinion 
 of the girl episode. What after all are girls to any man 
 until one of them has set him aching? But he, too, had 
 been in love with the small winsome mother, and so he 
 repudiated silences, ignored rebuffs, and calmly went on 
 with his friendship. And after a little Rob fell back into 
 the old deep cut grooves, and as time went on, as the 
 favourite of his commanding officers, received with polite 
 serenity the attentions of their innocent womenkind. It 
 was no more fatiguing after all than tracking the windings 
 of red tape. 
 
 Moreover, as everything comes to him who cares not a 
 jot whether it does or not, he had got his chance and
 
 158 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 used it in a six weeks' scrimmage in West Africa, which 
 in the lack of more important happenings had not been 
 overlooked by a hurried nation. Heron got the D.S.O. 
 out of it. 
 
 But he was lonely under his languor, for no man can 
 throw off the dead weight of passions congealed, not 
 scotched, nor whilst carrying it, very especially enjoy himself. 
 
 To find haunting suggestions of his mother, of all 
 created women, in a country vicarage drawing-room, 
 seemed to have recalled Rob to a world upon which he 
 had turned his back. 
 
 Under no circumstances could Mrs. George Winning- 
 ton's chestnut eyes deride him with the petulant, elfish, 
 brilliant challenge of his mother's sapphire ones. Nor 
 had she a trace of that mother's distracting, adorable, 
 horrifying wit. But the bird-like, smooth, swift move- 
 ments of the girl; her bird-like liquid voice, full of its 
 naive, astounding youth, her eager, soft, breathless taking 
 of pleasure, above all the extraordinary gleams of hostility 
 that his sharp experienced eyes had detected more than 
 once in her frank betraying ones were traits full all of a 
 disturbing significance, a horrid familiarity. 
 
 And the hostility to what? to whom? Certainly not 
 to the husband she so wistfully adored. Yet it was more 
 especially during their quick eager whispered conference 
 in the window her's and George's the stolen meeting 
 of lovers that he had caught the unforgettable, unmis- 
 takeable sign. 
 
 His mother perplexingly mixed up with Joan followed 
 Heron to his room. 
 
 He threw open all the latticed windows, to see what 
 roses and nightingales could do for him. 
 
 They seemed to be part and parcel of the thing. Fit 
 setting to that soft throbbing inexorable note of revolt 
 against something so pitiful, so cruel, so impalpable and 
 pursuing that good women keep hidden decently in their 
 own hearts and the others shriek from the house tops. 
 
 Any sane man will shut his ears to feminine bowlings 
 and flee for his life, so that it is only the few who have 
 been pierced to the quick by the note in its minor key 
 who will recognise and pause to consider it. 
 
 This destroying note seemed to haunt Heron and to
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 159 
 
 harry him. He fell asleep, his mother's entrancing laugh 
 in his ears. A vision of George on a gridiron smiling 
 with lofty enjoyment at Mrs. George, pinned by two 
 devils and crying in a silent, hopeless passion of grief, 
 awoke him at an unearthly hour. 
 
 " Is this country air," he thought angrily, " or the devil." 
 
 To judge by the crowing of cocks, the distant sonorous 
 rooting of swine in the wood; the imbecile arrogance in 
 the cackle of a hen ; the explosive fussiness of the rookery, 
 it was the country. But the devil was in it. 
 
 Rob cut himself in shaving twice, found the diminutive 
 bath insufficient, and had a premonition of family prayers. 
 
 He slipped stealthily down the stairs and out by a side 
 door to smoke himself back into a civilised temper. 
 
 As he smoked moodily in a seat behind a thick yew 
 tree, suddenly through the heavy green of the low 
 branches he was aware of George in his study, his face, 
 for the time of day, annoyingly radiant, interested, alive, 
 absorbed in some writing. The sight fascinated Rob. 
 And the longer he looked the more patent did the con- 
 tradictions in George's face become; the dominant, com- 
 manding, acute nose, the sensitive, sweet, inexorable 
 mouth, the high, narrowish, perpendicular brow, satani- 
 cally proud and saintly humble. The odd, pushing onward 
 look in the eyes that saw a deal too much, a deal too little. 
 
 The thing which especially struck Rob was the queer, 
 sudden fetchings up that seemed to come upon George. 
 When he wanted a book, for example, or a paper; some- 
 times plainly a word a suggestion. At these moments 
 the radiance seemed to wane, and George frowned and 
 grew humanly irritable. 
 
 Sometimes he got back to his better mood in rather a 
 clumsy way. 
 
 " Oh ! That's it is it ? " said Heron, " he wants her" 
 He looked at his watch. " 6.30 a.m. Poor Egeria ! " 
 
 " By Jove," he said, suddenly lifting himself up and 
 strolling down the path, " didn't strike me till now that 
 this is eavesdropping." 
 
 Joan, too, had risen early for her usual hour with her 
 baby free of infection, duty, stress, and the clinging dis- 
 turbing scent of the poor. And, suddenly, because she 
 simply must be young in some visible form, a quick, lilt-
 
 160 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 ing dance tune that she had sung the night before sprang 
 to her lips. With that she began to dance and the child 
 to shout. 
 
 Joan had been taught her steps by one of the wooden 
 instructors, but nature had taught her grace. She was 
 a born dancer. Her face alight, her deep dimples full 
 of sunlight, her eyes of smiles, she danced in all the liberty 
 of her powers under the red roses. 
 
 Heron just turning the corner halted to watch her. 
 
 It was as innocent and gracious and womanly as dance 
 could be, but it set Heron frowning. 
 
 George's face under a lustrous nimbus fell to jigging 
 up and down in his brain. 
 
 The passionate abandonment of George's wife to the 
 sheer physical joy of living seemed out of place some- 
 how, a discord, an offence, and yet it sent his pulses 
 humming. 
 
 And then all at once his hard, keen face softened in a 
 great compassion. 
 
 It seemed hard upon Joan that any display upon her 
 part of purely earthly gratification should invariably send 
 her friends away sorrowful. 
 
 Heron whistled softly. " Eavesdropping again," said 
 he. " There's something dangerous in the air of primeval 
 vicarages. This infernal place makes you feel like a 
 malefactor." 
 
 He moved stealthily away, discreetly quenching his 
 pipe. " What will the next move be ? " he wondered, lean- 
 ing over the old wall that bound the churchyard. 
 
 A limping widow-woman, an old, old man, and a smock- 
 frocked sexton gave him at last the clue. 
 
 " Early service," said he, " as I'm a sinner. I wonder 
 if the dance is done. Is she adaptable by any chance? 
 Can she make a luxury of religion? Some women can. 
 But she's a wood nymph. One can't imagine a wood 
 nymph frisking in a shadow land of roses at a seven 
 o'clock service conducted by her husband." 
 
 He turned and cautiously approached the long arch of 
 roses, just as Joan was handing her baby to the small 
 nurse and decorously smoothing down her dress. She 
 was sober enough now. Heron could detect an anxious- 
 to-oblige look in her small face.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 161 
 
 " Why didn't that young ass Fred get up and take her 
 for a walk ? " he thought resentfully. 
 
 " Good morning," said she, " and, oh ! I hope you aren't 
 very hungry. I can't give you breakfast for quite half 
 an hour." 
 
 " But I don't want breakfast. I'm going to Church." 
 
 With a shyness, an odd suggestion of maternal ferocity 
 about it, she scanned his face. 
 
 She had hoped rather that Fred would have been down 
 to help her with the singing, he went quite well some- 
 how with a family pew and a flower in his button-hole, 
 but this this was another thing altogether. 
 
 " If you're coming, we've only just got time," she said 
 primly. 
 
 Heron, behind her in the narrow path, remembered the 
 sun on her hair as she was dancing, and laughed under 
 his breath. 
 
 " Does she feel, I wonder, that her frock fits out- 
 rageously, and would rather I didn't look? She has the 
 oval of the mother's cheek. The mother, however, would 
 have turned round and changed all my points of view 
 superbly. She's afraid." 
 
 Here Joan caught sight of George hurrying on before 
 them. A nervous movement of her hands, a proud lift of 
 her head, a quick flush, enlightened Heron. 
 
 " Looking upon me as a scoffer is she, then ? A woman 
 with none of the nonsense knocked out of her will be- 
 lieve anything of a man," he thought, with sudden resent- 
 ment. " She wants bringing to her senses." 
 
 " Mrs. Winnington," said he in his most impassive voice 
 as he strolled on in her rear, " I firmly believe that you're 
 being puffed up by spiritual pride. It's a snare, a bad 
 one, too, I'm told." 
 
 She flew round like a bird and they stood facing each 
 other on the path. 
 
 " Won't you give any one but yourself any credit for a 
 little common sense and a gleam of insight ? You can't 
 expect to be reserving to yourself all the rights in a man 
 like Winnington. He's not your monopoly. He's a 
 beacon set on a hill and belongs to the age ; to the least 
 of us as to the greatest." 
 
 Her bewildered face tickled him. He paused to laugh, 
 
 II
 
 162 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 and remembered suddenly that the last time he had 
 really laughed was at some wild extravagance of his 
 mother's, also uttered between two privet hedges. 
 
 " I wonder if I ought to apologise to her ? " he thought 
 rapidly. " I'm going to Church, Mrs. Winnington, at this 
 early hour not to mock, I would have you to know, but 
 to find out what a lover of perfection can do with words 
 which have lost their savour for the most of us, and un- 
 less you move on we'll be late." 
 
 " I'm sorry," she said, gravely and simply, slowly turn- 
 ing. " But a woman called him a ' gilt pill ' the other 
 day." 
 
 " A neighbouring parson's wife, eh ? " 
 
 " Yes," was the solemn reply. 
 
 " Oh ! She'd say anything. Daresay she has cause, 
 poor soul, in the Trial upon her own hearth-stone." 
 
 "A man clothed upon with righteousness," he thought, 
 grinning into his hat. " Wonder if she's up to his weight. 
 If she's not he'll never be the one to find it out," he 
 thought presently, when George had finished his daily 
 five minutes of bright, beautiful words, that would have 
 made Silenus himself decide for the moment for decent 
 living, that made clean hands and a pure heart the most 
 simple and natural things in the world. 
 
 " Did he by any chance preach for me or at me or 
 around me ? " inquired Heron as they came back. 
 
 A sharp touch of her submerged quality rang in Joan's 
 voice. " It would never strike George to raise or lower 
 his standard for any one. And yet they all understand 
 all he says, absolutely." 
 
 " By Jove ! a pianette in a school-room is good enough 
 for the parsons one generally happens upon. But it's only 
 organ music and a Cathedral that would fit such splendid 
 simplicity as Mr. Winnington's." 
 
 With a dim suspicion that he'd find her eyes blazing he 
 turned to look at Joan. They outshone his mother's at 
 their brightest, and had as vast an outlook. 
 
 " Oh ! You'd like that sort of thing ? A Cathedral 
 and the organ business." 
 
 " I I should like it but it would never strike George." 
 
 " No," he said dryly. " It would never strike him, but 
 it might happen."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. ^ 163 
 
 Her face breathed mute denial. 
 
 " There have been, in the course of history, great saints 
 gloriously apparelled." 
 
 "There have," she meekly admitted. "How hungry 
 you must be." 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 " I'LL tell you now," said Fred pensively, as he stood beside 
 his hostess in the window, " that when George asked us 
 yesterday to come to you, I was in a blue funk. I hadn't 
 seen him, you see, since he changed over, but I'd met his 
 sisters, and they spoke of him in rather a death-bed way, 
 you know. I was prepared for anything." 
 
 " Even to do without wine for dinner ? " 
 
 " Rot ! As though George could do anything else when 
 he'd promised the fellow. A big loss to the service, is 
 George, that's what he is I say, I beg your pardon. But 
 if you see a real man going to waste, your first idea is to 
 rake him into your own shop. I daresay, when you see a 
 likely chap you'd give your eyes to sweep him into yours." 
 
 " I ? " cried Joan, " I certainly should not." 
 
 This for a parson's wife struck Fred as odd. He stared 
 at his shapely feet. What weren't solemn convictions upon 
 things in general in Mrs. George appeared to be doubts. 
 
 The solemn convictions, being the first he had met in a 
 drawing-room, he set aside for future consideration. To the 
 doubts he felt rather drawn. They were refreshing in a 
 cock-sure age, and gave oneself a chance. 
 
 " You see," Joan explained, " if you don't like the things 
 George does just as you ought to do, it would I can 
 imagine that it would be extremely easy to hate them just 
 exactly as you ought not to. In this, it's all or nothing." 
 
 " But," said Fred cheerfully, " that's the way with every 
 honest trade. If it's not all, it's generally nothing." 
 
 " There's the most extraordinary difference, really. You've 
 got to live in it to know." 
 
 " Oh, well," said Fred soothingly, " nothing's all beer and 
 skittles." 
 
 II*
 
 164 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Joan looked at George and blushed. Fred's eyes followed 
 her. 
 
 " I I really I beg your pardon." 
 
 " Oh, but don't." Her face took on the sudden, proud 
 look that seemed to Heron from the other side of the room 
 to sit like a coronet on the small brown head. " Vicar's 
 wives aren't the Church; you shouldn't judge the Church 
 by by the blots on it." 
 
 The full significance of the weird protest broke out 
 slowly upon Fred. 
 
 " Good Lord ! " he muttered. 
 
 " It's quite, quite different from other honest trades," 
 she assured him. 
 
 She looked uncommonly interesting, but this wasn't the 
 sort of thing to further conversation. Fred wriggled. 
 
 Joan felt guilty. Vanquished, as usual, by the pressure 
 of the High Calling of George, she could only think of 
 the usual things. Careless joy and the Comic Opera seemed 
 centuries away. 
 
 The door opened, and a maid broke the spell. 
 
 " Brought by a trooper, sir," she proudly announced, 
 presenting Fred's Captain with a note. 
 
 The Vicarage household was caught up in the general 
 excitement, and a red and blue warrior towering huge amidst 
 the roses in the porch had set its pulses thumping. 
 
 " Everything's gone wrong at the Barracks," said Rob, 
 "and we've got to stay here a day or so longer. But we 
 won't bother you, Mrs. George, of course. There's the Inn 
 handy. Only you'll let us come in now and then, won't 
 you?" 
 
 "You don't escape us like that," cried George. "You 
 must certainly stay here, if you can put up with meat 
 without drink." 
 
 " But we'll be interrupting you." 
 
 George thought of Joan's face and her sweet, new ways. 
 
 "We like to be interrupted," said he. 
 
 Joan thought of George's twitching fingers. 
 
 " You must stay with us," said she eagerly to Heron. 
 " But we'll go on just as usual. You can smoke when we're 
 busy. You won't miss us, really." 
 
 " I don't know about that," said Fred, in a dejected voice. 
 " But we can take a look at the country."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 165 
 
 "And practise the forbidding virtue of self-denial," said 
 his senior, with a laugh. " If you'll have us, Mrs. Winning- 
 
 111 i 11*1,1. )i 
 
 ton, we'll be delighted to stay. 
 
 It was common property in and around the village of 
 Thryng that every derelict in it counted time by the comings 
 of Mrs. George. Thus it was that Mrs. Worrall, who hove 
 in sight just as Joan disappeared within a notorious thres- 
 hold, uttered a " bother," with the vim and virulence of a 
 " damn." 
 
 She had arrived with a brimming budget of news, which, 
 when discharged, she designed to refill and bring back to 
 Peter, held by a funeral sermon in his study. 
 
 Mrs. Worrall never returned empty, and she had many 
 fixed principles, the most fixed amongst them being, 
 perhaps, a resolve to neglect no opportunity. Her first 
 impulse, therefore, when loose in a parish other than her 
 own, was to prowl round upon the track of abuses. 
 
 Lifting her eye-glasses, she now perceived some suspicious 
 transaction going on in the churchyard. She strode up the 
 path, took a seat upon a low tomb-stone, to find the sexton 
 digging a grave in the last spot allowed to a conservative 
 people by a despotic government. 
 
 " I'm astonished at Mr. Winnington's permitting such 
 practices/' burst out the lady at last, with lifted eye-glasses, 
 keeping time with her umbrella to the dull thuds of the 
 spade. " The dead in the midst of the living ! An abso- 
 lutely disgusting anachronism." 
 
 Mrs. Worrall thought highly of the value of long words 
 as applied to the working-classes. 
 
 Diggins paused to let every trace of intelligence drop from 
 his wizened visage. 
 
 " Naw, marm. There you be wrong. T'ent infectious. 
 Gospel truth, naught but old Deborah Jones an' her 
 rheumatics. An'," he jerked his head, seemingly to include 
 the powers that be, "an' we're well within the law, that 
 we be." 
 
 " The law isn't common sense. The law isn't modern 
 science. Where does this place drain?" 
 
 Diggins jabbed stolidly at a stone, and looked, if possible, 
 more vacant than before.
 
 166 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Banged if I know, marm. Vicar'll tell 'ee." 
 
 She snorted. 
 
 " That grave is not the legal depth." 
 
 " Noo act, marm. Fashions in graves like other things. 
 Don't put 'em in tiers on this 'ere propputy like in the 
 towns, or like 'twas in th' old Vicar's time." 
 
 Rapt and caught up in professional memories, he paused 
 to wipe his brow. 
 
 " Mawny's the time an' a moonlight night we've gone 
 out, Vicar an' me an' the red tarrier, a prodden o' the 
 copses." 
 
 " Good gracious ! " 
 
 " To locate 'em," he mumbled, digging diligently. " So 
 we didn't shove the nextes too close on t'other, a trick as 
 has been sar'd on mawny a copse. Goes agin you, summow, 
 t'hustle a copse. An' wi' onsasoned deal, an' pore work, 
 niver no tellinV' 
 
 " My man pray explain yourself." 
 
 " See 'ere, marm. 'Tis like this, now." He glanced in- 
 dulgently at her simplicity, and proceeded to demonstrate 
 the matter on his spade handle. "A sharp dink o' steel 
 at t'head of a long pole, a stable-broom handle, as you might 
 say, ony med o' puppus to prod amid the copses. See it in 
 t'hold vestry, marm. A sarvival, the young Vicar do call 
 it. Rare proud he be, too ; shows it hoff to Bishops an' the 
 like. Mrs. George, she don't like it. T'ent a lady's fancy, 
 summow." 
 
 Having dismissed the matter, he bent down again to his 
 grave. 
 
 Mrs. Worrall rose, flung a curt good-day over her shoulder, 
 and thumped down the path. 
 
 " I knew it," she muttered. " I knew it in spite of Peter's 
 maunderings. All flash and glitter. Ignorance and gross- 
 ness as rampant as in the darkest hour of the Dark Ages. 
 The Parish matches the Hall." She sniffed high-mindedly. 
 " Defend me from those writing Parsons. Poetic brow, in- 
 deed, and breeding typhoid in his own parish. 
 
 "That Spanish grandmother ruined the Winningtons. 
 The blood of foreign play actresses is not what the Church 
 wants. Thank God, anything introduced into it upon my 
 part or that of Peter can only work for Good." 
 
 In travail with a cankering conviction that George Win-
 
 HE FOE GOD ONLY. 167 
 
 nington had distinctly seen her at Aiken not a week ago, 
 and, thereupon, had incontinently scurried down a lane, 
 Mrs. Worrall had forgotten her enthusiasm for holy zeal, 
 and had that moment a rod in pickle for the " so-called " 
 saint's wife. 
 
 " Will the girl never come ? " she irritably thought. 
 
 Meanwhile, his uninvited guest having turned her back 
 upon him, the light of a fairly astute intelligence returned 
 as by a miracle to the countenance of John Diggins. 
 
 "Thank the Lard I've scattered t"hold besom," he 
 grunted. " Her can sow strife in her own parish, her can, 
 an' lave ourn." He chuckled solemnly, and spat on his 
 palms, preparatory to resuming work. "Talk o' vaults an' 
 dry rot, or Satan or the shadder o' death an' the worm, or 
 the moth an' rots, fools the lot ov 'em to they ferritin' clargy 
 wummen. A steamin' down she be naw on little Mrs. 
 George, like a grit road-ingin." 
 
 The lady was, indeed, sheer upon Joan, an uplifted 
 watch in one large, ungloved hand. For sanitary reasons 
 Mrs. Worrall went gloveless amongst the poor, and even in 
 midsummer wore a black, glazed, germ-proof, sailor hat. 
 
 " Twenty minutes in one cottage," she cried. " My dear 
 Mrs. Winnington, I envy you your leisure. Five is my 
 maximum, unless, indeed, it's a question of open sin. In 
 that case, I give fifteen, gladly. It couldn't be that sort 
 of thing there. Stephen Black is well on in senile decay, 
 and his wife is on the verge of it." 
 
 " They dislike being hurried." 
 
 " Dee ar lady. If we begin to think of their likes and 
 dislikes, where are we likely to end ? " 
 
 " I wish I knew," said Joan to herself, with a helpless 
 look. " That's just exactly it." 
 
 " What we've got to do Ah ! you're turning here 
 
 it's my way also. What we've got to do is to think of what's 
 good for them and possible to us. There are only twelve 
 hours in the day, and with meals and your family, where will 
 you be ? " The lady, when instructing ignorance, frequently 
 neglected elegance of speech. 
 
 " Twenty minutes to two people whose time for repen- 
 tance is past, / call wicked waste of energy. Wait, my 
 dear young friend, until you have a few more children. 
 Directly I found that by God's will it seemed likely I
 
 168 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 should have a baby every eighteen months, I arranged 
 accordingly, thus cutting short, from the very start, either 
 grumbling or false hopes. System, Mrs. Winnington, is as 
 necessary in your parish as in your kitchen." 
 
 " But the kitchen belongs so absolutely to yourself." 
 
 "And if the parish doesn't belong to yourself, I'd like 
 to know who it belongs to." 
 
 " I always feel as though I belonged to the parish," said 
 Joan, half meek, half amused. 
 
 " False modesty, Mrs. Winnington, and ruination to the 
 poor. Fills them with airs and graces and vapouring 
 wants; and then, no doubt, you're surprised at a general 
 tone of slackness." 
 
 " No," said Joan serenely. " I expect it." 
 
 " Then it's your duty to cast the evil thing out. You 
 must speak as one with authority, or excuse me you'd 
 better stay at home." She paused to consider. " You 
 must spend a day with me, Mrs. Winnington. Tuesday, 
 washing; Wednesday, young girls' class; Thursday, fac- 
 tory; Friday, old women's tea. I have no hesitation in 
 putting them off. Say Friday, then." 
 
 " But they'll be so horribly disappointed. I had to do it 
 once for two days, and found that the delay made them 
 suffer tortures." 
 
 " Pampering stomachs and high falutin' notions," said 
 this mother of the diocese, " never saved a soul. Mr. Win- 
 nington, I can see clearly enough, has been infecting you 
 with his ideals as he has ahem! more or less been 
 infecting all of us. You can't idealise the Poor. And very 
 lofty ideals when unchecked may become tarnished with 
 much mischief producing unpracticality and some carnal 
 pride. I do not, of course, allude to your dear husband," 
 she cried, with suspicious alacrity. " I am thinking of a 
 dear young relative just taken priest's orders, connected 
 with the Dean of Slough, and .300 a year from his mother 
 who, through excess of zeal, has lately spread scarlet fever 
 through a crowded parish." 
 
 " She's impervious to hints," thought Mrs. Worrall pen- 
 sively. " Possibly a fact may rouse her." 
 
 " By the way, do you know but of course you don't 
 that the poor, dear squire has again broken out ? " 
 
 Joan started and flushed.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 169 
 
 " He dined with us last night," said she tamely. 
 
 "A man can do much after eleven o'clock. Mr. Win- 
 nington has not been idle. Seeing obvious signs of dis- 
 turbance at the second keeper's cottage a stupid, surly 
 man, from whom one could gather nothing I went on to 
 the third keeper's wife she turns my sheets and fills 
 mattresses, a most respectable woman. What I heard 
 alarmed me so that I thought it my duty to call at the 
 Hall. The language of your father-in-law I shall never 
 forget." 
 
 Joan, with great presence of mind, uttered a non-com- 
 mitting murmur, then turned an unmoved face to her 
 tormentor. 
 
 George, as it happened, had not seen the lady at Aiken,. 
 but she had, and since George had an important sermon to 
 preach that day, she had shamelessly hurried him into a 
 place of safety. 
 
 " This is her revenge," thought Joan hurriedly, " but in 
 spite of it, she means lunching with us, and I don't intend 
 to ask her. She needs George's influence badly, no doubt 
 of that, but simply I can't, and you can't even describe her 
 to George as you you feel her." She sighed, and glanced 
 hastily at the glittering hat. She had begun lately to snatch 
 little secret joys, into which it. was not for the like of George 
 to enter. 
 
 " I can't ask her," Joan again told herself, " and I must 
 get to the Hall before George does." 
 
 Mrs. Worrall did, indeed, mean lunching at the Vicarage. 
 She had put off an exhortation upon ventilation to a faggot 
 of palsied age to enable her to do so, and find out who 
 precisely the Vicarage visitors were. 
 
 "Are you really going to ask me over for a day, Mrs. 
 Worrall?" inquired Joan sweetly, but with a guilty flush. 
 
 Mrs. Worrall divined what she was after, and bridled. 
 
 " Will you allow me to write, Mrs. Winnington ? I 
 need hardly say that my time is subject to many interrup- 
 tions." 
 
 " Oh ! I know it is. Please arrange some day yourself. 
 But now I think I must say good-bye. I have several things 
 to see to, and you won't want probably to climb that 
 hill." 
 
 This precisely was what Mrs. Worrall did want to do.
 
 170 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 As became the controller of the human nature in an im- 
 portant parish, she was blessed with magnificent eyesight. 
 And, at the top of the hill, leaning idle against a fence, 
 obviously lying in wait, her eyes had just beholden a young 
 man. That the gross spectacle was equally patent to Joan 
 she did not for a moment doubt. The grateful incense of 
 iniquity rose delicately to the nostrils of Mrs. Peter Worrall. 
 
 " I am an excellent walker," she said haughtily. " I shall 
 be quite glad of a little fresh air. It is so seldom that I 
 allow myself a morning walk unconnected with parochial 
 duties." 
 
 " Doesn't see him yet," she thought. " Not she ! And 
 not even to mention her visitors ! The first in her life, 
 probably. Catch the Colonel opening his door to wolves. 
 In spite of Peter, I knew she was deep." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Joan, " there's Fred Thryng, George's 
 cousin. He's waiting for me." 
 
 " Obviously." 
 
 " They'll be with us longer than we thought. Until 
 Saturday, perhaps, even Monday." 
 
 " Indeed." 
 
 (" Having failed to hoodwink me, my fine lassie is now 
 trying conciliation.") 
 
 " The soldiers seem to be off somewhere this morning. 
 They look so well about the village. The people are so 
 pleased." 
 
 ("This, then, is the simplicity Peter makes idiotic re- 
 marks about. Simplicity ! ") 
 
 " Let us hope their pleasure may not bring gnashing of 
 teeth in its train. My husband and I have been feeling 
 deeply concerned for Mr. Winnington." 
 
 " But they're wonderfully picturesque, and really quite 
 sober," pleaded Joan. 
 
 " Spectacular effects have, I fear, but an indifferent effect 
 upon village morality. A set of pleasure-seeking idlers with 
 loose minds in and out of presumably decent homes ! My 
 dear Mrs. Winnington, I know the Poor." 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Joan, with a flush with which the 
 poor had but little to do. 
 
 "Yes?" demanded Mrs. Worrall. 
 
 " It's not Fred Thryng. It's Captain Heron." 
 
 " I see."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 171 
 
 Joan presented her visitor to Mrs. Worrall. 
 
 " I felt sure you'd come back this way," said the carnal 
 loafer. 
 
 " It was quite by chance, then. I generally come the other 
 way. I thought you were Fred at first." 
 
 " Fred's gone recruiting with that fine soldier, Miss 
 Rebecca." 
 
 "Oh! Is she here?" 
 
 " Been prowling round drilling the boy, and taking pro- 
 fessional notes. She pumped me dry. Sort of caged-lion 
 look about her. By the way, I believe she wants you." 
 
 " Miss Rebecca is no doubt worried." 
 
 Mrs. Worrall's voice thrilled solemnly. 
 
 " Shouldn't have taken her to be of the worrying sort," 
 said Heron, his fascinated eyes upon the hat. 
 
 " There are times when not to be worried may mean 
 callousness," said the lady oracularly. 
 
 Joan's cheeks were scarlet. 
 
 " She means to explain him in detail," she reflected 
 precipitately. " Nothing will stop her now, and nothing 
 will induce me to listen to her." 
 
 With the courage of despair she turned with flashing 
 eyes to Heron. 
 
 " Mrs. Worrall doesn't approve of soldiers," she ex- 
 plained. " She won't allow even that they improve the 
 landscape, so as I've got things to do that simply must 
 get done, and at once, I'm going to leave her to you to 
 convert, and I'll say good-bye and run literally run. I'll 
 have to race, in fact. Mrs. Worrall," said she, her spirit 
 mounting, " I know you won't mind, for, as you very 
 rightly say, the rules of society must always give way 
 before clergymen's wives." 
 
 Her conscience a lump of lead, her heart light with 
 malicious glee, Joan was off, carrying ^Yith her a pleasant 
 memory of Heron's laughing, protesting face ; her ad- 
 versary reduced to a glaring silence. 
 
 All at once her conscience swung free as her heart. 
 
 " It's delightful doing wrong and having no remorse," 
 she panted, running like the wind, so as to reach her goal 
 from the direction opposite to that now floating in the 
 enraged consciousness of Mrs. Worrall. 
 
 " And being hungry with ducks for luncheon ! It's all
 
 i/2 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 delightful together. And Captain Heron will rescue him- 
 self all right. He wants no help from me." 
 
 The pause to open a side gate into the park brought 
 Joan to her senses. 
 
 For a long time now there had existed a tacit compact 
 between Joan and Rebecca, that upon these melancholy 
 occasions when the devil entered into Jasper, the younger 
 woman should be the ambassador between the three 
 houses concerned in the tragedy. 
 
 A quaint barricade of maidenly reserve, indestructible 
 by time, tears or weather put it quite out of the question 
 for Miss Rebecca to descend in bodily presence upon 
 Jasper's hearth-stone, even to bring his sin home to him. 
 To violate this piteous convention would have shivered 
 the very foundations of Miss Rebecca's sense of delicacy. 
 It was the last fragrant touch of youth in her heart; 
 which, to be sure, is a thing whereunto a woman, if she 
 be wise, should hold fast to the day of her death. 
 
 " To think of her prowling round helplessly this whole 
 morning," thought Joan, still running at full speed, " while 
 he's debasing himself. I hope I'll be in time. I hope 
 I'll be there and back before George gets him on his 
 mind spiritually. The only single solution for all of 
 us, is for them to marry. And the only obstacles a 
 moustache and me ! If only he's sober enough I'll begin 
 to-day." 
 
 The next minute she was walking sedate and unruffled 
 up the drive. 
 
 " Thank the Lord ! " said the old butler, " you're fust, 
 ma'm. Why he should start this time there's no fathomin'." 
 
 The sounds of fury, which upon Joan's entrance seemed 
 to bulge through the door, suddenly ceased. 
 
 " T'aint so much body drunk, Mrs. George, as his mind. 
 Not t' obscure it, Lord help us, no ! but summow to let 
 loose a avalanche, as you might say, o' wits like razors; 
 seems as if he must throw it off or bust. Two grooms 
 had a good three months' earnins this mornin' afore light. 
 The second keeper he had his'n at ten-thirty, the stable 
 boys kem in at the heel o' the hunt. An' all had the 
 interest laid on. It's too sharp he be," groaned Higgins, 
 " both brain and tongue, God help us."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 173 
 
 " Higgins, did he say anything very particular to Mrs. 
 Worrall ? " anxiously inquired Joan. 
 
 He scratched his worried head. " I'm bound to say it 
 was a bit particular, ma'm, but wonderful reasonable. 
 Dratted little folly in the poor Squire's ravins. He'd drive 
 the truth into a wooden peg, would the Squire, once he's 
 started," he murmured, gloomily leading the way to a 
 splutter of sound apparently shot through a window. " An' 
 the gun-room it must be," he pursued, dejectedly hobbling 
 on in advance of Joan, "open to the ears of all. He 
 did use to fancy the library which gave you a chance to 
 keep things retired." 
 
 When Joan went in, Jasper, with a most sinful air of 
 enjoyment, was sipping his grog. 
 
 By this time had he ventured to stand up he must 
 undoubtedly have fallen. 
 
 Unwashed, unshaven, he sat in his evening clothes, tie 
 twisted, face of a lively crimson, his white hair in dis- 
 order. The blood-shot, fierce old eyes, however, gleamed 
 out shrewd, diabolical mockery. His shoulders were 
 squared, his bearing erect, his great handsome hands 
 steady, his invincible wicked old brain as clear as a pool. 
 
 There was a terrible intellectuality underlying this 
 organised debauch, a superb, excellent, analytical grasp 
 of all and every side of it. 
 
 " My little daughter-in-law herself ! " he roared, with a 
 genial laugh. " Can't get up, my dear gout, we'll call it, 
 eh ? Come on your own account or George's ? " 
 
 " On my own account," said Joan with serenity, taking 
 off her hat and gloves in the leisurely way that always 
 pleased the Squire, and sitting unaccusingly down beside 
 the spirit-stand. 
 
 " George doesn't know unless he's happened to meet 
 Mrs. Worrall, in that case " she paused. 
 
 He nodded and chuckled joyously. 
 
 " Yes ! Yes ! I sent her flying. Bounced in to come 
 the parson over me and quote Peter. I gave her her head. 
 Let her chuck the lot off her chest a sour lot, too, to be 
 sure. Then I began. Sketched a vicar's wife as she is 
 and as she ought to be. Courteously, meekly, I hope, as 
 a sinful man may, you understand, in the presence of an 
 avenging angel."
 
 174 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Here Jasper shrewdly paused to gather his scattering 
 wits. 
 
 " Your language, she said, was awful," observed Joan 
 unmoved. 
 
 " Scripture ! my girl, scripture ! Every damned word 
 of it ; I beg your pardon ! I do assure you though 'twas 
 scripture. A man with a spur in him can put a lot of 
 action into scripture." He dreamily tapped his glass. 
 " She was obviously impressed." 
 
 " She was," said Joan. 
 
 In the pause Mr. Winnington poured out some more 
 whiskey. 
 
 " Why did you begin this time ? " enquired Joan, her 
 grave, attentive eyes upon the bottle. " There seems to 
 be no apparent cause." 
 
 There was a loug silence broken only by a contented 
 sound of soft sipping. 
 
 " Conscience," said Jasper at last, and relapsed into 
 silence. 
 
 "Yes?" said Joan. 
 
 Fine moon when I started last night, set me off thinking 
 no doubt. Look here, my girl, Rebecca's got on my mind. 
 She's on me, poor soul, like a thousand bricks. I can't 
 throw her off. And if I could I'm dashed if it would be 
 playing the straight game to do it. Damn it all confound 
 my infernal tongue. Oh, well ! you know, we were engaged 
 once. I was immensely fond of Rebecca. Magnificent 
 girl ! Never saw such eyes and a figure. It's no good," he 
 muttered sadly, "you'd never believe me be putting it 
 down to whiskey. Oh, well, never mind. She rode like a 
 bird. Could turn a figure of eight with a four-in-hand on 
 a crown piece, so to speak. Kind and true as an angel, 
 poor Rebecca! And as straight through and through 
 as they make 'em! There was mischief made and I 
 married poor Isabella ! " He lowered voice and eyes apolo- 
 getically. 
 
 " Love takes hold of women in different ways," he re- 
 sumed more robustly. " Some can shake it off while you 
 say ' knife ' and start on something else as likely as not 
 marriage. In some it turns sour and is let off in poisonous 
 gossip or parochial ferretting; some throw it off on pugs 
 or a macaw. It gets into the religion of more and peters
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. i/5 
 
 out in good works, or curtain lectures. But in some 
 women it stays and turns 'em into a temple within, with- 
 out " 
 
 He paused. "Without God help us all, sometimes 
 time and the weather get the upper hand. I had a shock 
 last night, my girl the devil's own shock ! " 
 
 Rebecca's weird form overflowing the tremulous stool 
 arose before Joan's reflective eyes. One gleam of sym- 
 pathy escaped and flew to Jasper, but her heart bled for 
 Rebecca. 
 
 " The one single thing that would set everything right," 
 said she at last, with a square look at the whiskey, " would 
 be for you to marry Rebecca." 
 
 His eyes followed hers and dropped. 
 
 " I know it. Damn it all, don't I know it ? Forgive me. 
 But isn't it this that " 
 
 " Don't you think that some of it is natural de- 
 pravity ? " 
 
 Her voice was extraordinarily sweet and unassuming. 
 
 " Now that's just where you go wrong," said Jasper hotly. 
 " Natural depravity forsooth ! It's a spur to a jaded 
 horse. A leg up to a drooping conscience ! The bridge 
 between despair and hope." 
 
 " Oh ! " murmured Joan in unruffled innocence. 
 
 " Ahem ! " resumed Jasper, " a silver lining that can be 
 fitted to any cloud. A means, my child, towards divers 
 excellent ends. That's, of course, when it robs a man's 
 wits of nothing save only the mawkishness of over-civilisa- 
 tion, and has never left him," said the squire, smiling 
 magnificently ; " never in the whole course of a long life 
 with a next morning's head on him, or made him do justice 
 upon anyone who didn't richly deserve it. I defy you to 
 say it has, my girl." 
 
 " Go on," said Joan. " Have I said one word ? " 
 
 " To give you your due you haven't, nor looked one 
 either." 
 
 " Yet conscience " 
 
 " Hang conscience ! I'm telling you facts. Good malt 
 and barley have helped me up many a steep hill ; been a 
 trusty staff in my hand through many a tough job, and I'm 
 thankful for them." 
 
 Joan dreamily watched him.
 
 i;6 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " It's quite likely your head won't ache to-morrow," said 
 she. " You're surprisingly strong, but I wonder if you'll 
 still be thankful." 
 
 " I hope I may, and if I'm not," said Jasper, with pious 
 vehemence, " may God forgive me." 
 
 Joan looked confused, but enquiring. 
 
 " Rebecca Westcar's something to be thankful for, I tell 
 you. A mine of pure gold. The best of her kind ! But 
 God pity the weakness of man. Sometimes he'll want a 
 leg-up before he can attain," he murmured pathetically. 
 " Before he can, so to speak, shift his balances, and put 
 the right thing through." 
 
 He leaned, lost in thought, upon his great stick, then 
 lifted a hot, resolute face. 
 
 " One spur and it's done ! And there you are slick into 
 a new life ! 
 
 " Rebecca, my girl," he rapped out jerkily, " is a woman 
 of great determination and propinquity does much. You 
 can't be hurting a woman's prejudices when she's sitting 
 cheek by jowl with you by your own fire-side. That is," 
 he hastily added, " if she's straight and fair upon her part 
 and don't nag." 
 
 " It's a very curious sort of morality," said Joan. " I 
 don't understand it, but I daresay it has its points. If 
 you were married to Rebecca Jasper minor might often go 
 to stay with you." 
 
 This was a sore subject ; Jasper promptly bristled. 
 
 " He could come now, as I've told you a thousand 
 times." 
 
 " How could he possibly ? We all want his life to be 
 as sweet and open as the day. Nothing to gloss over in 
 it or get hot over, or feel afraid about. Think of Jasper 
 having to know about horrid things to have fairly to 
 hate people because they know and have the most odious 
 ways of using their knowledge." 
 
 " I'll marry Rebecca before the year's out," said the con- 
 victed sinner in a hollow voice. 
 
 " You'll never marry her at all if it's only just as a sheep 
 dog you want her," said Joan. " Rebecca is a proud 
 woman. She wants love and loyalty and courage and 
 sensible behaviour generally. Not to be the last refuge 
 of a coward."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 177 
 
 Stung to a fleeting sobriety of limb Jasper stumbled to 
 his feet, his eyes blazing redly. 
 
 " Coward ! Sheep dog ! " he roared. " We'll have the 
 baby on the stump next ! A chit of a child, all love and 
 no experience, who doesn't know what enjoying herself 
 means, to preach to me ! " 
 
 " You know I couldn't preach to save my life." 
 
 " Humph ! " He dropped back into his chair. 
 
 " Besides I do know what enjoying myself means. I 
 even understand a great deal about enjoyments I've never 
 had myself in all my life." Joan caught her breath in 
 an odd way and clasped her hands. " I can understand 
 the delight of dancing and of betting and gambling," said 
 she, with controlled excitement. " If I read of a race in 
 the papers it follows me. I can see the horses, and the 
 people, and the post ; I can hear the shouts, and feel just 
 what they're all feeling I know I can. I know just what's 
 going on in them. I can see the actors in all the plays. 
 Directly I've got the plot, the idea I can act every 
 character myself. I have the most extraordinary under- 
 standing of of unworthy pursuits." She paused, her 
 bright impartial eyes moving from Jasper to the decanters. 
 " I believe I could understand even drinking if I let my- 
 self, more especially when it doesn't leave a headache 
 behind it, much less sorrow or shame." 
 
 She sighed softly as she added under her breath, " It's 
 the higher enjoyments that seem difficult really to enter 
 into." 
 
 Jasper was one dismayed stare. " What's theory after 
 all ? " at last he stuttered. 
 
 " It's late," she said, slowly pinning on her hat. 
 
 " Skirmishing with temptations you haven't the faintest 
 hope of being called upon to resist, must indeed be dull 
 work," he ejaculated. 
 
 " I have sometimes wondered if a real big mountain 
 of a temptation rose up before one," Joan said, beginning 
 to put on her gloves. " If the very thought of the size 
 of the fight wouldn't give you courage to get through it 
 well. The very fact of confounding your enemies by 
 your victor} 7 , you know, and forcing them into eating 
 their words would be such a help, don't you think ? " 
 
 " Damn I say, my girl, not going ? " 
 
 12
 
 i;8 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " I must, or luncheon will be cold. A delicious 
 luncheon," she added pensively. " Your two ducks, and 
 the cream cheese." 
 
 Her look and all it implied was hardly within Jasper's 
 grasp, but it moved him in a confused sort of way. 
 
 " What do you want of me then in God's name ? " 
 
 " Under present circumstances, nothing." 
 
 As she firmly intended it should do, this set Jasper 
 raging. 
 
 "Do you suppose then that I'm imbecile? A swinish 
 log ? " he roared. " A confounded boa-constrictor, like 
 Jenks, the pedlar the traditional village sot ? " 
 
 " It's so difficult to determine exactly. What's theory 
 after all ? " said Joan, smiling upon him like an angel. 
 His wrath exploded in a hoarse laugh. 
 
 " To prove just how drunk you really are, will you," she 
 said pleasantly, " will you see if you can go upstairs, have 
 a bath, and dress yourself properly ? " 
 
 Jasper started, grunted, and stared. 
 
 " If you're equal to that, and to come down again 
 without Higgins in advance of you to break the fall and 
 
 eat your luncheon " Joan paused to get her voice 
 
 quiet, and in the pause she whitened. " If you can do 
 all that I'll send Jasper minor up after his dinner, and 
 you can take him for a drive." 
 
 "You'll do that?" 
 
 " I will. I promise." 
 
 For a long time he was silent, watching her face. 
 
 " It's a bargain, girl. I'll bring him safe back to you. 
 And you might send Higgins to me. And, you can't help 
 being a woman my girl, you'd feel better if you had the 
 keys." 
 
 " But Higgins would feel awful and so would you. 
 You'll come to dine with us to-night ? " 
 
 Her voice seemed to be going away from her altogether. 
 She had to drop her frightened eyes. She turned dully 
 to go to the door, but used to self-discipline, turned again 
 before she got there to fling back a wan little ghost-like 
 smile that went like a dart to Jasper's heart. Confused, 
 convicted, torn with remorse, he was about to give her 
 back her magnanimous offer. But she was gone. He 
 could hear her light steps flying down the path. His legs
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 1/9 
 
 were not yet in a condition to follow her, but his sobered 
 brain saw as clear as day that the white-faced little girl 
 had just done a very big thing for his sinful sake. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 As Joan ran up the garden she perceived Mrs. Worrall 
 her best satin stretched solemnly across a creaking bosom, 
 her hat well eased off her large flat face seated squarely 
 in the window, obviously prepared for luncheon. 
 
 " She's beaten me ! " gasped Joan, her hand upon the 
 latch. " And Oh ! I wonder how it strikes George ? " 
 
 Plainly, from the lower point of view, it had not struck 
 George at all ! 
 
 He was listening with courteous attention to the lady's 
 out-pourings wondering indeed how it struck the amiable 
 and long-suffering Peter. 
 
 Joan found him out at a glance. 
 
 " He's pitying Peter," she thought plaintively, " he 
 hasn't even noticed the hat," which indeed was less than 
 fair to George, who felt sorry for Peter upon this account 
 also. 
 
 Once again Joan searched her husband's face. One 
 smallest glance of sympathetic understanding would have 
 greatly cheered and fortified her. 
 
 The answering smile of George was incomparable of its 
 kind, but not just what she wanted. She felt suddenly 
 clerical, set apart, and guilty. Her wistful eyes flew to 
 Heron, cool and imperturbable, leaning up against the 
 window frame. 
 
 His comprehending grin supplied all that George's 
 smile left lacking. 
 
 Feeling young again, and unofficial, Joan advanced 
 courageously to the victorious enemy. 
 
 " Mr. Winnington," sweetly explained the lady, " insisted 
 on my coming in to luncheon, and has been discussing so 
 many things with me here, although I begged him not to 
 consider me, knowing how anxious he must be to get to 
 the Hall." 
 
 In order to match George, Joan had had a really nice 
 
 12*
 
 i8o HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 sentence, with a touch of penitence in it, on the tip of 
 her tongue ; but she altered her intention. 
 
 " How kind of you ! But it's no use going to the Hall, 
 George," she said, turning to him, " your father will be 
 out. If you want a message taken, nurse is just going up 
 with Jasper; his grandfather wants to take him for a 
 drive." 
 
 George started, but, warned by a look of eager entreaty 
 from his wife, discreetly held his tongue. 
 
 " Won't you come and take off your hat, Mrs. Worrall ? " 
 said Joan. 
 
 Rob Heron noticed with carnal joy that the face of the 
 Vicar's lady, as she followed her hostess's proud young 
 back, was unevenly suffused with pain. 
 
 He was still in the window, supposing that George 
 had left the room, when the sound of flying feet and 
 a quick cry of " George ! George ! " made him turn to 
 see the parson and his wife face to face just within the 
 door. 
 
 He felt uncomfortable, but decided to cough should any- 
 thing happen. 
 
 " Joan ! " cried George. " How is this ? the account 
 she gave " 
 
 " George ! If you could feel for one single moment as 
 I do about that woman, Oh ! what an unutterable com- 
 fort it would be ! She told me in her horrible way and 
 so, of course, I went up at once and found that he was 
 going to be simply awful this time. But I think I was 
 in time. George, I've given him Jasper for the whole 
 afternoon. He didn't ask. I gave him myself. Oh, 
 George ! Oh, George ! " 
 
 " My child ! My brave little girl ! God " 
 
 " Don't oh, don't talk of God ! I can only think of 
 baby and your father. It's he, after all, who will have to 
 drive. Oh ! don't look like that, I can't help it. I feel 
 distracted. And I may just as well tell you I didn'f 
 ask her to luncheon. I was firmly determined not to, and 
 I hate being conquered. Oh ! You may as well know. 
 I don't feel right, I'm so terrified about that drive. She's 
 a horror, and the luncheon is so nice. I shouldn't mind 
 half so much if it was a cheese-day." 
 
 George dumbly stared.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 181 
 
 " But at least I did right about Baby, George ! say that 
 I did." 
 
 " I am sure you did right, dearest." 
 
 She looked breathlessly in his face. 
 
 " Oh ! If only I could believe in your father's driving 
 in his present state as firmly as you do in God's care ! 
 But he was very bad and enjoying himself so im- 
 mensely. George ! If you look nothing but but holy 
 when she comes down she'll know things are quite as 
 bad as she hopes they are, and that giving him Jasper is 
 nothing else but a miserable gamble ! " 
 
 From the first day he had seen Joan, Heron had been 
 oddly attracted by the quick changes going on in her. 
 Now torn with the pain of a great sacrifice of self just made, 
 the adoration and recoil in her attitude to her husband, her 
 docility and revolt, her high womanliness and some- 
 what feline joy in pleasure and soft living, all the sort- 
 ing and resorting, the sure unevenness of a character 
 in the making, the things, in short, that confused and 
 startled George, passed before Heron as in a looking- 
 glass. 
 
 George, with a tender, puzzled, inquiring surprise, 
 looked into his wife's face. 
 
 Heron felt that this was the only woman, save his 
 mother, whom he had ever intimately known. 
 
 " George," she cried, " he's been doing justice on 
 every one since daylight full of and his face and 
 the row of decanters nothing could possibly have 
 stopped him, but something huge. That's why I did 
 it, dear." 
 
 Rob knew by George's back now turned to him that 
 he was looking a dozen things into his wife's face. He 
 wondered with grim, irrational irritation, if, by any chance, 
 they were the right things. 
 
 The dull thud of a descending body on the stairs smote 
 upon his ears, and Joan's voice was saying quietly : " I 
 hope luncheon won't be cold so that you may all be able 
 to forgive me for my lateness without any particular effort, 
 you know." 
 
 " I say ! you want to make a luxury of forgiveness on 
 both sides," said George, with a laugh. " I doubt if it's 
 sound doctrine."
 
 182 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " I hope it is," said Heron. " Anyway it's an uncom- 
 monly pleasant way of looking at a very poisonous business. 
 If you feel you're conferring a boon as well as accepting 
 a favour you need never bother to grovel before your 
 forgiver." 
 
 " But in any case there are compensations," said George. 
 "You can always console yourself by considering the tor- 
 tures the other fellow's endured in getting up the steam 
 to forgive." 
 
 " Dear Mr. Winnington," bleated Mrs. Worrall from her 
 duck, " as though you couldn't forgive any enemy." 
 
 " But anyone could forgive an enemy. You expect 
 nothing particular from an enemy, you can easily excuse 
 him." 
 
 " Even a friend," she coldly ventured, " may upon occa- 
 sion call for some forgiveness." 
 
 " Forgiveness is not the word between friends, is it ? 
 You have nothing to go upon with your friends but experi- 
 ence, and experience is rather a broken reed. We're 
 constantly astonishing ourselves, of whom we know every 
 turn and twist, so how can we expect not occasionally to 
 be unpleasantly surprised by our friends, of whose twist- 
 ings we can only guess? It's a question of accepting, not 
 forgiving. It's only when forgiving or being forgiven lies 
 between two so close and intimate that the very fact of its 
 need means shuffling the whole scheme of your existence, 
 the smashing up of a lot of idols, a regular shock to the 
 foundations of things generally that forgiveness comes in, 
 and then it calls for real hard condition. Heron, have some 
 tomatoes ? " 
 
 " They're Miss Rebecca's, and rather famous," said 
 Joan, hurrying back to her duty. George's brows sud- 
 denly jerking together had fascinated and frightened her 
 into momentary forgetfulness. 
 
 " He could forgive any one," she thought, nervously, 
 " but me or himself, and he finds it's simply dreadful 
 having to forgive his father." 
 
 " For my part," commented Mrs. Worrall, " I find that 
 a Parish calls out all one's power of forgiving." 
 
 " A parish ! Oh ! you mean having to swear at sinners 
 that sort of thing. But, after all, language has nothing
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 183 
 
 to do with forgiving or condemning. It's it's a depart- 
 ment in itself." 
 
 " Then who's to judge of anything ? " she wailed. " You 
 rob us of all our rights." 
 
 " The opinion of the majority is a fair test of common 
 conduct for common men," said George good-humouredly. 
 " And there's always the Court of Final Appeal, into 
 whose counsels even the Archbishops haven't, so far, been 
 invited even as witnesses." 
 
 " This really is very interesting. I do wish Peter were 
 here," cried Mrs. Worrall. " The opinion of one forced 
 from poetry into prose while yet in early manhood Peter, 
 Mr. Winnington, has in his time, written a book of verse, 
 religious of course ; indeed the gift is in his family a 
 cousin although he had quite eight hundred a year and 
 really nice connections, to the day of his death sent 
 verses to the various periodicals but as I was saying, 
 the experience " she paused, to gather up her threads 
 " of a man forced from pleasant dallying with the Muses 
 into the hideous hand-to-hand conflict with sin, must surely 
 be of some little value. And yet " she coughed be- 
 hind the vast bony structure of her hand, " and yet there 
 are things that crop up in one's sad daily rounds for which 
 even Peter can find no forgiveness." 
 
 When she spoke earnestly and with speed, Mrs. Worrall 
 spat in a general sort of way ; of this unpleasant fact George 
 was painfully aware, but he answered like a Christian : 
 
 " Consciences vary quite as much as constitutions, don't 
 you think? It's one of the things, I always think, that 
 makes ordinary forgiveness pretty easy." 
 
 " Mrs. Worrall," cried Joan, " do have one of Miss 
 Rebecca's peaches." 
 
 Mrs. Worrall was knotting her handkerchief under the 
 table-cloth to remind Peter to bring the subject of forgiving 
 at random under the notice of the next clerical meeting, 
 and so confound the presumption of ignorance. 
 
 The peach somehow increased her natural irritation ; it 
 reminded her of the gilded youth of George Winnington 
 a glance at the home-made blouse worn by George's wife, 
 gave Mrs. Worrall pause gilded, anyway, a vast deal more 
 than ever dear Peter's was, she amended, as she carefully 
 peeled her peach.
 
 1 84 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 A sudden conviction that the silver she had long deemed 
 to be the best Sheffield, was after all solid, increased her 
 godly wrath. 
 
 " And we the descendants of humble fishermen," she 
 sorrowfully reflected, " who drank probably out of cockle- 
 shells." 
 
 " Don't be persuading Mr. Winnington to deal with us 
 according to our transgressions^" entreated Captain Heron. 
 " If he begins at that game, where would any of us be ? 
 I should be sitting, any way, on some weird stool of re- 
 pentance, remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, instead of 
 advising you strongly to eat this nectarine." 
 
 Mrs. Worrall simpered, and threw back a limp strayed 
 lock. 
 
 " Pray don't suppose, Captain Heron, that I don't admire 
 Mr. Winnington's beautiful sense of charity. But will it 
 wear? I ask." 
 
 " It won't wear us out at least. There are some things 
 connected with the Church that you'll admit do, rather, 
 eh? Mrs. Worrall," said he, still plying her with fruit. 
 He seized the moment for his impertinence while George 
 was conferring with his wife in regard to the temporal 
 estate of one Jonathan Jones, who concerneth not this 
 chronicle. 
 
 Mrs. Worrall bridled and smiled. She could always 
 get on with a polite young man, and in a chaste way en- 
 joyed conversation with him. 
 
 " Ah ! Captain Heron," she sighed, " one often sees 
 allusions in the daily Press to the grievances of the Army. 
 We also have ours. Young men of doubtful antecedents, 
 who come in amongst us through colleges of a low order " 
 it was a sense of haste and responsibility, not spiritual 
 and ecclesiastical pride, that caused her here to " spit " 
 dreadfully and greatly distress Joan " taken from St. 
 Bees, you know, and St. Asaph's and the like. They, I 
 admit with sorrow, do frequently bring the Word into 
 disrepute and prove a snare to refined intelligences, used 
 to the ministrations of those of enlightened views and 
 County connections. Failing that," she murmured 
 modestly, " with relatives in the higher Professions." 
 
 " It must make an immense difference," said Heron, 
 with vague though warm sympathy.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 185 
 
 " It makes all the difference, Captain Heron." 
 
 But though, like St. Paul, always ready at the convenient 
 season to expand in social intercourse and be all things to 
 all men, she yet remembered the hall-marked silver, and 
 that she had a testimony to make. She drew from her 
 beaded bosom a watch that raucously ticked. 
 
 "Two-thirty! Dear me! Labourers in any vineyard 
 must not be idle," said the indefatigable lady, plunging 
 back upon her diocesan position. " Mrs. Winnington, pray 
 don't let me detain your husband." 
 
 She lifted her eyes in a large piercing glance at Joan's 
 pretty table, and strangled a sigh. 
 
 " In our sin-laden, laborious, almost sordidly frugal life, 
 one does sometimes feel a little envious of those whose 
 lines are set in pleasant places. But there is one thing to 
 be said in the very heart of sin and misery one is at least 
 preserved from any temptation to entrench one's self in the 
 lap of luxury. The contrast is too awful. One couldn't 
 bear it." 
 
 " One gets roses in the country for nothing," said Joan, in 
 a distinct voice, " and the other " 
 
 But George had seen her eyes. They struck him as 
 being superb with professional points still. He jumped 
 up alertly. 
 
 " You're quite right, Mrs. Worrall. I must be going." 
 
 " Mr. Winnington one moment I must see you " 
 she hesitated, and modestly coughed behind her hand, "in 
 the hall if you don't mind." 
 
 Joan and Rob discreetly drew back. 
 
 " What's up now ? " enquired the young man. 
 
 " Some abominable suspicion, I should think quite unfit 
 for publication. Talk of something else." 
 
 " She's so engrossing. Are there many of her? Is she 
 herself or a chip of a type ? " 
 
 " Herself, Captain Heron," said Joan, precipitately. " I 
 want you distinctly to know that this luncheon is an 
 exception. Most of it was sent to us by Miss Rebecca and 
 George's father, so as not to disgrace the family before you. 
 If we'd been alone the sick would have had the best part 
 of it, we'd have had just what wouldn't agree with them. 
 And to think of her daring to suggest that George George 
 pampers himself ! "
 
 1 86 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " But but don't you like that sort of thing food and 
 things ? " he demanded, stammering. 
 
 " I ? Of course I do. But but you don't suppose I'd 
 like George to be beaten by Peter? I'm truly sorry for 
 Peter, but if you saw him " 
 
 " I understand I've seen his wife." 
 
 " That in the Church, at any rate that's not final," 
 said Joan thoughtfully. 
 
 " But it's a clue." 
 
 Absorbed in certain chaotic reflections of her own, to 
 this Joan made no reply ; so Rob turned his thoughts upon 
 the consideration of " a dinner of herbs," where love is. 
 " But somehow Love doesn't seem to flavour them," he 
 thought ; " now how's that, I wonder ? " 
 
 Possibly Mrs. Worrall in the hall might have told him. 
 She was then deep in the fatal subject. 
 
 " Oh ! Mr. Winnington," she wailed, " don't talk to me of 
 love. The very name of it is the bane of a conscientious 
 clergyman. And twilight, I assure you, fills one with 
 absolute nausea! The sight of a couple in a lane makes 
 me shudder. The trail of sin spoils scenery! A girl may 
 be as steady and biddable as you could wish, never missing 
 a sewing meeting, putting her pennies every week in the 
 bank, wearing decorous hats and mended stockings. 
 Love " she paused to snort " LOVE sets in she begins 
 to walk where are you? Unless you see to it, there will 
 be trouble. I met Anne Dale on Monday, a yellow bunch 
 of daffodils on her head, a pink tie about her neck, and 
 with her James Black ! Dropping with fatigue though I 
 was, I took the trouble to follow the pair down Stepings 
 lane knee-deep, I assure you, in mud. James Black was 
 I have it on undoubted authority drunk at Wisley 
 fair " 
 
 " I'm glad I can contradict that upon even better authority, 
 Mrs. Worrall my own, in fact " said George, " I was 
 there. So don't, pray, add it to your own anxieties. You'll 
 be glad to know, too, for a fact, that the banns are to be 
 put up next Sunday." 
 
 " What are Banns against human depravity ? " 
 
 " Oh ! come, now ! They're an earnest, anyhow, of honest 
 intentions." 
 
 " H'm, yes ! Far be it from me, Mr. Winnington, to
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 187 
 
 press my services where they are not welcome. Your 
 parish is your own." 
 
 " They're both rather friends of mine, you know, both 
 Anne and James," said George, with unruffled good 
 humour. 
 
 "Yes. But, dear Mr. Winnington, with your capacity 
 for charity " 
 
 "My friendship doesn't count for much. But in regard to 
 those two young people, we can at least hope." 
 
 " Ah ! yes. We can hope. Good-bye, Mrs. Winnington." 
 She moved nearer to Joan and lowered her voice. " I think 
 I can feel what you are feeling about your little boy, with 
 his poor grandfather in that state." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Joan, in dulcet tones, hoping to goodness 
 that George wouldn't hear her. " I'm not the least anxious. 
 Mr. Winnington is a perfect whip. He couldn't possibly 
 make a mistake." 
 
 Mrs. Worrall looked at her, and softly sighed. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 DRIVEN by promptings compounded in equal parts of 
 satanic pride and saintly repentance, by a pursuing, haunt- 
 ing need for speed for the ring of rushing hoofs, the 
 balm of keen cloven air, with a gnawing torment at the 
 pit of his stomach, and a megrim in his brain, Jasper 
 beside him the nurse quaking and grinning, with Jasper 
 minor on her knee drove with magnificent audacity round 
 every perilous corner in the parish. But he brought the 
 child safe home to his mother. 
 
 Subsequently he dined decorously, but with little appe- 
 tite, under the maddening benignity of George's eye. It 
 was a ruthless dinner that, and sent the sinning father 
 groaning to a restless bed. He arose from it dejected, 
 but buoyed up still by a consuming sense of virtue im- 
 placably urging him to increased effort. Once started upon 
 the bitter road to repentance the Squire was resolved to
 
 i88 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 tread it so firmly, and so relentlessly, as thoroughly to 
 satisfy all those so embarrassingly concerned in his higher 
 interests. 
 
 But in spite of all his woes, the tender sacrifice just 
 offered up for the sake of his sinful old soul oddly up- 
 lifted Jasper, and filled him with a whimsical reverent 
 passion for his little daughter-in-law. 
 
 The Squire's reserve of emotion was in its way as vast 
 as the rest of him and naturally enough the Inevitable 
 overflow drained off into the half-choked, deep, old chan- 
 nels cut long ago by his first love. 
 
 From Joan, defying time and weather, he climbed some- 
 what heavily to Rebecca. 
 
 " I'll go to-day," he said aloud, when having paused 
 momentarily beside a groaning side-board which the night 
 before in order to test his courage he had directed to 
 be set out bravely with glittering temptation, he proudly 
 passed on. 
 
 Having tried for a good half hour to concentrate his 
 thoughts upon ^Eschylus, an author who entered largely 
 into his seasons of repentance, as a whip to effort he for- 
 sook the seclusion of the library and betook himself to a 
 less strenuous retreat. 
 
 He turned, in fact, into the gun-room, in the intervals of 
 his reflections upon love and its embarrassments, to experi- 
 ment with a new short-range rifle from the window. 
 
 He had previously warned the stable lads that if they 
 were idiots enough to bring their doddering carcases 
 within shot range of experimental practice it was their 
 look-out not his. 
 
 " I wonder," he paused to reflect after some dozen shots, 
 " if the little girl would lend me the child for an hour 
 or so. One wants a peculiar leg-up in a delicate business 
 of this nature. 
 
 "John Higgins," he called out, "tell Black to have the 
 dog-cart at the door at ten o'clock." 
 
 Sighing, he regulated the sight of his rifle. The 
 amazing steadiness of his hand cheered him. 
 
 Having avoided by a hair's breadth the red head of a 
 quivering mass of horror creeping stealthily towards the 
 harness room, his courage mounted higher. 
 
 " I'll stroll down to the Vicarage myself, John, after all,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 189 
 
 and see if the little chap would like a drive," he said pre- 
 sently, looking into the dining-room. 
 
 As the Squire paused on the hill above the Church he 
 experienced a shock of an unprecedented and startling 
 order. 
 
 Just below him Joan and a young man, with an ex- 
 ceptionally neat swagger, were advancing with rather a 
 marked air of leisure, their laughter rising light upon the 
 breeze. 
 
 " The very set of her shoulders is yielding to these new 
 and insidious conditions," he reflected, with a pained but 
 interested stare. " And the elder man, too, the fellow 
 with the story ! By Jove ! Hoped it was the innocuous 
 young shaver she's being a mother to ; but no such luck ! 
 And with George climbing everlasting hills for all he's 
 worth, when he's not sunk in drains." 
 
 Joan's eyes were sparkling amazingly. She laughed with 
 delicious merriment She didn't see him, not she ! an 
 infernal deal too absorbed for that. 
 
 " Well, my dear, out for a stroll ? " said Jasper. 
 
 The artful words stung the Vicar's helpmate back to the 
 Parish ; her dormant activities arose. " I set out mean- 
 ing just to carry round broth, and somehow we've got 
 here," she explained. 
 
 " It's only another way round," suggested Heron coolly. 
 
 " Yes, but rather a long one," said Joan, " and Mrs. 
 Penn expects her beef-tea at eleven o'clock to the minute." 
 
 " Ah ! They keep you in order." 
 
 " Little you know, it's my little daughter-in-law who 
 keeps us all in order," said the Squire with ready wit, his 
 keen eye upon Heron and the Future. " The most in- 
 exorable stickler for noblesse oblige you ever came across. 
 Never lets one of us off." 
 
 " One for that young man used to slack fashionables," 
 Jasper proudly told himself. " If George's unfortunate 
 proclivities have converted her into a parochial drudge, 
 better assume once for all that she's the royal variety, 
 born in the purple one, so to speak, by divine right, not 
 by reason of the vagaries of a fellow who ought to know 
 better. Takes the sting out of the dispensation somehow 
 to assume that she enjoys it. Can't have my daughter- 
 in-law lumped with the ordinary parson's spouse."
 
 190 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Well played that," thought Heron, glancing with frank 
 admiration at the fine old figure. 
 
 " I'm on my way to see Rebecca upon some rather im- 
 portant business," resumed Jasper, carefully prising up a 
 dock. 
 
 Joan looked warm approbation, but suggested that it was 
 rather early. 
 
 " Never deferred any business till the afternoon but I 
 had cause to regret it," said Jasper valiantly. 
 
 " Far be it from me to be a spoke in the wheel of duty," 
 said Heron. " I have promptings of duty myself on stock 
 though seldom asked for. You've aroused them, Mr. 
 Winnington, and I'm off to repair some of Fred's omis- 
 sions. Better try your hand on him next, Squire." 
 
 " By the way," said Jasper hastily, with a longing look 
 at the light young man, " I'd like to stroll round myself 
 and take a look at the horses." 
 
 " Only too delighted, sir. But " Illuminated by a 
 
 vague though stirring suspicion, Captain Heron halted 
 deliberately to look with modest deprecation from Mrs. 
 George to the old man. 
 
 Joan's eyes were full of laughter, but her lips were firm. 
 She glanced calmly at a tree-top. Jasper flushed lustily. 
 
 " Are you going to see the horses now ? " she innocently 
 inquired. 
 
 " This," thought Jasper with precipitation, " this is scarce 
 fair to Rebecca, A queen amongst women, poor Rebecca ! 
 Worlds too good for the like of me." 
 
 " Well, my dear, I think not. Suppose, Heron, we say 
 to-morrow ? Our ways, my girl, lie together for a bit." 
 
 Heron went off chuckling. The bye-play of eyes 
 tickled him immensely, and he was never a marplot in any 
 pretty game. 
 
 " I've forfeited a pleasant morning," he thought rue- 
 fully. " And I wonder what she's after, and if it will con- 
 sole her for the wiles of a sinful leisure on a summer's 
 day. Poor child, this to be accounted unto her for un- 
 righteousness ! What a household ! " 
 
 He turned to watch the ascending pair. 
 
 " If her clothes fitted, her back is the back of the little 
 mother. And her walk she makes music wherever she 
 goes as she used to do. Only so far the music this one
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 191 
 
 makes is in the minor key. She could dance to a merrier 
 measure. Some day I'll see if I can't set her going." 
 
 But whilst he watched and compared, the other woman 
 his mother was back in her bewildering, mocking, mad- 
 dening way, playing bo-peep again in all his thoughts. 
 
 In spite of everything his mother was always welcome 
 and in the company of the wife of a bond-fide saint, herself 
 compact of faith and ignorance, although the companion- 
 ship in no sort of way commended itself to his reason, it 
 yet touched his sense of humour, fixed his interest, and 
 was any way an informing partnership, full of nebulous 
 possibilities. 
 
 He turned promptly to the vexed question of hock sprains, 
 but the quaint fellowship seemed still to pursue him with 
 whimsical illusory suggestions. At last little Mrs. George 
 grew as disturbing, absorbing, and unsettling as his little 
 mother, and so exasperated did he become with both that 
 he wrote a hasty note excusing himself from luncheon, and 
 buried himself in the wholesome safety of horses. 
 
 " Why can't women stick to the primitive type and leave 
 you alone ? " he demanded, addressing a snaffle. " They 
 fall on their feet do primitive types, and are not incom- 
 moded by conditions. To suggest either tragedy or 
 comedy or both would be as bad as indecent exposure to 
 their simple minds. The husband of a primitive type 
 might live in a villa and produce a large family, yet really 
 enjoy himself. The others are fire-flies in your brain. 
 And yet and yet you can't get rid of them and you 
 don't want to. I'm afraid that girl is only surface meek, 
 and I wonder if she's good or only trying to be good. This 
 sort of thing gets infernally oppressive, however, and I 
 thinking too that I'd done with women ! " 
 
 " Now," mused Jasper, upon his part, " that danger 
 averted, I'm in, neck and crop for the other." 
 
 " Joan, my girl," he wheedled, " it's a grand morning. 
 Suppose I run the young chap over to Rebecca's." 
 
 Joan's face primmed. " To-day ? But surely he'd be 
 dreadfully in the way ? " 
 
 " On the contrary I'm inclined to believe he'd be a most 
 timely relief. You must aproach these matters by sug- 
 gestion gradually, you know." 
 
 " But hasn't all that part been faithfully gone through ?
 
 192 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Every detail attached to Jasper minor has rather a way 
 of distracting you from from active operations, you 
 know." 
 
 " The presence of a child," pleaded the modest lover, 
 " is often of immense assistance in the most onerous 
 affairs." 
 
 " But it's rather aggressive, don't you think ? and all- 
 pervading ? In some circumstances a woman might herself 
 like to be the centre of attraction. You can have him 
 to-morrow for the whole day if things go off all right." 
 
 Jasper had learnt before this that his daughter-in-law 
 was a somewhat difficult person with whom to argue, and 
 being, in spite of his bad habits, of a philosophical turn, 
 he shrugged his shoulders with melancholy resignation. 
 
 "Women take these things with an amazing calm," 
 sighed he. " The fact of their ideals being so frequently 
 iced keeps 'em, no doubt, cool. It is given to them, more- 
 over, to see many things as through a glass darkly. Any 
 way they are dauntless creatures. You must, however, 
 remember, in justice to us, that you are spared the brunt of 
 the business, the first plunge into dark waters." 
 
 " But there's always some one on the spot to fish you 
 out," suggested Joan soothingly. 
 
 "Well, yes but even then " He thoughtfully 
 
 flicked the crest off a thistle. 
 
 " You would prefer, perhaps, not to be fished out ? " she 
 enquired artlessly, " to be left floundering ? " 
 
 " I haven't the least notion what I'd prefer," he re- 
 joined wrathfully, then broke all at once into a thunderous 
 laugh. " And you think I'm the first man in the same 
 hobble eh ? Little you know. Little any woman knows. 
 Fools rush in Jove ! That's getting a bit personal. Now, 
 for God's sake, don't look like that or how is a man to 
 explain himself intelligibly to a woman's point of view? 
 All very well for you, flippant with youth and sentiment, or 
 for me over night. But Rebecca is a big fence to take 
 for any man past his prime and handicapped with gout 
 and and other things, and with all the sentiment of him 
 sifted in the sieve of experience. I love and honour every 
 bone in Rebecca Westcar's body deuce take me if I 
 don't. I know the value of her heart, the soundness of 
 her fine, acute intelligence. I have every advantage to
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 193 
 
 myself in in this ahem ! transaction at my finger ends, 
 yet I'd give half I possess to anyone who'd put it through 
 for me. Break me, so to speak, to poor Rebecca. It 
 struck me," he faltered, "that the baby might be instru- 
 mental in bringing us together, you know, without any un- 
 necessary jolting." 
 
 " I'm afraid," said Joan inexorably, " you'll never slide 
 into Cousin Rebecca, and it's rather exacting of you to 
 expect it after all these years. However you manage it 
 surely it must come with a bump." 
 
 " Yes, yes ! But can't you see ? A man upon an occa- 
 sion like this wants to get the years off his mind the years 
 that the locusts have eaten and his gout and the 
 thousand and one things frayed and devoured by time 
 and one's own folly. The pleasant things one has dropped 
 by the way. It's impossible to explain to you," he pursued 
 hotly. " But this thing wants courage. The tail-end of 
 an exceptionally ahem human life is a queer enough 
 article at any time to throw on the market. A man don't 
 like being the butt of his own humour or of that of any 
 shrewd woman ripe with wit and virtue. To go wooing 
 with the twelfth Chapter of Ecclesiastes singing in your 
 ears makes you diffident, my girl, I'd have you to know. 
 In short I'm in the devil of a blue funk, my dear, and I 
 thought your baby might have brought back a little of 
 the dew to the parched earth for both Rebecca and me." 
 " I'm afraid," said Joan, now melting with sympathetic 
 understanding, " I'm afraid he'd only fill the room with 
 himself and upset everything." 
 
 " Ah ! well, I must face it alone. ' Because man goeth 
 to his long home and the mourners go about the streets.' 
 Wish that infernal fine poem wouldn't keep tormenting me. 
 Read it last night till I saw stars." 
 
 " It's hardly appropriate to the occasion," suggested 
 Joan. " There are others. ' The Song of Solomon,' for 
 instance, and a host of prophets and patriarchs, all marry- 
 ing men. And I haven't noticed that in your case ' Those 
 
 that look out of the windows ' are darkened " 
 
 " God bless my soul ! Never wore glasses in my life ! " 
 
 " Then you ought to be able to see clear enough to 
 
 look back through all the years and see things as they 
 
 used to be. I believe then they'd keep so, and you'd both 
 
 13
 
 194 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 forget that any years had ever come between anything. 
 You and Cousin Rebecca between you ought to have sense 
 and sight enough to throw bridges over the years and take 
 trips together into the old times. It must be dull to have 
 to go alone and sad and silent ; but two together ! It 
 would alter everything ! " 
 
 " Ha ! child. You have a way with you ! I'll go while 
 the spur is in me ! Just catch her before luncheon." 
 
 " And I'm a good hour late, and won't catch anyone," 
 cried Joan, hurrying discreetly away. 
 
 " It's her drug morning," she thought, with a regretful 
 start. " I do hope to goodness her fingers won't smell of 
 senna. And I wonder if the sun-bonnet will look more 
 awful than usual, or less, from not having been seen 
 lately." 
 
 With an inexpressible sensation of faint, sick, physical 
 repulsion Joan paused the next minute upon a threshold 
 redolent of respectable but unwashed old age, took a deep 
 breath, and went in as bright and noiseless as a sun- 
 beam, to be soundly rated for her inexcusable negligence 
 in bringing the broth late. 
 
 The bonnet, as it happened, looked more awful, and 
 was Jasper's first shock at it dangled askew on Rebecca's 
 neck, whilst she rested upon a bench by the Dispensary. 
 
 But he overcame manfully his mental shudder and 
 solemnly marched forward. 
 
 " My dear Jasper," she called out, " you look as though 
 you were about to charge a Jury. Is it gout? Or have 
 you been up to anything more disreputable than usual ? " 
 
 " The sun's in your eyes, Rebecca. Never felt better 
 in my life. Come down the garden walk." 
 
 " I was thinking of going round to the pig-styes. That 
 old doddering Jones is jawing about measles. Now you're 
 here you might " 
 
 " Confound the pigs ! Too fine a morning to waste 
 on pigs." 
 
 "Might waste finer on worse things," she remarked 
 in an observant pause. " However, since you're set 
 on the garden walk, of all places in the world, come 
 then." 
 
 " What is up with the man ? " she reflected, frowning. 
 " Look's distinctly peculiar."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 195 
 
 In face of his continued silence she was seized with real 
 urgent anxiety. 
 
 " Whatever it is, Jasper, speak up." She planked her- 
 self down on a seat under the outspread tail of a pea- 
 cock cut in yew, and spread her fingers on her knees. 
 " I won't take another step until I hear everything. Don't 
 hesitate man, I'm always prepared for anything with you. 
 Pray don't consider my feelings, but suspense I won't stand 
 at any price. What is it this time ? " 
 
 " My dear friend," she rapped out irritably, as he hesi- 
 tated, " anyone would think we'd only met yesterday." 
 
 " The truth is, Rebecca, I come upon a widely different 
 errand from any you suggest." Upon the spur of a long 
 buried instinct Jasper threw a leg. " You certainly give 
 one little assistance." 
 
 " In the name of common sense how can I assist you 
 till I know what you're after ? " 
 
 A horrid suggestion of bristling entered like the devil 
 into the moustache. Jasper's eyes were only too quick 
 to perceive it, but his heart ached when he thought of 
 the goodness of Rebecca; her faith; her love; her un- 
 swerving patience and loyalty. 
 
 His eyes, full of kindness, and an odd wistful, half- 
 amused remorse, rested upon her ravaged face. 
 
 " I want more than you bargain for, Rebecca. I want 
 you" 
 
 " You want me ? And what for, pray ? " 
 
 Jasper lifted a proud, offended head. 
 
 She stared and whistled. 
 
 " And who sent you, may I enquire, upon this astound- 
 ing errand ? Joan Winnington ? " 
 
 " Rebecca ! This is no light matter." 
 
 " Obviously not ; you look thoroughly worn out. Oh 
 sit down, Jasper, do ! Standing is most trying for a man 
 of your size, and it fidgets me to see you towering up in 
 that bird's tail. And so you want me, do you ? " she said, 
 in a voice all at once grown tired. " And you thought 
 you'd better make known your wants whilst yet there was 
 time make hay before the sun went under, in short." 
 She threw up her head sharply, and had time to remember 
 it when last he had asked her, a fleecy cloud of black- 
 ness. And so for a minute she said no more. 
 
 13*
 
 196 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 The plethora of subtle emotions in the occasion touched 
 Jasper keenly. He would have spoken bravely out in 
 fair, flowing words, but a queer affectionate respect with- 
 held him. There were things going on in and about 
 them too deep for such words as would come to him. 
 They could only hurt and outrage both himself and 
 Rebecca. The sheer inherent sincerity of Jasper struck 
 him dumb. 
 
 What he had to offer he knew, in a flash, to be un- 
 worthy of Rebecca, unworthy of himself. 
 
 The pigs that not ten minutes ago had painfully jarred 
 upon him, now flooded his soul with a longing. He looked 
 queerly toward the farm-yard path. But his honour was 
 now engaged, there was no drawing back. 
 
 Jasper experienced the most fiendishly uncomfortable 
 moment of a long and chequered life. He paled visibly. 
 His hands tightened convulsively upon his stick. He 
 floundered in the bitter waters of humility. To go forward 
 was the one thing left him, but a man must get his 
 breath. 
 
 Save in theory, or when the victim has died beautifully 
 in a well-preserved youth, there is something awful to a 
 man in the life-long, unbroken, unepisodal love of a woman 
 for himself whom fate has forbidden to share and enjoy 
 it. To be brought sharp up against it in the flesh, how- 
 soever expectant and prepared for the encounter, will 
 make the stoutest quail. 
 
 Rebecca hitched herself round to look at Jasper. And 
 as she gazed she remembered his last abortive attempt and 
 the naive exhortations of Joan that probably heralded in 
 this, and in spite of a rending heart she widely smiled. 
 
 " Poor Jasper can't get out his fine prepared speech," 
 she thought. " It sticks in his honest throat. And no 
 doubt I do look weird, splashed out against that abomin- 
 able bird's tail. Ah ! well. The last little stroll home 
 together might have been very sweet ! My dear Jasper," 
 she remarked, with monumental serenity, " this has been 
 one of the things to be done, and to be done well. You've 
 got through it admirably. But suppose we take the rest 
 as read and be just the tried and trusty friends that we have 
 always been. In that connection neither has ever failed 
 the other or ever could. It's proven ground, old friend.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 197 
 
 We're a bit hoary and stiff, you and I, to go breaking up 
 new country." 
 
 She paused to look at him, smiling even wider than 
 before. 
 
 " It would it would be like planting flowers on a grave," 
 she said, " and that thought would spoil the scent of them 
 for me. We'll stick to the well-matured herbs that have 
 grown up about our feet. They're pungent any way, and 
 wholesome, and have served us well. They have flavoured 
 life for us. Come, Jasper," she said slowly, moving as 
 though to rise, " we'll drink to our sturdy old friendship 
 in a glass of my best port." 
 
 " Rebecca ! " he cried, with genuine feeling. " Don't go, 
 my dear. Friendship is good, but love is better. And 
 ours it's older after all than the friendship, and has the 
 first claim." 
 
 She shook her head/ 
 
 "Rebecca! Why?" 
 
 For a minute she looked before her, seeing nothing. 
 Still looking, she saw, filling the horizon, a whole wilder- 
 ness of wasted youth. Softly and reverently she bent her 
 head. 
 
 " ' Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, 
 and fears shall be in the way. And the almond tree shall 
 blossom, and desire shall fail ' " 
 
 Jasper sprang to his feet. " To hurl that damned 
 chapter at me at such a moment ! Hasn't it been flaying 
 me alive these three days ? " 
 
 " And I never thought of it in all my life save as a 
 kingly poem until now," said she, rising and moving 
 towards the house. " That's a man's chapter. Why, to 
 consider it, save as a classical and elevating piece of 
 literature, would make a woman of forty look forty on 
 the spot. Do you want to undermine all our founda- 
 tions, sap all our hopes, make hay of our multitudinous 
 beliefs? If a woman can't believe in her own power to 
 be the one exception that every other woman but 
 herself is in fief to the Moth of Time, what faith will 
 remain to her ? " 
 
 " Rebecca ! This is beside the mark." 
 
 " It's quite near enough." 
 
 " Hold hard, dear lady. Don't bucket. Be reasonable.
 
 198 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 There's nothing to divide us, and life alone is a cold busi- 
 ness. Let us come together at last. I've had a hell of a 
 time, as well you know, and I'm hanged if it's been all 
 Heaven for you. If we can't go back to pick the flowers 
 we've missed we can at least go forward ; they're springing 
 up still by the wayside, and the skies are as blue as ever 
 they were." He gazed, with resolute cheerfulness, at the 
 wooden wall of the Dispensary. " That idea about a 
 grave was an unkind suggestion for so kind a woman, and 
 not to the point." 
 
 " What about the twelfth Chapter of Ecclesiastes ? " 
 
 " Oh ! Rebecca ! " 
 
 " Jasper ! What if I said yes ? " She swung round 
 with startling agility and caught him. 
 
 Then of one accord they stood still and burst out laugh- 
 ing. Rebecca laughed till she cried. Her very knees 
 shook with merriment. But she stopped just in time. 
 
 " Ah ! well ! That's two striking," said she at last, rather 
 jerkily. " And now for luncheon." 
 
 So differently was he made the proposal was like a blow 
 to Jasper. He shrank back. 
 
 " My dear Rebecca ! Couldn't touch a mouthful." 
 
 " No man ever needed one more, or more honestly 
 earned it. I'm not a born idiot, Jasper. This sort of 
 thing goeth not forth save with prayer and fasting, and 
 I'm not an ungrateful woman. You've been considering 
 me in in most things all my life, and you haven't failed 
 me now. You've brought the thing to its logical conclu- 
 sion triumphantly. Come ! By some lucky premonition 
 I've ordered sweet-breads." 
 
 She laid her handsome hand upon his arm, and her 
 smile was that of a portly angel. 
 
 Jasper could have wept. Instead of doing so, in order 
 to humour Rebecca, he ate an immense luncheon, and 
 thoroughly enjoyed her port. 
 
 More than once he wished he had deferred the business 
 until after luncheon. 
 
 Possibly a glimmering of this desire may have shone in 
 his ruddy face, for when they stood up from the table, 
 instead of leading the way to the drawing-room, Rebecca 
 marched to the window, propped her broad back against 
 the wall, and fiercely knitted.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 199 
 
 " No after-luncheon relentings for me," she thought 
 grimly. 
 
 " Now, Jasper," said she pleasantly, " I don't want to 
 be rude, but I've had about as much of you as I can 
 stand for one morning, and I have a dozen things to 
 attend to." 
 
 Jasper started and stared. He now felt ready for any- 
 thing. He had promptings. 
 
 But her eyes her eyes nipped his courage, they likewise 
 made his heart bleed. 
 
 Without a word, with a grave, stiff dignity he went to 
 her, and stooping painfully, kissed one after the other 
 the hands that had unweariedly been doing good since the 
 first day he had touched them, just three-quarters of a cen- 
 tury ago. 
 
 There was a mist before his eyes when he stood up, and 
 through it he saw the girl of the black eyes, and the light 
 foot, and the merry laugh, the toast of four Counties. 
 
 " Rebecca ! " he cried, " Rebecca ! " 
 
 She hardened her face. 
 
 " Jasper," said she, " will you look at the pigs as you go 
 out and tell that old fool what's wrong with them. They 
 have no more measles than I have myself. I feel it in my 
 bones. It may comfort you to be of some practical assist- 
 ance to me." 
 
 Jasper turned, and went away sorrowful. 
 
 When he was safe off the premises, Rebecca went up 
 the stairs, and in spite of her common sense was obliged 
 to hold on by the banisters. She tottered, in great zig- 
 zags, across her room till she reached the big yellow otto- 
 man, when she fell with a thud beside it, and hid her grey 
 head in its flounces. 
 
 " How different they are from us," she moaned, " how 
 different ! It seems so odd for love to grow cold in a 
 heart, so odd. It's as warm in me and as young as when 
 it began fifty years ago. It's it's just eighteen ! " 
 
 Suddenly she stood up and went slowly to her glass and 
 stared long and hard. 
 
 " To look like that outside, and to feel so sweet and 
 fresh within ! " she cried. " To be your own one uncon- 
 querable foe. The angel of the flaming sword to your 
 own paradise ! To be flouted by your own ruined face !
 
 200 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Oh ! this hideous, cruel, intolerable old age ! " In a great 
 anguish, she lifted her balled, threatening fists as though 
 to crush her offending, quivering face. 
 
 The spectacle she presented in the glass, the distorted, 
 wicked old face that there confronted her, brought back 
 the senses of Rebecca. 
 
 With a bitter, sobbing laugh, she whipped up a towel, 
 and flung it over the glass. 
 
 " It's enough to disgust one with the truth for the rest 
 of one's days," she said, sitting forlornly down on the otto- 
 man, her fingers mechanically combing her fallen hair; 
 a most miserable Banshee. 
 
 " Love to grow old and totter," murmured the old 
 woman, " and grow full of strange fears and have twitch- 
 ings of of gout It's so odd. Yet, I daresay it's the more 
 comfortable state. Little enough comfort certainly in the 
 inner workings of the eternal things, those that keep green 
 whilst the rest grow grey." 
 
 She pressed her hands hard upon her aching breast. 
 " Oh, my heart ! my heart ! " she cried out at last in her 
 mighty pain. " Grow old along with his and let me 
 cease from aching a little before I die. It's too weary a 
 pain for the old, dear Lord." 
 
 She lifted herself after a long rest, and went quietly 
 back to the glass to brush her hair. 
 
 " But after all," she said at last, " the old age of a 
 man must be as sorrowful with the weight of a half dead 
 thing always in his breast. I'd rather stick to my pain." 
 
 " Dear Lord," she said presently, kneeling down, with 
 the most extraordinary little laugh, " after all I'll keep my 
 love alive and young in my heart. I'll ask for none of the 
 anodynes of my years. The one little spot of everlasting 
 youth in an old heart has its drawbacks, but it is too good 
 a thing to barter for shameful ease."
 
 2OI 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 WHEN Heron, having by honest labour steeled himself 
 against vain and vagrant sentiment, and was strolling 
 towards the Vicarage along a cool, green lane, he was 
 astonished to see George not a hundred yards ahead, lean- 
 ing over a gate, sunk plainly enough in profound dejection. 
 
 Heron paused to stare. 
 
 The suggestion of surrender evident in the broad back, 
 the inertness in the strong, alive shoulders, contradicted 
 all his preconceived notions of George. 
 
 The modest ordered confidence in himself and every one 
 he came across that seemed to possess George, and make 
 his presence, wherever it appeared, a centre of stimulation, 
 vitalising thought and outlook, dividing him from all his 
 tribe, lifting him and his profession clear-cut and keen 
 from out a blurred web of mists, now seemed sunken in 
 that indistinct and hazy back. 
 
 The palpitating life of spirit, body and brain, individual 
 to the man, every part of him, was a thing one looked for, 
 one expected just as one expects to find the living, warming, 
 fructifying sun in some men's pictures. 
 
 The present spectacle of a stripped George was a positive 
 shock to Heron. 
 
 In spite of acquired stoicism, Captain Heron was pecu- 
 liarly susceptible to certain influences, and little as he 
 knew it he had still a healthy and ravenous young appetite 
 for illusions. 
 
 He now whistled under his breath. 
 
 " Spares her his moods, seemingly. Wonder, by the 
 way, if she wouldn't rather enjoy one on occasion for a
 
 202 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 change. You can't bet on anything where a woman is 
 concerned. However, s'pose I'd better clear out." 
 
 With that, he was about to vault over a breach in the 
 fence, when George lifted himself up and saw him. 
 
 " Well met," he called out cordially, " I've had just as 
 much of my own company as I want. Hardly a compliment 
 to foist it on you, perhaps you're thinking, but it's a relief, 
 anyway, to me." 
 
 He stretched lazily, and opened the gate. "This," he 
 said, " is our nearest road home." 
 
 " Pity," he began, after a moment's pause, " you can't deal 
 with yourself, as, for sheer decency's sake, you're forced to 
 deal with your fellows, through the veil of civilisation. 
 After all, you could appreciate your own civility as well as 
 another man's, yet it's the one blessing reserved for your 
 betters." 
 
 Heron was experiencing some genuine anxiety. 
 
 " Been soul-digging this parson form of agricultural 
 labour that don't pay," he reflected rapidly, "especially 
 with experts." 
 
 " Politeness would hardly suit my case," he said easily. 
 " A good rousing swear is more to the point. It clears the 
 air, squares things generally. You feel fresher to go on 
 again." 
 
 George laughed. 
 
 " That's good enough for ordinary occasions, but suppose 
 an extraordinary one comes along. Oh ! your time will 
 come, and if it does " George swung round and shrewdly 
 looked at him " I'm a good deal mistaken if you don't find 
 yourself as tough a subject to tackle as myself, and as little 
 inclined to yield to reason." 
 
 " Hem ! Problems aren't much in my way." 
 
 Much as he admired George, for the Church, Rob had 
 a constitutional distrust. It was too vast for companion- 
 ship; he wanted, just at the moment, to talk to a man. 
 
 As it happened, this precisely was what George also 
 desired. 
 
 " Problems ! Any problem, given air enough, you can 
 live down. I'm talking of the things in life that have got 
 to be done." 
 
 George had been going through days of hard, stubborn 
 struggle, the result of which needed threshing out in homely,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 203 
 
 human words. He had taken a strong liking for Heron, and 
 so used was he to the giving out of kindness, that if he hap- 
 pened to want any for himself, once sure of his man, he 
 never hesitated about demanding his right. 
 
 " Are you afraid I'm letting you in for a mental spring- 
 cleaning, with the buckets and mops all over the shop? 
 Not I. Suffer too much myself in the parish from that 
 sort of thing. I've just left one. The lady enjoyed the 
 mess immensely, explained and demonstrated the uses of 
 each article with elaboration. She finds much more moving 
 interest in the next step than ever she could in the finished 
 plan. She'll be itching, that amazing female, when all's 
 done, for the time of disruption to come round again, to 
 break some man's shins and slumbers and her own 
 monotony." 
 
 " Lord ! How do you stand it all ? " 
 
 " Oh, it's all right. I wish they weren't so like it mentally 
 though. They so thoroughly enjoy a haul over of their 
 inwards. Every second woman you meet is at heart a 
 mediaeval Catholic. But now she puts it into words. 
 
 " Peas in her shoes would be less trying to her husband 
 and her spiritual adviser," suggested Heron. 
 
 " But not so soothing to her." 
 
 " I wish he'd get on," thought Heron. 
 
 George sincerely wished he could, but suddenly the sub- 
 ject had grown difficult. 
 
 They were now on the top of the hill opposite the 
 Vicarage garden, and could see Joan in a white dress 
 leaning back in her chair, young Fred above her, waving 
 a branch. The baby and nurse were coming in little runs 
 across the lawn, and all the white roses looked red in the 
 sunset 
 
 The old Church, stately, silent, full of a great significance, 
 stood out upon the rise. Silvern it was with great memories, 
 golden with hopes, grey with anguish. The village nestled 
 at its feet, all its littlenesses hidden in a soft haze. 
 
 The home-coming cows lowed softly as they crossed the 
 bridge. The children played tirelessly upon the green, and 
 in the distance their voices rang sweet. 
 
 The peaceful beauty of the scene struck both men keenly. 
 
 " It's a fragrant setting for a woman's life," said George 
 abruptly. " The Church, the roses, the infinite rest in that
 
 204 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 brook's song never seemed so exquisite as they do to-day, 
 when I've decided to leave them." 
 
 "I thought something of that sort was coming," said 
 Heron quietly, his eyes kindling. "Will you tell me 
 why?" 
 
 " It's a long story, but I'll run it through before we get 
 home. I want to know just how it strikes you. A reason- 
 able ' layman's opinion has never failed me yet. 
 
 " You see, there's plenty to do in this big, straggling 
 parish for a man over forty, but under it there's rather 
 too big a margin to give up to your own pursuits, especially 
 if you've got a steam-engine in your brain and must keep 
 it in working order. I have a friend over there," he nodded 
 in the direction of Miss Rebecca's kingdom, " who is 
 running a race with death. For a score of reasons he 
 must finish an invention before he goes under, but a man 
 can talk and invent at the same time, and the words 
 of a good man dying, with all his wits cleared by the 
 process, stick. 
 
 " He knows the tight-packed poor down to the ground. 
 What can be done for them, and what can't. It's an en- 
 grossing subject as he puts it, but urgent. And a man in 
 his full strength can't talk for ever. So in the natural 
 course of things, one day I left talking and set to work 
 to help an old fellow at Aiken, who had just buried every- 
 thing, more especially his power to handle curates, in his 
 wife's grave. Things were all at loose ends, and since my 
 assistance was, of course, ex-officio, you will understand 
 the difficulties. But I don't think any one resented me. 
 We've always, all of us, pulled well together. 
 
 " Now Aiken's dying, the living is in his family, and he 
 wants my promise to succeed him, before he goes. 
 
 " I've had to decide at once." George paused to look 
 again at the garden and the westering sun. " It's sordid, 
 squalid, awful over there. So long as the work was 
 optional, there was, indeed, an extraordinary fascination in 
 it, an extraordinary stimulation. Now that it's to be part 
 of the day's work, it's a grind, I tell you." 
 
 " What does Mrs. Winnington say ? " enquired Heron in 
 a commentless way. 
 
 " She doesn't know yet. It's not a question to be talked 
 over, but a thing to be done. If it's a question of taking
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 205 
 
 a big fence that must be taken, and is possible, it's for a 
 man to give a woman the lead over, not to discuss the size 
 of it with her. My wife is a woman of high courage." 
 
 All at once his face shone in a ridiculous way. " She 
 can take her fences like a bird," said he, " she reaches things 
 in her own way, and always rightly, and the ways of women 
 are not our ways. They spring to the light often where we 
 grope." 
 
 Heron groaned inwardly. The humility of this parson 
 had a queer charm ; it was genuine, straight and simple, and 
 free of all servility, and in the deepest stoop of his spirit 
 he was a proud man, as proud as Lucifer. Hence his 
 strength and power, and hence his weakness. Such humility 
 now applied to Mrs. George as Heron recalled her naive 
 jibbings, struck him as being singular. 
 
 " Even if we do hunt in couples, Joan and I," pursued 
 George ; " if I'm ass enough to get off the scent, as I've 
 been doing about Aiken just now, there's no need to in- 
 clude her in my efforts to get on to it again, to load her 
 with the gross burthens." His face shone worse than 
 ever. 
 
 Heron felt like the apostles on the hill. 
 
 " She's not the sort of woman you want to drag into 
 your own particular spring-cleaning, amongst the pails and 
 mops." 
 
 " Don't you think," said Heron, " that women like to see 
 how men arrive at big results." 
 
 "A woman can be poles apart from women." 
 
 " Don't women sometimes see both duty and religion 
 through a man's eyes," persisted Heron coolly. 
 
 "Women do. Joan doesn't. She is the most innately 
 religious woman I have met. She lives and breathes her 
 religion. She is her religion." 
 
 " Now," thought Heron, " who is to combat misunder- 
 standing so profound as this?" 
 
 " Are you in doubt ? " said George. " Go down to the 
 village to the marsh, and see." 
 
 " Does she enjoy the village and the marsh ? " 
 
 " She leaves joy behind her." 
 
 " She is the sweetest woman I have ever known. At the 
 same time, a mistaken sense of duty has played hell with 
 a lot of lives. And a sense of duty, if you'll excuse my
 
 2o6 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 saying, isn't always quite safe in the hands of women and 
 priests." 
 
 "I was brought up as a man," said George good- 
 humouredly. 
 
 " You are a man. I shouldn't have said it else." 
 
 " And you're a soldier. If you had an obvious duty to 
 face, would you consult your wife until you'd got over your 
 queasy-mindedness and decided to do the straight thing ? " 
 
 " Oh, I grant you that, and yet " 
 
 " There are scores of yets, but not one of 'em holds an 
 argument." 
 
 " Spiritual chores are so painfully complicated with dirt 
 and general unpleasantness," said Heron abruptly. " Mrs. 
 Winnington has a wonderful way of enjoying herself." 
 
 George halted, and looked at him. 
 
 " I should like you to know my wife, really. Know her 
 as she is. Her nature, with all her quiet ways, is the most 
 generous, lavish, spacious, that I have ever known. As a 
 rule, young women haven't much holding capacity. But 
 Joan, I verily believe, could hold everything, and enjoy each 
 after its kind and in its turn." 
 
 Heron swallowed a mouthful of arguments. 
 
 "You might as well try to convince the ghost of St. 
 John," he reflected. " He'll be the death of the poor little 
 thing in the end. I'd better change the subject." 
 
 " What's been your own worst complication in this busi- 
 ness ? " said he. 
 
 " I've been wanting London and the ' agreeable classes ' 
 this long time pretty hard, and I've read too many fairy 
 tales with too keen a zest to give up expecting the inter- 
 vention of some miracle. Until the last moment I hoped 
 it might still be London. I have an offer there open this 
 long time. I have other work beside my profession. Has 
 Joan told you ? Oh ! she has. She's one with me in that, 
 too. I believe those sonnets are good. I'm not sure that 
 they're not Literature. Aiken isn't just the place for that 
 sort of thing." 
 
 " I know more of soldiering than I do of religion," said 
 Heron, " but I can tell a poem when I see one. Would 
 you mind letting me see yours ? " 
 
 " Last night when you were reading Heine, I saw you 
 understood, and I hoped you'd ask," said George simply.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 207 
 
 George sang again that night. The brilliant, pleasant 
 rejoicing religiosity in his voice as it poured forth some 
 hidden Holy of Holies, as an episode, enthralled Heron. 
 As a fire-side gift it gave him dread visions of an unwinking 
 all-night sun, an unceasing choir of tireless disembodied 
 angels. 
 
 He found genius, however, in the poem. 
 
 The thoughts were those that float like spirits in the air, 
 too bright and pure for common words or the gross mouths 
 of men, that fire men's brains, however, in the sad nights, 
 make life possible, and God no delusion. 
 
 But George had laid bold and reverent hands upon them, 
 given them concrete form, and clothed them in royal purple. 
 
 Directly he had read half-a-dozen, Rob Heron went 
 hot-foot to George doing choir accounts in his study, and 
 forgetting to knock, planted himself square upon the table. 
 
 " This is genius," said he, " and Aiken won't hurt it, how- 
 ever it may bore you. But the 'agreeable classes' must 
 get a sight of you first. I know several of them, by the 
 way, and I have an empty flat on my hands, on the embank- 
 ment. You must take pity on it, you and Mrs. George. 
 I want you to know my uncle, Bob Grant, the Bishop of 
 Slough, who wrote ' The New Venite.' " 
 
 George sprang to his feet. " But why " he broke off 
 
 short. 
 
 Heron shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Why did he stop at that?" he said. "He had to 
 take his wife to no end of dinners and things, and attend 
 to his own shop, too. When she was tired out at last with 
 the racket, and took to Committees and Teetotalism for 
 the Lower Orders they have a fine ancestral cellar of their 
 own down in Cheshire and Bob Grant got back to his 
 study, somehow it wouldn't come. He had grown old, so 
 he said." 
 
 " Ah, Ah ! " said George under his breath. " You must 
 do this sort of thing young," he presently added, "so as 
 to keep all its fragrance intact. It's a race with time." 
 
 " You have your work cut out for you, Winnington," said 
 Heron, turning away with a queer laugh. " And so has she, 
 by Jove ! " he added presently, to the moon above the 
 pines.
 
 208 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 " I'M sorry," said Joan, " I'm sorry." She stood in the 
 purple twilight looking with an odd feeling of excited 
 terror at George. 
 
 It was the evening of the day their guests had left 
 them. 
 
 Young Jasper was asleep, the maids quietly sewing; 
 the silence of the house had driven Joan into the garden. 
 Moreover, her head ached. The remnants of all the deli- 
 cacies had been collected and despatched to the marsh, 
 and they had supped on cheese. 
 
 The garden was not very gay that night. The very 
 birds seemed too dull to sing. The only alive thing about 
 the place appeared to be a brown owl which hooted sadly 
 from the door-step of his disorderly house. 
 
 The heavy air slammed down upon Joan's head like a 
 lid. But she forgot her aches presently when she began 
 to think of London. 
 
 London held everything, and she and George stood now 
 upon the threshold of that Empire; and then her radiant 
 face had turned to behold George, in anything but an 
 imperial mood, advancing up the path. 
 
 He brightened at sight of her, and without a word put 
 an open letter into her hand. It was a brief announce- 
 ment of Mr. Abel's death. 
 
 " I'm sorry," again said Joan. She felt in a sort of 
 agony really. She wondered why ; she had respected 
 Mr. Abel sincerely, his admiring reverence for George 
 had always pleased her. 
 
 Otherwise he was an old man throbbing with Parish ; 
 a most haunting mole under his left eye. It had spoilt 
 many a light luncheon for Joan.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 209 
 
 " It's not a matter for sorrow, darling," said George 
 soothingly. " No one could have kept on much longer, 
 few for so long, at the work Abel had to do, without some 
 innermost ideal near and alive, to breathe new life and soul 
 into him, day by day, and keep his lamps alight. He had 
 found this help always in the strong benign influence of 
 his wife. He probably should have attended to his lamps 
 himself," admitted George, " but it's a way a man will 
 fall into at any time, given the chance. And when the 
 kindly hands that have been helping him all his days 
 are suddenly removed, and he finds all the grinding, un- 
 congenial work thrown suddenly upon him as he gets 
 down into the dim valleys of life with failing eyes and 
 tremulous hands why, one can't be sorry that he's 
 reached the great Light at last, and lamp-trimming is, 
 for ever, at an end. He did his best always, and worked 
 hard." 
 
 " And the work is still there as big as when he found 
 it," said Joan, with slowly dilating eyes. 
 
 She saw things in George's face that were slowly turn- 
 ing her into a horrible sort of stone, as full of eyes as a 
 peacock's tail. 
 
 " ' God's in his Heaven,' and there's a fascination in size," 
 said George. 
 
 Directly she saw him she had feared the worst, now she 
 knew it had come. 
 
 Upon occasion Joan's moods could tumble one upon the 
 heels of the other like a rush of great beasts. 
 
 Her state of stone now incontinently precipitated itself 
 into a passion of revolt. George's face meant Aiken ; 
 Aiken meant extinction and outer darkness ; a riot of evil 
 smells ; the end of everything ; a chronic settling down 
 into holiness, an intangible maze of curates, an ocean of 
 beef-tea. All this did his wife see in the poor saint's 
 face. And with London at their feet ! At her feet and 
 George's ! 
 
 The promises upon which she had been feeding herself 
 these three days crumbled to ashes in Joan's hands. They 
 had been full of fire and a towering sublimity, and fell with 
 a mightier force than will lesser structures. For Joan's 
 faith in her husband's possibilities, given opportunity, the 
 one thing lacking, was absolute, and to put bit and bridle
 
 210 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 upon expectations as logical as they were legitimate would 
 have seemed to her to cast a doubt upon George. 
 
 This mood had of late been plentifully watered by the 
 frank admiration of Fred and Heron for George as man 
 and Priest. And Rob's genuine delight in the sonnets had 
 hardened and crystallised her own half vague, dazzled, con- 
 clusions in regard to them. 
 
 Captain Heron Joan knew to be a man of strong in- 
 tellect who had lived amongst men, and he was quite as 
 diffident and as doubtful and bewildered in the presence 
 of spirit as she herself was ; for she had found out a good 
 deal about her visitor in Church. 
 
 " He'd know in an earthly, trustworthy and wholly satis- 
 factory way he'd Know," she often told herself. 
 
 His face, indeed, as he read extracts from George's 
 heaps of MS. the previous night had more than once re- 
 minded her of George himself, with a moustache and a 
 difference. It strengthened her in her belief that he'd 
 know in precisely the right way. 
 
 " And if the genius of George worked like this in a 
 fastidious man, what might it not do with a world that will 
 swallow anything ? " she thought sadly. " Anything in the 
 shape of a clergyman." 
 
 Until felled by the direct blow of a cheese supper, Joan 
 had indeed floated for a full hour that evening in a 
 chariot of fire. 
 
 And now she had come down to one minute of London 
 and an eternity of Aiken. 
 
 George, she reflected, taking in with a gasp the width of 
 his shoulders, had twice the strength of Mr. Abel, and he 
 had held out for five-and-forty years. Joan's wits were 
 in good sound order. But throughout all the turmoils she 
 clung stubbornly to her smile. 
 
 It helped George greatly. 
 
 " It's never the size of anything that can appal one," he 
 persisted, " it's the pettiness." 
 
 " But the bigger a thing the the more pettiness it can 
 gather into the corners," she meekly suggested. 
 
 " The more sun one can let in to clear it out," he 
 cheerily explained. " Don't you think it's rather a com- 
 fort that Aiken, as you guessed at once, has been chosen 
 for us; that it's a leading we must obey? We shouldn't
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 211 
 
 have chosen it. It is hard to lose this." He looked 
 greedily out through the beautiful purple of the evening. 
 " But we can't all be swallows flying south." 
 
 There was a world of tenderness in George's face as 
 he watched the wonderful reticent dignity in the girl's 
 bearing, her resolution against any babble of vain words. 
 " Thank God I've got myself a bit in hand. I can help 
 her perhaps," thought he. 
 
 " This is the one thing," he said, with extraordinary 
 gentleness, " in which we must be parted for just a little, 
 you and I, but we'll soon come together again. I got 
 through this part yesterday, more or less. It will come 
 to you to-morrow, the whisper the stir, the stress. It's 
 in the blood of all of us. It's driven some of us to the 
 ends of the earth, and a few of us not far from Heaven. 
 And the women travel always in the van. It's the way 
 of the English. It's not a noteworthy journey that we've 
 got to go together, dear, nor is it very rosy with hope," he 
 said, " but we know wherein our help lieth." 
 
 George brought out his morsels of consolation absently, 
 at random, for his own soothing as well as hers. 
 
 First it was her pain alone that filled him, but side by 
 side with her, as usual, they melted and mixed, her pain 
 and his, and his by the admixture of her's had grown a 
 thousand-fold. 
 
 " So this is the great Act of Renunciation. This is 
 Crucifixion," thought Joan, " the sort of thing I have 
 often longed for. I used to see George in all the tor- 
 tures ; boiling in oil like St. John ; on the cross on his 
 head like St. Peter, transfixed with darts like St. Sebastian. 
 It would have seemed like an insult to George to spare him 
 anything. I used really to enjoy it. It seemed so 
 splendid to be a small part of such immense greatness. 
 One felt so thoroughly in the midst of things ; and now 
 now it's come it's grown dull. George once on your 
 mind as the centre of a brilliant crowd, you can't get 
 him right you can't sink him in soup-tickets, and goose- 
 clubs." 
 
 She recalled suddenly a long exhortation of poor, tired, 
 old Abel upon the subject of a goose-club delivered ser- 
 monically to a dazed young 'Varsity man throbbing with 
 high purpose. 
 
 14*
 
 212 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " He left the next week, the poor young man," she 
 thought, with a sympathetic sigh, and looked up to see 
 George's face turned away from her, full of a pain she had 
 never before beholden in it. 
 
 She paused breathless. 
 
 " George George is also dying for London," she 
 thought, cold with awe. " That young man was a coward, 
 and George oh ! he's sickeningly right I wonder if he 
 guesses if he possibly could guess how I feel I've smiled 
 so carefully." 
 
 All Joan's other dreads were now paralysed in the 
 overmastering one of being ineffectual to George in a 
 great moment. 
 
 And meanwhile the devil was at George's elbow show- 
 ing him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of 
 them, filling his poet's soul with an inextinguishable loath- 
 ing for Aiken. 
 
 The logic of Satan was magnificent, and side by side 
 with it ran Heron's words, " A sense of duty is not always 
 safe in the hands of women and Priests." Women and 
 Priests ! Was the partnership founded upon a sneer 
 thus to be an eternal one ? Were they, the minds of priests 
 and women, sealed in common, that they should fail to 
 see things as good men and true, see them ? 
 
 The difficult path need not necessarily be the right one. 
 The first leading was not invariably the true one. 
 
 George shook and trembled in the cold blast of doubt. 
 
 Was this mighty sacrifice after all the mere, morbid, pur- 
 poseless whipping of a back unfitted to fleshly lusts ? a 
 playing with martyrdom? 
 
 Given subtle hearts and strong brains to deal with, a 
 man with a multiplicity of gifts could do anything. A 
 man could touch the men who think sharper than any 
 poem. His life could live longer amongst them, his 
 memory smell sweeter. 
 
 With such people where one gift failed, the others could 
 be brought into play. 
 
 At Aiken all this would go to waste. One arm must 
 wither for the want of use whilst the other struck in- 
 effectual strokes. 
 
 The devil made wise by his long acquaintance with the 
 old Adam, seeing the time ripe for it, here shot into
 
 HE FOE GOD ONLY. 213 
 
 George's tired heart a dart upon which he had not yet 
 ventured. 
 
 " If only Joan would resist," he suddenly found himself 
 thinking. " Is she would plead herself the child ! " 
 
 George was no more than man, less indeed, he admitted 
 with some honest wisdom, being a poet, Joan could be 
 no more than woman. 
 
 Joan Joan should give the casting vote. 
 
 George turned upon her, a great demand in his face. 
 
 And then Joan forgot everything forgot even her child, 
 and thought only of the greatness of George ; the great- 
 ness that under all conditions it was hers to uphold. 
 
 The set-apartness of George, his aloofness from common 
 earth and common men, the things that so often had 
 lurked, a bitter sob, in Joan's carnal heart, now flew out 
 and about George's head, a flock of white doves chal- 
 lenging to the right this poor little Pagan. 
 
 " Priests and women," George was thinking in the 
 moment of silence. His soul was red-hot with wrath, torn 
 with ambition, rent in twain with the throbbing of earthly 
 desire, his heart was sick for himself and for Joan. His 
 manhood was all blown to pieces in the wild storm of his 
 youth. 
 
 " Priests and women," he thought again as he waited 
 hanging upon a woman's last words. 
 
 The words were not ready yet for a minute, but Joan's 
 hand went out to him, it rested, cool and light, upon his, 
 and upon the happiest inspiration of her whole life ; sud- 
 denly Joan began to laugh softly. 
 
 Her laugh acted like good wine upon the stricken 
 man. 
 
 " George, don't think I'm horrid," she said at last, " I'm 
 not really. But the actual fact of Aiken was like running 
 up against a wall. I think it sort of stunned me. Aiken's 
 a a facer," said she, quoting Fred. " But now it's faced 
 we'll recover in time. You'd have to do right in the end, 
 of course, so it was much better to go straight at it. I 
 can't get used to Aiken yet but if you did wrong oh ! 
 George ! if you did wrong ! Just now when you suffered 
 horribly oh ! I saw how could you expect to deceive 
 me ? Were you thinking I was going to fail you ? " 
 
 " You," he faltered, " my very dearest ! No ! "
 
 214 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 He paused to gather words in which to make his con- 
 fession to her, but upon the threshold of his disclosure 
 he paused. Why should be burthen and distress her with 
 his loads ? Why heap his pain upon the top of hers ? 
 
 The bald, brutal fact of his cowardice could only tear 
 and torment her, rob her of her courage. And he could 
 take care of his own repenting. 
 
 Had he but known it, the recital of this very mean 
 moment in the life of a saint would have been of the 
 greatest assistance to the heathen heart of that saint's wife. 
 But thus do men spare women. 
 
 " Do you know," said George, after a long pause, " that 
 you've given the casting vote for Aiken? That this is 
 the moment of my real decision. It's an absolutely right 
 decision. I could never now go back from it. And you're 
 the truest, dearest, wisest wife that ever man had." 
 
 " Oh ! George, if you could see me turned inside out 
 I think, I really think you'd die of it." 
 
 " Beloved ! " 
 
 " I'm not anxious you should, believe me ! I want you 
 always to keep on thinking me just exactly what you think 
 
 I ought to be. It keeps one going " Suddenly she 
 
 strayed away from her subject. 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried, " the roses, how they smell, and the 
 nightingales have begun again." 
 
 " Joan ! " said George in a low voice ; " you haven't once 
 spoken of the boy." 
 
 " The boy's yours as well as mine, part of both of us. 
 We won't speak of him to-night." She drew herself out 
 of George's arms and stood up squarely. 
 
 The thought of little Jasper seemed to undo everything. 
 She resolutely refused to think of him. 
 
 " The roses and the nightingales and the general dis- 
 turbance make one hungry," she said. " The servants are 
 gone to bed, and there are three new laid eggs on the 
 pantry shelf. George ! don't do poetry to-night " her 
 face was irresistible " and we'll boil the eggs and have 
 another supper. They were for you to take to Widow 
 Hone, but she's much better really ; and she beats them 
 up with gin in a green tumbler; it's a dreadful sight. 
 They'll do us much more good if we celebrate the move 
 to Aiken in them."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 215 
 
 " I think we may devour the eggs with a clear con- 
 science, and let the Widow Hone temper her gin with 
 water for once," said George, rousing himself. 
 
 And together they had a merry meal laid out at random 
 upon the snowy kitchen table. 
 
 But just in the middle Joan experienced a moment of 
 sadness, so profound that she simply had to do something 
 to scotch it, so that it did not spread to George. 
 
 A sudden invincible desire to snatch the dull hideous- 
 ness out of the horizon out of the atmosphere to 
 dramatise, so to speak, this abominable act of renunciation, 
 seized Joan. 
 
 She threw thought, regret, fear, despair to the winds, 
 took hold of the sceptre of fascination given to each woman 
 at birth and mostly mislaid the one sceptre to which a 
 tired world will always bow gleefully and wielded it like 
 a queen. 
 
 She moved, bewitched, dominated George. 
 
 She lifted him out of the slough into which in each 
 silence he kept slipping back, and his splendid trust in 
 himself restored, she began to amuse him. 
 
 She drew upon parts of herself that had, save uncon- 
 sciously, when with Heron, not yet seen the light. She 
 unearthed unexpected bits of George, and the laughter of 
 the two rippled through the silent house. 
 
 But the dark places of the earth held unspeakable 
 paralysing horrors for Joan. And they oh ! but they 
 grew in spite of all her efforts, they grew. To save her- 
 self she must make another effort to throw upon the 
 darkness some artificial light of her own generating. 
 
 She would see just to what extent she could move 
 George. She would try experiments. It was a wild game 
 of a wild heart, and Joan played it magnificently. 
 
 Whilst George gave himself up to the charm of it and 
 basked in its renewing glow. 
 
 Joan seemed to strip Aiken of its worst horrors. 
 
 " I could make him do anything," she said, as she went 
 at last tiredly up the stairs. " A woman could make a 
 man do anything once she knows how. Now I've learnt, 
 
 and I could make George give up Aiken " She paused 
 
 abruptly. " And I feel like Herodias. But I don't think 
 that even Herodias would have asked George for John
 
 216 HE FOE GOD ONLY. 
 
 the Baptist's head on a charger. No thanks, however, to 
 
 her, it's because he's George. I wonder " she paused, 
 
 her foot upon the last step, " I wonder what George would 
 think if he knew I could possibly feel like that sort of 
 woman. It's been a curious evening. I'm glad I didn't 
 cry. But to be Herodias, and I George's wife ! It's odd ! " 
 
 Jasper was moaning in his sleep softly, Joan went in and 
 crouched down beside his cot, and in the sob of a sorrow- 
 ful little mother she cast out Herodias. 
 
 Joan upon the side of the angels was a bulwark of 
 strength that night to George as he wrestled with God 
 because of his back-sliding. His victory came only with 
 the dawn, but he was not too tired even then to write down 
 hastily, " A thought upon a perfect wife." 
 
 The heart-beat of a saint in four lines. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 So George, Joan, and the Sonnets went forth into the great 
 world, and the two old friends, when not panting in the wild 
 wake of Jasper minor, sat together by the fire to deplore 
 George's latest and ultimate folly. 
 
 Joan, against all protest, had gone townward, clothed by 
 Miss Rebecca's bounty in purple and fine linen, fashioned 
 through Beatrice's intervention, by an excellent dressmaker. 
 
 Miss Rebecca's stern conviction that in thus doing she 
 was but casting flowers upon another grave, threw at first 
 a lurid shadow upon the gifts, and spoilt their freshness. 
 But for once, in a disappointing life, Hope gave regally all 
 she had promised, and in a day the color and delight were 
 back again in all the garments, and London seemed to 
 Joan to be humming with the joys of Paradise. 
 
 The flat above the Embankment had been bequeathed 
 to Heron by an uncle who liked Life well. It held many 
 things for the pleasure of a man's body; more for the con- 
 tentment of his mind. And below him, for his soul's sake, 
 flowed the River, which to him who has ears to hear, holds 
 the clues to all the stories of all the world.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 217 
 
 Several of George's old friends found them out, and a 
 selected few of Beatrice's. 
 
 And those Heron brought he took good care should be 
 of the best. 
 
 Fred, fresh with perennial youth, and laden with roses, 
 became part of the household. 
 
 In a week, the Bishop came in and out, regardless of 
 time or season. He had not yet made up his mind which 
 of the two young people he best liked. But since he feared 
 most for Joan, he came, perhaps, oftener to see her. 
 
 His friendship for George had a more personal and inti- 
 mate savour. 
 
 Having considered the young man officially, so to speak, 
 he made his reverent obeisance before the fineness and 
 rarity of his soul as priest ; he then plunged into his sonnets, 
 ransacked the drawer which held the stock-in-trade for more, 
 and went ravenously, breathlessly, through every least last 
 scrawl. 
 
 Whereupon he renewed his youth, forgot Theodosia, his 
 wife, now prancing round under the lash of a Theosophy, 
 which in the hands of active Western femininity had lost 
 all its mighty calm, and took up his pen again. 
 
 But those lost things come not back. 
 
 The Bishop worked off his despair in a fierce polemic 
 against commercial immorality, a subject which needed all 
 the language at his disposal, from which yet he conscien- 
 tiously conceived that he could exclude all personal feel- 
 ing. 
 
 For in spite of his episcopal income, owing to Theodosia, 
 and a trustful heart with a fatal inability to say " no " to a 
 sad countenance, he was as poor as a Jesuit 
 
 His resignation he threw into his warm, ungrudging 
 praise of George's work, his wise admonishings, his practical 
 counsels. 
 
 Two or three of the poems struck him as incomparable, 
 so he had carried them off to read again. They were bright 
 with some light from elsewhere, and thrilling with the red 
 life of earth; the red thrilling life that ran through every 
 line of them. They were warm with fire stolen from 
 Heaven ; of a more genial and human glow than any beside 
 which he had been vainly trying to thaw his frozen heart 
 for many a chilled year.
 
 218 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 He now stood in the doorway of Joan's drawing-room, a 
 bundle of papers in his hand, watching Joan wielding her 
 new sceptre in a small and pleasant crowd. 
 
 George caught up in some Paradise not yet open to the 
 public, stood in the window. 
 
 " It's she who's brought in this engaging element of 
 earth," said John Hilary to himself, " without her it would 
 have been too fine-drawn for ' human nature's daily needs.' 
 No earthly publisher, however high-minded, can consider 
 Angels' food, pure and simple, with the Trade in the state 
 it is. It's her touch that will secure fame for him, 
 possibly an income for the Aiken crusade, or crucifixion. 
 Which?" 
 
 He went over and touched George on the shoulder. 
 
 "Two monthlies will be out in less than a week, and 
 these two things of yours are going into them. The 
 editors thought it pretty sharp practice on my part sug- 
 gested next month. But I had 'em on toast. They owe 
 me something. I've given decent death and burial to a 
 score of honest jingles for both gentlemen, and written many 
 a courteous epitaph for the consolement of valuable sub- 
 scribers. They think well of my services, and I never press 
 for cheques. What about putting your own name to 
 these?" 
 
 " I hadn't got to that," said George, trying to steady his 
 voice, which fairly trembled with exultant delight. 
 
 " If you hadn't I feel certain your wife has reached it 
 long ago. She has a constitutional distaste for lights hid 
 under bushels. Also if a man believes in himself anony- 
 mity is a pose. The Church, moreover, needs the spur of 
 genius, and it's an abiding joy to whip the Laity in fair 
 fight at anything." The Bishop in his unregenerate days 
 had been the best boxer at Oxford. " So in they go, name 
 and profession both. When I've finished planting these, 
 I'll come back to dinner, and for fee as literary agent, let 
 me break the news to Mrs. George." 
 
 So Joan woke up one day to find her dream fulfilled. 
 
 George was the Coming Man, and his words were work- 
 ing in the hearts and brains of men. 
 
 Although, so far, they had not reached women. 
 
 This gave calmness to his first fame, and a reverent 
 decorousness that pleased Joan. It would have spoilt every-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 219 
 
 thing to see women the women who buzz buzzing around 
 George. 
 
 She thought of Mrs. Worrall, and shivered. 
 
 But presently a few ladies selected by Heron did come, 
 and then Joan's cup was full. 
 
 They were stately people with the grand air, and their 
 ways and words were made perfect with kindness. 
 
 In the wife of the young poet whom Heron had scarcely 
 mentioned, they found a distinct relief. 
 
 In their aloof, gracious way, they had quailed before their 
 private conception of this young person. 
 
 Joan, however, by this time, was aware of her power, and 
 could forget herself by habit, and so was ready for any 
 woman in London. She brought all her wonted interests 
 in amongst them, and followed them, as unruffled and un- 
 assuming in demeanour as a brown bird in her own hedge, 
 in the presence of kings. 
 
 Captain Heron's friends seemed to her the easiest and 
 most reassuring women she had yet met. They thoroughly 
 understood George's sonnets, and made acute guesses at 
 George himself. 
 
 It was the most natural thing in the world to be with 
 them, and to be happy in their presence. 
 
 But it was the possibilities for sadness that these bright- 
 eyed women detected in the young wife which rivetted 
 their attention upon her. Otherwise, she had, perhaps, 
 suggested rural insipidity. This was the last touch de- 
 manded of the True Romance, and directly she had got 
 over her delicate excitement in regard to the new poet of 
 the Spirit, more than one grand and gracious dame was 
 quite prepared to " take up " the more earthly half of the 
 Prophet, in the shape of his wife, who, judging by all 
 authenticated precedent, would surely need the shepherding 
 of one who knows Man. 
 
 But, meanwhile, they were moved, one and all, by another 
 wistfulness common to all their kind. 
 
 No woman breathing who has once touched life but is 
 waiting for her one sermon in Church, Chapel, Meeting- 
 house, Freethought Hall, or the great Out-of-doors. 
 
 A few hear it early, and comforted, go softly all their 
 days. 
 
 Others miss it at the beginning, and reject henceforth,
 
 220 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 with bitter arrogance, the stones given them in lack of 
 bread. 
 
 The great remainder may haply fill their aching void in 
 some happier Elsewhere. 
 
 But every woman who met George, spiritually discerned 
 in him that for which she had been waiting all her life, 
 and panted to behold him in a pulpit. 
 
 He was flooded with flattering requests to flesh his maiden 
 sword upon select congregations. 
 
 Fortunately for himself, George never yet stood in a 
 pulpit burthened by the yoke of himself. He took care to 
 fill himself beforehand with all the knowledge he could 
 hold, and being a poet, selected and polished his words 
 like gems. Thus faithfully prepared, he frequently forgot 
 his notes, and the gift of tongues had never yet been 
 withheld him. In London, as in his country parish, he 
 calmly paused, when he had finished, to search the faces of 
 his congregation, and, as in the case of his song, would 
 inevitably have begun again, had his eyes beholden either 
 misinterpretation or blank space. 
 
 He descended the steps of Church or Cathedral with as 
 high and simple a confidence in God and in himself as God's 
 Vicar, as he had mounted them, and even upon the morning 
 of his first startling success, was in no sort of way lifted up 
 personally. 
 
 Had, however, the ovation for which he looked, not 
 appeared in that sea of faces brilliant with critical intellect, 
 he would have felt both fool and traitor. 
 
 But Joan experienced all the delirious exultation of a 
 popular preacher. Her passion of overmastering pride 
 nothing could hold down. 
 
 She betrayed every atom of her to the Bishop, and proved 
 beyond question to the appraising matrons that they had 
 judged aright. Here was precisely the wife of a Rising 
 Saint. They would have no need to regret having stretched 
 forth to her the helping hand. 
 
 For once was virtue justified of herself. 
 
 Each lady looked up Church Patrons in Whitaker, and set 
 the ball rolling in Club and Palace. 
 
 Amused, exasperated, distressed, George saw what was 
 afoot, and held his peace. The matter of Aiken had been 
 decided. Until directly assailed upon a fixed decision, he
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 221 
 
 had no need to discuss the wisdom or the folly of it. Their 
 wounds, both his and Joan's, were yet too raw to be torn 
 open again. 
 
 And being young and in magnificent health, the spirit of 
 "let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die," 
 contended in the sub-consciousness of George, with the 
 legititimate strivings of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 George was wonderfully human, those weeks of his two 
 great successes. 
 
 And when forced upon his thoughts, even Aiken he 
 could face boldly. Fortified by the pride of life, the joy 
 and stimulation of a one-handed big fight that would never 
 fail him, the delight of conquest, the fructifying impulse 
 of any crowd, there was a sense of invulnerability about 
 George. Above all was he uplifted by the growing con- 
 viction that his creative power was not founded upon any 
 illusion ; that it would bear the brunt of strain and stress, 
 and was no vain shuttle-cock of circumstances. Aiken was 
 a big dragon in a man's path, but the young Vicar had an 
 iron constitution, a digestion that feared nothing, high 
 faith, and a wife who knew what he wanted. 
 
 To Joan, with no constitution to speak of, a squeamish 
 stomach, her faith founded upon George, who did not 
 know in the least what she wanted, or how passionately she 
 desired it, Aiken was unsoftened by one alleviating cir- 
 cumstance. 
 
 And through all the glow and glamour of her little hour, it 
 now began to gnaw again, a hoary, rapacious, reprobate old 
 fox. 
 
 Heron found her out one day when she and Fred were 
 going over the very newest opera. 
 
 George was absorbed in the Bishop, so practically there 
 was nothing left for Captain Heron but to observe George's 
 wife. 
 
 He had never forgotten the revelation of intoxicating 
 gaiety that had distinguished Mrs. Winnington's first venture 
 into comic song. It was a chastened voice that now trilled 
 out the measures. An odd regret breathed through all the 
 merry song. It struck Heron that the singer was not un- 
 like a swan saying a last good-bye at the beginning of a long 
 life instead of at the end. 
 
 An uncomfortable innovation. He wondered if the girl
 
 222 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 had herself any inkling of the weird suggestion. It was be- 
 coming a constant question with him, how much Joan really 
 did know or apprehend. 
 
 Some women, he was aware, can slip into a life of self- 
 sacrifice, blindfold. They are frequently tender-eyed, these 
 biddable souls, but they do not, perhaps, quite realize their 
 pain until it kills them. 
 
 Others go wide-eyed, and anticipate every pang. But 
 their eyes under no circumstances show pink rims, and they 
 keep proudly to the end, all the pleasant curves of happi- 
 ness. 
 
 This girl belonged to neither variety of type. He could 
 not place her, and baffled at last by vain imaginings, he 
 turned his thoughts merely to amusing her, and then and 
 there arranged an evening at a roaring Farce for her, and 
 a supper at The Savoy. 
 
 It was from this day that he fell persistently to blotting 
 out Aiken for George's wife, and helping her to grasp life 
 with both hands. 
 
 Once started it was an engrossing game. Gaiety, he soon 
 found, was the natural element of the Vicar's wife, and as 
 a pleasure-seeker she was tireless. 
 
 More than once when Captain Heron perceived George's 
 eyes dwelling, dim with unseeing love upon his wife, 
 breathless with carnal enjoyment, he could have kicked the 
 fellow. The next minute he was, however, just as ready 
 to kick himself for so irrational a prompting. 
 
 Poet, preacher, priest and man, wrapped up all in one 
 envelope, cannot be expected to plumb the frivolity of a 
 woman, as a sinful man, guiltless of aliases may. Some- 
 times Rob called Philosophy to his aid. "A girl," he 
 argued, "who could subsist spiritually upon the crumbs 
 from any man's table, given an ordinary husband, would be 
 an ordinary woman." 
 
 But even when her seams went crooked at the waist, Mrs. 
 George had never looked precisely as one expects either a 
 born worker or a Vicar's wife to look. 
 
 There was a fascinating disturbance in the contemplation 
 of the girl, and the yawning chasm somewhere ahead of 
 her that invariably blocked his view. It was, he was per- 
 suaded, quite in the running that some day she would stand 
 upon the near edge of this chasm, George upon the farther,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 223 
 
 and nothing but some bridge, strong with humanity, would 
 bring the two together again. 
 
 It was a profitless study. Whenever he possibly could 
 do so, Heron left it and amused Joan. 
 
 But the clock of time clicked on, and having gone to- 
 gether through a bushel of ideas for poems, and skirmished 
 over many a sermon, one day George and the Bishop, of 
 one accord, paused, laughed, stretched, and looked in each 
 other's faces. 
 
 " Now," said the Bishop, " we'd better get through with 
 Aiken." 
 
 " Go ahead," said George. " However well disposed to- 
 wards procrastination, we couldn't put it off much longer." 
 
 The Bishop laid his hands upon a bundle of papers. 
 
 " This," said he, " this part of you is outside the ques- 
 tion. It won't suffer. It would ripen and bring forth fruit 
 in a dungeon. Nothing but 'that which cometh from 
 within ' will interfere with your inspiration." He paused to 
 look at George, his acute, ugly face quick with life. 
 
 " You can't escape from heritage. I wonder what your 
 weak point is." 
 
 " I thought you'd have found it out by this time." 
 
 " Don't underrate my acuteness. I've found out scores. 
 Man ! you're a poet ! But so far It has escaped me. 
 When It appears it will be ferociously weak. There's a 
 great deal of the animal as yet undisturbed under 
 that soul of yours, George. And dogs, however will- 
 ing to let 'em lie we are, won't always oblige us in that 
 particular. Look at your habit of devouring anything set 
 before you without turning a hair. I saw you last night 
 consume English melted butter, and burnt at that, with the 
 placid content of a Newfoundland dog." 
 
 The Bishop, in order to thwart his natural leanings to- 
 wards aesthetic gormandising, supported life mostly on 
 chops. 
 
 " When it appears," he pursued, with serenity, " it will be 
 a crude weakness that will astonish the lot of us, yourself 
 most of all. It's difficult to defend yourself against an un- 
 known adversary, still less to scotch him with prayer, so for 
 the present we'll leave him. Never be too cock-sure, 
 however, till he's shewn his cloven hoof. If a thing's 
 strong in a strong man its bound to crop up at the most
 
 224 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 inconvenient moment. ' Lest I myself should be a cast- 
 away.' That's the most profoundly sad, the most pro- 
 foundly human thing St. Paul ever said." 
 
 " I wonder how you found out all this," said George. 
 " I've known this long time that I have forces somewhere 
 about me that only need some touch, not yet given, to come 
 out and raven." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the Bishop, after a pause, " you're both very 
 young. And this brings us to the woman inevitable in 
 every business. Nothing will keep her out," he mused 
 sorrowfully, " nothing, Celibacy least of all. Throws but a 
 more lurid light upon her, that refuge of cowards, thus 
 fixing her significance. Let us look upon this fact as 
 proven, else we'll never get on at all. As for St. Paul's 
 advice, the value of it is somewhat bounded by time and 
 climate. We never allow enough to social and climatic 
 differences in our interpretations of Scripture Judaism and 
 orientalism in the blood will colour the thought of the writers. 
 
 " When St. Paul, for example," said John absently, 
 " penned exhortations to those weaker brethren possessed of 
 more than one wife, it was, no doubt, a facer to some. 
 Time has put all that right. ' Be a ruler in his own house- 
 hold ' " he murmured, in the sympathy of a true friendship, 
 forgetting George. " St. Paul, you will admit," he presently 
 resumed, " had not encountered the Invincible Modern." 
 
 George, moving to put his manuscript away, recalled the 
 divine, for an instant, to current events. 
 
 " This is, however, not the point. Though when you 
 come to think of it," said John Hilary, again wandering off 
 suddenly, " there is a new spirit in the youth of the present- 
 day woman, a more urgent, rampant, rapacious awakening 
 of enterprise in all her senses than there used to be; she 
 likes her air in big draughts, her light in torrents, her 
 exercise in avalanches. There's something too warm and 
 free, and well yes fierce, running in her blood for the 
 trivial task any longer to satisfy. She'll perform it possibly 
 more faithfully, more generously, more devotedly than her 
 maiden aunt, but it will bore the younger woman, as it 
 never did her elder. Yes ! there's a violence in the emo- 
 tions of the young woman now-a-days ; a demand that never 
 troubled her grandmother. If it did the lady had inherited 
 her spaciousness of outlook, and probably became a maker
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 225 
 
 of history or a marrer. In those easier days that sort of 
 thing was bred only amidst grand airs. Now we find it 
 in villas. That's what makes the crucial difference. To be 
 good, in short, has grown as big a grind, as subtle a puzzle 
 for the average homely woman, as it has always been for 
 women born in the purple, and for all men. The bit jerks 
 at her mouth now, as it has always been jerking at ours, 
 and we've the benefit of ancestral experiences which she 
 lacks. While the current girl is having her character shaped 
 and fitted and, after all, she doesn't get it thrown in with 
 a white dress on her coming-out night nor is it a usual 
 wedding gift, with all the impatience of growth in her, 
 she can't have altogether a rosy time of it, nor can the man 
 who undertakes to help her with the fitting, expect to come 
 off scot free. 
 
 " Platitudes all, no doubt," sighed John, " but they some- 
 how crop up directly clerical life takes the field. The 
 meanness, the ugliness, the dullness inseparable from the 
 active doing of good of the clerical life, must fall heavy 
 upon the modern woman. How far do you propose to let 
 this inevitable fact influence your future?" said he, his 
 voice like a pistol shot. 
 
 " Not at all," said George, simply. " How could I ? 
 Besides, not one of you quite knows Joan. If I wanted to 
 turn back, with her beside me, I couldn't. She is not the 
 woman to whom you could offer the second best, with the 
 best within your grasp. All I have to give I give to Joan 
 just as much as I give it to God. Any man who lives with 
 Joan must be half a Pagan. Joan is natural in everything, 
 so of course she's as full of natural desires as any other 
 pretty young woman. She is pretty," said he, with a proud, 
 boyish laugh. " You must see she is, and she feels things 
 with extraordinary strength. We shouldn't exactly have 
 chosen Aiken, either of us, but if I did violence to the best 
 in both of us, funking this obvious duty, it would have a 
 disastrous effect upon Joan. She'd say very little in either 
 case. Now her power of silence is like a draught of wine 
 I can conceive of circumstances in which it might become 
 a draught of gall." 
 
 " In either case you are, indeed, blessed," said John 
 Hilarv, fervently. 
 
 " This present wild dissipation is a temptation after all, 
 
 '5
 
 226 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 into which we've thrust our heads, both of us," continued 
 George. " The reaction will wring our withers, but the 
 work there won't lack either spur or incentive and the 
 evenings will always be our own." 
 
 The Bishop's impatience melted to wistfulness as he 
 looked at the lights pricking up in George's face. 
 
 " I feel as though I had an unfailing spring of good things 
 in me," said George. "All the flattery I get here might 
 dry it up. Then where should either of us be ? " 
 
 " You have good sporting blood in your veins," said the 
 Bishop promptly. "You'll enjoy fighting, and with a 
 woman who knows when and how to hold her tongue, a 
 man can do anything. It's not for you I'm afraid." 
 
 George frowned in his quick, sensitive way. " I'm bound 
 to Aiken." There was a hint of protest in his voice. " I 
 promised Abel. I know I can do my work." 
 
 " The gift of poetry will always gild your horizon," said 
 the Bishop drily. 
 
 " The sublime and gorgeous selfishness of a poetic saint 
 whose wife has the gift of silence is a thing not 
 to be approached by a mere Bishop," thought John Hilary 
 sadly. " It's an exquisite temptation to any man, that 
 lovely gift of silence. What man, born of woman, could 
 withstand it? I'd better leave it all to God and the 
 awful hand of Time. It's not for me even to counsel him 
 not to feed that unfortunate girl on cheese. I can only 
 hope that Robert, in the chivalry of twenty-eight, has ex- 
 aggerated in this regard. I'll make a last effort, however, 
 and pass on to curates. I see he means to crucify her also 
 in that connection." 
 
 " Let me strongly advise you, George, against total 
 abstinence," said the Bishop in his most practical voice. 
 " Take good Scotch whiskey regularly yourself, and give 
 your wife port." 
 
 George laughed with devastating blitheness. " She 
 wouldn't take it." 
 
 " That would depend entirely upon how you offered it 
 to her," said John sharply. " She is a woman singularly 
 open to reason." 
 
 George looked surprised. " I've been noticing how very 
 little wine women do take now-a-days." 
 
 " They have the stimulation of new frocks and a con-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 227 
 
 stant succession of wide-awake idle men to amuse 'em," 
 snapped the Bishop. " In giving this advice, I'm in no 
 sort of way tampering with the tillage of the Lord's vine- 
 yard." 
 
 " There are so many stimulants." 
 
 " There are. You're chock full of them, of one sort or 
 another. However, fling my suggestion on the heap with 
 the other platitudes." 
 
 " Your suggestion throws up Joan in quite a new light. 
 That in which she's stood hitherto has been been in- 
 comparable." 
 
 "A little sound port, properly applied, won't dim the 
 translucence of any light, I'll have you to know ; and will 
 throw nothing out of focus. The weak spot that will 
 undo you for a season isn't connected apparently with over 
 indulgence of the Burning Problem of the Church. What 
 about the curate question ? Have you faced that ? ' 
 
 The glory fled from George's face. 
 
 " Now for a touch of his human quality," thought the 
 Bishop, sitting up briskly. 
 
 " It's very difficult to decide," said George, with hesi- 
 tation. " Your one desire in a parish like Aiken is to form 
 a harmonious stimulating circle for yourself " 
 
 " How do things there now stand ? " 
 
 " We've got a good home-spun man, with a weakness 
 about the knees, and a melodramatic gift, which he's using 
 to the immense advantage of a nest of slums. He grates 
 like ashes upon your teeth." 
 
 " And he'll be the death of Mrs. George, honest man ! 
 Never mind, stick to him. It's a burning and a searing 
 question, that of curates," proceeded the Bishop dreamily. 
 " The fly in many a pot of very precious ointment. I've 
 never faced an ordination yet, but I'd have gone back with 
 thankfulness to the day of small things when I did minor 
 chores upon those occasions, swept up the episcopal hearth, 
 so to speak. When I was a younger man the peace and 
 joy in the Laying On of hands became often, by reason 
 of curates, a chastening rod ; and formed an almost in- 
 superable barrier between me and the Higher Aids, but 
 I hope." said John Hilary meekly, "that to some extent 
 .1 have overcome this stubborn resistance of the flesh to 
 exterior influences. 
 
 15*
 
 228 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " I have never ordained any man of whose intrinsic 
 worth I have not been firmly convinced. I have not spared 
 myself in striving to do each man justice, but God forgive 
 me, for many years of my life it went very hard with me 
 to ordain some of the men I have ordained. God may 
 have chosen the good and faithful servant ; I have never 
 had any doubt in my own mind but that He did, but 
 there's never any knowing where man won't plank him 
 down. If this poor fellow suits the place, keep him. 
 It's not your harmony he's got to promote; your soul to 
 cater for. The spiritual palate of the public is peculiar, 
 but it's due a big voice in the matter." 
 
 " You are absolutely right," said George. " His dramatic 
 gift is nevertheless astonishingly wearing." ^ 
 
 " Don't I know it ? It's a feature of the modern curate 
 of a certain type. It's difficult, in some cases, to take the 
 view of St. Peter who after all was primitive man and 
 fit it comfortably to the squeamish and cultured stomach 
 of the twentieth century. It's a dispensation that 
 searches the reins, but one that's got to be faced and 
 accepted. I have often wondered if the growth of the 
 Higher Education of women may not help us in the future 
 in this matter. In considering the curates that have 
 passed through my hands, I have often speculated as to 
 the type of women, who having had the misfortune to bear 
 a certain order of child, should involve others in it by 
 urging the unfortunate half-baked young person into a 
 Church sighing for perfection. It's invariably the woman, 
 I find, who does the family weeding." 
 
 " In this," suggested George modestly, humouring the 
 mood ecclesiastical, " the hockey-stick girl might come in 
 useful." 
 
 " I doubt it. The indifferent wielding of a hockey-stick 
 seems unfortunately frequently to interfere with the 
 efficient handling of a baby. However that's neither 
 here nor there. 
 
 " This weird, humorous religion of the man now under 
 discussion is a deep-seated sign of the times produced by 
 some need of the times. The unpleasing necessity has 
 I have no doubt whatsoever that it has been of the 
 Church's making most necessary social atrocities have 
 been and it's but fair our withers should wring for it.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 229 
 
 The other day a zealous layman came to me in regard 
 to a young curate who gives weekly discourses to the 
 youths in a big town parish. 
 
 " The Vicar has dropped into a sleep so sweet and 
 sound that the Episcopal staff, howsoever actively applied, 
 has hitherto failed to rouse him from it. And in this 
 matter/' said John Hilary, with unction, " I do not think 
 that I have fallen short. My lay friend came armed with 
 proofs. The addresses were undoubtedly a soul-saddening 
 farrago of wit and wisdom, perilously hovering upon the 
 brink of blasphemy yet keeping always, as by a miracle, 
 to the hither side of the precipice. My heart bled for 
 artistic England, but it was wit and it was wisdom. It was, 
 moreover, I might almost say, glorified by a sincerity that 
 could appeal to the heart even of a hooligan, by a love so 
 burning, pure, and lavish that it must pierce^ and warm 
 even his hide-bound soul. Behind all the vulgar 
 grotesquenesses one could see the tears in that young 
 man's soul, and the people felt them. 
 
 " I went down into the lanes and mews of that abomin- 
 able neighbourhood ; there was healthy growth in the faces 
 of the dreadful youth of the place, and a gleam of the 
 happiness for which Christ died and the Church has 
 laboured for so many sad centuries. Drunkenness, vice, 
 loafing had diminished in an amazing way. I found like- 
 wise the expert opinion of the Salvation Army to be in our 
 favour. With a tearful, exasperated, flattering benedic- 
 tion they had delivered up the district to Waghorn and 
 gone farther afield. I dined later with the Vicar and his 
 curate. He was a young man in regard to whom you have 
 to wrestle with the Lord, not once, but many times, and 
 yet when the Vicar wakes up elsewhere, I'll see that Wag- 
 horn steps into his shoes. Stick to your man if he's fitted 
 to his hole, George. What about the others ? " 
 
 " Two are dull, but suited to the locality. They are 
 faithful workers, with an extraordinary flow of even spirits, 
 and are past masters in apt and pregnant anecdote. Their 
 minds are of the Oiled Feather variety." The Bishop 
 nodded approval. " They are restful in sick rooms," pur- 
 sued George, " and old women delight in them." 
 
 " Keep them," said John Hilary, with a wry face. " The 
 others ? " he inquired sympathetically.
 
 230 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " They could be trained." 
 
 " Then let some one else train them ! Your back isn't 
 broad enough for that last brace. Get one man to leaven 
 the mass so as to save it from itself, and the last choose 
 for your own sake if you can find him. Even our 
 Lord permitted Himself St. John. In the dark places of 
 the earth a man, more especially a poet, needs the help 
 of another man to mop some of the squalor from off his 
 soul. We can't chasten and conquer ourselves back into 
 the arid righteousness of Judaism. It's easy to overstrain 
 any situation. There's a cancerous tendency even in reli- 
 gion, and a good deal of the woman in priest, poet and 
 man. Have any of the young men wives ? " 
 
 " None, thank goodness ! " 
 
 " Directly they acquire them, send them flying. The 
 young ladies likely to be chosen by the first three of your 
 coadjutors would be but a brutal and unnecessary mill- 
 stone around Mrs. George's neck, and warding them off 
 you would put her to much anxiety and inconvenience. 
 The man of culture will have his hands full, as will also 
 the three Leaflet Curates. Your own familiar friend will 
 be too busy hero-worshipping to go wife-hunting." 
 
 The Bishop looked at his watch and sprang to his feet. 
 " Jacob will have to whip up his cattle or I'll never get 
 my sleeves right," cried he in a panic, flinging his gaunt 
 length down the stairs. " Before you're on the Bench, 
 George, make your wife acquire the knack of these sleeves 
 inserting a spring in them cunningly or or a hat pin 
 so that they hang at the first shot. I know one man's wife 
 who does it. To an outsider it's her one virtue. But 
 her husband rises up daily and calls her blessed. Dear 
 me! I'm sorry for Jacob. Haste unbefitting the 
 Episcopal state is abhorrent to his soul. One bars 
 being a perennial source of trial to one's faithful coach- 
 man." 
 
 That evening when the Bishop came to the flat, George 
 was out, and Joan sprang to meet him, a dozen questions 
 in her eyes. 
 
 When he perceived what she was after, the primal 
 impulse of John Hillary was to throw on all his episcopal 
 robes and stand at attention. 
 
 The strivings of Theodosia had permanently unmanned
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 231 
 
 the nerves of the Bishop, but beneath them slumbered his 
 courage, to awaken without fail to the urgent occasion. 
 
 Suddenly he threw off his rags of office, and dropped 
 into his own chair. 
 
 " George is disastrously, sickeningly, sadly and most 
 divinely right throughout, my dear," said he, his face 
 touched with a thousand kindnesses. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Joan slowly, holding her hands together. 
 " How delightfully you put it." 
 
 By a sort of reflex action, the Bishop primmed his mouth 
 and awaited the girl's next move. 
 
 " Oh ! If only you were our Bishop." 
 
 " Even in that case George would still be right." 
 
 " Ah ! But about the curates ? " 
 
 " We've been running through them," said he sorrow- 
 fully, " three are inevitable." 
 
 " You haven't seen them," she murmured, striving for 
 resignation. 
 
 " Haven't I ? I've seen them in their thousands ! There 
 are limits to human endurance, however, George will get 
 two new ones." 
 
 " Oh ! thank you. Thank you most awfully." 
 
 " My dear, wait until you behold them in the flesh." 
 
 " They must they simply must be an improvement. At 
 least you'll come to stay with us." 
 
 " Why naturally." Joan was flushing oddly. The 
 Bishop's whole face threw out nervous enquiry. 
 
 " In in the midst of things I'll be able to tell you just 
 how things curates and all strike me. It will," she 
 explained hurriedly, " be rather like making confession 
 and then one can start fair again." 
 
 " But ? " What was a man to say after all ? He 
 
 held his peace. 
 
 " I couldn't interrupt George, you know," she pursued. 
 " It would be impossible." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " It would spoil his swing," she explained. " George is 
 so different from me. He has no need to be always lifting 
 himself above the poor and the other things by shutting 
 his eyes and ears and nose to nearly everything, and making 
 the rest amuse him. He wouldn't understand at once. 
 Getting at it would worry him immensely."
 
 232 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " In ten years," said John Hilary steadily, " George will 
 take a humorous view of many things and let them drop 
 by the way, which now he carries upon a galled and jaded 
 back to the foot of the Throne." 
 
 " In ten years ! In ten years ! " she murmured under 
 her breath, breathlessly. 
 
 " Women are kittle cattle," thought poor John, " and 
 neither years nor the Episcopacy do much towards eluci- 
 dating them for you." 
 
 " When grinning inside you alone becomes a habit, 
 it seems," said Joan, " to it seems rather to to savour 
 of Satan, don't you think? And yet it does get over 
 a lot of things." 
 
 " It does," said the Bishop. " It's a snare that has often 
 tripped me up. I'll come down to Aiken when I can, and 
 we'll laugh aloud together, you and I, and clear the air. 
 And remember that when a young man is in the very act of 
 running a race he has but little time for wholesome 
 levity," he went on gravely. " Bringing his body into sub- 
 jection, moreover, must inevitably crush many things best 
 left to sprout and spread. But in the end they'll be all 
 the better for the pruning, and you'll have watered every 
 root, don't forget that 
 
 " At what cost," he thought, strangling a sigh. " ' Suffer 
 all things, lest we should hinder the Gospel of Christ,' " 
 he murmured. 
 
 " The sacerdotal habit will crop up," he mused in silence, 
 " but were I to quote it aloud now, it would be quoting to 
 deaf ears. An odd shifting of things to be sure. She's 
 living the religion which one day she will surely feel. 
 Generally it's the other way about, but this, to the carnal 
 mind, is the more attractive method. It's the least feminine, 
 any way, and that's always soothing. 
 
 " ' It were better for me to die than that any man 
 should make my glorying vain.' " This he did quote 
 aloud. 
 
 Joan nodded, her face brightening. 
 
 " Go on," she said. 
 
 "George is right, and as George's wife you also are 
 right. 
 
 " Thirty years ago I also was running this race ; had I 
 had such as you beside me I might have won the prize.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 233 
 
 ' Know ye not that they which run in a race, run all, but 
 one receiveth the prize.' I, however,- am now a Bishop, 
 and George will be the poet I might have been. Aurelius 
 tells us that a man must stand erect, not be kept erect by 
 others, but he didn't mention poets. George and I are of 
 those who require buttressing. But George will reach his 
 aim. 
 
 " He may starve her," he told himself, " body, soul, and 
 spirit, but his aim he'll reach, and any way she's not being 
 starved for an illusion, poor child. Let me recommend 
 you," he gently said, " to accustom your palate to un- 
 attractive food, and to get into the habit of eating any- 
 thing for it's all you'll get." They both looked square 
 at each other, and both laughed merrily. " For the rest," 
 said John, " I can't advise you, and you're quite capable 
 of doing your own thinking. But if ever you want me, 
 send, and I'll come." 
 
 Presently he found himself quoting in the very teeth of 
 Piccadilly traffic, 
 
 " ' Human, yet something which can ne'er 
 Grow sad and wise. ' 
 
 " That's how she might be. As it is the betting is 
 that she may grow sad without the wisdom. She's a poor 
 little thing. One would like to save her from living cheek 
 by jowl with ' The smouldering infelicity ' of man. She 
 hasn't the constitution for sordid tragedy ; if she gets despe- 
 rate, she'll get very desperate indeed. And yet it's all for 
 the good of her soul, no doubt. How interfering we 
 are ! " 
 
 " Ah ! my dear Bishop ! " screamed an admirer into his 
 astonished ear, " I see what you're at, thinking out the 
 sermon that's presently to delight us. I can see it well- 
 ing up in you." 
 
 " Indeed, dear lady, were I to permit it to well over, 
 so to speak, 'tis a sermon that would considerably astonish 
 you."
 
 234 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE elopement of his enchanting, if erring mother had 
 robbed Captain Heron of much. Amongst other pleasant 
 things it had taken with it some of the careless lordliness 
 of the young man's youth, and all its exuberant audacity. 
 It left him, however, simple and courteous in his ways 
 and with woman, no matter what her degree, no matter 
 whether of wise function or orgy, in which she played her 
 part, he was always grave and modest. 
 
 Woman, through his little mother, had become to him 
 a delicate subject, and he treated her delicately. 
 
 To be tried early in the fining pot of affliction gives 
 vogue to a man. Rob had been made the object of mani- 
 fold temptations, and being peculiarly protected had ac- 
 quired an eminently re-assuring presence amongst women. 
 
 Joan's trust and confidence in him was supreme, and to 
 be worshipped, served and amused, seemed to her as 
 natural a part of this wonderful life, as much her right 
 as the equal companionship of George's superb patronesses. 
 The paradise wherein she stood was from everlasting 
 apparently, and that she well became it, she took for 
 granted. It is not to be supposed, however, that anything 
 wonderful had grown up in Joan ; she was, indeed, neither 
 startling nor supreme, and not the least wise. There 
 was the same quaint, gentle, old-fashioned wifeliness about 
 her that had first surprised and arrested both Heron and 
 Fred Thryng, the same unstudied frankness, the same 
 sweet, quick ways, but the enchantment of this moving life 
 had untied the hands of all her faculties, and her tongue 
 had learnt a new wit, her brain a new receptivity; her 
 heart a quickness to feel strange griefs; her voice had
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 235 
 
 lost the sharp touch of Spring in it; there was the youth 
 of the whole world in her laughter. 
 
 To try experiments upon capacity to enjoy so illimitable 
 as Joan's, became an enthralling excitement for her guide 
 into the ways of the new life, and Captain Heron fairly 
 heaped joys upon the girl. 
 
 Her cry the first time she tasted whitebait faded before 
 her mute intoxication in her first opera, and they were 
 both blotted out before her thrilling, throbbing, subdued 
 ecstasy in George as a great Preacher the saint of the 
 moment. 
 
 In three weeks Joan had become partially articulate. 
 She had charm now and sweetness, but her strength lay 
 still upon the knees of the gods waiting for another turn 
 of the great wheel. 
 
 At home, doing her duties and detesting them, she 
 had known her weakness and had often scorned herself 
 as a coward, but here she had forgotten the feeling of 
 cowardice. Now to be afraid seemed an impossible thing. 
 
 It was Heron one evening, oddly enough, who reminded 
 her that once she had been afraid in a dumb vague way, 
 afraid of her own fears, also that the unutterable sensation 
 might return. 
 
 It was a first night at a great theatre, and they were 
 waiting in a cool corridor for the next act. 
 
 " If one could only carry this back with one," she said 
 suddenly, looking round at the brilliant groups of the 
 Select alone admitted into this sanctum. " The stir, the 
 movement in all the surroundings, the extraordinary alive- 
 ness in their quiet faces. You can see the things they're 
 thinking. Look at that man's mouth. It's frightful, but 
 just do look at the corners, they're twisted up with a 
 dozen delightful and terrifying things." 
 
 " They are, by Jove ! He'll give Clows fits to-morrow 
 for that last act." 
 
 " He deserves it," said Joan intolerantly. " The acting 
 was false and bombastic and the actor guessed it. His 
 voice cracked once like a tin kettle. That man there who's 
 going to judge him may be malicious, but he won't scatter 
 his malice foolishly. I I'd like him to see George's 
 poems. I'd I'd rather like him to report one of George's 
 sermons."
 
 236 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Heron chuckled. 
 
 " Reporting sermons isn't in his line exactly, but I be- 
 lieve he might possibly sit still under one of George's." 
 
 " He'd sit still and remember every word of it. He 
 might twist his mouth a little perhaps where George 
 went over his head, and probably at the same moment 
 went wrong," she added serenely, " but he's one of the 
 things I want to carry away. Oh ! who's that other talking 
 to him?" 
 
 " The man who wrote the play with Clows. They'll 
 have their knives in one another directly. They always 
 allow five seconds first to the amenities ha ! now they're 
 at it." 
 
 "Oh! But they do it beautifully, splendidly. They 
 don't notice the gashes, they're each so delighted with 
 the science of them. And they're quite sincere. 
 
 " Now," she cried, " oh ! now two women are coming 
 in. I know one." Joan leaned nearer to whisper. " She 
 came to see George. She didn't make one single mistake 
 about anything. Something George said made her repeat 
 one of the sonnets, every word right. Her eyes were wet 
 and her voice was a wonder. It made a song in my ears 
 for the rest of the day." 
 
 " She's thought to be the proudest woman in London 
 and the most reticent," observed the mentor. 
 
 " She's simple and magnificent," said Joan grandly ; " it's 
 the pride of gods. Naturally she would be proud. She's 
 never in all her life been afraid of anything, and she 
 knows that never under any circumstances could she be 
 afraid I'd rather know that than anything else in the 
 whole wide world." 
 
 " You do know it." 
 
 " Oh ! no, I don't. Do you think I'd deny the possession 
 of a kingly thing like that? I'll tell you I did think I 
 was absorbing this sort of courage that it was coming 
 but as the time draws near my confidence seems to be 
 going off." 
 
 She flushed to her eyes, leaned nearer to the brilliant 
 group before them, and changed the subject. 
 
 " Oh, listen, do ! They're speaking of one of George's 
 sonnets." She paused to drink in praise of the New Man 
 frank and generous criticism likewise frank and trenchant,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 237 
 
 but hardly less generous. " Dear me," she sighed, " and 
 George is talking to a lady who doesn't in the least matter. 
 She went to sleep yesterday all through Mr. Balfour's 
 speech." 
 
 " He has a sedative way with him and you can't expect 
 a poor lady with three daughters, all bones and intellect, 
 to marry off, not to yield to a dulcet voice and a gift of 
 re-assurance." 
 
 " She wanted to go asleep on Tuesday during Tristan 
 and Isolde only one of her daughters kept poking her! 
 But she really enjoys talking to George." 
 
 " She's eminently correct, and George is the vogue in a 
 good circle." 
 
 " It's not that in the least and you know it's not. Oh, 
 the low-toned good-humour of it all and the delicious 
 snap in the air. They have the power of knowing the 
 right, these people." 
 
 " Even if they don't always do it ? " said he. 
 
 She nodded with unruffled charity, her eyes falling upon 
 the critic and his victim. " Oh ! they use polished weapons 
 and they do nothing badly. And they fight like gentle- 
 men. They're the only people I ever looked at they 
 and the Bishop and you more or less who have the 
 slightest right to judge George. And just think of the 
 creatures who will be sitting on shabby judgment seats all 
 around him just in exactly ten days. You remember Mrs. 
 Worrall ? There are others to match. I could never be 
 a coward here. It's the little things that rob you of all 
 your courage." 
 
 " I shouldn't put Mrs. Worrall among the little things." 
 
 "You would, if your mind was attuned to the right 
 key." 
 
 " What else besides that handful of people and the alive- 
 ness do you want to carry back with you ? " 
 
 She looked eagerly around. " The joy and the diamonds 
 and the power of overcoming under their breath." 
 
 He uttered a prolonged " Oh." " They can yield upon 
 occasion," he hazarded, " with the same graceful and re- 
 strained sense of humour." 
 
 " Their temptations," said Joan, with wistful sympathy, 
 " must be so large so spacious and breezy." 
 
 " Well, they are pretty big," he admitted modestly.
 
 238 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " By the way, you must remember that you've met only 
 the best of the town. We're the proud possessors of a 
 fairly big second best, amongst whom you'll find quite as 
 much sordidness and want of comprehension as even a 
 factory town can supply. 
 
 " But one couldn't think of it here," she protested, " it 
 wouldn't get into you and stay, with faces like that man's 
 there, for instance, to divert your attention. He looks like 
 a mixture of Molkte and George." 
 
 " There's a good deal of Molkte in him, and some of 
 George." 
 
 " What are you doing ? " 
 
 " Asking him to supper. See how well I can aim," said 
 he, the twisted piece of paper he launched landing fair 
 at the feet of the distinguished man. 
 
 " Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! " cried Joan. " How delightful, but 
 if only one could bring him back, and keep him on tap in 
 the cellar?" 
 
 " But we couldn't let him go. Do you want to rob us of 
 all our leaven ? " 
 
 " You have so much." 
 
 " Have we ? I'm not so sure. Not more than we want 
 anyway, nor as much. We want George, for example." 
 
 " Yes," she said proudly, " I can see that. And it makes 
 the littlenesses of of the other things just twice as small. 
 Do you know I've never thanked you for what you've done 
 for us, for George and me," her face warm and radiant was 
 turned to his. He could see her breast heaving with quick 
 breaths. " Oh ! let me," she said softly, " I must thank 
 you, thank you, above all for showing us this. I want to 
 tell you that it's all as much to George as it is to me. 
 George could grow grow drunken on it if he let him- 
 self, and giving it all up is awful for him. He doesn't 
 speak of it, of course. It's no use. We can't have it. 
 Giving up the other things was awful too I know now by 
 this that it must have been. Hunting, you know, and 
 fishing, and all the pleasures that take time and money. 
 I thought once he didn't really mind as we should you 
 and I, but I wronged George greatly and so did you. It's 
 his face and his splendid pride at least," she said hope- 
 fully, " I hope that does come in. It makes it finer, don't 
 you think? and more interesting and understandable.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 239 
 
 George really is the biggest thing I've come across even 
 here you know you've given me the opportunity of com- 
 paring him another thing to thank you for! and 
 George beats them all. I think it's partly George's size 
 that makes me such a coward at heart," she added 
 dreamily. 
 
 " Ah ! they're going back. And now the last act," she 
 cried, her dream at an end, her eyes like stars. " And 
 then the drive in the twinkling lights, and the supper and 
 Molkte ! And you to thank for every bit of it." When 
 they sat down she put her hand on his arm and affection- 
 ately squeezed it. 
 
 Then she clasped her hands together and the stage 
 swallowed her. 
 
 But Heron sat immovable and cold, for a strange thing 
 had happened to him. In one moment, with no apparent 
 will of his own he found himself plunged into a new life. 
 He was ready to give everything he possessed to get away 
 from a girl who yet, in a hair's breath of time, had become 
 the one and only being in this mortal life whom he ached 
 to hold, for ever, near him. 
 
 He sat dumb, and dull ; stared at the actors, and thought 
 of his neighbour's wife, of her dove's eyes, and behind 
 them turbulence. He thought of her gentle womanliness, 
 the petulant revolt underlying it, of her peaceful presence, 
 her fiery heart, her strivings after perfect wifehood, her 
 failure to attain unto it. Her warm, wistful longings for 
 the delights of her kind ; her passionately controlled enjoy- 
 ment of them ; her absolutely ungrudging yet frankly un- 
 willing devotion to duty. Her strength, her weakness, 
 her perfection, her incompleteness. He thought of the 
 chaos of anomalies that ran riot in Joan and yet brought 
 forth peace. 
 
 And then the pathetic youth of the creature seized him 
 and the long, long years in which this youth must wither 
 and grow old, of the tired wings that must be for ever 
 beating against iron bars, but beating a deal harder against 
 the unchastened distaste of a wild heart for bars so right 
 arid necessary. 
 
 Rob saw Aiken precisely as Joan saw it, and understood 
 all her fears. 
 
 " Oh ! Where can you be ? " she whispered reproach-
 
 240 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 fully. " You're miles away. You've missed that. I can't 
 explain now. Do pick up the threads. It's worth all the 
 rest. Look at George's face, and see if it's not. Until 
 this minute George has been disappointed." 
 
 Rob stared at her bidding and lugubriously beheld the 
 towering heights of George. He felt stifled and a pigmy 
 and knew that George's wife had frequently felt the same. 
 Even the saintly selfishness of the man seemed so colossal 
 that it took his breath away. 
 
 All his thoughts ran shuddering back to Joan. She 
 was beautiful with the scented innocent beauty of home, 
 which fine thing never having come his way he had 
 always longed for and another anomaly she was like his 
 mother. This endowed her with possibilities outside the 
 domestic hearth most regal and passionate, that but empha- 
 sized her power to reign thereupon. The golden web of 
 anomalies in which he wrapped her made Joan irresistible. 
 
 She was the one living woman he could make happy ; 
 who could bring happiness to him alter everything for 
 him ; yet made to reflect the sunshine of the whole world 
 she was to grow cold at Aiken, to fight under the shadow 
 of a saint for her own, poor little soul. 
 
 He could make her forget her love, and could give her 
 everything. 
 
 All the things he had grown indifferent to assumed all 
 at once a new significance. The old turretted house that 
 would be his, spoilt by the disgrace his mother had 
 brought to it, once more stood proudly out upon its wooded 
 hill. The noted Italian garden the other man had 
 poisoned, he now thought would just suit her. The 
 peaceful, stately atmosphere of an ancestral home would be 
 her proper setting. The nurture of clean and grateful 
 tenants her delight. She could grow good day by day, 
 beautifully; in that other place she might also grow good. 
 But oh ! the difference ! 
 
 " They're the first people I've really met on the stage," 
 cried her happy voice, as they went down the steps after 
 George, caught and held by an inexorable admirer. " One 
 could live with them, see them every day, and enjoy it. 
 And they do evil in a really delightful way. It's not 
 acting, it's living. " Oh ! I'm glad I've seen it. And 
 and why you're bored ! "
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 241 
 
 " I'm nothing of the kind. But I require a walk before 
 I can go into dramatic criticism with so fresh an enthusiast. 
 Here, George ! take your wife, and I'll be there nearly as 
 soon as you are." 
 
 The walk did him good. All through supper he de- 
 livered Joan up to her Molkte hero, and as a nerve-tonic 
 himself took George. The next day he spent in devising 
 a new bit for cavalry and making good resolutions. But 
 he knew in spite of them that once loving Joan there was 
 nothing to do but to keep on loving her and to love her 
 always, never less, but more. 
 
 There is a sense of triumph in the beginnings of an 
 honest man's true love, be it lawful or unlawful ; an exal- 
 tation, silent and sacramental, that lifts it high above the 
 dust of reality. This is the royal garment of love and 
 can be used as a purple pall one day when the lover enters 
 at last into the cold, bleak kingdom of his renunciation. 
 
 But in the beginnings of love a man will only scent sweet 
 incense and behold hope. 
 
 In the morning, bathed in dews, a great forbidden passion 
 knows neither pain nor burning. Anguish grows with the 
 heat and burthen of the day, and with the going down of 
 the sun comes despair. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 JOAN awoke early the next morning, and in the clear, cool, 
 probing light of the dawn it seemed to her that in an odd, 
 vague way, she had been disloyal to George. She had be- 
 trayed far too plainly her oblique, stubborn distaste for 
 George's life to Captain Heron. 
 
 The Bishop had been another thing altogether. To 
 speak to him had been like saying one's prayers aloud. 
 
 There was no reason whatsoever in saying one's prayers 
 aloud to Captain Heron. 
 
 She called to mind a look uncommonly like compassion 
 upon that young man's speaking countenance she had lately 
 noticed whenever the mention of Aiken cropped up. 
 
 So Joan firmly set her mouth, and all her cruel, rampant, 
 young pride was up in arms. 
 
 16
 
 242 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Those women who wear their jewels with a perfect 
 poise, their courage and their humour like a star, who go 
 magnificently all the day, needn't monopolise everything," 
 said she to herself. She, too, had her rights, and she would 
 make a try at wielding them. So at breakfast she plunged 
 gaily into the discussion of Aiken, and afterwards whenever 
 the hateful name made the room stuffy, a look of quite 
 radiant acquiescence spread steadily, and, considering all 
 things, with an astonishing air of spontaneity upon her 
 changeful face. Her merry laugh healed in her husband 
 many a strange pain and warded off many a panic. 
 
 The reticence and delicacy in Joan's tribute of helpful- 
 ness was of inestimable value to George in those dark days. 
 This commentless breaking of her box of alabaster upon 
 his tired feet seemed to him too beautiful, too holy for 
 words. His gratitude shone in all his ways. His smile 
 was an unsanctimonious benediction. 
 
 To Heron the girl was an insoluble and enchanting 
 enigma, full of exasperation and hidden incense. 
 
 For, in spite of her pride and her courage, he caught 
 glimpses behind the cool sweetness of her eyes of odd 
 flashes, in no sort of way connected with the clerical life. 
 
 Joan at this period was rather a terror to herself. 
 
 " I manage it here, finely," she reflected, " but there, 
 with little Jasper to think of, supposing I lose the way." 
 
 When, in fact, she did get home, she was gay and brilliant 
 with sublime memories, but she eluded the researches of 
 Jasper major, and Beatrice found that she had no longer 
 to deal with a novice. 
 
 " George," reflected the squire, " would be George in 
 London or out of it. Has living in a suburb of Heaven, 
 so to speak, taught his poor little devil of a wife untimely 
 wisdom? Has she plumbed the hollowness of the world 
 in six weeks ? " 
 
 Billy, with the wisdom of the simple, knew better. He 
 fell into the way of appearing at odd times with a saddled 
 horse and carrying Joan off for a ride, and, filling what he 
 knew in his bones to be a distracted mind, with healing 
 horse-lore. 
 
 George, meanwhile, who must be pressing forward, had 
 gone to perch in his bare Vicarage with one maid, who 
 contracted an indigestion from the pervading hideousness
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 243 
 
 of all things, and "anything," which was her master's in- 
 variable order for meals. 
 
 Joan had not seen the new vicarage ; the old, for sanitary 
 reasons, having been found impossible. 
 
 " In this, the sanitary arrangements are perfect," wrote 
 George, " so set your mind at rest about the boy. I'm 
 overflowing with ideas. Beloved ! if only you were here." 
 
 The details Joan received from Jane in a succession of 
 ill-spelt and ear-piercing wails. 
 
 One day Beatrice made a tumultuous entrance upon Joan, 
 in her hands a letter, full of notes of admiration, the strokes 
 an inch above their t's, the dots anywhere. 
 
 " You're as close as a ferret, Joan," she screamed, " and 
 George, between poetry and the Spirit but, oh! don't let 
 us talk of George ! Of course, I knew that he was a ripping 
 success in town, but you why you were a hit a real, down- 
 right, flat-footed hit on your own account ; and I, thinking 
 you'd just do, just be sweet and amiable, be just right, in 
 short, for George's wife. That aggravating Billy, it seems, 
 spotted you long ago, knew it always, if you please, and 
 refused to be astonished." 
 
 " Billy is never lavish with his emotions. He prefers to 
 admire the force and vigour of yours" said Joan with 
 serenity, fixing a pile of plates in their basket. 
 
 " Weren't you surprised, then ? Had you no fears ? " 
 
 Beatrice plumped down upon an upturned basket. 
 
 " I hadn't any fears for George, of course, and I hadn't 
 any time to think of myself. It was all too delightful. 
 Besides, you can't have fears in a place where you get 
 right through everything." 
 
 Beatrice stared. 
 
 "A crowd of unexceptionable admirers at your heels; 
 women who came to patronise remaining to be charmed." 
 With another stare of doubt and astonishment, Beatrice re- 
 ferred to her letter, " The scent of the Country, the sense of 
 the town, the pride of seven devils. Good gracious ! And 
 as for Captain Heron- 
 
 " He was our host, in a way " 
 
 " The innocent game, Joan, is played out. If this," Bee 
 flourished her scored sheet, " if this is true, you know as 
 well as I that had you been a mere good, young wife he'd 
 have given you Earl's Court, and luncheons." 
 
 1 6*
 
 244 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Beatrice flounced up, caught Joan's shoulders, and 
 searched her face. " Did you care for it all horribly ? " 
 
 Joan laughed, flushed, and looked non-committal. But 
 in Beatrice's frank, bold eyes there was something she had 
 never before seen there. Suddenly she laughed and replied 
 to it. 
 
 " I did care for it all horribly, and so did George." 
 
 " George ! He'd have been just as capable of cutting 
 your throat." 
 
 " He did, all the same." 
 
 Beatrice narrowed her eyes, and looked down from her 
 stalwart altitude of five feet ten. 
 
 " He might care in a modulated, chastened, superfine 
 way." 
 
 " He cared in the other way, but he overcame it." 
 
 " George isn't a dispensation to be argued about." 
 
 Beatrice surged round for a space, and by way of helping, 
 hustled many a thing askew, then fetched up beside Joan 
 now carefully packing her best cups. 
 
 Everything she laid her hand on seemed to straighten 
 and fall into its place, there was a gentle, quick perfection 
 in all her movements, and yet under it an odd ardour. 
 
 " Oh ! you've grown years in three months. You must 
 have put days into every minute." 
 
 " There was so little time, and so much to get into it." 
 
 Beatrice shifted her chair so as to stare with more ease 
 to herself. 
 
 " There's a queer streak of humility about you with all 
 your Satanic pride. I wonder if a girl who could ever in 
 all her life feel humble like that, could ever properly enjoy 
 herself her own dear, darling self, I mean; her own im- 
 portance, her own power to make laws and enforce them, 
 and break those already made, if she wanted to. You 
 needn't look like Lucifer let loose I wonder if you could 
 possibly take that sort of interest in yourself. A glorious, 
 absorbing interest that grows quite intoxicating at crises 
 when you're not quite sure where they'll land you. It's a 
 sort of lovely, diabolical possession. I can't imagine you in 
 the throes of it. 
 
 Joan's eyes were innocently fixed upon two cover-dishes. 
 
 " How can one either assert or deny in the face of so 
 settled an air of conviction," she asked.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 245 
 
 Beatrice jumped up and coolly turned Joan's face to the 
 light. 
 
 It sparkled and rippled and glowed like jewels. 
 
 " Good gracious ! You haven't missed a thing, not even 
 that. To leave everything with the tide at flood! To be 
 hovering on the verge of being the newest beauty, and to 
 drop meekly into a bottomless pit of curates! I'd rend 
 Heaven with my cries. You pack egg-shell china without 
 turning a hair ! " 
 
 " You forget George." 
 
 " I forget nothing, but George least of all." 
 
 " Shall I ever get done ! " sighed Joan. 
 
 Beatrice surged up, marched tempestuously through chaos, 
 and showered a tempest of kisses upon her sister-in-law. 
 
 " The goodness of a saint," she whispered, " makes you 
 gnash your teeth. The goodness of a sinner makes you 
 want to howl." 
 
 " Don't do that," pleaded Joan, tremulously. " It would 
 be so odd in you, and I'm rather tired just now for startling 
 innovations." 
 
 " You you reserve your confidences, it seems, for the 
 men of the family," said Beatrice presently, in an offended 
 voice. " Billy talks of nothing else but the pathos of taking 
 the boy to that hole." 
 
 " I never said a word to Billy." 
 
 " Billy's not the fool he looks. Anyway, you're artful 
 enough with me, and worse with George. His great calm 
 soul grows calmer, it seems, in the contemplation of what 
 gives Billy and my father fits, Joan ! " she cried, in a 
 sudden outburst of real feeling, " don't hide things from 
 me. I know, I know. Longing for a little baby of your 
 own tells you a lot about the pain of mothers. And that 
 quaking Cora with two bouncers." 
 
 " Beatrice," cried Joan, laughing, with wet eyes, " but 
 your waist ? " 
 
 " I wouldn't mind a permanent twenty-five inch waist, not 
 in the least," she protested heroically, " when even the tor- 
 ture a child brings with it can turn Billy eloquent, and my 
 father sober." 
 
 " If Billy saw you now ! " said Joan softly, " I don't think 
 he'd want for eloquence." 
 
 " Then I'd probably horse-whip Billy."
 
 246 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 -" Is there a little bit of silence full of pain, I wonder, in 
 every woman?" said Joan, tenderly touching her. 
 
 " If you once start speculating about the fiendish silences 
 laying waste the world, you'll never get through Aiken alive. 
 You upset one horribly. You make one sloppy. No 
 wonder you keep men's thoughts hovering about you. It 
 makes them interesting to themselves in a nice way sort 
 of sanctifies them. There's a lot of artifice about you 
 even now I've done all the emotion. You haven't told me 
 a thing, not one single thing." 
 
 " Oh ! there's Billy in the hall." 
 
 "As though Billy mattered." By some inexplicable im- 
 pulse, however, Bee fished out a glass from her pocket and 
 roughed up her fringe, and when Billy came in, she was 
 smiling. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 " WHEN a truthful woman takes to lying," said Jasper, storm- 
 ing up and down the room, " Sapphira may hide her head." 
 
 " There I wholly disagree with you," responded Miss 
 Rebecca, looking up temperately from an absorbed study 
 of her tablets. " Sapphira had an oriental facility denied to 
 Joan, a constitution adapted to lies, and a congenial hus- 
 band. Where have you been ? " 
 
 " Oh ! prowling round that abomination of desolation 
 Aiken. George is amazing, no bilking that fact. You'd 
 think a man who can manage a parcel of curates in the 
 masterly way he does would know, at least, a little of 
 women." 
 
 " I can myself see but little resemblance between Joan 
 and a curate." 
 
 " Sex." 
 
 " Curates are of both sexes." 
 
 " I also have in this regard permitted myself a little hope 
 and much charity," sighed Jasper "There's that fatal war- 
 horse look about George. He smells blood. You can hear 
 him champing the bit. He'll be tossing his mane next. 
 Before you can say knife he'll be possessed by a horrible 
 joy. We lunched to-day on tinned rabbit and the latter
 
 HE FOE GOD ONLY. 247 
 
 end of a Dutch cheese. George appeared to extract a 
 brutal satisfaction from both. He was, I was thankful to 
 see, a bit off colour on his return from London. But 
 George can go down to Hell and up again before you can 
 turn round. What will be the upshot when the girl is 
 fairly soused into this pit of George's brewing?" 
 
 "A break down with some originality in it, I fancy." 
 
 " No room for originality in these affairs. Chronic in- 
 validism or a man. I wonder if Heron will have the sense 
 to keep out of her life." 
 
 " There's no room for Heron in Joan's life, George fills 
 it," said the lady haughtily. 
 
 " He may be blundering into her reputation then, and 
 suggesting sermons to the curates." 
 
 " No evil seemingly without its resultant good. The 
 sermons will tingle with a larger life than that which now 
 possesses them. Supposing, Jasper, you go to meet Joan. 
 She went to see three widows, and she'll come back by the 
 pine wood." 
 
 " The roses and the pines know a hanged lot more of 
 Joan than we do," said Jasper jealously. 
 
 " So long as she turns to the pines and the roses we may 
 well be satisfied." 
 
 " Or to Aiken's willow-bordered canal," said Jasper bit- 
 terly. " Even a father-in-law might be a pleasanter outlet 
 than that." 
 
 With his handsome head wagging, the Squire strode off. 
 But his wrath gathered, and the sense of his own desolation 
 burned in his heart. 
 
 The unquenchable youth within him mocked and derided 
 its own thwarted efforts after vicarious satisfaction, yet the 
 necessity put upon him to cut off even the pale consolation 
 thus nefariously attained tore at his vitals. In spite of 
 Isabella and a spoilt life, he had there was no denying it 
 with extraneous assistance Jasper had enjoyed himself in 
 his own way, and he was no such churl as to scorn an old 
 and trusty friend. Whiskey was an excellent substitute for 
 a multitude of better things. 
 
 And now, on the top of this calamitous cutting off, that 
 there should come the more poignant one of his son's young 
 wife's affairs. Just at the moment, too, when he had got 
 into the way of sauntering back at her side amongst the old
 
 248 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 green lanes and flowery bye ways of life, and picking up 
 again, as though it were yesterday, old scents and sights and 
 sounds he had almost forgotten. 
 
 George's very disqualifications, his flights into airs too 
 keen for mortal man, had their advantages in this connec- 
 tion, in the increase of his own significance in regard to the 
 lower reaches of a most agreeable world. " I can, at least," 
 he reflected meekly, " foster the lesser things in the girl, 
 the sweet, small, fragrant things that escape the observa- 
 tion of a saint in his first rapture. When he tones down," 
 sighed Jasper, " he'd thank me, and we could have watched 
 the child grow together, Joan and I." It was his last 
 chance, too, to watch the growth of his own flesh and 
 blood, for Isabella had taken precious good care in the early 
 days to cut. him out of that part. 
 
 And the boy for whom he had planted the pines, he 
 thought remorsefully, as he looked down at his stalwart 
 plantations, must now, by his own damned folly, never walk 
 with him amongst them. 
 
 The boy for whom he was breeding his hunters, he 
 thought again, peering through the belt of trees that flanked 
 the colts' paddock, he must never teach to ride. His own 
 fault to be sure, but it was none the better for that. With 
 his sins tumbling about his ears now also came Rebecca with 
 all her weight. Joys mellow and mature were still, he had 
 reason to believe, within his grasp. Rebecca ! a woman in 
 a thousand ! a very well-spring of worth but the little 
 daughter-in-law could give him back his youth. And the 
 thirst for the old taste of youth upon the palate, once astir 
 in a man still lusty with strength, nothing will quench but 
 time, and the great occasion when even youth fails the 
 young, and it's the old that must help and uphold. 
 
 Then, when she came at last slowly up the green arch of 
 the grove, Joan's walk exasperated him fiercely. What 
 had a bent head the man she loved attained to do with 
 sweet and twenty? 
 
 Unwilling renunciation spoilt the air, the woods, the old 
 mellow house in the distance his fathers had built " to be 
 so gay with." At that moment the poor Squire would have 
 given them all to keep the girl's youth young for her, to 
 hold tight to the one little handful of his own youth, so 
 dependent upon hers, now melting in his grasp. Without it
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 249 
 
 and Joan he felt with much sincerity that he'd be going 
 very peculiarly to pieces. 
 
 " And how the deuce is a girl to keep up waning courage 
 on tinned rabbit ? " he muttered. And, by way of example, 
 lifted himself proudly to his full height. 
 
 At sight of him, by sheer reflex action, Joan rose also to 
 hers, and came up smiling. But her smile carried no con- 
 viction to wrathful Jasper ; there was no substance in it he 
 conceived. It carried ghostly suggestions of the fleshliness 
 of the dread days to come. In the dim, shadowed light he 
 beheld wrinkles furrowing the satin smoothness of her child- 
 like face. 
 
 " I've been getting on with the good-byes," said she. 
 
 A score of cruel cynicisms trembled on the tip of the 
 Squire's tongue, but the dregs of kindness in his evil old 
 heart swallowed them, every one. 
 
 " We had as hanged a bad luncheon as ever I tasted," 
 said he, with studied mildness, "and George enjoyed it! 
 Wonderful knack of getting the best out of everything, has 
 George. He's digging and manuring the curates now, until, 
 I give you my word, I believe they'll sprout in time." 
 Moved by a regal inspiration, Jasper's eyes brightened. 
 "At the same time I noticed that tinned rabbit stuck in 
 the throat of the slim young fellow with bandy legs. He 
 gives you beans, by the way, by saying ' whoever did it,' 
 every second sentence early penury, no doubt, and Jesus 
 College, and being Welsh, a dirty drop I daresay of dis- 
 senting blood in him. Never be too hard on a man till 
 you inquire into his breeding. But there's promise in that 
 fellow. It's a promise, however, that wants building up, 
 buttressing with things outside the spirit and slums. Good 
 food would put a glow and ardour into chaps of that order 
 that I'm hanged if ever nature did." 
 
 In Jasper's eyes there shone now a great purpose. 
 
 " That, and George's influence, of course," he hastily in- 
 terposed. " But one without, the other is hopeless. Those 
 fellows practically live at the Vicarage. Now here you 
 could come in useful, and I'd be only too glad to assist 
 you." 
 
 Joan paused to consider. 
 
 " It's so difficult with the poor. One is so terrified of 
 defrauding them of their rights."
 
 250 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " The fellows that are ordained to chivvy the poor into 
 decent living and dying have rights, too." 
 
 " Their first duty, somehow, seems to be to renounce 
 them," said Joan doubtfully. 
 
 " Sacredotal rot ! I've been through every slum of that 
 parish." Joan started. " Oh ! it's not. for me," continued 
 Jasper flushing, "to be judging any poor devil ignorantly. 
 Too many of my own follies to account for without loading 
 myself with other people's. I went over three times a week 
 while you were away, just ahem to see for myself whether 
 George was quite a born ass or not, and came home every 
 evening feeling as though there was a washing day going on 
 inside me. Do you want to persuade me that tinned rabbit 
 will clear that out in order to make room for the spirit and 
 better things. Good food, my girl, and good liquor, a wash 
 in the merciful waters of oblivion is what you want there. 
 The pleasant moisture dries off, Heaven knows, soon enough. 
 And even Judas was permitted to cool the tip of his tongue 
 once in a way." 
 
 " It's a very difficult subject," said Joan, with much con- 
 cern. " In the company of curates I always do think of 
 food. We often do think side by side, you and I and 
 yet " 
 
 Suddenly Joan nestled up against the old man. 
 
 " Hang it all," said he, with nervous haste, " it's a difficulty 
 to be overcome. That little more than scrapings should be 
 got out of a breed of men who should be producing full 
 barns is, I take it, largely the fault of the laity. A matter 
 of inanition, physical, mental, spiritual, due in some measure, 
 we'll hope, to the damned niggardliness of their wages. 
 High thinking, my girl, should rise from the warm earth, 
 not float out anyhow, from the cold mists of Heaven, and 
 how can they nourish themselves decently," cried Jasper, in 
 a fervour of piety, " unless we pay 'em. A contented 
 stomach, my girl, lies at the root of all home-spun grace. 
 Talk of crusades, if building up curates isn't one I'd be 
 glad to know what is," murmured Jasper artfully. 
 
 " It sounds delightful," admitted Joan, " curates are clean, 
 too, and extraordinary grateful. Here in the wood it sounds 
 all right and reasonable. There " she laughed, " looking 
 at George eating anything gladly the delicacies would stick 
 in all our throats."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 251 
 
 " That's a mawkish servile temptation to be overcome, 
 and it's your business to back the curates. Teach them to 
 emulate George's physique before they attempt any com- 
 petition with his soul. Damned cheek ! I call it. We must 
 learn to walk before we can fly. As a growing boy George 
 lived like a fighting-cock, and now he's reaping the benefit of 
 it. What those young fellows subsisted on one hardly likes 
 even to imagine." 
 
 She fetched up before him. " Is this good advice or the 
 devil tempting me ? " she demanded. 
 
 " It's advice sound to the core, and the devil is worlds 
 away." 
 
 " I'm afraid he's nearer than that," sighed Joan, " and it 
 sounds too easy." 
 
 " Duty needn't always give you fits." 
 
 " But it generally does." 
 
 " That's morbidity." 
 
 " No ! It's being a lineal descendant of Lot's wife," said 
 she dejectedly. " We needn't go home yet, let us sit here 
 on this trunk." 
 
 Sitting, however, did not suit Joan's mood. She walked 
 rapidly up and down before George's father now, honest 
 man, rather weak with apprehension, and very red in the 
 face. 
 
 " Instead of feeding the curates, my mind will be occupied 
 in concealing from them that I'm just repeating disreputable 
 history," said Joan, after a pause. " And, oh ! the way I 
 used to despise that image of disloyal cowardice Lot's wife. 
 A pillar of salt seemed too good for her." She paused for 
 an instant. " And little Jasper Aiken and curates and the 
 poor and dirt are all like outrages on his babyhood. Babies 
 should have sun and light and beauty and merriment. 
 Oh ! but it's much better not to speak of Baby," she said, 
 swinging round and stifling a little dry sob. " But there 
 are other things. You'd understand better if you'd seen us 
 in London, George and me ! " 
 
 " I understand quite sufficiently without," mumbled the 
 wretched man. 
 
 " You couldn't," she said dreamily, " and one can't ex- 
 plain it. It's not mean and trivial up there, as they say, 
 it's big and wonderful and full of kindness, and George 
 suited it. Oh ! you should have seen how he suited it.
 
 252 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 And and, if they do break the ten Commandments worse 
 than we do in the country, which I'll never believe, they 
 don't break them openly in your face like the others, and 
 they have, at least, time and leisure and good food enough 
 for repenting. How can people possibly repent when they 
 are being gnawed at continually by a craving for gin ? It's 
 too exacting to expect it of them, and yet you can't possibly 
 be giving them gin instead of advice. Oh ! the horrible 
 puzzle of it. Now in London it was all easy and natural. 
 George just slid into their hearts and brains, he did truly, 
 and in a superb sort of way, he he actually took possession 
 of that beautiful crowd full of knowledge ! You see, he 
 hadn't to be labouring to these people through a fathomless 
 stomach, getting all his beautiful thoughts mixed up with 
 broken meat and soup-tickets George George to be a 
 mere vehicle for conveying nourishment! and never having 
 enough even of that to content any one of them. Besides, 
 there are so many others to do that sort of thing, such hosts 
 born for it." 
 
 Her face recalled the Squire to all the sense he could lay 
 hands on. 
 
 " It's a horrible problem," he muttered, " who shall solve 
 it? And things have altered or else it's our points of 
 view, perhaps," he pursued, with caution. "You'll quite 
 understand how much easier it makes things for a man to 
 accredit all women, or those anyway that matter, with a 
 natural gift for abstinence. To allow woman, in fact, a 
 hand for breaking in nature that we, God help us, have never 
 attained. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm sorry woman should 
 ever lose this strange dexterity of hand; the loss would 
 increase her complications, and make bad worse. Nature 
 believe me, is a sour jade if you let her get the better of 
 you give her her head too much " An odd look upon 
 his pupil's face caused him now to break sharply off. 
 
 " George and little Jasper seem too big a price to pay," 
 said Joan, " and after all, for what ? " 
 
 " A preposterous price, and for what, indeed ? " 
 
 The Squire felt weighed down by a very cart-load of good 
 advice, but this is what he said. 
 
 A ripple of laughter ran over Joan's sad little face. " At 
 the present moment," said Joan, " I'm Lot's wife. Let me 
 say all the wrong things she only thought, to-day; by to-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 253 
 
 morrow you'll have remembered the right exhortations, and 
 I'll be in a better mood to hear them profitably. I must, 
 just for once, speak the pure, abominable truth. What I 
 want is to give nature her head, to let her go free and un- 
 shod without bit or bridle. I hate abstinence, and sacri- 
 fices, and renunciations, and the breaking in of nature. I 
 want to take her at a gallop, and to be absolutely joyfully, 
 splendidly, disastrously selfish." 
 
 Suddenly she threw up her head, and swept up and down 
 with a marvellous fine swing, her eyes like lamps, her cheeks 
 carnation, her lips in a moment grown scarlet. Jasper held 
 his breath. The girl seemed to have come to her own in 
 one bound. 
 
 " Oh ! but you should have seen me in London, as well 
 as George really, to understand ; I was the centre of the 
 most delightful things, too. I had the courage of of 
 Goliath, and his strength. I could do anything, and say 
 everything just exactly right." 
 
 She paused, her fingers on her lips and slowly frowned. 
 
 " I was really, rather delightful, and I was pretty, too. 
 I found out one day by chance that I can just be as pretty 
 as I choose to be, and this isn't silly vanity, or odious 
 selfish discontent either, truly it's not." Her triumphant 
 voice had grown wistful. " It's a fair sort of self-defence 
 I think it is, anyway. You see, I knew that I could help 
 George up there, I know I could in a way that he'd simply 
 adore in time. We could be so happy, and good George 
 and baby and I. Between us, George's light would shine 
 through all the world. And he George hasn't an idea 
 how much he'd like it or the enormous good he'd do. But 
 7 know. Oh ! I know I know I wish to goodness I didn't 
 know. Can you understand anything ? especially my horrid- 
 ness ? " 
 
 " That," said the poor sinner sadly, " I understand down 
 to the ground." 
 
 "I wonder if you understand," she proceeded anxiously, 
 " now, how pretty I could be, if I gave way to it you 
 know." 
 
 She leaned nearer to look. "You must, after all, for I 
 did give way to it when they came to stay with us Captain 
 Heron and Fred Thryng." 
 
 " My poor, unfortunate child, you're as pretty precisely,
 
 254 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 as you yourself have admitted, as you choose to be. It's a 
 telling and disastrous gift in a woman." 
 
 " When," she rejoined, " you get amongst the duties that 
 ache in you, you know, you get afraid even of the pretti- 
 ness you in spite of you you compose and attune your- 
 self from inside to the needs of the poor. You get mouse- 
 coloured and your skirts don't seem to hang. You're all 
 wrong to yourself, inside and out and some day, suppose I 
 acted accordingly ? just how disappointed would you be ? " 
 
 "I should be as much disappointed, my dear, as you 
 yourself would be," said he, in a steady, grave tone that 
 for a minute silenced her. 
 
 " Ah ! " she said at last, " at least, George would never 
 find it out. If I once began to go like that, I think I should 
 die of mortification, and settle things once for all. How 
 dark it is in the wood," she said, " and it's grown cold. 
 Come back to Baby." 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 PROUD, cool, serene, refusing to permit itself to be touched 
 or tainted by any offending airs foul with smut, a great 
 mountain of saffron cloud, with purple about its knees, 
 looked down with mercy upon Aiken, gilding all her 
 wretchedness. The great factories were silent now of 
 their throbbing hum of life, but the fires still burned within 
 them, and the watchmen watched. Flames flared up from 
 tall chimneys turning to orange and rose the lower reaches 
 of the purples, and farther down upon the great rambling 
 hillocks of waste, there gleamed, day and night, a riot 
 of lesser lights. Small snakes of flame; scarlet, blue, 
 green, opal, glided ceaselessly, tirelessly in and out the 
 waves of blackness like shattered rainbows trembling in a 
 dark cloud. Like a huge red pomegranate with yellow 
 seeds, half way up the sky a great factory clock warned 
 the weary people of the shortness of their time for rest. 
 The dome of the sky, sheer blue out in the quiet country, 
 was here a mystery of colour seen tremulously through a 
 veil. Black and smirched near the earth the air as it 
 reached Heaven had grown diaphanous, the glimmer of 
 gems in its swathings of pellucid mist.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 255 
 
 There was a marvel of compassionate beauty in that fine 
 mantle of charity flung upon Aiken the night when Joan 
 first came to live in it. And in the saffron glory of that 
 wonderful cloud she beheld George looking from above 
 downward at seething horrors, refined and made beautiful 
 through the golden atmosphere cast by his own radiance. 
 It enabled her to understand as she had never before 
 done how George could eat cheese happily and stride, 
 full of light, through any evil-scented blackness. It was 
 a delightful, illuminating sort of beginning, full of 
 pleasing prophecy, and Joan, to be sure, made the 
 most of it. 
 
 Also just at first Jasper was well ; the faithful and ad- 
 miring curates, treading delicately as Agag in her foot- 
 steps, amused and interested Joan, and the evenings, when 
 all the work was done, although she ached badly, and 
 weakly desired bed and a really nice supper, were yet 
 absolutely, inspiringly, satisfactory. 
 
 For George's powers grew in bounds. The book ad- 
 vanced beyond all the hopes even of his wife strong, 
 tender, sweet always, it was now touched with the divine 
 touch of an unappeasible sorrow, an unappeasible com- 
 passion, an unappeasible hope; the crown and coping 
 stones of all great song. 
 
 And little as George knew of Joan's aches, it was the 
 things they brought into her transparent face which pro- 
 vided him with many a kingly finishing touch. 
 
 The mighty and true things that moved him now when 
 his eyes turned to her, that made him pause, and wonder, 
 and wince at some new confession of pain and beauty 
 found in her little face, he took, however, to be incense 
 wrested from the tears and bloody sweat of the groaning 
 heart of Aiken, the magnificent reward for his own grudg- 
 ing, paltry act of renunciation. 
 
 George thanked God often in that he had been rightly 
 directed and had torn himself from the flesh-pots; a 
 prayer in good sooth echoed in many a stout heart, in the 
 grimy desolation of the factory town. 
 
 Joan too in her own way thanked God, for in spite of the 
 night-mare canal, and all the smelling heats, Jasper kept 
 well, and with George, George, and Jasper growing and 
 gay, what did anything matter? So she subdued all her
 
 256 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 ridiculous inclinations and did all that she found to her 
 hand to do with a most winsome grace. 
 
 But as the Autumn drew on, and grey, clotted mists hung 
 nightly above the slow waters of the canal, as the Vicar's 
 wife plodded round amidst perspiring poverty, the babies, 
 who for pity's sake she dearly loved, disturbed her greatly 
 because of strange metallic blotched patches that began 
 to break out upon their faces. These symptoms did not 
 seem to alarm their mothers or the parish doctors. They 
 were a part of Aiken it seemed, and yielded to time and 
 faith, but they had a prophetic significance about them, 
 and distressed Joan dreadfully. She procured powders 
 and washes from Miss Rebecca, and charmed leave out 
 of the worn, yet still human doctors, to apply them. The 
 nostrums proving of no avail, Miss Rebecca herself, 
 panoplied in all the pomp and circumstance of war, 
 appeared on the scene, to regulate the wailing infants and 
 defy the Profession. 
 
 But the blotches spread as the leaves fell, and the weary 
 little heads mournfully wagged. 
 
 In spite of Joan's firm refusal to believe her own eyes, 
 Jasper's little face now also began to grow steadily peaky, and 
 one evening his mother found him sitting up in bed crying 
 for " wed woses." 
 
 Without a word to George, then absorbed in some dire 
 crisis, partly parochial, partly of the Spirit ; making a bad 
 cold of Miss Rebecca's her excuse, Joan posted off next 
 day to see Dr. Baker. 
 
 Having completed his invention, so securing his mother's 
 future, and done the very last things he had to do well, 
 Dr. Baker was now quietly dying under the professional 
 eye of Miss Rebecca. 
 
 The moment for which she had been long prepared, 
 when the stubborn will of the young man must perforce 
 yield to reason, having come at last, Miss Rebecca had 
 swooped down and carried him off bodily to her best bed- 
 room, where at least he could die decently. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said gently, when he saw Joan's face, " I 
 know what brings you I've been expecting you these ten 
 days. You knew from the beginning he couldn't live there 
 permanently ? " he paused " surely you knew ? " he 
 asked again.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 257 
 
 " I I tried not to ; I'd got to believe he needn't go, I 
 think." 
 
 " George hasn't noticed, of course ? " 
 
 Joan made not the slightest motion either of response or 
 denial. 
 
 He quietly watched her. 
 
 " To which of them will you give him ? " at last he 
 asked. 
 
 " I've been trying to decide. I want to bring him here." 
 
 "Naturally," he said, smiling broadly; "best place in 
 the world for helpless infancy." 
 
 This roused Joan from her selfishness. She remembered 
 that she hadn't even asked for the sick man. 
 
 " Oh, but you like it now ? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes. I've come to that, and she has the kindest hands 
 ever made." Being so tired and sick, he did not feel ready 
 yet to go back to the child, so he stuck to Miss Rebecca. 
 
 " You might ask her though why aren't you sitting 
 down? to give up the three o'clock draught. I'm getting 
 a bit slack for argument myself. I like my tea still and 
 that decoction of the devil spoils it. One of the draw- 
 backs of this thing this dying is that it makes you 
 cling, with a sort of feeble tenacity, to any enjoyment left 
 you. You want the little usual homely things that used to 
 please, to please still. You get jealous and niggardly 
 about them. They've attained a new significance." 
 
 He laughed softly, but Joan's face flashed out restive 
 wrath. 
 
 " It's surely time that you at least gave up renouncing 
 things. I'll make her stop all the horrors." 
 
 " And spoil the whole business for the best soul that 
 ever spent a whole life in renunciation, and rob me, too, of 
 my last flicker of obvious humour. I'm not up to the more 
 subtle varieties now. The afternoon abomination is all I 
 want struck off. The others have their points." 
 
 Joan said nothing ; she was moving quietly about the 
 room making little alterations. 
 
 " You've truly put right everything that's been worrying me 
 at intervals these three days," he said, watching her. " I've 
 seen you in sick-rooms before this, and you have always 
 done things like a child, now you do them like a woman. 
 You've grown up in London. But even as a child, you 
 
 17
 
 258 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 did all the things beautifully, only in another sort of way. 
 When you haven't an inch of born nurse in you, Mrs. Win- 
 nington, and find the whole thing so dull and sordid and 
 unnecessary, how do you manage to make no mistakes ? " 
 
 She paused, flushed, and hesitated. 
 
 " I'm back in the elementals," he pleaded, " and like ask- 
 ing questions." 
 
 " I like doing things for you. How do you know I de- 
 test the the usual things for the usual people ? George 
 doesn't know, nor nor any of the others. I've always 
 looked upon you as part of the Church, part of George in 
 a way." 
 
 " The sexton, sidesman, doctor and pew-opener," he mur- 
 mured. " Church property all ! " 
 
 " Ah ! you make me horrid ! " 
 
 " I don't, but death makes me sharp. If I didn't know 
 how lustily you detest and how exquisitely you do, I might 
 be dying this minute with a doubt as to George's future, 
 and your part in it. Knowing you as you are, cools the 
 fever of all my anxieties. I hated George's marrying, of 
 course, every man does. He sees the woman standing 
 always between his friend and the sun. You stand just at 
 the right angle and keep off the blinding glare." 
 
 " Oh, you don't know " 
 
 " Don't I ? But you let the minutes bother you, Mrs. 
 George. There's more power to stifle in one minute if you 
 give reins to fancy, believe me, than in all eternity. Take 
 the minutes kindly and they grow luminous. You can 
 look through their insignificance to the beyond that alone 
 matters." 
 
 Joan stared solemnly at him. 
 
 " But I do see beyond sometimes. George's future 
 seems to sit down on me often like a mountain." 
 
 " Good Heavens ! You're out of form all round seem- 
 ingly. There's a little bit of the future in every minute, 
 but you needn't try to crowd the whole lot into it. We 
 go on from strength to strength unless we go to pieces 
 and strength is made perfect in weakness." 
 
 " Some people go on so quickly from one strength to 
 another that you haven't time to see the weakness," said 
 she dejectedly. 
 
 " That's iron constitution and a sublime selfishness
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 259 
 
 almost inseparable from the sense of omnipotence the con- 
 stitution gives you. Weak lungs teach you a lot, but I 
 hardly think even that makes up for what they cause you 
 to miss. Mine have robbed me of two fine things, for 
 example. They kept me from seeing you in diamonds that 
 night of your first dinner-party, and they'll make me miss 
 seeing you in a Christian state. You'd be a most sooth- 
 ing Christian, Mrs. George, so that I feel this last loss 
 to be the worse of the two. I wish I could wait." He 
 spread his thin hands out on the snowy quilt. " But by 
 that time I'd be a scarecrow unfit for human companion- 
 ship. Even now I'm thinking of taking to gloves." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Joan, " you know too much of me. I 
 wonder if I ever did arrive at the the Christian state 
 if I'd enjoy things." 
 
 " So it's generally supposed," he said dryly. " Pretend- 
 ing to enjoy them is quite as effective to the living, don't 
 judge by me, I'm abnormally sharp, I tell you, and see at 
 the other side of things ; and don't drop the Pagan graces 
 any way as you go higher." 
 
 Joan laughed, then she stood up abruptly, and looked 
 down at him, her face strangely soft. 
 
 " Some day," he went on half smiling, " you'll be stand- 
 ing high up on a great hill in the teeth of a fine breeze 
 with George, and you'll be laughing together about a time, 
 not so very long ago after all, when you were rather a 
 fool. A slight touch of say pleurisy an unexpected 
 spiritual defeat, the trip of some well-covered sin 
 something unpleasant, will give George fits, and hustle all 
 his points of view. He'll come to you naturally to help 
 in the resorting, but it will be a new help and a new sym- 
 pathy he'll be asking then, and in the surprise of it you'll 
 have things out together, and begin to value and appraise 
 the weaknesses in each other more fairly than you do now. 
 A just appreciation of weakness is the one thing that 
 makes strength more admirable, that makes love perfect. 
 At present you're overweighting poor George, just as you're 
 overweighting each unfortunate minute as it comes, and 
 choking it up with all eternity. You pack all George's 
 future into his present until the burthen would break 
 any man's back, and he bulks larger than human in your 
 eyes. You'll be dying of a moral indigestion, Mrs. Win-
 
 260 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 nington, if you don't look out, and I won't be here to cure 
 you." 
 
 " If I once began to disassociate George with greatness," 
 said Joan, " it oh ! it would never do to divide them. 
 It makes everything worth while." 
 
 " A lighter touch both upon George and Eternity would 
 make things more worth while still, take my word for it," 
 said the doctor. 
 
 " How selfish I am," said Joan abruptly, a new eagerness 
 in her face, " I came about baby and we've drifted on to 
 George and me, and after all this is your occasion, your 
 own, we mustn't be thrusting ourselves into it." 
 
 " But it wouldn't be an occasion at all without all three 
 of you," said he, smiling. 
 
 "I wonder I wonder if you could ever have enjoyed 
 things as as much as I can," said Joan. 
 
 " I believe I could." 
 
 " I don't mean good works and scientific things. But 
 the usual things." 
 
 " I liked life well. I liked it better than most men, I 
 think." 
 
 " Ah ! you weren't always denying yourself then," she 
 said, her eyes brilliant. " Your face just at that minute 
 made me ask you don't mind, do you? It makes me 
 know you ever so much better." 
 
 " Go on," said he, with a low laugh. 
 
 " Had you many chances ? " 
 
 " I had an unusual amount. I have relatives, you know, 
 with plenty of this world's goods, and I have been fortunate 
 in my friends. I have lived in pleasant company." 
 
 " You were a real success then ? " 
 
 " If I may belaud myself a moment, I was rather a 
 marked success, all round, for many years." 
 
 "And you gave it all up for your mother's sake," said 
 Joan, with wide eyes. " And now you're dying dying 
 without one single word of regret or revolt. I didn't grasp 
 it all really until this minute. I've been getting used to 
 people dying. It's often the most comfortable thing the 
 poor things can do. They get so tired. I've been glad 
 sometimes when it's all done and they have no more 
 dreadful to-morrows to face. And so many people can so 
 easily be spared. Their death makes no difference to
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 261 
 
 any one. There is no more use for them." Her eyes 
 looked quietly into some pit unknown to man, where some 
 of the sorrows of women lie hidden. " Death is their 
 natural end," she said. " It just makes more room, lets 
 in a little more air, that's all. But to be dying when you 
 might still be enjoying yourself ! To surrender everything 
 without a word," she cried in an unsteady voice. " Oh ! 
 I've been horrid to you. Don't try to be good and stead- 
 fast for my sake," she cried " as an example, Dr. Baker, 
 but please do speak out. Don't you hate it in your 
 heart ? Isn't it very hard ? Isn't it horrible ? " Joan's 
 eyes were heavy with unshed tears, her lips trembled. 
 
 " It's it's a hanged unpleasant business, my dear child. 
 Don't let anyone persuade you it isn't, that is, if you're 
 not too tired to care. But if in spite of your lungs, you 
 still feel fresh and ready for a new lease of life if only 
 you could lay hands on it, and your hope of Heaven, will, 
 in spite of you, get mixed up with the memory of all that 
 earth has still to offer, I tell you it becomes a deplorable 
 grind. I doubt, however, if it's as bad as giving up liters, 
 Jasper," said he, with beautiful kind eyes, " without a word 
 of revolt. I doubt even if it's much worse than giving up 
 the things that make life joyous upon the very threshold 
 of life for the sake of a man, as you've done. The thought 
 of you doing hated tasks in the perfect way is helping me 
 a lot in this bitter business. I always meant to tell you, I 
 had a letter written telling you ; it's there in my drawer. 
 Take it, if you like but it's better to say it to your face. 
 And I why I have a well-spring of strength from 
 which to draw that you have not yet touched. Oh ! " he 
 cried, " you've helped me tremendously in this sordid affair 
 and yet, and yet you've made me my last hell ! " 
 
 " I I " 
 
 " You've been too busy and faithful with your violent 
 hates and your tender loves to trouble about me," said he, 
 with half-amused reproach in his failing voice, " or even to 
 notice my gradual fall into folly. Sweet Mrs. George, I 
 have loved you dearly this many a month as a Pagan. 
 When next we meet it will be more decorous, don't you 
 think, if I may be permitted to love you as a Christian ? " 
 
 For reply the withheld tears rained down Joan's cheeks 
 and she softly wrung her hands.
 
 262 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Just another thing to give up," she cried at last, " just 
 one more ! " 
 
 " And the hardest," said he. 
 
 " You'd already so many ! If only I'd known. Oh, if 
 I'd known I might have made it easier for you." 
 
 " How ? " he enquired, with sad, humourous eyes. 
 
 She laughed tremulously. " Oh ! I I should have 
 been so sorry so sorry ! " 
 
 " Such sorrow is beguiling," said he, with a sorrowful 
 laugh. " Death cancels all one's obligations to the con- 
 ventions, however, and telling a woman that you love her 
 brings back the fragrance of life to the spent air. It it 
 breaks the monotony of dying. It freshens everything. 
 I don't think I shall ever feel properly tired again. Pagan 
 to the finger-tips though you are, Mrs. George, you yet go 
 harmoniously with the Infinities. But no man so full of 
 bounding life, so near sinless perfection as George could 
 find out your heroic hypocrisy. He'll have to stumble a 
 little himself before he can understand the foolishness of 
 women and their wisdom. You're the least disturbing of 
 women ; it may be some time before the knowledge comes 
 to him. Now I've fixed myself in your memory let us 
 get back to the child. With your Pagan propensities 
 there is no doubt as to his future destination. There are 
 wild doings up at the Hall." 
 
 "Oh! I know, but George doesn't. Don't tell him." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " What could he do? It would only disturb him." 
 
 Dr. Baker jerked an impatient head. 
 
 " That might be a blessing in disguise ; of sound educa- 
 tional value in the development of George. 
 
 " George wants all the peace this week that Aiken will 
 leave him. He has difficult things to face." 
 
 " How can one argue with a creature that has the 
 touch of Pan himself?" he asked. "However, after all 
 you do owe the Squire some reparation. You came be- 
 tween him and what had been a blameless though some- 
 what laborious future, and the boy, with the audible flutter 
 of wings about him and an upward motion, will be of more 
 use just now than Miss Rebecca, with the clatter of the 
 poor wings that have moulted in waiting for the Squire. 
 And in sending the boy to that astonishing household you'll
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 263 
 
 be doing right. The only thing that could ever break 
 you, child, would be to imagine that giving up is no 
 longer demanded of you, no longer of any avail. It's that 
 which brings despair to women. Neither contingency," he 
 added dryly, " will be likely to interfere with your develop- 
 ment. But sermons bore, and here have I been preaching 
 at you this half hour. Rough that upon anyone so amaz- 
 ingly young, and I loving you so dearly too. The very 
 sight of you stirs up my own youth and makes me want 
 to be up and doing. If I'd loved you longer I might I 
 might have hated this even more perhaps. Don't I hear 
 the rattle of a spoon ? Which means that I must go back 
 again to dying and the absorption of nourishment. But 
 this last taste of life has been the sweetest I've tasted. I'll 
 die with it still on my mouth. 
 
 " And George ! " he murmured, his aching eyes closed. 
 " Oh ! some day he'll find out the price a born Pagan has 
 to pay before she reaches the Kingdom of Christ. Some 
 Christians are run up cheap, like jerry-built huts," he mut- 
 tered ; " they irritate dreadfully, those good tinsel erections, 
 some on the contrary require to be cemented brick by 
 brick with tears before they'll stand the stress of time and 
 storm. These never irritate and in their end there is re- 
 joicing. After my shameless confession you'll now often 
 be thinking of me and this little spark of truth will filter 
 in with me. But Christian or Pagan, go on as you're 
 going. Do everything like a quick, sweet bird full of 
 loving kindness, without even the most perfunctory know- 
 ledge of Church principles ; and good-bye ! good-bye ! 
 good-bye ! " 
 
 " I wish Oh ! I wish you could stay." 
 
 " To go, unpleasant as it is, simplifies matters. That 
 was not Miss Rebecca after all ? " 
 
 " I can understand dying thankfully," cried Joan pas- 
 sionately. " But how you can smile as you do in this tor- 
 ture of surrender it's it's beyond me." 
 
 " Look here, Mrs. George," he cried, with sudden energy. 
 " If ever again you dare even to think of dying THANK- 
 FULLY, go over, that very hour, to Miss Rebecca, and get 
 her to feed and dose you. Promise me." 
 
 " I promise," she said absently. 
 
 " If you don't I'll I'll haunt you. And if Jasper is ever
 
 264 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 seriously ill, give him whiskey, brandy, anything. Preach- 
 ing again ! But it's because of the shortness of time. 
 Such a lot of things are coming back too, but they're 
 blurred and mixed up oddly with with unprofitable 
 things, considering the occasion, perhaps. But if I could 
 think very clear, I could explain. I I might give some 
 most excellent advice. It's no use, I can neither sort nor 
 select. Ah, dear, kiss me. George won't mind now at the 
 last." 
 
 " I'll come again," she whispered. 
 
 With a great effort he threw off his weakness. 
 
 " No this is the last. This is good-bye. We've come 
 as close, we two, George and I, as men can come and I 
 know things, oh ! I know. George could be as jealous 
 as his father. Deep down George is fiercely human and 
 nothing no one must come between George and me. His 
 hand must be the last I shall touch." He dropped back 
 in the pillows, panting a little. " Besides, I utterly detest 
 death-bed scenes. Miss Rebecca will make me none, and 
 men, thank Heaven, can't be mawkish together. When 
 you get very weak you can't tell what sort of pranks a mix- 
 ture of love and religion won't play with you and it 
 might demoralise the survivor. And besides I've another 
 Master besides love to whom I owe my last days. Go, 
 dear, go ! You make life too sweet and death too bitter." 
 
 She kissed him weeping and went, but she turned back 
 at the door. 
 
 " I've never done anything in all my life for you. Let 
 me do just one little thing. Jasper needn't go yet, not 
 just yet. I'll not give him up till the day you go then 
 we'll be giving up together, you and I. It will be our first 
 partnership. It won't be quite so lonely, I think, if we do 
 this together." 
 
 His grateful, amused face said a last good-bye mutely. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 FOR three eternal, silent days the thought of her odd 
 partnership ached in Joan. 
 
 Whilst in the noise and stress of his labours ; in the bray-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 265 
 
 ing of innumerable asses in mortars all too small for 
 them; in the multiplication of unnecessary foolish words 
 for the conviction of invincible ignorance; in the clack 
 and clatter of minor officialdom, to come home to look at 
 Joan in the ordered peace of her household, restfully 
 busy, was the one saving and sanctifying moment of 
 George's life. 
 
 And so the silences in the dim, grey house grew daily 
 longer, and to George more quickening, more renewing, 
 more eloquent with fullest comprehension, fullest sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 Joan, on the contrary, grew cold in these mute hours, 
 and now as she was practically waiting beside a dying 
 man for the hour of their mutual surrender, she had some- 
 times to pinch herself blue in order to keep herself from 
 shouting aloud of all her pain and all her revolt. 
 
 The horrid temptation beset her invariably when George 
 had fallen asleep anywhere upon anything nearest him 
 for one begrudged moment, or was joyously, proudly 
 scribbling down an idea snatched clear-cut and clean as a 
 gem from the midst of howling chaos. 
 
 Joan always wrestled successfully, however, with her 
 ingrowing besetment, and George found her, as ever, a 
 perennial benediction. 
 
 In those days, indeed, he sorely needed one. 
 
 The imminent death of his friend tore at his heart. The 
 curates were a blistering dispensation. 
 
 The seeds of a criminal strike were festering in the 
 clotted, breathless air of Aiken. More harrowing and 
 absorbing than all else he was now in hot strife with Satan 
 on behalf of a kingly soul. 
 
 When one day Joan had to rouse him from a little sleep 
 into which he had tumbled, to tell him that Dr. Baker 
 wanted him for the last time, she sighed with a curious 
 relief. 
 
 " But sit down for a few minutes," she said, as he 
 sprang up, with tumbled hair, " you can't go till the five 
 train. You must have some tea first, and I must speak 
 to you. I've known for several days, dear, that we couldn't 
 keep Baby here," she began, after a pause. " It's the 
 Autumn. You've seen how it kills the children, and the 
 Winter is worse; the mothers say "
 
 266 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Joan ! " cried George, in a low, shocked voice. 
 " Joan ! " he repeated confused and then stopped dead. 
 
 Tired, shocked, astonished, he could only look at her, 
 a little blinded with the stirring within himself of strange 
 pain. The ordered quietness of her face confounded him. 
 She had altered, he dimly conceived. Her face, that was 
 so sweet and gentle, with vivid, sparkling lights behind 
 her eyes, was different now. Instead of the old child-like 
 sweetness there had grown into it a wonder of kindness. 
 
 The lights behind her eyes shone still and steady, but 
 now they seemed farther away. It was the face of a 
 woman no longer quite young. 
 
 " And you told me nothing ! " cried George at last. 
 
 " You've been so busy and so tired. And it wouldn't 
 have altered things. Jasper must go." 
 
 " But you ? child ! you ? " 
 
 " George, don't look at me like that. If I once begin 
 to cry and I never have cried, not once and after all it's 
 worse for Dr. Baker, and I don't suppose he cries " 
 
 " But oh ! it's so different. He has earned his rest." 
 
 " Even if he has I don't think he wants to rest. He 
 wants to live. He's enjoyed himself immensely. Oh ! 
 George, he hates dying, he told me so. I went on Tues- 
 day to ask him if we must give up Baby and he told me 
 he told me a great deal. He's taking it in anything but 
 a a born saintly way. Well, he hates it so badly that 
 that I arranged to take Jasper to his grandfather the 
 very day Dr. Baker dies. It's always comfortable to do 
 horrid things together in an understanding sort of way. 
 It's not so lonely. And in a way it will then be one 
 sorrow for you, not two. You've so little time for your 
 own sorrows, poor George ! " she said wistfully. 
 
 " Oh ! you poor, poor little mother ! " cried George 
 heartbroken. " But, darling, you have so much to bear," 
 he continued. " Try to think of Dick in another way. 
 He's done splendid work, splendidly. It's been recognized 
 in spite of his thirty years, his name will last, and every 
 minute of those years have been full of good things. 
 And lately he's been working against cruel, crushing odds. 
 Surely no man has better earned the Eternal Life ? " 
 
 " But he so thoroughly enjoys this life, and, George," she 
 said, "he loves me."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 267 
 
 "He what?" 
 
 George was on his feet, his face as grey as granite. 
 " But when ? Where ? " he demanded incoherently, his 
 brain afire, his heart like ice. 
 
 " He told me that last day. I had never thought of such 
 a thing. If I had oh ! if I had " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 The hardness in his tone struck some little atom in Joan 
 dully. All the rest of her was throbbing with the pain of 
 the two partings. 
 
 For the first time in his life George discovered that even 
 in chastened flesh may lurk strange and discordant points 
 of view. 
 
 " But, Joan ? " The tone this time fixed Joan's wander- 
 ing attention. She turned her eyes full upon her hus- 
 band's face. Then slowly, and with an ineffable dignity, 
 she stood up. 
 
 " But, George, I don't understand. I I'm extremely 
 proud of the love of a man like Dr. Baker. It's the only 
 one single thing he ever did give me, and after all it's the 
 best he had to give. And he gave it beautifully. And 
 I I can tell you nothing while you look like that." 
 
 His face made her giddy, she could quite easily have 
 fallen. To be defending herself against George ! It seemed 
 so extraordinary. She had to hold her hands tight else 
 they must have flown up to hide her face. She loosed 
 them in a minute and laid one upon a chair. 
 
 The aloof, quiet, proud offence in her face was like 
 another blow to George. His grey face flushed darkly. 
 He turned silently to walk up and down the room. 
 
 An unaccountable dismemberment seemed to rend and 
 twist him, a storm pitilessly to smite and beat upon him. 
 
 His face partook of his disorder. His mouth worked 
 oddly. His eyes flamed. He was possessed with a horrid 
 sense of undeserved outrage, he was ashamed and con- 
 founded. 
 
 And he entirely failed to understand or account for his 
 warring emotions. 
 
 That the abominable anger surging up in him against 
 his dying friend was the fury of fiends, not that of men, 
 he knew ; the rest was dim. He fetched up short and 
 stood dully marvelling at his own unworthy violence.
 
 268 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 Joan's eyes, fixed in mute enquiry upon his face, sud- 
 denly flashed out. 
 
 George's appalling likeness to his father, at his worst, 
 explained a great deal. She remembered Jasper the elder 
 in many a spasm of intemperate wrath. 
 
 One day, not a month ago, young Jasper, with the ex- 
 asperating guile of babyhood, had consciously excited the 
 jealousy of his adoring slave. At the time Joan remem- 
 bered Isabella and shuddered. 
 
 George, too, seemed to be shaken from all self-control. 
 
 To her terrified eyes he might also be a drunkard, shat- 
 tered after a debauch. George, to be disfigured into such 
 a likeness ! 
 
 She sat down and steadied herself. 
 
 " Oh ! George, you must stop looking like that, please." 
 Her tone did more for him than the wisest words. Her 
 averted face further helped him. In an instant he knew 
 how piteously he must have lost his head; the fever of 
 jealousy was consumed in a hot flood of shame. 
 
 " It seems so utterly impossible. I can't simply bear 
 it," she went on slowly. " Until the last few minutes your 
 face has always made the most impossible things possible 
 except just at odd moments when I've been too tired 
 to bother. And now to see you feeling all wrong in 
 rather a low way I should imagine," she added, with a 
 quiet disdain that made George wince, " I felt as if I I 
 couldn't sit up properly any longer. If the smallest atom 
 of you were really to go, I believe the whole of me would 
 go with it. Oh ! George, I'm so brittle." 
 
 George was now broken with remorse. He was 
 awkward now before her, sensitive, awkward, and very 
 young. 
 
 " Oh ! Joan, I've been vile, outrageous, senseless, dearest. 
 I don't know how it all happened. But in one instant I 
 found myself struggling in the blackest waters that I've 
 been in yet. They swamped everything; our sorrow for 
 the boy ; Dick's dying ; your goodness. I could only 
 remember that he loved you, and you liked it ! Joan ! 
 Lift up your face and look at me," cried the poor fallen 
 saint. " I can't touch you, dear, till I see that you for- 
 give me. You needn't be afraid to look at me now, dear," 
 he said sadly, as she sat immovable. " I've behaved like
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 269 
 
 a fool and probably look like one; we can't escape the 
 outward sign of any mean emotion, but I'm no longer a 
 cad a ravening brute." 
 
 She flung a lovely shy look at him, and with a sigh lifted 
 her head. 
 
 " I thought I'd wait till you were absolutely right," said 
 she. " I've noticed with myself it takes a few minutes." 
 
 " I lost my head," he said humbly. " It's so odd to 
 come across unexpected wild beasts in yourself. The 
 thought of your going to Dick about the boy and not to 
 
 me you know Oh ! Joan, if you were a man you'd 
 
 understand better how a man may stumble into making a 
 fool of himself in this particularly odious way. You you're 
 so absolutely different from other women " 
 
 " But in London," she said wistfully, " I was rather like 
 them." 
 
 " Their likeness to you was what made their charm," 
 safd her husband proudly. 
 
 " It's you who are different from other men," said she. 
 " If if you altered, if you weren't you, nothing would ever 
 be the same again. Nothing would seem right." 
 
 " After this idiotic outburst ? " he asked ruefully. 
 
 " But it's over. And it's shown you at least how much 
 I do depend on you," she said, with trembling lips. " You 
 can light all the dulness and still all the pain except just 
 sometimes. I depend on you altogether, you hold me 
 up." 
 
 " This time I've been a broken reed." 
 
 " Yes," she said, frowning curiously, and stirring a little. 
 " It was odd you could be you who can see God every- 
 where." 
 
 " Sometimes a man forgets God and can only see his 
 wife." 
 
 " It's nice to be remembered before Higher things some- 
 times," said she, after a pause, "but not just in this sort 
 of way. George," said she in a quick, sharp voice, " did 
 the face of God ever seem dreadful to you ? " But sud- 
 denly she threw up her hands. " Don't tell me," she cried, 
 " I'd rather not know. It's all past and nothing must ever 
 bring it back. And with Jasper gone I shall depend on 
 you more than ever." 
 
 " Your strength is stauncher than mine, and has the
 
 270 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 invincibility of perfect gentleness, beloved," said George. 
 " That's perhaps why you don't realise it. It will never 
 leave you in a moment of miserable passion and drop you 
 like lead into the waters of weakness." 
 
 Joan drew her feet up under her chair, and every atom 
 of her twisted in a spasm of dissent and revolt. 
 
 He looked so big and uplifted and so near to God. 
 She felt so far from God, so small and dejected. 
 
 Should she tell him, heap some of her burthens upon 
 his back, her own was so tired? She fetched a deep 
 breath and a volley of hot words seemed to blister her very 
 lips. 
 
 " If only you knew " she began. 
 
 "As though I didn't know your reserve of strength. 
 Isn't little Jasper tugging at it this minute? and over- 
 work, and this dreadful air? And Dick's dying? Do you 
 think I've forgotten anything in all this bitter business, for- 
 gotten your goodness in sparing me till the last ; forgotten 
 your struggle before you decided to give the boy to my 
 father and not to Miss Rebecca ? " 
 
 George's face had regained its power over her; she 
 could no more now have told him all the petty disorder 
 of her mind than she could have struck his wonderful 
 face. 
 
 " And, darling, that madness has left me, and Dick was 
 my friend first after all. And I can think now from his 
 point of view. I know better than you can what it must 
 be to him to love you and say good-bye ! " 
 
 " He did hate it," said she. 
 
 All the heat had turned seemingly to ice in Joan and she 
 spoke icily. She was sorry, but it was the best she could 
 do. 
 
 George knew everything everything but just what she 
 so sorely wanted him to know. 
 
 Her failure to enlighten him seemed to put between her 
 and George all at once a confusing medley of parochial 
 institutions, a thousand dissonant points of view, a throng 
 of strange shuddering silences. 
 
 And in the distance a dim Heaven and a dazzling earth 
 blocked the way to George. 
 
 " And yet to say it all out would be like like desecrating 
 an altar," she thought, with a long look at him.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 271 
 
 " I wonder," said George suddenly, " I wonder in spite 
 of idiotic explosions if two souls ever before clung so 
 close as ours two brains ever before thought so near 
 together." 
 
 " Poor George ! " said Joan, with the oddest laugh, and 
 in a quick spasm of surprise, loneliness and remorse she 
 caught and kissed his tender, stroking hand. " All Baby's 
 things are packed," she added hastily. " I'll go with you 
 as far as Hepple and change there." 
 
 " Won't you come on and see Dick, dearest ? " 
 
 " No, I might make it harder and disturb him." 
 
 " It's not your usual way to disturb." 
 
 " But at such a time earthly things must disturb. I 
 don't think he's ever mixed me up with heavenly ones." 
 
 George turned a loving glance upon her, but he did 
 not repeat his invitation. 
 
 " Oh ! Baby and the tea ! " she cried. While George 
 was drinking his second cup of tea she crouched down 
 beside the child. 
 
 " Jasper ! " she cooed, " we're going to grand-dad's, you 
 and I, and you're to stay, and take care of him. And 
 you'll see the horses and the calves and the cows, and 
 the young colts and the red roses." 
 
 " An' you'll see 'em, too ? " he demanded, her face per- 
 haps moving him to a sudden suspicion. 
 
 " No, not for long only just for a day ; I must stay with 
 daddy, but I'll come to see you. And a very big bit of 
 you belongs to grand-dad. We mustn't keep it as well as 
 our own. Greediness is dreadful, darling, especially when 
 grand-dad's ill and no one can cure him but you." 
 
 " Me ? " 
 
 " Yes, you, and no one else quite so well. It makes 
 grand-dad well when you take his hand and insist upon his 
 going out to see the horses, and the cows, and the flowers. 
 Sitting still in the library or the gun-room is extremely 
 bad for grand-dad. Oh ! Baby, you've got a great deal 
 to do." 
 
 " But I'm seepy," said Baby, nestling drowsily up against 
 his mother. " And it's so far. If I called where we lived 
 wid the wed woses, you could always hear; won't hear 
 dere." 
 
 He looked so small and white ; he leaned so helplessly
 
 272 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 up against her. She held him closer and an odd little 
 look of defiance came into her face. 
 
 George did not in the least mean to be selfish, but there 
 was a panic-stricken look about him. His wife seeing it, 
 controlled herself. 
 
 She softly put the child down, stood up, took her hus- 
 band's cup, and brought him some more tea, but for the 
 moment she could not touch George. 
 
 " You turn wid me to grand-dad's, mummy. San't cure 
 him widout you," murmured Jasper. " Tisn't no use never, 
 mummy. An' tink o' pears an' apples, an' six young cats 
 all blind an' mewin', an' gwapes. Mummy, is your ears 
 gone blind like the kittens eyes ? " 
 
 " No, dear, I hear every word." 
 
 " An' the dwives," said Jasper minor. " You arms hold 
 better 'n Bwook's and his chin scwapes an' he smells of beer 
 an' peppermint." 
 
 " I'm afraid I can't stay this time, little lad." 
 
 " Mummy," said Baby, with an air of premature wis- 
 dom, " I tink you must. Bwook's is wery kind, but he's 
 awful wulgar, he is. Bwook's says I'se a damned little 
 
 warmint and a buckin' hippopotamus an' " He paused 
 
 to conjure up other memories and behold the result of the 
 disclosures already made. 
 
 " I'm dreadfully shocked, little heart, but tell me more." 
 
 " Oh ! there's lots," said Jasper cheerfully. " Let me 
 tink." 
 
 While Jasper nerved himself to further effort George sat 
 silent to watch his incomparable wife struggling towards 
 victory. That her place was at Aiken and by his side 
 George had no doubt whatsoever. It was absolutely 
 necessary that Jones, the second curate, must rest, he 
 had twisted his ankle badly; the Infant School mistress 
 was ill ; his own hands could hold no more. If Joan went 
 now it would entail an entirely new adjustment of things 
 and there was no time. 
 
 Besides, never in all his life had he more urgent need 
 of his wife. He was himself fiercely fighting against a 
 host of despairs, a gathering crowd of indifferences, a web 
 of fastidious horrors. Pains, that only the contact of the 
 best beloved could assuage. 
 
 George spared her the recital of these he fought and
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 273 
 
 conquered them with dignity alone with his God. But 
 afterwards to come to Joan was what made everything 
 possible. A wounded man will go slack to his work, Joan 
 healed his wounds and sent him out whole to his labours. 
 
 If it was necessary for her to go then, of course, he 
 could face the fact. But was it? 
 
 The child's face had certainly grown thin. His colour 
 had faded. George looked anxiously at his legs and was 
 reassured. They were sturdy and instinct with life, now 
 as he was kissing his mother they kicked vigorously to 
 emphasize the vastness of his affection. 
 
 The rampant abandonment in the child's movements 
 might well compose the most fearful of fathers. 
 
 But with the intuition of a poet George knew to an 
 unusual extent for man or saint what an imaginative mother 
 may endure. It was Joan's first real parting with the child. 
 His heart bled for her. 
 
 But that Joan could accept the lesser thing could take 
 the easier road struck George not at all. Still less that 
 the easier road may upon occasion be the right one, for 
 in a variety of ways George was still very young. 
 
 " He said," proceeded Jasper, ' I'se a bloomin' eel, an'll 
 make him split his sides, an' Squorr'll give him the sack. 
 He told 'em in his hand away from grand-dad's best ear, 
 he did, mummy. Awful wulgar, ain't he ? Turn, mummy, 
 or me'll be saying dem awful wulgar words, me will," said 
 Jasper wheedling. 
 
 " No, Baby, you won't because when you thought of me 
 they'd seem to be biting your throat, and when you're 
 not thinking of me you'll be curing grand-dad. So there 
 won't be any time." 
 
 Her sweet, quiet face, her clinging embrace of the child, 
 the brightness in her voice remained with George for many 
 a day, a haunting memory. 
 
 " I'll ask the doctor if I need stay," said Joan, " and if 
 it's not really necessary I'll come back to-night. Perhaps 
 I'll meet you at Hepple." 
 
 Jasper gave a queer, bitter little sobbing cry, but being 
 a brave boy he stoutly held back the tears. 
 
 " Daddy wants me most, little heart, and mother wants 
 both of you. And mothers can do ever so many things, 
 but they can't divide themselves in two." 
 
 18
 
 274 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Bravo ! " said George in a low voice. " Men have got 
 decorations for smaller victories than that. Heart of my 
 heart, we couldn't have spared you now ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 ALTHOUGH her child had not been peculiarly successful in 
 dazzling the dulness out of life for Joan, without him there 
 seemed to be no light anywhere. So in her painstaking 
 way she had gone forth to search diligently until she 
 found it. 
 
 She shut her nose to the scents, her eyes to the sights, 
 her ears to the language of the poor, and went in and out the 
 sweltering houses. She told stories to the seething infants, 
 beguiled their elders into suffering gladly their many tasks 
 of sewing, listened attentively to the mothers, and gave 
 tobacco to the old men too deaf for verbal consolation. 
 And everything the Vicar's wife did, she did with a full 
 understanding of the insidious yearnings of her clients, and 
 with a real appreciation of their mighty fortitude. 
 
 And sometimes in her irresponsible way Joan was sud- 
 denly alive and alight, sheer back in the one vivid transform- 
 ing holiday of her life, with George the centre of it; and 
 conscientious in all things she would strive to turn this 
 radiance of the past upon the monotonous dimness of the 
 present, but in this matter the screw refused to turn in 
 her hand. 
 
 Without visions it was difficult to get on at all, however, 
 so in order to exorcise the worldliness from memory to 
 thrust the glitter of jewels out of her hankering mind, she 
 often shut her eyes and betook herself to the more per- 
 missible sparkle of streams only to open them upon a 
 dank wall hideous with posters. 
 
 But it was only when she looked away from George that 
 these degenerate thoughts took any real root in his wife. 
 In George's vivifying presence she could generally cast 
 them out. 
 
 His vitality strung hers up to a spurious activity. There 
 are convictions, however, with which it is impossible for 
 a woman to argue.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 275 
 
 " If only I could get to enjoy the affection of those poor 
 young men," Joan sometimes mournfully reflected as she 
 plied George's curates with nourishment, " it might be a 
 solace, but it makes one rather tireder than before. When 
 four people all like you in the same indefinite way it 
 becomes a drag.'' 
 
 She beat up eggs, however, for the ailing ones, and gave 
 the sound tea, and pride kept her face bright. 
 
 It was only with herself she could do nothing. The 
 passionate hostility of this foolish woman to the whole 
 deadly routine grew in vim and volume, and night and 
 day she longed for Jasper minor and the bright air of the 
 woods. Even if she could have been wholly at ease as to 
 the baby's entourage ; she was anything but that, however, 
 for it was a chaotic household which ecstatically welcomed 
 her to the Hall and a blear-eyed master. 
 
 The Squire's latest bout seemed to the untamed and 
 adaptable mind of that gentleman to be founded upon 
 common-sense. 
 
 He considered it in the light of a robust protest against 
 unnecessary self-immolation involving the innocent ; against 
 the leading of lambs to the slaughter after a sneaking fashion 
 only possible to the modern saint with radical tendencies. 
 Even the martyrs, argued the Squire, saw their way to going 
 to the stake unaccompanied by wives and infants. He felt 
 deserted in his old age; even Rebecca he reflected with 
 bitter inaccuracy, even Rebecca had twisted a solemnly 
 worded, high-principled proposal of marriage into a sug- 
 gestion fraught with levity. There was literally no refuge 
 left him but the bottle and an invulnerable head, for which 
 he found himself now often blasphemously thanking God. 
 And by way of conscience-money he would despatch a 
 double donation the very next day to George's thrice-damned 
 schools. 
 
 Joan's belief in the heavenly influence of her boy was 
 staunch had she not proved it upon worse than Jasper? 
 But the amazing versatility of her father-in-law took strange 
 turns. Faith where he was concerned must be plentifully 
 planted with hope; and the air of Aiken nipped all the 
 tender young sprouts of that sensitive plant. 
 
 Jasper's secret stirrings of heart, however, because of 
 the trust and confidence implied in Joan's preferring him 
 
 18*
 
 2/6 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 before the righteous Rebecca and that lady's critical eye 
 upon his handling of responsibilities so unfitted to his 
 deserts, combined with Joan's hints, tended to produce in 
 Jasper a strenuous intolerant rectitude, an unswerving firm- 
 ness of touch in his dealings with petty misdemeanours, very 
 much to the advantage of Jasper junior. So upon many 
 matters Joan's mind might have been at rest. 
 
 While to obey a grandson who had absorbed many of 
 his mother's ways whilst escaping divers of his father's, soon 
 became quite natural to the Squire. The efforts of the 
 infant for his good chiming in melodiously with that young 
 person's own aims, and his thoughts about his mother, 
 were unremitting. 
 
 Rebecca, moreover, the child supplying the indispensable 
 chaperonage, now came at frequent intervals, and with 
 Rebecca about 
 
 The squire left the sentence incompleted, closed his 
 twinkling eyes, and emptied a bumper he had just pre- 
 pared for himself into a pot of scarlet balsam. "Wants 
 bucking up by the look of it," he murmured benignantly: 
 kindly disposed, even to the vegetable kingdom, was Jasper. 
 
 The boy, in short, brought a hush and a fragrance to a 
 jaded household, and pricked the memory of his grandsire 
 with a thousand gentlenesses. 
 
 Thinking of the child whilst talking to Rebecca, that 
 lady lost her wrinkles, and in the twilight she was a black- 
 eyed girl again, with the boys of four good counties toast- 
 ing her. 
 
 And when she had gone, and he sat lonely in the gather- 
 ing darkness, Jasper would bitterly resent the cruel fate that 
 had prevented Rebecca's being the grandmother of their boy. 
 
 In those forlorn moments the Squire often felt that it was 
 time indeed he did begin to make ready his balance-sheet 
 to lay before the last Auditor. 
 
 A difficult matter for a mind still, alas ! somewhat carnal 
 to tackle alone. A thing that needs somehow the help of 
 a good woman. 
 
 The baby, in short, was doing all that could reasonably 
 be expected of him; his face was round again, his cheeks 
 as red as his roses. 
 
 And yet was his mother filled always with a strange 
 fear.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 277 
 
 George, however, was tortured by no such dim faithless 
 ache. 
 
 Body, soul and spirit was he absorbed in his great fight, 
 and the fiercer the contest the better fitted did he seem to 
 face it. Every atom of the Vicar answered gallantly to the 
 greatness of each need. His work prospering, his intellect 
 expanded, and the freshness of his youth never waned. 
 
 So broken with fatigue that he could fall asleep on a 
 door-step, yet after a rest of ten minutes he was ready to 
 go out again with the step of a boy, and a face that could 
 bring hope to a dungeon. 
 
 Just now a series of sermons for young men called forth 
 all George's powers. 
 
 They had been begun modestly in his own dim barn of 
 a Church for a knot of young fellows seething with vulgar 
 talent, swollen with truculence and an overweening arrogant 
 desire to " best " the clergy. 
 
 It was impossible to deal with each man separately, so 
 having severally excited their curiosity and aroused their 
 fighting spirit, on the plea of the shortness of time, he had 
 induced them to let him take his innings once a week in 
 his own pulpit. 
 
 The Vicar had a gift of rapid rejection as regarded both 
 idea and word. What filtered through heart and brain 
 therefore on to the fair paper was invariably the best of 
 George, with all the frank informing charm of his absolute 
 naturalness. 
 
 For George was at heart the least priggish of men, and 
 only by mere accident was he ever inhuman. 
 
 The courteous respect for his opponent, inseparable from 
 a good soldier, was the first thing that struck his amazingly 
 thin-skinned audience simmering with hostility, together 
 with his intimate knowledge of their every point of view. 
 So that the echo of his sympathy and respect for every man 
 and every opinion, so long as there was a spark of honesty 
 in either, was soon at work amongst his hearers, undermining 
 prejudice, allaying suspicion, disarming hate. 
 
 Then, but not till then, did George let his shafts of 
 keen, kindly sarcasm play in and out the gaudy meretricious 
 arguments he knew so well. 
 
 And by this time his men eager, amused, alive, were all 
 ready to have the thing out with the parson as Man, and
 
 278 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 could behold with reasonable serenity visions of sand in 
 their foundations of granite, of rents in robes until now 
 deemed immaculate. 
 
 The sequels of these sermons rarely enjoyed the peace and 
 privacy of George's study. They were begun and continued 
 at odd moments, in street and lane, on the banks of the fer- 
 menting canal, beside factory fires, and the desks of clerks. 
 
 But this thing once begun had to go on, and it called for 
 all that George had to give, and at any moment he had to 
 be prepared for the extortionate demand of some intellect, 
 suspicious, alert, often offended, therefore as often offensive, 
 and always as keen as a razor. 
 
 So each day George grew more thoughtful, more absorbed, 
 with less time to think of the absence of Jasper or of the 
 little interests of life. 
 
 Moreover, in spite of her boy away and dank weeds for 
 roses, Joan shone above them all, a gracious star guiding 
 upwards ; through the whiteness of misery, the redness of 
 crime, the horror of the sadness of living, she passed un- 
 touched, and there was healing in her steps. And to give 
 George his due, it never struck him to omit the workings 
 of human fallibilities in the course of Joan's sweet and 
 soothing progress. 
 
 To evade and discount anything in such as Joan were an 
 insult. 
 
 Her moments of impatience, of strong strange revolt, in 
 no sort of way escaped this curer of souls. He saw her 
 love for colour and light, for fine clothing and change, and 
 the fresh airs of Heaven, the glitter of jewels, the desire 
 for admiration, and further explorations into that riot of 
 delight, called society. All Joan's passions were beautifully 
 known to George; without them, to his mind, she had 
 peradventure been an insipid saint with a lengthening nose. 
 
 At this time George was woefully beset and buffeted by 
 an enquiring youth of atheistic tendencies, with a fiendish 
 gift of words, an insatiable faculty for amassing incontrover- 
 tible fact, and a superbly accurate habit of deduction. 
 
 To keep up with the romping swing of this young man's 
 revoluntionary campaign added heavily to George's labours. 
 
 And now one day, in the crux of a tumultuous argu- 
 ment, despair had looked round the corner and palely 
 mocked George in the face.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 279 
 
 In one grim sword stroke this man had cut the ground 
 from under George's feet, and left a score of steadfast 
 trusted threads loose and bleeding in the hollow air. For 
 the moment the Vicar could get no sure foothold anywhere. 
 His grasp was weak as a child's. 
 
 The falter was only for a moment, but it was a moment to 
 look fair in the face. 
 
 George resolved to snatch one hour of peace with Joan 
 and silence, and went back, a lion refreshed, all the threads 
 again in his hand. 
 
 But it all meant more work, more absorption. Joan saw 
 less of him and more of the curates, and the silences gathered 
 and grew. 
 
 Nothing in regard to George, however, escaped his wife. 
 Her surprised admiration for him never wavered. She 
 learned all his love, and his struggle, and the aching of his 
 faithful heart in the words of gold she wrote down to his 
 dictation every night when the work was done. For now 
 she was his Secretary. But being a weak, unherioc woman, 
 sometimes she could have wished that George would push 
 aside her pen so as to hold her to his heart and still her 
 pain. 
 
 Sometimes in a pause she would wonder how long ago it 
 was since, the child in bed safe above them, she had sung 
 comic operas with Fred Thryng, and every drop of blood 
 in her had jigged gaily to the measure. 
 
 Now her blood seemed to shuffle along in rather a slip- 
 shod way, and even her thoughts that used to come leaping 
 crept now tiredly trailing. 
 
 They came always in time, however, she hastily assured 
 herself George quickened them. So in the evening when 
 he wanted them they were there. 
 
 One night, for some inexplicable reason, Joan kept waking 
 in horrid panics. It seemed to her that little Jasper was 
 calling. She lay still and breathed softly, afraid of waking 
 George, and that night through all her broken sleep there 
 went the crying of the child. 
 
 Vague fears were in no sort of way things to lay upon 
 George's over-burthened shoulders. So even when the 
 morning brought a cheery note from Jasper senior alluding 
 casually to a slight baby complaint, Joan said nothing, and 
 did not mention the note.
 
 280 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 There were moments when, to complicate George with 
 infants and their minor complaints seemed next door to 
 blasphemy. This was one of them. 
 
 But still the cry rang in her ears, the impulse to go to 
 the child turned in her heart. So when the vicar came 
 back to luncheon his wife gave him the note, and in a voice 
 that could not disturb the most nervous of carnal hearts, 
 much less one so peculiarly buttressed by faith as George's, 
 she suggested that she should like to go see the boy. 
 
 George was reading absently, imperative thoughts pressing 
 themselves into each sentence, now he jerked himself back 
 into fuller attention. 
 
 " But, dearest it's nothing, surely ? " 
 
 " No, but I'd rather like to go. I can manage easily by 
 hurrying. I must catch the earlier train though, it would 
 never do to chance the later. I'll he back in the morning 
 for breakfast." 
 
 " Oh ! well dearest, go, if you are the least anxious," he 
 said after luncheon. " I'll miss you horribly. Henty 
 wants to come with me to Frome," he said, following her 
 into the dark little drawing-room. " I have, as you know, 
 to preach on that very subject we're at logger-heads about, 
 he and I. The fellow has thrown the most amazing dis- 
 cord into chords that until now have always rung true. I've 
 been at the thing now for three stricken hours and it won't 
 come right. I can't refuse his company, that would be 
 cowardice, but I'd joyfully be rid of it. I needn't enter 
 fully into the difficulty to-night, but I must be quite ready 
 for Henty afterwards. You can't face a scoffing, striving, 
 sad soul like his with a glimmer of doubt in any argument, 
 and as for subterfuge, it would be like defying God with 
 Henty's big mournful eyes on you. I mean to win in the 
 end, of course, but oh ! the shortness of time. And Henty 
 savagely triumphing in his horrible intellectuality, bitterly 
 regretting in the depths of his curious, cruel, tender and 
 most uncomfortable heart. I'll win I must win but it 
 will cost blood. And this night of all others to be without 
 you ! " 
 
 Perhaps he had said more, but he caught that moment a 
 glimpse into one of the secret chambers of women into 
 which men must not enter. With a whimsical impulse to 
 take off his shoes, George sighed and was silent. Presently,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 281 
 
 with a half-realised idea that in some vague way he had 
 been selfish to his wife, George laid his hand upon her 
 head. 
 
 " Why should you come back in the morning," said he, 
 " have a 'appy day in the country. It will do you good." 
 
 He sprawled down, and leaned his head that ached with 
 thinking against her knee. " I sometimes think," said he, 
 " that Henty lodges seven devils, every one of them a senior 
 wrangler. There's so horrible an accuracy in his arguments. 
 He's never blatantly blasphemous, and latterly the wistful- 
 ness underlying his savagery is the saddest thing I know. 
 If I could prove this thing convince myself first and then 
 him, afterwards I could have courage for anything, I think. 
 In five minutes yesterday the fellow shuffled back to 
 chaos, the sortings and siftings of years. And in two 
 hours they must be to some extent readjusted. If only," 
 said the poet in this complication of a man, "if only you 
 could be with me, a cloud of white work upon your 
 knee." 
 
 A shiver ran through Joan, but she kept her voice steady. 
 
 " It's such a busy day. There's such a lot to do before 
 the train goes, George." 
 
 " Dearest, I know. But I believe my need of you is 
 developing into a morbid craving not to be given way to. 
 I'll get things straight all right in the end, never fear. 
 And if Henty's arguments prove to be as rational as I now 
 think them, and as original, no rechauffb of German thought, 
 after all it's fortunate they came up before the sermon, not 
 after. You may eat your words upon occasion in the 
 presence of your wife, but never under the intelligent glare 
 of a factory hand ! " 
 
 " George, supposing Henty had happened in in Peter's 
 parish ? " 
 
 George looked at her, and his eyes danced until they 
 were a joy to see. 
 
 "We'll leave out Peter, if you don't mind," said George. 
 
 He stood up, laughed, and shook himself. 
 
 " Oh ! Joan, it's a serious moment. It's a crisis in my 
 life, and in Henty's. Wish me good luck in the name of 
 the Lord, child ! " 
 
 He paused, and turned on the threshold. "How young 
 you look, and as though you might be so gay. It's in
 
 282 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 spite of everything it's a glorious life," he cried, " but for 
 you sometimes I've thought " 
 
 Joan sprang up and went to him. 
 
 " If you thought one single bit differently about the life. 
 If you got usual or lukewarm, or or stodgy, or curatey, 
 or the least atom like Peter, I should die. If if I'm a 
 beast, and can't quite enjoy several things, that that has 
 nothing to do with you! Oh, George, this sermon will 
 come right, I know it will, and so will Henty. 
 
 " Henty is disappointing to look at, certainly," she ad- 
 mitted, " but if he's so passionately anxious to be spiritually- 
 minded, he surely must succeed in the end, even without 
 your passionate interest in him. Between the two, how 
 could he possibly go near failure ? " 
 
 She was diligently brushing his coat with her soft hands. 
 
 " Your very touch gives one courage and takes the green 
 shine off this coat," said George gratefully. " It's awful, 
 this one, isn't it? The possession of you makes a man 
 vain-glorious. You lighten every darkness, and bring the 
 sparkle of the stars into the dull routine of life. You keep 
 apathy at bay. I never come away from another man's 
 house having beholden his wife but I'm sorry for him ; 
 she falls so horribly short of mine. We're poor, dependent 
 creatures. You hold us in the hollow of your hands, and 
 you're not always merciful." 
 
 George's eyes rested gaily upon her, and he laughed softly. 
 " I once knew a fellow, a double first man, with a born talent 
 for theatricals. He might have done anything, but his wife 
 drove him to nightly Halma at forty, and he died with the 
 fifteenth edition of ' Ben Hur ' in his hand. So much for 
 wives ! " 
 
 " Don't worry, darling, about the boy," he called back. 
 " If there was the smallest cause for worry they'd telegraph." 
 
 " Telegraph," she repeated to herself, shivering. " But, 
 even if they did, George would still be thinking of Henty's 
 soul." 
 
 " It's it's a terrible religion ! " The next instant she 
 lifted her head proudly. " But it's magnificent ! " she said 
 aloud. 
 
 Her pride was but of short duration. It vanished in a 
 humble admission. 
 
 " I believe I could understand this passionate zeal every
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 283 
 
 throb of it, if George was going out to kill bodies instead of 
 saving souls! To feel like that, and yet to be George's 
 inspiration! It's odd and, and it's rather frightening." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THAT afternoon seemed to Joan to go in bounds, and yet 
 drag dismally. She had so much to do, and the necessity 
 put upon her to do each thing in its order and with an 
 air of ample leisure, tormented her wickedly. 
 
 Joan had no natural leanings towards panics, false sen- 
 timent or morbidity ; she argued down "her senselessnesses, 
 each in its kind, sedulously. But the soft wail of her 
 child in her ears broke obstinately through every tag of 
 logic and settled coldly in her heart. 
 
 She got her Penny Bank safely through, and lest she 
 did too little, having done much more than was strictly 
 necessary for the parcel of derelicts committed to her 
 care, with a feeling of inextinguishable nausea, she went 
 in to her Mother's Meeting. 
 
 The women seemed more hot and steamy than usual. 
 Their eyes were duller, their voices rasped with a more 
 desolating drag, their feet shuffled with an added touch 
 of droning monotony; the one straw too much was 
 in everything. 
 
 And all the babies looked limp. 
 
 Joan fixed the sewing assiduously, and failing to move 
 her mothers by word of mouth, she betook herself to read- 
 ing aloud to them. She picked her subject with refer- 
 ence to the weird tastes of her audience, and valiantly read 
 on. And through all the words there throbbed the crying 
 of the child. 
 
 But the voice of " Passon's lady " to the women, who 
 for all their dulness, had the wise ears of those who 
 have borne children, seemed only the sweeter for the new 
 note in it. 
 
 What Joan read troubled the women of Aiken but little 
 at any time, though they always dearly loved her voice, but 
 never more than upon this weary, thunderous day of 
 Autumn. It nevertheless disturbed them.
 
 284 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 One faded, faithful creature who never thought of her 
 husband but she remembered a beating, and yet revered 
 the marriage state, in a pause laid a furtive hand upon the 
 girl's lap. 
 
 " A 'usbing," she said feelingly, " may be a blessin' in 
 disguise, an' 'e may not, God knows. But it's wen the 
 childer begin as we larn. It's they as put the bitter in 
 all our drink. Your little un's 'ad to go, mum, they tells 
 me. Wot wi' the teethin' an' the conwulsions an' them 
 there creeturs in the water, not to spake o' brown creeturs 
 an' watered brains. A plenty sure in children to try the 
 faith an' the temper. An' afore you've fairly finished wi' 
 this 'ere lot hup come Satan an' the pits 'e lays. 
 
 " Tis thankful," she proceeded dreamily, " we should be 
 for our benefits, for sure. An old maid be but a barren gye 
 a passil o' crool waste, she be, God 'elp 'er an' a likely 
 man rarer every year, God 'elp us. 
 
 " But childer " she paused to groan softly " they set 
 us prayin', the childer do." 
 
 Joan knowing that she meant kindly, pressed her gnarled 
 hand, but the comfort had stricken chill. 
 
 She got, however, through her tasks triumphantly, had 
 time to change all her things so as to be fresh and fragrant 
 for Jasper, and ready for tea when George burst in. 
 
 " You're back ! " cried he, " how lucky ! " 
 
 His face was white, his eyes sunken in his head, but 
 they gloriously shone. 
 
 He looked as one who has fared through a dreadful 
 vigil of the night to find joy in the morning. 
 
 " I've had the very devil " he laughed " well, I've 
 
 had a rank bad time of it then, but I've got square again. 
 I know now where I stand. I see light everywhere, and 
 words are fairly pelting into me. I'll convince Henty and 
 wiser than Henty. But I can't let one single idea, one 
 thought go they're not written down yet. And you must 
 help me child, how white you look. Are you so tired ? " 
 
 " I'm not tired but " 
 
 " You're tired to the bone, dearest," sighed George. 
 " Can't I see ? But it must make no difference, dear, we 
 know that, you and I. You know Hinde is dying, and he's 
 sent. He can't stand any one of the curates but Jones, 
 and he's gone, you know. He adores you, however
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 285 
 
 more, I think, than he does me, and it's the man who has 
 the whole of life before him, not him who has just reached 
 home, whom to-day I must serve. Will you go, dear, to 
 him and explain ? He'll understand. The dying are often 
 wise, and we've talked together of Henty, he and I. Oh ! 
 he'll understand all right. I'll be with him, of course, at 
 the last. It's not so urgent as that." 
 
 " But George " she stopped abruptly, and steadied 
 
 herself. 
 
 George's eyes were upon her, tender, remorseful. How 
 white she was, how tired her sweet white face tugged at 
 his heart. But he stood like a runner ready for the race, 
 one foot lifted, his proud, eager head towards the door. 
 Minutes were hours to him. 
 
 " He's forgotten," thought Joan, " forgotten baby and 
 the time, and the train " 
 
 The haunting cry was in her ears again. She daren't 
 wait or she must refuse George. 
 
 "I'll go," said she. "I'll go at once." But lest he 
 should kiss her, she moved aside. 
 
 George had meant to kiss her, but with the exquisite 
 Tightness of his wife palpitating in a man's soul, what 
 after all are kisses? and here was a great race to be 
 won. 
 
 A woman cannot hurry a dying man, so Joan lost her 
 train. 
 
 The shuttle-cock of two rival companies, as one train 
 crawled into the station, her mocking sister dashed gaily 
 out. It was twelve good miles to the Hall. Joan thought 
 frantically of telegraphing. 
 
 But it was an evil road banned by the Squire, who loved 
 his horses. The message would terrify the conservative 
 old household. Above all it would imply a want of trust 
 in George's father. She could explain her presence and 
 her ridiculous fears, but it seemed a mean sort of cruelty 
 to set a beloved old man, with strong feelings, off upon a 
 good three hours' unnecessary blasphemy. Besides, how 
 could she sit still and wait, for the child's crying rent her 
 brain ? 
 
 There was one fly available. The horse seemed skittish 
 and the driver looked askance at the weather. But Joan 
 coaxed him and he obeyed.
 
 286 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 The roads were rough, and the going slow, and when 
 they were five miles out upon a bleak common, the storm 
 broke. 
 
 By this time Joan knew for a certainty that her driver 
 was most obstinately and unpleasantly drunk. She had 
 expected as much from the beginning, but rustic manners 
 are often misleading. 
 
 Moreover, the potations of Mr. Stokes being but recent, 
 and his normal powers of resistance to the insidious ad- 
 vances of strong waters considerable, it had taken the keen 
 air and a panic fully to betray him. 
 
 In spite of her sustained effort after the sterner vir- 
 tues, Joan was hampered by many of the foolish fears of 
 her small, dead mother. 
 
 To be out alone, at any time, in the dark, was torture 
 to Joan, and a thunder-storm, even in the day-time, a 
 terror. 
 
 But now in the outermost darkness, with a scared horse 
 and a driver in a still more disturbing condition, her heart 
 stood still. 
 
 Chains of horrid fire ravened across the sky. A 
 lurid radiance of orange and scarlet danced devilishly 
 in her eyes. Freakish, irridescent zigzags of deathly 
 flame went fleeing across the common, through the 
 black branches of a blasted oak crashed a thunder- 
 bolt. 
 
 Hitherto hereditary reverence for the " Sqweere's dar- 
 ter-in-law " had restrained the use of " bloodies " in direct 
 conversation upon the part of Mr. Stokes. In the slack- 
 ness of mortal dread they flowed freely. 
 
 Joan shuddered and held tight to a strap. 
 
 " A evenly night vur a wild goose chase, this 'ere 
 
 an' no turnin' neither till we reach the crass," yelled 
 Jonathan. 
 
 All Joan's minor terrors were swallowed in the one great 
 one. 
 
 " To turn back now ! " she thought frantically, " and only 
 six miles from baby." 
 
 With her voice raised so as to pierce through the 
 howling elements and two drunken ears, she artfully ob- 
 served : 
 
 " How lucky that we've got over the worst of the road.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 287 
 
 It would have been terrible on that hill above the station. 
 I I think it's getting lighter," she faltered mendaciously. 
 
 " Think it's a-gettin' lighter, she ses, ses she," sneered 
 Jonathan, debauched by drink and terror into a rank 
 Republican. "An' the adjective 'evens a droppin' hout 
 their innards." 
 
 His voice seemed the most cruel thing in the crash of 
 elements, and in a mighty flash she saw, all at once, a 
 spice of danger in the dishevelled creature. 
 
 " Gettin' lighter ? " he roared, flinging his whip-hand aloft 
 towards the belching sky. 
 
 Joan shrieked a re-assuring reference to the Squire's 
 kitchen. 
 
 " Sqweere's kitchen be damned ! An' me a soppin' to 
 
 the pelt. Wi' the double newmony this 'ere 
 
 spring. Can a turn safe enuff be the crass an' turn 
 
 I will, s'elp me." 
 
 Joan peered into his distorted visage. It was the face 
 of a man who at any moment might hit out. Soft words 
 in such a case were vain, and she had now the courage 
 of a mother bereft. 
 
 She brought her mouth close to his horrible, drenched 
 ears and through the trumpet of her joined hands 
 shrieked : 
 
 " Don't dare to turn. Drive on at once, as fast as you 
 can, or I'll take the reins and drive myself. And you 
 know the Squire, you must surely know also what you'll 
 get from him if you presume to disobey me." 
 
 For full five minutes Jonathan, shocked into mechanical 
 obedience, drove with stertorous breaths. Then his dull 
 mind began to creak again upon its rusty hinges. He 
 thought of the slimness of the creature who dared thus to 
 defy him ; the terror that he had seen plain enough with his 
 two eyes upon her puny face. "A shakin' like a jelly," he 
 murmured, with a side glance at this freak he carried. 
 Her unhorsey appearance, backed by a constitutional con- 
 tempt for women, filled him with surly, mortified wrath. 
 
 " What do 'er know o' 'osses," he reflected, " tain't the 
 build." He paused in a nervous spasm of old associations. 
 He had in his time bent head and back before more than 
 one hard-bitten nose, in a habit, with a tough whip-hand. 
 Another look re-assured him. " Tent the build," he re-
 
 288 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 peated aloud, " noways," and in the wide sweep beside the 
 horse pond, recurring to his original intention, half 
 mechanically he jerked at the mare's mouth. 
 
 The half-formed intention to turn, with a blinding flash 
 in her eyes, confused the ill-trained brute, driving her back 
 upon her haunches, and in a second they were floundering 
 in a wet ditch into which the pond, when over full, drained. 
 
 The insensate bowlings of Jonathan completed the 
 mare's demoralisation; whereupon he began to lash out 
 wildly with his whip. 
 
 A lioness now, robbed of her whelps, Joan seized reins 
 and whip, crushed the brute's hat over his eyes, thus still- 
 ing his yelpings, and, how she managed it, who could tell, 
 but in the end she got horse and freight up the bank 
 on to the open road. Joan had little practice and less 
 skill, but a soft voice and kind hands go far with man or 
 beast. 
 
 But one wheel was on its last legs, and the mare dead 
 lame. 
 
 Jonathan, drenched, maudlin and semi-repentant, 
 crouched by the wayside to await death, meanwhile jerk- 
 ing out imprecations, with points of piety, in each. 
 
 No remonstrances could reach the creature through the 
 storm and Joan was at her wits' end. She wondered if she 
 could ride the mare and leave the wretch to his abominable 
 devotions, but she found the brute wincing with the pain 
 of her knees cut to pieces. She drew horse and fly as 
 near as she could to Jonathan, and proceeded to poke up 
 that gentleman, now fervently requesting God to break the 
 teeth of his enemies, for Jonathan was pious-bred and 
 knew the Scriptures anon supplicating Him to bless his 
 father and mother, long since laid in their graves. 
 
 The voice of command, touching at last some old brain 
 centre, Jonathan scrambled to his tottering toes and meekly 
 bobbed. 
 
 " Since any moment may be your last," said Mrs. George 
 imperiously, " hadn't you better try to die sober ? 
 Straighten yourself at once and attend to me. This horse 
 must be put somewhere. Is there any place near ? " 
 
 Jonathan shook himself. "A cottage 'ark a' that, oh 
 Gawd ! oh Gawd ! Swish ! see that. Gawd Amighty ! 
 be nigh us ! A cottage ses 'er It's main 'ard," he whined,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 289 
 
 and in a painful effort to stoop to look at the knees, he 
 sprawled at Joan's feet. 
 
 " Instantly get up," she cried. " Is there a cottage any- 
 where ? Yes or No ? " 
 
 As a last resource, hoping to arouse some familiar 
 memory, Joan kicked him. 
 
 The heroism in the action as applied by woman to man, 
 went straight home to Jonathan. 
 
 He hitched himself up, limb by limb, and with a new 
 humility stared at the bit o' whiteness in drenched muslin, 
 who serenely surveyed him. 
 
 " Hup that 'ere field be a cottage," he ventured, " me 
 haunt it be as owns it." 
 
 " That's fortunate then, she'll know what to do with 
 you." 
 
 Unsteadily he freed the gig from the traces. " Hup 
 hup," he shouted, and determining to be even with some 
 one, he grabbed the whip out of Joan's hand and slashed 
 cruelly at the quivering, terrified brute, but strung now to 
 desperation Joan had no fear. She wrenched the whip 
 out of Jonathan's hand and struck him with all her 
 strength. 
 
 " Go on in front," she cried, " and lead the way, and 
 don't forget that I have the whip." 
 
 Jonathan was no sooner inside his aunt's door than he 
 collapsed in a whimpering smother of foul language. 
 
 " Sqweere's darter-in-law," wailed the old woman, " s'elp 
 us. An' drink wicious he does, does Jonathan, sense he 
 wor breeched, an' afore it. Lard ! Oh, Lard ! " 
 
 But at last Joan brought her to coherence, got the mare 
 to shelter, and finding there was no candle in the hovel, 
 much less a lantern, she stood by the fire for a minute to 
 gather up her courage for the dark road. But in the 
 security of light and warmth, sheltered from the blinding 
 storm what lay between her and her boy, her fears grew 
 so vast and unsurmountable that Joan daren't delay. 
 
 She said a hasty good-night to the old woman, promised 
 help for damage done, and was away again into the dark- 
 ness before the crone, dulled with ague, could protest. 
 Her shrinking presages of woe followed Joan however, far 
 up under the sodden arch of trees, another note of horror 
 in the hideous discord. 
 
 19
 
 290 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 The young moon was lost now in the thick sky; the 
 unfettered winds fled howling one from the strokes of the 
 other. There was a dense wood above the cottage, rent 
 branches whirred through the air, and the thunder rolled 
 and the dome of the Heavens was scarred with horrid 
 flame. Up in the trees a host of birds twittered fearfully. 
 
 It was an awful night within four homely walls. A night 
 to give pause to every sinful soul. 
 
 To think of what it really was alone in the open must 
 have undone Joan, so she just thought of each footstep as 
 it came and plodded on. 
 
 Head and hands thrust forward, she groped through the 
 woodland stretches, and in the clear spaces tried to run, 
 but now her knee that she had twisted in the confusion of 
 her souse in the pond, began to ache and hampered 
 her. 
 
 By the old woman's clock it had been ten o'clock. It 
 could now be no more than eleven, and yet she had surely 
 travelled for centuries. 
 
 Suddenly upon a slight rise in the road, she was fetched 
 up by a horrid consciousness that she had lost her way, 
 that cold terror of travellers from which there is no 
 escaping. In the pause another terror seized and held 
 her. A swarm of grisly things rose up all at once from 
 the earth and closed in above and about her. They beat 
 her upon face and neck and hands with slimy wings. They 
 caught at her shivering flesh with curious claws, they 
 possessed her and would not let her go. To turn back 
 was to fall sheer amongst them, to go forward to get farther 
 out of the road. 
 
 And through a pause in the storm the child's cry came 
 wailing. 
 
 Suddenly in a flash of blue light, she saw the white 
 arms of a cross and with an odd childish gesture, beating 
 off the Things with her hands, she limped towards it. 
 
 And in the lurid light deciphered signs upon the 
 bleached arms. 
 
 She had laboured three miles out of her road and was 
 still eight miles from the boy. 
 
 And then Joan sat down and cried bitterly. 
 
 This was, however, folly, so she lifted herself up and 
 stumbled back the way she had come.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 291 
 
 She wished tiredly that she could pray, but as she 
 forged doggedly on, she could only think of Jasper and the 
 Things, always pursuing. 
 
 And then with a gasp she felt herself falling over the 
 edge of the world. 
 
 The sweeping rains had broken down the great bank 
 upon which the road was built, and Joan found herself 
 jammed fast in a pit, inextricably bound and imprisoned 
 by a heavy fall of mud and shingle. 
 
 A dreadful numbed, confused longing to lie still and let 
 things go seized upon Joan, but an ingrained habit of self- 
 sacrifice is always useful to a woman. She restrained her 
 feeble desire to dally, and with all her strength shouted 
 for help. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 JOAN might have cried till morning, however, had not 
 Captain Heron found himself very peculiarly bored at a 
 dinner-party that same evening and left early. 
 
 He had indeed fallen lately into rather an unhealthy 
 habit of lightly getting bored, of even faintly resenting the 
 harmless and necessary flow of polite conversation. 
 
 With the reputation of his mother growing daily in en- 
 chanting audacity, social chatter held pitfalls. He had 
 found more than once a hush at his approach. And since 
 even a spotless woman may be irretrievably ruined in one 
 angelic smile, what may not happen to a be-spotted one ? 
 
 He had found, moreover, that little Mrs. George Win- 
 nington once having entered into a man, was a difficult 
 person to get rid of, so as there really was no good and 
 sufficient reason for ousting so sweet and delicate a visitor 
 she remained with him, so making other women unab- 
 sorbing. Moreover, as the notoriety of his mother in the 
 unhappy woman's despair rose to screaming point, the 
 thought of that other woman so like, and so unlike, oddly 
 enough, became as a soft hand upon a raw wound. 
 
 George Winnington, in throwing in his lot with Aiken, 
 had not been forgotten by the County. He belonged to 
 it, and the veil of poetry half obscuring his common sense, 
 kept up a nervous interest in him. One could never tell 
 
 19*
 
 292 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 what he might not do next. He had already got into 
 several highly respectable papers, and once in the papers 
 God only knows ! And Joan came in by the way. 
 
 It was to hear about Mrs. George Winnington that, in- 
 deed, had suggested to Heron to accept Lady Rose's in- 
 vitation. He had heard in the course of the evening a 
 good deal of the fitness of Mrs. George Winnington for 
 her high calling, and a little about the muddiness of one 
 of her skirts and the dead wall that closed in the Vicar- 
 age; and then Mrs. Mercer, who had borne children and 
 done excellently by all of them, in the act of peeling a 
 peach, having first given her views upon vaccination and 
 the unseemliness of the New Gallery, related how little 
 Mrs. George, finding that her child could no longer stand 
 the foetid airs of Aiken, had taken him of all places in 
 the world to the Hall. 
 
 Women often surprised Captain Heron, and as he re- 
 membered, with a curious awe, how passionately Mrs. 
 Winnington loved her child, he stared at the Bishop's help- 
 meet and wondered exceedingly. 
 
 He was still wondering, in an unlearned, mannish sort 
 of way, when an hour later a woman's voice broke through 
 his meditations. These being of an unprofitable nature 
 may somewhat have demoralised Heron. He was cer- 
 tainly less calm and cool than usual. Instead of sensibly 
 permitting his soldier servant to explore the drenching 
 blackness, with a queer catch in his throat he jumped him- 
 self out of the dog-cart, and by the light of one of the car- 
 riage lamps went floundering through the deep mud towards 
 the slope whence came the cry. 
 
 The strangest thing in the evening's experience was that 
 he felt not the slightest surprise when he saw Joan in 
 the ditch. It seemed to him that he had fully expected 
 to see her. 
 
 " I felt pretty sure it was you," said he in so matter- 
 of-fact a tone that his coming became, in a moment, also 
 quite natural to Joan. 
 
 It was the least melodramatic of meetings ! 
 
 " Are you hurt ? " said he 
 
 " Just a little my knee. But I can't move there's 
 some sort of a mountain on me, I think." 
 
 Heron reserved his enquiries and went to work. And
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 293 
 
 there did indeed prove to be the better part of a ditch upon 
 Joan. She was in dire distress else she could hardly be 
 in this plight, that he knew, and yet, in spite of the know- 
 ledge, in spite of hour and place and storm, in spite of 
 reason and righteousness, with the maddening selfishness 
 of a great love upon him, Heron, as he freed her from 
 mud and shingle, seized with every touch an eternal 
 moment of bliss. 
 
 " I'm not the least surprised," he said, his joy despite 
 all effort mounting to his voice. " I've been expecting to 
 meet you somewhere to-night." 
 
 Then he remembered a great deal and changed his 
 tone. 
 
 " Where on earth were you going ? " 
 
 They both laughed and that broke the spell. 
 
 Joan's laugh breaking off into a tremble made him, how- 
 ever, blink oddly. 
 
 " I heard this morning that my baby wasn't very well," 
 she said ; " nothing really but but I got frightened. 1 
 had to come. I hoped to catch the first train, but I 
 didn't you know those trains. I found a fly at the sta- 
 tion, but the driver was drunk, and out on the common 
 the storm was dreadful. Trying to turn we had an 
 accident, smashed the fly, and hurt the horse. I had to 
 walk on." 
 
 " I see," he said dryly. " I'll have you at the Hall in 
 half-an-hour. But George ? " 
 
 " George doesn't know. He has gone to Hepple." 
 
 " But you heard in the morning ? " 
 
 " The letter said really very little, and George was 
 terribly busy. I didn't let him see it." 
 
 " I see." 
 
 " You see quite wrongly," she promptly replied. " In no 
 sort of way is it George's fault." 
 
 He was busy getting as much mud as he could off her 
 skirt. 
 
 " I don't suppose for a moment it was. When he finds 
 how the expedition has turned out he'll be nevertheless 
 terribly put about, and probably be thinking that it was." 
 
 " No," she said quietly. " He will not. You can't 
 blame yourself for what you know to be right. He'll be 
 dreadfully distressed, of course, but where a big thing's
 
 294 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 involved, one must take big risks, and one can't begin to 
 whimper directly they come." 
 
 She said nothing more, and was passive in his hands. 
 As a rule so self-helpful that she often made things rather 
 difficult for a man, she now yielded silently to his every 
 touch and permitted him almost to lift her into the dog- 
 cart. 
 
 When he got in beside her she was shaking from head 
 to foot. 
 
 " Do you think you've caught cold ? " he asked anxiously, 
 wrapping her round more warmly. 
 
 " No, but I'm just finding out how awful it's been. I'm 
 so glad it was you who came. The one thing I could 
 remember was not to stop for one minute calling out. If 
 I had, oh ! if I had, and you'd passed by ! " 
 
 " I shouldn't have passed by. I should have known, 
 and come." 
 
 She looked up at his face, clear and distinct in the 
 moonlight pouring through the riven blackness, and all 
 the things she had seen upon the face of the dying man 
 she saw now writ plain upon that of the living. But, oh, 
 the difference ! 
 
 Yet somehow it all seemed just as natural, as much part 
 of the whole thing, as that he should have come to her 
 that night. She was shocked, and sorry to her heart, but 
 she felt richer, more proud, and just a little warmer. It 
 seemed to her that she had been given something that only 
 the best of a woman can buy, a gift that could in no sort 
 of way shake her confidence in a friend. 
 
 To give all she could in return must be the next step. 
 For to take all, and give nothing had never been Joan's 
 way. 
 
 But there seemingly were difficulties afoot and a new 
 pain was stinging all the old ones into life. She saw 
 Heron flush under her grave, attentive eyes. So she sat 
 still, looking straight ahead of her in order to let the 
 new, strange sorrow settle down quietly, and to wonder 
 what her part in this perplexing matter would be. 
 
 The wind had fallen now and the thunder muttered and 
 growled in the far distance and the driving rain had 
 ceased. It was no longer necessary to shout each word 
 aloud.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 295 
 
 And yet neither spoke. 
 
 Heron was wondering dumbly how far he had gone in 
 folly, how much she knew, and how she would judge 
 him. 
 
 She was, he knew, singularly innocent in her points of 
 view, singularly lenient in her judgment and not easily 
 shocked, and she had a fine power of selection. He had 
 known her to face truths steadily that a more learned 
 woman had passed by. In a natural state there was no 
 morbid sentiment about Mrs. George ; a quiet fearlessness 
 that had often surprised him, had always distinguished her. 
 But who could answer for an overworked woman ? He felt 
 a horrid compunction; a confused sense of having 
 stumbled into waters too deep for him, having also drawn 
 in, perhaps, a less stout swimmer than himself. 
 
 They were silent both until he had driven in through 
 the wide gates. Then at last she leaned closer to him 
 and laid her hand so quietly upon his arm that not the 
 most vigilant of grooms could be any the wiser. 
 
 " I'm sorry," she said, " I don't think any words could 
 ever tell you how sorry I am for you. I have thought 
 always that the very saddest thing that could ever happen 
 to woman or man was to love one who can never give 
 anything back but a miserable substitute. It is the one 
 supreme misfortune. It means every pain that's ever 
 been suffered." 
 
 " But you what do you know ? " 
 
 " Oh ! but I know ! I've thought it out often, I've been 
 so sorry for people. I've been so thankful that that at 
 least could never happen to George and me. It's been an 
 immense consolation often. Oh ! I'm sorry, sorry for 
 you. I'm only the gainer. It's an honour to be loved in 
 the only way you could love," she said softly. " You're the 
 best man, except George, I've ever known." 
 
 " Don't for God's sake " 
 
 " You're better than you have any idea of," she gently 
 interrupted. " You're better than the Bishop, in a way. 
 No Theodosia living would spoil the best in you, the 
 greatest. You being a soldier she'd probably make it 
 greater in the end. You couldn't hide a talent under any 
 lace pocket-handkerchief." Heron drove on doggedly, his 
 face like stone.
 
 296 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Look at me," she pleaded, " we must have this thing 
 out together." 
 
 " What do you propose ? " he asked harshly. 
 
 " What a voice ! and things already so hard." Her 
 own voice was faint and very tired. 
 
 In spite of heroism Heron looked tenderly down into her 
 face and somehow it gave him strength. There was an 
 afflicting womanliness in Joan. 
 
 " To ignore or evade or pass by what you mean what 
 we both know brings a commonness into this thing," she 
 pleaded. " It dishonours us don't you think ? There's 
 never been anything common in you. If there had been 
 you would never think of offering it to me. So why should 
 we pretend? I want your love and your friendship and 
 your help to-night more than ever before in all my life 
 I want it as I've never wanted anything. To-night no one 
 could help me as you could. Not George nor George's 
 father nor Rebecca nor the Bishop even. You're the 
 one friend I want. By right, of course, you ought to go 
 away alone, and get things right again into shape again, 
 but I can't spare you and you won't even look at me." 
 
 And with that he looked. 
 
 " Mrs. Winnington, you don't quite grasp my point of 
 view." 
 
 " But I do. If I didn't how could I make this big 
 demand on you? I should sit up straight and hope sin- 
 cerely that you'd be gone before I came down in the 
 morning. But I want you to stay to help me." 
 
 " But how ? " said he in answer to her compelling face. 
 
 For a minute she said nothing, then she clutched his 
 arm. 
 
 " I wonder if any woman could ever tell any man how 
 much she loves her baby or in just the sort of way I 
 can't tell you how I know but I do know that mine is 
 worse than anyone suspects. I believe that he will die. 
 It's not foolishness I've known, in a way, all day. And 
 
 if if Aiken has killed him and and things " 
 
 She held his arm more tightly, her face was marble white, 
 her eyes full of uncontrollable fear. " Sometimes I'm 
 afraid of myself. If everything got suddenly uprooted I 
 might do some foolish thing. Being foolish yourself should 
 accustom you to folly. I think you'd understand you'd
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 297 
 
 know what to do for folly. Someday you must come to 
 live our life with us then you'd perfectly understand how 
 I feel." 
 
 " I understand now. I'll do the best I can, and any way 
 there's no reason to spare me." 
 
 She peered up in his face. " That's it partly, but to- 
 night there's more I'm asking a big thing of you, but you 
 care for me in a foolish sort of way, and I'm not very 
 wise I've grown afraid of despair and," she cried out 
 sharply, " I didn't think I'd have had to protest so much ! " 
 
 " You break a man's heart with the things you don't say, 
 and yet you expect him to be ready with common words. 
 Of course, I'll stay with you and stand by you." 
 
 " But," she presently said, " I've been extraordinarily 
 frank, I've said out all the things upon which I should 
 have been silent, and yet you imply that I'm keeping things 
 back. You can't explain just how you feel about your 
 baby and George George, too, is difficult. But you 
 have great understanding, surely you can see I'm not 
 morbid or exaggerated really in my heart, but-to-night I'm 
 tired ? Find things out by your own folly please, then 
 you'll get to the folly in me, I think. 
 
 " See," she said quietly, " there are lights moving in the 
 house. Ah ! I knew. I'm glad you came." 
 
 Heron, as he lifted her down, made a supreme effort 
 to forget himself, and to his credit, be it said, he partially 
 succeeded. 
 
 Until eight o'clock the boy had been practically well. 
 His cold had seemingly vanished. He was a little paler 
 than usual, he chattered a little less ; but no one, not even 
 Rebecca, who had never let him out of her sight that 
 day and where Jasper minor was concerned Miss Western 
 was a very well-spring of alarms had any fears. 
 
 Having seen her own mixture swallowed, and that of the 
 doctor reserved until the child's absolute recovery should 
 render it innocuous, with an assured mind, she had gone 
 home. 
 
 But at eight, an odd, swift weakness fell upon the child. 
 He sank tiredly back, after drinking his milk, and began to 
 cry softly for his mother. Whereupon there raged chaos in 
 Thryng. 
 
 There was little need for Joan to make excuses for her
 
 298 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 sudden presence. The household at sight of her of one 
 accord thanked God. 
 
 Joan submitted passively to the kindly, trembling women 
 grown grey in the Squire's service, who flocked around her, 
 brought her to a great fire, unfastened her drenched gar- 
 ments, chafed her numbed limbs, wrapped her in soft warm 
 clothing, and gave her hot wine to drink. And then she 
 hurried to go to her child. 
 
 " Now we'll get along," said the Squire, waiting for her 
 outside the door. 
 
 He had been extracting all he could from Heron, and had 
 his own opinion as to what was withheld. 
 
 He was consumed with wrath against George, with anguish 
 for the child, and fears for the mother. But when he saw 
 her face as it stooped over the child, to combat her hopeless- 
 ness seemed the one hope left him. 
 
 " Where are the doctors ? " Joan asked, looking round 
 " He must have brandy at once. Dr. Baker, you know, said 
 so, he said he had a strange constitution." 
 
 " The vagaries of a dying consumptive are fundamentally 
 untrustworthy," said Jasper, in nervous haste, while they 
 waited for the doctors. " They'll be judging other constitu- 
 tions by their own. 'Tis of his own soul a man should be 
 thinking at such a moment, he's got past doctors. Those 
 men we have know what they're about. That child is not 
 the constitution to want nips." 
 
 But Joan asked and received permission to give brandy. 
 Some condition of the lung had so far forbidden the use 
 of stimulant, so the doctors said, but now it could do no 
 harm. When she turned again the old man's face hurt her 
 greatly. Why should she add her despair to his? 
 
 " I daresay Dr. Baker may have been wrong, perhaps, in 
 a measure, about baby," she said, " but I've a sort of idea 
 that he knew most things." 
 
 " Ought to have known better than to foist off his morbid 
 moribund imaginings upon you then." 
 
 " Jasper has always been like me in the little things. Only 
 for the wine they gave me just now, I shouldn't be able to 
 stand up." 
 
 " I have nothing to say about the stimulant, my girl, only 
 for God's sake rid your mind of a poor dying man's wander- 
 ings about the little lad's constitution. "And " he
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 299 
 
 paused, flushing, " faith, my dear, and prayer, and all that 
 sort of thing, you know, mean a lot, I think, when given by 
 a mother." 
 
 Her quietness was driving the Squire to distraction. 
 
 She laughed softly up in the face bent over her. The 
 saddest little laugh in the world. 
 
 " I'm afraid he'll have to be content with what love can 
 do for him. I've got nothing else left, but it's the greatest 
 of the three after all, isn't it ? See ! The brandy is doing 
 him good already. His eyes are opening! His lips are 
 redder! and he's a little warmer. Don't you think he's a 
 little warmer ? Just a little tiny atom ? " 
 
 It was true, the child was better, and a glimmer of hope 
 sprang up in Joan, but it went out again long ere that lit 
 by its living spark in ever)' other creature in the house even 
 thought of waning. Tiredly, patiently, she tried again and 
 again to hope, but each time she failed. 
 
 Then she held her peace and let the others hope on. 
 
 " If George would come, if only George would come and 
 pray," she thought stonily. " It will be a horror to George 
 if baby should go without his prayers. Griefs and consola- 
 tions vary so oddly." 
 
 She went at last obediently to have some soup, leaving 
 the doctors in charge. She came back quietly, and stood 
 in the doorway paralysed by something one of the men was 
 saying. 
 
 " It's an extraordinary case inexplicable from every 
 scientific point of view. It would have needed a power of 
 prophecy, not granted to our profession, to venture upon 
 the treatment, but had we begun stimulants three hours 
 ago, we might, I firmly believe, have saved the child. For 
 God's sake don't let it out to the mother." 
 
 But Joan was beside them before they saw her. 
 
 " Are you quite sure of what you say ? " she simply asked. 
 
 They both started. At the end of a long pause, one man 
 said, in a low hesitating voice : 
 
 " Where a human life is at stake one can never be quite 
 sure." 
 
 " But I've been sure all this last hour But I wish I hadn't 
 known actually. I wish I hadn't heard." 
 
 Her erect, proud little head fell suddenly as though she 
 had received a blow. " If," she thought, " if only I'd caught
 
 300 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 the train." And quietly, invincibly, inexorably, a growing 
 resentment against George and all he represented took hold 
 of Joan's wild heart. 
 
 But dim memories came soon pricking in amongst the 
 evil thoughts. She turned half vaguely to the two men. 
 
 "Don't tell this to anyone else. Not anyone else, not 
 even my husband especially not my husband. It will 
 only do harm, only hurt more. And," she added, looking 
 attentively at their faces, " don't be blaming yourselves. I 
 don't blame you in the least. Things have been too strong 
 for all of us, that's all." 
 
 " God in Heaven help you, Mrs. Winnington," said the 
 elder man. " I'd have given my right hand to save the 
 child. We took what seemed to us the right course techni- 
 cally, it was the right course but " 
 
 " Things were too strong for us," repeated Joan under 
 her breath, " that's all." 
 
 With bent heads they turned to leave the room, but the 
 elder man came back. 
 
 He was a kind man, full of a quiet diffident religion, and 
 had marvelled at this young girl in a score of pauper 
 houses. 
 
 " It is too sad even for me to think of to discuss," he 
 said. " What it is for you, only God knows, but at least 
 I can thank Him that you will not sorrow as those without 
 hope." 
 
 She looked at him. He was a gaunt, ungainly man, with 
 red cheeks and curious side whiskers, his disturbed face 
 worked. 
 
 He looked so funny so funny it was all so funny, and 
 her own little child was dying. If she could not laugh oat 
 her heart must surely burst. 
 
 But even in her uncontrol Joan was gentle. 
 
 The soft, womanly ripple in that terrible laugh rang for 
 many a long day in the big, useful ears of that good, home- 
 spun man, and many a time by his bedside at night did he 
 pray for little Mrs. George Winnington. 
 
 But old Jasper in the doorway leaned against the lintel, 
 and shook for fear. 
 
 He had seen the truth in the three faces. And there was 
 more in the girl's face than even the death of her first-born 
 had ever brought to a good woman's eyes. " Neither death
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 301 
 
 nor hell could alter a woman in this way," thought Jasper. 
 
 There's some d tommy rot of George's here. My little 
 
 girl, my little girl ! Don't ! " he whispered, his strong hand 
 steadying her, for she was swaying a little. " Don't ! we 
 all depend on you." 
 
 " If you knew," she said, " if you knew," and she chuckled 
 in a horrified way. " The oddness of the whole thing, the 
 muddle, the grotesque sort of disproportion." 
 
 " Do you suppose I don't know, I ? " With firm gentle- 
 ness he stroked her shoulder. " Now still and so thin," he 
 sadly thought. " It was the oddness, the grotesqueness, the 
 disproportion, the hideous muddle, the horrible inexorable 
 humour in the discord that drove me to drink. It's driven 
 saints to model gargoyles and paint devils. Sometimes it 
 drives women mad. The only thing now left you to do, my 
 girl, is to get back as quick as you can to old habits, to the 
 habit that's brought you, and the likes of you, through many 
 a Hell, to think of others and forget yourself. Believe me, 
 it's the one and only hope for any woman upon her beam 
 ends." 
 
 " I I haven't forgotten others not quite I want George 
 more than I ever wanted him .before to to pray for Baby. 
 And the ungentle smile was still upon her lips. " He'd be 
 so sorry if he didn't; it's so little to deny any man. When 
 can he be here ? " 
 
 " Heron has gone for him ; he took the big bay and the 
 light cart." 
 
 " Ah ! Captain Heron will be quick." 
 
 " Do you think," she cried suddenly, her eyes flashing, 
 smothered passion in her low voice, " do you think that 
 during any moment of this night George will be able to say, 
 ' Thy will be done.' To say it, and believe it" 
 
 " It's time for the child's brandy," said the Squire gently. 
 
 " It's only just time. I couldn't forget, surely not that, 
 not that. Please make them bring me beef tea and things 
 I do want to feel right. It must be so much easier. 
 Baby's getting no wanner it doesn't make him warmer 
 any longer. Stoop down and listen; he's saying, Mummy, 
 Mummy, Mummy! Has he been saying it long? When 
 did he begin ? " 
 
 " At eight o'clock." 
 
 " If I'd caught the first train I'd have been here by eight.
 
 302 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 I heard him at breakfast yesterday, or was it to-day ? That's 
 why I came. Did Captain Heron tell you?" 
 
 " Yes, my girl." 
 
 She looked up sharply. " And you both blamed George 
 in a silent sort of way. The way men blame each other. 
 It's an obstinate and vindictive way, and it's absolutely un- 
 fair to George. He didn't realise that I wanted to come. 
 Your letter told nothing. I couldn't tell George that baby 
 was calling; no man could understand. You don't under- 
 stand yourself; and George had more than life or death to 
 deal with. Understand that George has been right all 
 through," she commanded. 
 
 " I understand, perfectly, my child," he said soothingly. 
 
 " Don't, forget then ever, whatever happens that even if 
 he'd known, if the choice had been given him he did 
 right, he chose rightly. He did what Moses and Aaron and 
 the prophets should have done and sometimes didn't, I 
 wonder I wonder if their wives were glad. If George had 
 been a soldier," she said abruptly, "and this all happened 
 for for honour's sake as it's happened, we'd have been 
 glad, you and I, we'd have been full of immense pride in 
 George. It's how we're made. It's a dreadful make. 
 " Oh ! Grandad ! you don't think I'll ever take to drink 
 too? Sometimes I wonder oh, I wonder! We're so 
 ridiculously alike, we two. And it makes things so hard 
 so hard. Don't you think ? " 
 
 " God in Heaven help us, my girl. You never said a truer 
 word." 
 
 She softly laid her head, for an instant, against his arm, 
 she then began to chafe the little chill feet, trying to hope. 
 Jasper saw the effort made, and relinguished, and waited 
 mutely. 
 
 " The oddness," she muttered, her eyes dry and wide and 
 hard, " the curiousness. It's all so great, so wonderful, but 
 oh, if you could only see Henty's body ! " 
 
 " But George was right, right, right," she repeated, a 
 panic breaking the hard, calm of her eyes. 
 
 " He's colder," she said presently, her voice melting back 
 into its old likeness, " just a little colder." 
 
 The Squire, numb with agony, wondered what would 
 come next, when suddenly Joan lifted her head, listened 
 intently, and stood up facing him. For an instant, she
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 303 
 
 hesitated, softly panting, then moved gently to the other 
 side of the cot. 
 
 The child's eyes feebly followed her, and now he mixed 
 up his whispers of " Mummy " with little wandering scraps 
 of rhyme. She turned the small flower of a face towards 
 her, and in the purple of the dawn she waited for her hus- 
 band; between him and her the death of their first-born 
 child. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 AFTERWARDS Joan gave as little trouble as she could. She 
 ate and drank obediently, and lay down when counselled 
 to do so. She was grateful for the tenderness showered 
 upon her, offered no resistance to anything, and was 
 passive and docile even when Miss Rebecca, at her wits' 
 end to reach the human heart of the girl, thinking as a 
 preliminary to touch her temper, let Mrs. Worrall in upon 
 her. For a solid twenty minutes did this lady expound 
 Peter, and Peter's expert handling of the griefs peculiar 
 to humanity, even in a large model town parish, to the 
 poor little mother, yet without visible effect. 
 
 Joan sat and lay, talked or was silent, and all the time 
 the little dead child barred the way to love, for his 
 mother's heart was wholly occupied in hating the souls 
 of men. 
 
 That within Joan which made the touches of George 
 unbearable, the future a horror, grew up minute by 
 minute gourd-like. She tried to struggle against it, but 
 now she was too tired to fight hard. She had got beyond 
 herself, and all her strength was slipping away. 
 
 The second day, in a kind of despair, Heron came in, 
 bringing her white flowers. The minute before she had, in 
 spite of herself, winced away from George. George knew 
 it. Knowing that he knew his wife was frozen into a sort 
 of helpless remorse. 
 
 Involuntarily shunning her husband, Joan's eyes turned 
 to Heron, and the appeal in them was plainer than 
 words.
 
 304 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 He knew, if any human creature ever did, the fears 
 that broke her, the anguish that rent ; it seemed to her at 
 this moment, definitely and distinctly, as all along it had 
 vaguely done, that it was he alone who could help her. 
 
 She must get away from everyone from everything 
 else. She was so tired so tired she could do nothing 
 alone now. So help her he must. 
 
 And this very distinctly did she tell the miserable man 
 with her beautiful, irresistible eyes. 
 
 Moreover, unused to oblique dealings, she did it under 
 the very nose of George. 
 
 Heron was aghast, for George seemingly could also read 
 eyes and had forgotten nothing. He was now staring 
 dumbly from Joan to him, from him to Joan, upon his face 
 astonished and stern inquiry. 
 
 For Captain Heron it was the most helpless and God- 
 forsaken moment of his life. 
 
 For George the most chaotic and amazing. 
 
 Joan Joan heart of his heart, life and soul of him 
 in this her day of tribulation, to be turning from 
 him to another man ! Men have been deluded of devils 
 before this. George drew his fingers across his confused 
 eyes and looked again to make sure. Joan had now 
 mechanically taken the flowers in her hand and was look- 
 ing absently at the glory of their whiteness. 
 
 After a moment's further consideration, obviously totally 
 unconnected with the innocent" blooms, again she lifted to 
 Heron questioning eyes that slowly melted to entreating 
 ones. 
 
 For one instant George hesitated ; his eyes rested upon 
 Joan ; his lips moved ; the next he bit down upon words, 
 turned on his heel, and quitted the room. And there 
 went in his heart that which is more cruel than the 
 grave. 
 
 Heron swung round precipitately and was fain to follow 
 him, a half vague intention of having it out with the man 
 forming in his mind, but Joan called, and perforce he 
 must obey. 
 
 She was looking a little dazed, and he thought she 
 shivered. 
 
 " You're not going ? " said she, plainly to give herself 
 time.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 305 
 
 " I came over to see if I could be of any use," he said 
 lamely. " It doesn't seem as though I can be," he added, 
 with a certain grim intonation, " so I'd better go." 
 
 He hesitated and looked at his boots. " The Squire is 
 with Miss Rebecca, and George will be wanting you," said 
 he. 
 
 " Yes, George will be wanting me," she repeated in- 
 determinately, slowly standing up. " But do stay and talk 
 to the others. The silence and the cold have got into 
 us, and we're all rather afraid of each other. Anyone from 
 the outside who understands can't be let go in such a 
 hurry." 
 
 She looked at him, paused, and looked away again. " I 
 wish " she passionately broke out, " I wish " 
 
 Heron nervously dropped his head, but she left her 
 sentence incompleted, and slightly caught her breath. " I'll 
 go to George and please you go to them" she said in her 
 usual voice. " You don't know how much you help us, 
 really." 
 
 " Good God," thought Heron, looking after her, " she's 
 as mad as blazes, small blame to her, but what's a man to 
 do ? The old people are beyond logic ; it's not for me to 
 tackle George just yet must wait till he cools down and 
 she steadies herself. Tired, and ill, and mad, and think- 
 ing he's killed the boy ! God help women ! Oh ! Joan ! 
 Joan ! Joan ! " he cried in his heart, " and I could have 
 made you happy." 
 
 The old people, full of unspoken, unspeakable anguish at 
 the strange indefinable alteration going on in Joan, at the 
 silent heartlessness of her grieving, found real, frank relief 
 in Heron's sympathetic presence, free of riddle or fore- 
 boding. To absent himself, therefore, howsoever George 
 might feel about it, the next day, or the next, would have 
 amounted to a discourteous cruelty. 
 
 By that time, he argued, with a wry mouth, George might, 
 perhaps, discern that much sorrow had made his wife mad, 
 also that in her right senses she could never wound or offend 
 him even by look that in her senses she loved him 
 utterly. 
 
 Heron had no idea that anyone but himself knew that 
 had the mother been in time her child had probably 
 lived. 
 
 20
 
 306 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 He had fairly forced the fact from the doctors. It con- 
 founded him. 
 
 Her silence upon this matter to her husband, her un- 
 flinching determination to spare him this ultimate bitter- 
 ness seemed to him the maddest touch in this chaos, but 
 it was natural enough in a way and surely not for him to dis- 
 regard her express commands in the matter. Used to the 
 irrational ways of women, Rob Heron took the vagaries of 
 Joan rather more for granted than was wise perhaps. Her 
 stubbornness in self-sacrifice, coupled with her extra- 
 ordinary treatment of George upon the previous day, did 
 not very much discompose him ; for in his compassionate, 
 old-fashioned creed no man can bet upon what an over- 
 tired woman may not do, and this one, after all, was 
 desperate. 
 
 Of all those who loved Joan, he was the only one who 
 did not over-estimate her strength, whilst he had a whole- 
 some belief in his own. He could never bring himself to 
 believe that women's backs had originally been made for 
 the carrying of burthens. It had only been by an un- 
 happy accident that women had ever been turned into beasts 
 of burthen. Thus he always found it more natural that 
 women should depend upon him than that he should fall 
 into the way of depending upon them. 
 
 " Looking at it from her point of view," Rob told him- 
 self with some spiritual pride, " I can quite understand how 
 her love for George has fallen for the moment into con- 
 fusion. It will sort itself presently," he thought, with a 
 sigh he failed to stifle, "if he's not a born ass; mean- 
 while oh ! well, meanwhile I'm neck and crop in the 
 business, so it seems. God knows I'd be glad enough to 
 get out of it by hook or by crook, but how in the devil's 
 name can I? Since I'm here, anyway, I'll do the best I 
 can for her whatever happens, and square things with 
 George presently. They'll want some squaring too, I'm 
 afraid," he said gloomily. " For in spite of all the saint 
 in him he's got the Winnington turn of mind, has George, 
 unless I saw double more than once." 
 
 " It's the devil's own business, anyway I wish I was 
 out of it," he mused, as he drove up the last hill on his 
 late way home. " Even if I wrote to George," he went on, 
 " how on earth could I tell him that practically he did kill
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 307 
 
 the child? Besides, until the twist in the poor girl is 
 smoothed out, telling him wouldn't much mend matters 
 that I can see. She'll get back to him in her own way ; 
 no one can very well push the poor little thing into his 
 arms." 
 
 And so for many causes, shaking in his shoes, yet with 
 intrepidity, when the day came, Heron set forth to the 
 funeral. 
 
 Together the sad little party stood amongst the In- 
 finities. Those who could pray, prayed, those who could 
 weep, wept. Joan's eyes were dry and her hand lay cold 
 in her husband's grasp. She tried loyally not to hate his 
 touch, not to hate God, and to get the warmth back into 
 her frozen heart. 
 
 As they all turned to go home Heron was quietly and 
 thankfully slipping away ; Joan saw him and in a sharp, 
 low tone of command told him to remain. 
 
 At such a time he could do no less than she asked, but 
 in her hot, restless eyes, in her dreadful silent efforts to 
 steady herself, he saw danger ahead. 
 
 And upon George had fallen blindness. 
 
 By this time George had apparently overcome his jealous 
 wrath ; his gentle, thoughtful solicitude for his wife was 
 spontaneous and seemingly untroubled by any hideous bye 
 thought. 
 
 But Heron knew that in no sort of way could this com- 
 fort the coldness of death that lay between these two 
 labouring souls. 
 
 He looked again at Joan and it seemed to him that 
 gentle, passive, controlled, as the girl seemed, in the 
 mighty tempest that had laid bare the soul, heart, and 
 spirit of her, the tigerish quality in every mother's love for 
 her child, smothered in the fragrant old roses of time and 
 of generations of culture had sprung to the surface. 
 
 And in this spirit this woman was judging a jealous 
 man ! 
 
 " In women," so Heron thought, being in some of his 
 thinkings somewhat mannish, " justice is an accomplish- 
 ment; in man it's a birthright. It depends upon himself 
 how he plays the fool with his gift." 
 
 He was therefore most uncomfortably sorry for George 
 and made some very excellent shots at Joan's condition.
 
 308 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 But he stood steady in what seemed to him to be his post 
 of duty, and awaited developments. 
 
 Never, to the day of his death, did Rob think without 
 squirming of the eternal drag of that dreadful afternoon. 
 It was absolutely necessary that at the close of it George 
 should return for some special sacred duty, to Aiken. Joan 
 had made not the slightest motion towards accompanying 
 him, and yet in their nervous anguish of doubt and con- 
 fusion both the old people assumed, with almost stupid 
 insistance, that it was only Joan's thought for them that 
 hindered her from rushing back to devotion, George, and 
 duty. 
 
 The general disruption in all things seemed to be 
 hustling the Squire's common sense, and taking the keen 
 edge off his native acuteness. 
 
 Whilst the whole of Miss Rebecca not put out of action 
 by sorrow, went wistfully out to Jasper. 
 
 As for George, having violently sinned and as violently 
 repented him of his sin and fought down successfully 
 a whole heart-ful of unexpected passions, he was re- 
 solved to possess his soul in patience, and whilst waiting, 
 trust. 
 
 In short, not a soul amongst them but Heron would dare 
 to admit even to himself the madness of Joan. 
 
 She herself, indeed, had caught glimpses of it When 
 she came back from seeing George off, a strange smile 
 upon her lips, Heron had seen her fetch up with a start 
 before the tall hall glass, stand for one perplexed moment, 
 then flee, fear upon her face, to her room. He had seen 
 her literally swing her thoughts from some unseen danger, 
 watch herself, guard herself from herself. 
 
 Everything she did upon this strange day was most 
 bitterly patent to the unfortunate man, most bitterly preg- 
 nant. 
 
 Fear was upon the track of her, and who could help ? 
 
 The dimness of twilight was in the air when Joan asked 
 him at last to go out with her. 
 
 Little Mrs. George set the standard of conduct in that 
 loving household, else surprised eyelids might have been 
 raised that she should go a-walking with the blinds still 
 down, when man like the stricken beast is supposed to 
 crouch hidden in his hole. As it was, every man and maid
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 309 
 
 in the house felt an awed gladness that she should take 
 the air in the company of one in whom they had such 
 boundless trust and confidence. 
 
 But with one impulse Jasper and Rebecca, who had 
 been crouching beside the fire, bending one toward the 
 other, stood up and went to the window to watch the two 
 down the avenue of lindens out of their sight. 
 
 " There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth there 
 for someone," said Jasper at last. " Come back to the fire, 
 Rebecca." He laid his hand kindly upon hers, " Come 
 back, old friend." 
 
 But Rebecca was bristling. " I detest insinuations," she 
 snapped, " and in this time of sorrow they seem to be 
 odious beyond words." 
 
 " No sorrow will keep the devil out," sighed Jasper. 
 " Joan takes her sorrow in an amazingly attractive way. 
 You may eject the fatal Third out of a woman's horizon 
 with pitchforks, but he'll crop up." 
 
 "Not with Joan." 
 
 " You speak as a woman, Rebecca." 
 
 " How then, pray, would you have me speak ? As a born 
 fool?" 
 
 " Rebecca you know " 
 
 " I know nothing of the sort. Pray proceed with your 
 unworthy suggestions without reference to me. I thank 
 God I have the fullest confidence in Joan." 
 
 " So have I. It's of the man I'm thinking." 
 
 " Men are weak, Heavens knows, but even then no man 
 of honour " 
 
 " But when a sense of duty edges itself into the infernal 
 business where are you then, I'd like to know? Rob 
 Heron " 
 
 " Is, to my mind, all that a young man should be." 
 
 " Quite so, dear lady, but he's twenty-seven, and look at 
 Joan ! " 
 
 " I never hoped to look at her in a setting so vulgar 
 and hackneyed as this you seem able to suggest without a 
 blush." 
 
 " Had you been a man " 
 
 " Thank God, I'm not. Are you all evil ? " 
 
 " We're all, alas ! men." 
 
 " Collect yourself, Jasper."
 
 310 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 "We must strive at least to deal rationally with this 
 matter." 
 
 " Rationally ! Dear ! Dear ! " 
 
 " On the whole we'd better, I fear, leave the thing in 
 Heron's hands and stick to prayer." 
 
 " No time this for blasphemous flippancy." 
 
 " You're thoroughly upset, my poor girl. Blasphemous 
 flippancy ! I hardly think " 
 
 " For Heaven's sake do let us think, then. Time, in- 
 deed, we did begin to think ! To leave such things in 
 the hands of children, you and I, each with a foot in 
 the grave ! " 
 
 " Aren't we harrowed enough without that, Rebecca ? 
 Will women spare you nothing ? " 
 
 " Men can only swallow sugared truth, I believe. I've 
 been seeing things, feeling things, not daring to look at 
 things, these three awful days, expecting you to have the 
 grace at least to speak out." 
 
 " My dear Rebecca what ! with a woman to do it ? 
 I've been waiting for you. I, too, have seen the cloud no 
 bigger than a man's hand arise up between them, and I 
 hoped I hoped it would vanish or break when the blow 
 came in in healing rain." 
 
 " She can have no no cause ? " faltered Rebecca. 
 
 " God knows," groaned Jasper, " when it's to do with a 
 saint insufficiently curated." 
 
 " Where does the other man come in ? What's brought 
 him ? " 
 
 " My daughter-in-law," said Jasper somewhat wildly, " is 
 well bred to the core." 
 
 " So was Ophelia, according to her lights, but she went 
 about in broad daylight in duck-weed and a rag ! " 
 
 Jasper moved restlessly. " We shouldn't have let them go." 
 
 " We had no choice." 
 
 " Suppose we go to meet them ? " 
 
 Even close to the fire Rebecca was cold to the bone, 
 and the East wind blew drearily, but she arose at once. 
 "Yes, we'd better go to meet them," she said, but she 
 paused before she moved. " I thought we so thoroughly 
 knew her," she said. 
 
 " So did I till Wednesday. The girl has somehow lost 
 her way, I think."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 311 
 
 " And gone to an amateur to find it for her," said 
 Rebecca tartly. 
 
 Jasper solemnly stood up and faced her. " Look here, 
 Rebecca, if that beast of prey, jealousy, is about to enter 
 into you fling him out or he'll be gnawing at your vitals 
 before you can say ' knife.' I've been in grips with him 
 myself these three days, and it's that, I fear, that's been 
 obscuring my mental vision. Youth," he continued, " for- 
 bidden or lawful, holds a magic for youth. The barrier 
 built by the years is a bitter one. The moment comes in 
 all our lives, dear, when we must lay down our tried and 
 proven arms before it, and watch whilst they with untried, 
 unproven ones attack life. If we are not called upon to 
 witness defeat which, steered by our skill, would have been 
 victory, we may thank our stars. I wish," he added in a 
 more robust tone, " that I'd chanced a rebuff and tackled 
 her. But our damned pride is seemingly the one peren- 
 nial, evergreen left us. But don't be sweeping and in- 
 tolerant anyway, Rebecca. Remember at least that Rob 
 Heron is a right good fellow. All the same, I'd give my 
 eyes to kick the fellow into space," mused Jasper, when she 
 had gone. " But I mustn't let Rebecca see that. The best 
 woman living will take advantage of you if she gets the 
 chance. Gives 'em a leg-up moreover to be watching you 
 overcoming. And after all it's not necessary women should 
 see all the bloody sweat that goes to the infernal grind." 
 
 With consolation near, to think of grief is fatal. 
 
 The steps of Jasper, by no will of their own, had carried 
 him post haste to the dining-room side-board. Before he 
 was quite coherently aware of his action, the decanter was 
 in his hand. 
 
 It was no sudden temptation that had gotten hold of 
 old Jasper. Since the stroke fell it had been a goad unto 
 him, an ache that knew no soothing, a knife turning in a 
 wound. And the antidote was now in his hand. 
 
 In three hundred seconds from then he might be float- 
 ing in a very respecUfble Heaven of his own. For in none 
 of Jasper's airy erections did even one low purlieu skulk. 
 Hope would have arisen from her grave, and he would be 
 young again young with a difference. 
 
 The god in him somewhat emphasised, perchance, his 
 wit grown keener.
 
 312 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 A tempest of moral reflections swept through this chaotic 
 mind and for each morality there cropped up a counter 
 argument. 
 
 Morality was already on her death-bed, and the horizon 
 of the Squire was rosy again. 
 
 But suddenly it struck Jasper sharply that if a seasoned 
 soldier could thus fall to the strokes of a wily adversary, 
 what in God's name could be expected in the way of re- 
 sistance of a poor, raw little recruit unlearned in the uses of 
 arms? 
 
 And so presently the Squire stumbled from Heaven to 
 Hell, an old man with sweat upon his brow. 
 
 He emptied the glass behind the fire, and was back in 
 the drawing-room before Rebecca caught him. 
 
 " It would be pleasant to tell her," he thought, moving 
 restlessly upon his seat, " but she'd not see the thing in 
 the same light may be. Some day I'll tell the little girl, 
 she'll understand. Perhaps the experience may even give 
 her a leg-up; who knows? I'd be glad indeed if some 
 good does come of the confounded business. Ha ! 
 Rebecca ! well wrapped up, I hope ? " 
 
 At first Joan, driven by her natural inclination to make 
 people comfortable, had made remarks about the weather 
 and the troubled sky, but the foolish little words dropping 
 raspingly from dry lips were more than Heron could stand. 
 He fell back into an old way he had with his mother, took 
 hold of Joan's arm and impatiently, protestingly, coolly 
 shook it. 
 
 " Why do you say anything till you're ready ? " he asked. 
 " We're surely too good friends for that ? I'm not hanker- 
 ing to know more, believe me, but if you've got things you 
 must say, don't say them till you must." 
 
 So they silently walked half across the park, and once 
 of twice Joan walked blindly, then in a second his hand 
 was out to help her. 
 
 It was a walk to make a man grow old, but in the pathetic 
 reaching out of his disordered brain ttote girl grew younger. 
 
 At last the words came headlong. 
 
 " I can't go back to George," she said, " I can't, not yet. 
 How can I tell him? What can I do? I can't think any 
 longer. You'll have to help me." 
 
 Heron had expected at least a prelude !
 
 .HE FOR GOD ONLY. 313 
 
 " Mrs. Winnington, I believe/' he said hesitating, " I 
 believe that as much as any man can understand a woman's 
 point of view, I understand yours. It's no use pretending 
 ignorance or attempting to mince matters. The child's 
 death has risen up between you and George because you 
 believe him to be the cause of it." 
 
 " The Church has been the cause of my child's 
 death." 
 
 " That's sophistry. George is the soldier of the Church. 
 Would you think better of him if he hadn't been up to his 
 neck in a duty which even you confess to have been para- 
 mount? If he'd funked it for more or less of an idea, a 
 a whim ? " 
 
 " That sort of thing won't help me," she said slowly. 
 " It's written large all over me. Did arguments did 
 knowledge did knowing the right -did common sense 
 prevent your loving me? The Church is Juggernaut's car 
 and it's gone over me, so I must escape from under it 
 before I get well again. I can't go back to George and 
 do Church work, I can't go to see miserable people with 
 this in my heart. I can't help George at night with his 
 wonderful work ; he in Heaven and I in Hell ! It's not a 
 question of right and wrong, it's just a question of what 
 one can do. Could I, do you think, explain this to 
 George, or to George's father, or to Rebecca ? I can't face 
 one of them. You care for me in an irrational sort of 
 way, so perhaps you'll understand. I'm so tired. Take me 
 anywhere to rest, if you love me and and there's no 
 need to spare you ! Take me " 
 
 " If I love you," cried the distracted man, " but it's be- 
 cause I love you that I must try to keep my head, and 
 run no insane mucker. Good God ! can't you see ? " In 
 his fear and confusion he soundly shook her. " You're the 
 kindest woman in the world when you're all right. 
 There's a sense of justice about you, too. Can't you think 
 for a minute and you'll see how beastly unfair to me you 
 are." 
 
 " I can't think any more and I must go away, I can't go 
 back," she said in stony despair. " I can't go back to 
 George, and I'm so tired. I haven't any money even, I 
 can't manage things alone. I knew I knew I should fail 
 when the the big thing came."
 
 3H HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Supposing I did take you away, what do you suppose 
 George would say ? " 
 
 " George ! " 
 
 " What would you say yourself to-morrow ? You'd both 
 turn on me, you and George, and I should be nowhere. 
 I love you and you love George, therefore the sooner I 
 get you back if not to him anyway to safety the better, 
 I take it, for the lot of us. Being a man," he resumed, in 
 despair at her attitude, " gives you more authority in these 
 matters than any woman can lay claim to." 
 
 Then he began to shake like a man with a palsy, for 
 now her mad head had dropped upon his arm, and she was 
 clinging to him for support. 
 
 " I can't go back," she whispered, " till I get right." 
 
 " Steady yourself, for God's sake, and don't be so un- 
 reasonable." 
 
 A sudden spark of light seemed to flicker up in his 
 clouded intelligence. " Look here now, Mrs. Winnington," 
 he entreated, " and be fair at least. The person re- 
 sponsible for the dear little chap's death, if you look 
 straight at it is is yourself." 
 
 She grasped him convulsively. They were standing out 
 in the path in a broad streak of moonlight, and although 
 the words he spoke were the words of wisdom, the un- 
 brotherly hand of Rob tenderly held her. 
 
 To the most unprejudiced observer the man was as mad 
 as the woman. 
 
 " You never, I'll bet anything, said one definite word 
 about your fears to George," he pursued. " It would have 
 been totally unlike you to to do anything so sensible, 
 and George, as I said before, was at his post, and your 
 face if anything kept him steady there. It's the sort of 
 face that does, you know," he added, strangling a groan. 
 " Mrs. Winnington I don't say you did right, mind, in this 
 case no man can decide for any woman in so delicate a 
 matter, but at any rate it's not for you now to be blaming 
 George ; and the Church, I would have you to know, is 
 not the only profession in which the woman's interests 
 must go bang if the man is to stick to his duty. I used to 
 think you'd be the best soldier's wife that ever lived, Mrs. 
 Winnington, but by Jove ! this is not like it." 
 
 She lifted herself and faced him.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 315 
 
 " If if George had been a soldier ! " she drew 
 her fingers across her eyes " that's part of the awful- 
 ness. Oh ! never mind. And if you won't help me, some- 
 one must." 
 
 She pressed closer and peered into his face. 
 
 " It's so curious, this tiredness," she said, " when you 
 can't do things any more for yourself, but yet you know 
 they must get done. Of course, you could hardly under- 
 stand it. It confuses me." 
 
 Her face was like stone, her eyes cold and hard as 
 pebbles, she was drawn, haggard, her youth was vanish- 
 ing. If but one single straining nerve were now to snap 
 her brain would shiver to pieces. 
 
 It was touch and go with the girl. She was white, reck- 
 less, unwomanly, growing old, but in her intimate appeal 
 to him, in the confused horror of pain and fear upon her 
 shadowy face, in her wild, quick, panting breaths, in her 
 petulance and unreason, she was wholly adorable. 
 
 In an agony of human passion, in a more bitter one of 
 impotence as a counsellor, Heron stood staring, his wits in 
 confusion. 
 
 With a look of cold, helpless disappointment she slowly 
 turned away. 
 
 " Oh, well ! " said she, " I must go somewhere." 
 
 And then an inspiration came to Rob. 
 
 " I say " in his relief he shouted it " what have we 
 been thinking of? Why, the Bishop's the very man we 
 want." 
 
 She walked rapidly back. 
 
 " But, good God, you're not going now," he shouted, 
 " not this minute ? Look at the weather you'll be 
 drenched in ten minutes." 
 
 " It seems so amazing not to have thought of him be- 
 fore," she panted, still forging on. 
 
 " Good Lord," he thought, with some difficulty keep- 
 ing up with her, " March hares aren't in this ! " 
 
 " We'll just catch the train," said she. " Oh ! what a 
 lucky thought of yours." 
 
 " Mrs. Winnington, we're not alone in this ; there are 
 others to consider. One word of explanation will put 
 things right with them. Your clothes ? " 
 
 " They don't matter, and George is at Aiken ; I'll write."
 
 316 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " My uncle would come to you." 
 
 " I'll get to him sooner. I can't go back. Oh ! why 
 won't you understand ? " 
 
 She was beyond argument. 
 
 " I'm at the mercy of Providence now, any way," re- 
 flected her escort. " All I've got to do is to sit tight." 
 
 He put his arm about her passive form and helped her 
 forward. 
 
 The swirling winds, which for hours had been beating 
 back the rain, had paused to rest a spell, the bulging 
 clouds pounded down and the waters descended upon the 
 flying pair. 
 
 Captain Heron did what he could to protect her little 
 worn body, but it was a drenched, shivering, half-inarti- 
 culate creature that he at last deposited in a first-class com- 
 partment of the train bound for Marven. 
 
 " Just get my ticket," she jerked through chattering 
 teeth, " and go back and tell them I'll write to George 
 myself." 
 
 " I'll see to everything," he answered vaguely, and was 
 off. 
 
 He had two minutes and a half in which to write his 
 note and secure tickets, a messenger for the note, and 
 some brandy for the girl. 
 
 But he was in beside her just as the train moved 
 off. He had certainly had no time for any detached ex- 
 planation of their mad jaunt, but felt notwithstanding a 
 pleasing confidence that at least the few sentences he could 
 get written must tell enough to square things more or 
 less and send someone along by the first train next 
 morning. 
 
 But it is generally the third who manages to wry the 
 situation. 
 
 The porter, goggled-eyed with wonder and just off his 
 shift, with a hereditary appreciation of the Squire's 
 kitchen, was all for haste and sustenance at the other 
 end, but his wife, a wary woman, knew well what form that 
 sustenance would take. Moreover, a weakness at the pit of 
 Jahn's stomach due to deferred tea and gold in his 
 breeches pockets would inevitably mean calls by the way. 
 
 Likewise to wash before facing the gentry was one of 
 the articles of Jahn's wife's creed.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 317 
 
 She insisted therefore upon Jahn's " a-clanin' an' a- 
 ridden " whilst she got him food. 
 
 In her ineradicable habit of making clean sweeps, Mrs. 
 Jahn, however, burnt the untidy note, a scrap of paper in 
 a rumpled telegraph envelope, that Jahn unfortunately had 
 laid in his excitement upon a heap of leaflets lately left 
 for the comfort of his wife's soul and the torment of her 
 body, they being drearily thumb-marked and of an un- 
 pleasing perfume. 
 
 Jahn was an honest fellow, however, and resolved to 
 earn his half-sovereign one way or the other. 
 
 Amid a shower of blasphemy, scorning tea, he started 
 for the Hall. 
 
 Human nature, however, upon an empty stomach is 
 weak. After several pauses to still the gnawings at his 
 vitals and after frequent recitals of the amazing occur- 
 rence Mrs. George's disordered condition, and the young 
 Cappen's haste things grew confused in Jahn's mind, 
 and in the craftiness of drunkenness, in his final recital 
 of his marvellous experiences in the village Inn, he care- 
 fully omitted any mention whatsoever of the burnt letter 
 and posed as a philanthropist pure and simple. 
 
 Having reeled out all he knew and had wit to invent, 
 he collapsed in a heap upon the sanded floor. 
 
 The landlord hereupon threw on his overcoat and 
 carried the tale forward. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 BEFORE he left Joan, George, to the best of his belief, had 
 plucked the last little spark of jealousy from his heart. But 
 still the wound ached, and the ache kept the cause of it 
 alert within him. 
 
 Away from Joan, back in his sorrowful house, in the 
 clammy airs, amidst his people with warm hearts, coarse 
 thumbs, and a constitutional craving for the detailed 
 amenities of woe, the fact that Heron was beside her stood 
 up stark in his bleak horizon.
 
 318 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 It was an unworthy vision insulting to Joan, to him, to 
 the man they both so highly valued, but it persisted. It 
 dogged his footsteps, it got into his prayers, it threw a 
 veil between him and the altar, that no anguish could ever 
 have had the power to do. 
 
 But the aftermath of sin will always endure. 
 
 With all his might did George beat down the venomous 
 thing. He threw himself headlong, almost violently, into 
 his work. He guiltily sought out Henty. He betook him- 
 self to the little children with clean hearts, but it persisted, it 
 persisted, this passion that had gotten hold of George. 
 
 By three o'clock he felt a palpitating dismay of soul that 
 good works and human touches failed to still. At four, he 
 felt sick, body and mind. 
 
 At five, in his cheerless room, an abomination of desola- 
 tion which Joan had turned to Paradise; a cup of char- 
 woman's tea before him in a kitchen cup, for the servants 
 had not yet returned, to get back to Joan, to right the 
 widening wrong grew too strong for further resistance. 
 
 There was now no reason why he should not go. He had 
 done the important thing he had come to do. 
 
 The curates were devoted and heart-broken they had 
 loved the child ; they adored the mother. 
 
 So in the end George caught the train which Joan had 
 missed, and was walking with long impatient strides up the 
 avenue of tall trees, when not twenty yards from him Joan 
 hove in sight. 
 
 Repressing an exclamation of delight, remorseful, 
 ashamed, heart, spirit, soul, going impassionately forth to 
 his wife, George went eagerly on. 
 
 Of a sudden Joan halted, the next minute she was clinging 
 to Heron, and then her head was on his arm. 
 
 George squared his great shoulders, clenched his fists, 
 and rushed on like a black-coated Berserker. 
 
 But perhaps unfortunately the habit of self-control for 
 which these many years he had been striving so hard, fetched 
 him up. 
 
 But if George could not for the moment face his wife, as 
 little could he pry upon her. He turned and flung back 
 into the oak wood, and there for a solid hour did he furiously 
 wrestle with doubt, dismay, and the devil. 
 
 When he got home he was broken, sad, and tired,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 319 
 
 but considering temperament and the circumstance, he 
 had jockeyed himself into a fairly reasonable state of 
 mind. 
 
 Just as George entered the stricken house by the front 
 door, the landlord of the " Fox and Goose " lurched in by 
 the back. 
 
 But even before he heard the confused, amazing dis- 
 closures of Jonathan Hall, every face that met George 
 looked blank. A chill more deathlike than death had fallen 
 upon the breathless household. 
 
 With his horrible knowledge turning like a two-edged 
 sword in his heart, George stood silent whilst the man 
 stuttered forth his burthen of news, and the inevitable un- 
 utterable questions came with an odd, slow doggedness 
 from the squire's lips. He had been seated when the man 
 was shown in, but as the story jerked forward upon 
 its deathly course he lifted himself to his full height, and 
 stood up beside George. And the indomitable pride upon 
 the faces of the two men, both at that moment so 
 tragically alike, muffled in a regal cloak any less dignified 
 emotion. 
 
 The squire asked the questions, but it was George who 
 stood at the last in the breach, and as one with authority 
 explained the unexplainable. 
 
 " My wife was mad with grief," said he, " it was the fear 
 of such a possibility that brought me back to-night," he 
 added, magnificently lying. 
 
 " Captain Heron naturally could not allow Mrs. Winning- 
 ton to travel alone at this hour of the night. It's most 
 fortunate he is with her, and there was apparently no rime to 
 write. Only last month one of my own parishioners wandered 
 as far as Purly, mad with grief, and wasn't found for three 
 days. I'm much obliged to you, my man. Go down and 
 have something in the kitchen, and here's for your trouble." 
 
 When the man had gone, the two old people hung their 
 heads, and they were all silent. 
 
 But Rebecca soon raised hers. " There's some horrible 
 muddle here," she said. 
 
 " Yes," said George, " there's some horrible muddle, and 
 the last train left just twenty minutes ago." 
 
 The squire's head was now in air. 
 
 " Fortunately," said he, with fine composure, " what in
 
 320 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 heaven's name would be the use of starting off on a wild 
 goose chase? we'll know by the first post where she is. 
 Tisn't as though she were alone, and ill bodily." 
 
 George looked vaguely at him, and stooped to warm his 
 hands. But the brilliant living fire seemed to throw out 
 no more heat than a painted one. 
 
 Miss Rebecca, with a swift glance at father and son, 
 quietly rose, and trembling, left the room. 
 
 " He looks," she thought in agony, " as Jasper looked 
 when Isabella betrayed him. He, too, stood beside the fire, 
 in the little oak room, and tried to warm himself." 
 
 She paused upon the third step, and reddened darkly, and 
 stamped. 
 
 " And to dare to look in that sort of way about our 
 Joan," she muttered. " I'd better, indeed, get to my room ! 
 Possibly a Winnington may be able to bring a Winnington 
 to his right mind. At least, Jasper had the excuse of 
 ample cause," she mused, " and his unregenerate soul found 
 outlets at hand; he had some common sense, too, and 
 humour. But a saint pure and simple to be dominated and 
 devastated by so supreme a passion! George won't know 
 what to do with it," she wailed. " It's too gross an inmate 
 for such a soul. While he's contending with it, in his high- 
 minded way, it will be steadily burning him up. 'Tisn't 
 prayerful courtesy, God help the boy, a vice like that 
 wants. It will turn that inexperienced lad stone blind, 
 that's what it will do. Don't I know the Winningtons for 
 my sins? And George was one of them before ever he 
 became a saint. He may have overcome a deal, poor 
 darling, but he's not yet got the better of Jasper, and that 
 outrageous great-grandmother. Oh! God help the lot of 
 us! And this unhappy young man in love with her before 
 that first week was out ! What between love and pity, and 
 being twenty-seven, he can't be reckoned responsible, and 
 with Joan mad! Where are they? In Heaven's name, 
 where are they?" she demanded of the blank ceiling. 
 " Mad ! mad ! mad ! I hope to God there's no method in 
 the madness upon his side. I hope," she proceeded 
 presently, " that Jasper will have the wit to order up dinner. 
 Their incarnate pride his and George's will make them 
 eat; they want food." She steadied her hands and dried 
 her eyes, put her wild hair straight, and then sat sadly
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 321 
 
 down beside the fire, which owing to the general disruption 
 of the household, only wearily smouldered. 
 
 "The loneliness of an old woman who is unmarried," 
 she thought presently, with grey lips, "is rather hard to 
 bear. At all the crucial moments we must stand aside and 
 wait whilst the real action of the play goes on without us. 
 We are just, supernumeraries, unless, indeed," she added 
 scornfully, catching sight of her unlovely figure in a gleam- 
 ing mirror, "we sit and puff." 
 
 " Half-past-eight," she cried, " and no sign of dinner ! At 
 least, I can see to that ! " 
 
 She looked out into the soft, black night, and the big 
 mother's heart in her ached to go out after Joan, or down 
 to the boy who might have been hers ; the rest of her dreu 
 irresistibly to the man she loved, and who, alas ! liked her. 
 
 But there was no beautiful ordered place for Rebecca 
 anywhere in all the tragedy. So she went down quietly and 
 made them bring up dinner, and her kind, honest presence 
 comforted both man and maiden; righting the young mis- 
 tress in the hustled minds of both, and then, with homely 
 practicality she built up strong and seemly bulwarks about 
 anguished souls, leaving the rest to God. 
 
 And all that aching evening she knitted on bravely, made 
 characteristic remarks, and was as a pleasant shaded lamp 
 in some sweet and warm house place, to two weary men 
 groping without in a great darkness. 
 
 But sometimes for a fleeting instant Rebecca longed 
 piteously for some sure anchorage in some life, from which 
 no storm could oust her. It seemed hard to her to stand 
 always upon the threshold of every grief. 
 
 But as she went up the stairs that night, her obscured 
 senses suddenly cleared. 
 
 She turned, and stumped down again back to the 
 men. 
 
 " What fools we are ! What born asses ! " she cried. 
 " She's gone, of course, to the Bishop. She was giddy and 
 dazed, and could see no light in her darkness, and she's 
 gone to the one man who could show her some. Rob 
 Heron evidently has given us credit for more sense than 
 we possess. Instead of glowering over the fire, George, get 
 to bed, boy! and start by the first train. To have been 
 torturing ourselves all the evening with vague surmises ; 
 
 21
 
 322 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 each insulting to our common sense," she said desperately, to 
 George's stony face. 
 
 Jasper wrung her hand. 
 
 " You're a brick, Rebecca," said he, an unutterable weight 
 lifted from his simple heart. 
 
 " I'll start at seven," said George. 
 
 But as he was lighting his candle, Rebecca closely watched 
 him. A flicker of cynical mockery hung about his sweet, 
 firm, boy's mouth. 
 
 She had seen the like eight-and-twenty years ago upon 
 his father's face. 
 
 " Oh, my poor saint," she thought, with a bleeding heart, 
 " my poor, poor saint one one might, at least, shake a 
 sinner ! " 
 
 In his quick, sympathetic way, George saw her disappoint- 
 ment, and smiled gratefully in her disturbed face. 
 
 " You're a brick, if ever there was one," he said. 
 
 " Go to bed, George, do, La nuit porte conseil, so they 
 say, and our poor mad Joan will want some managing. 
 Sleep, boy ! " 
 
 But suddenly lifting her candle-stick as though it were a 
 denunciation, she squared up to him. 
 
 "Are all you saints of this abominable generation the 
 lineal descendants of that poor craven Thomas? Stop 
 thinking, George, stop it, for God's sake. To think in 
 your present frame of mind is to insult our Joan, and your 
 own understanding. Go to bed," she commanded. " Your 
 contract with Wady is out, isn't it ? " she said suddenly, 
 pausing upon one foot. 
 
 "Yes," said George, rather dumb-founded. 
 
 " In that case I'll bring you something to sweeten your 
 imagination." 
 
 She marched off to compound, with scientific accuracy, a 
 delectable mixture of whiskey, lemon, and hot water. 
 
 " And to think," she miserably muttered, " to think I 
 should be called upon to drive common decency into a 
 budding bishop through the base medium of hot grog ! 
 
 " Oh ! my Joan my poor, poor, poor pair of born idiots." 
 
 George drank the grog. 
 
 And in his sleep the practice of sweet charity returned to 
 his soul, and the poison of doubt departed therefrom. 
 
 But anger and doubt came back with the dawn.
 
 323 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 THE Bishop was abed when the drenched fugitives reached 
 the Palace, and both sick and tired. 
 
 There was a pestilence in his foetid diocese, and he was 
 of those ecclesiastics who leave the lighter chores to the 
 minor clergy. Day in, day out, he fought the plague and 
 buttressed the faint-hearted with a cheerful courage. He 
 comforted the dying, and widows who had lost their all 
 remembered till their last day the things he said unto 
 them. 
 
 He was constant, in season and out of it, and always to 
 the point. Only in one particular did his common sense 
 forsake him. 
 
 He went his rounds in water-logged boots. For, by 
 reason of an overdraft at his bank, and a phenomenal bill 
 at his grocer's, he did not feel himself justified in making 
 personal purchases. 
 
 Thus his chest felt most unaccountably heavy, his head 
 as though there was a fire in it, and his breath came in 
 gusts. 
 
 Whereupon his old housekeeper Theodosia was 
 happily absent upon field duty disclaiming protest, put 
 the Bishop to bed, and laid upon him, like Aaron's breast- 
 plate, a large mustard poultice. When acquainted by Rob 
 with the details of the wild flight, the Bishop groaned, 
 and nestled pathetically into his blankets. 
 
 But Joan, without her husband, her baby not dead a 
 week, waiting at this hour of night, and Rob her guardian 
 angel ! 
 
 " I'd better go down," said the Bishop, when Rob had 
 left him. So he arose from his warm bed, and from old 
 habit whistled softly whilst he dressed. In his sibilant pon- 
 
 21*
 
 324 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 derings the poultice wriggled from its moorings and settled 
 down, a damp smudge with a sting in it, upon a long-suffer- 
 ing hip. 
 
 The Bishop, however, heeded it not, or rather, unused to 
 chest complaints, set the new sort of burning down to some 
 complication, and devoted himself to the young people. 
 
 Having warmed and fed them, he sent Heron to bed, 
 but warned by the wildness of the girl's eyes that her occa- 
 sion could not be deferred, he softly set her, robed in his 
 housekeeper's best purple dressing-gown, in a big chair, and 
 waited, trusting that despite pains and burnings, shortness 
 of breath, and a lurking sense of the ludicrous, he might be 
 permitted to keep his head clear. 
 
 But the waiting seemed long, and when the words came, 
 more than once did the quaking divine nervously cross and 
 uncross his slim, sensitive hands, and wish the young 
 creature were masculine and capable of crystallising her 
 emotions swiftly into short sentences, or even an illumina- 
 ting grunt or so. 
 
 The passionate seriousness in the tone of the words caused 
 the Bishop to lift his chest, which stooping seemed to 
 relieve, to a more vigilant erectness. 
 
 He had fallen into the way of associating this tone with 
 women of a throbbing egoism, or with something to con- 
 ceal ; morbidity, or unutterable husbands ; he had certainly 
 not expected to hear it in George Winnington's wife. 
 
 Even in her confession, when woman most betrays the 
 things about herself she refrains from mentioning, this 
 young woman had been simple and straight, unexacting, 
 and reasonable. 
 
 John Hilary had a dreadfully uncomfortable habit of feel- 
 ing at critical moments rather young for his position, now 
 he felt aged ; so aged and tired as to be afraid of the con- 
 fidences of such curiously young youth. He sighed in- 
 wardly, and gave it all his attention. 
 
 George's wife, strenuous, strained, with wild eyes and dis- 
 tracted hair! 
 
 He had understood the state better in a more modern 
 woman. 
 
 And with a racking chest, even a Bishop is not prepared 
 for the unexpected. 
 
 " My head feels so extraordinary," Joan went on, " that
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 325 
 
 the words won't get right ; they run in and out oddly, don't 
 you think?" 
 
 " My dear, that I'm used to. Pray go on." 
 
 "Ah! you must understand." 
 
 So she went on, and in spite of words he did under- 
 stand, and tremble. 
 
 But to reply! 
 
 It was a ticklish predicament, and words he had just 
 learnt were dangerous things. It had been easier to wait 
 a little and pray. 
 
 But he looked across diffidently but that would be to 
 offer stones for bread. And, oh! those tumultuous eyes 
 that so greedily searched him! 
 
 In a moment's glance he crushed down his natural lean- 
 ings toward a host of gentlenesses, and put upon him the 
 whole armour of truth. 
 
 " You're too young for this life, my dear," said he, " and 
 that's all about it, both you and George Winnington. You 
 haven't the wit for it yet. No married man in his senses 
 can't you see for yourself, you foolish child? would go 
 posting off to Heaven in a Juggernaut car unless his wife 
 encouraged him. A man with a single mind and his eyes 
 upon the Everlasting Hills, wants steering, I would have 
 you to know. His whip-hand wants to be kept alive to 
 some well-known, trusted, beloved touch, or he'll be going 
 ahead blindly; and Heaven only knows what he'll be 
 running over, or into what ditch. Why, the road without 
 some practical eye in the business would be fairly strewn 
 with weaker brethren. 
 
 " The way of a young enthusiast is to go headlong upon 
 his shining path, felling difficulties and foot-passengers like 
 nine-pins, but he must learn to go slower. You can't take 
 Heaven at a cavalry charge, and trample down those en 
 route neither so nimble nor so well horsed as yourself; 
 besides running the risk of becoming yourself in the end 
 nothing more than a window saint. In any regard in 
 this order of advance, either man or saint must be missing 
 the smaller humanities and losing touch with the greater. 
 He must inevitably be waxing selfish. Nowadays we want 
 a saint with all his senses sharp as a razor, and eyes in the 
 back of his head. And a woman of all created beings 
 should know, surely, how to help in the developing of this
 
 326 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 particular brand of saint, and while he's still emerging, be 
 capable of supplying his deficiencies. She'll not do it, 
 believe me, by wholly effacing herself, and thus fostering 
 and pampering the selfishness inherent in man or saint." 
 
 " George George is different." 
 
 " We're all different with a family likeness, but in the 
 end we amount very much to the same thing. We haven't 
 let you and your like into the Church, my child, for per- 
 petual priest adoration. If we'd meant that we'd have kept 
 you outside it, in the dim religious light of the ante- 
 chambers." 
 
 " Oh, but " 
 
 " I don't counsel nagging," he hastily protested, " far 
 from it, or or a grasping personality," he added, sad with 
 memories, " but there's reason in every virtue. If you felt 
 as you did about the child, George had a right to know it." 
 
 " I wish I could explain you see, Henty's soul " 
 
 " Was, and is, of infinite importance, but so is a mother's 
 heart, and your prompting had its rights as well as 
 George's. And there's a lot of British self-consciousness 
 even in sermon-making, and some want of faith in priests. 
 It is difficult to judge any man through an over-conscientious 
 woman," he peered close at her, frowning, " insufficiently 
 nourished; you've not succeeded in acquiring a taste for 
 cheese, I fear, but perhaps had George trusted a little more 
 in God and less in his own right arm, he might have got 
 things straight, sat down comfortably to his tea, and enabled 
 you to catch your train. Anyway, since he's not taken the 
 vow of celibacy and thus relinquished such rights, it was 
 his right to know. By sparing him you will see presently 
 you have thrown him into an anomalous an odious posi- 
 tion." 
 
 He paused to collect himself. Her grave, questioning 
 eyes unconsciously reproached him. 
 
 She was so young, so white. She was suffering greatly. 
 Unlimited tenderness was the natural thing to offer any 
 being so forlorn and tired. But she was scarce sane enough 
 for tenderness, John sternly impressed upon himself, and 
 there was no time to lose. Each minute he more acutely 
 felt the danger of his aches growing too much for his 
 reason what there was of it and at all costs he must save 
 her from the insidious tenderness of Rob Heron.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 327 
 
 Plainly there lay more between George Winnington and 
 his young wife than the child's death, he thoughtfully re- 
 flected. That was the crown of her sorrow, the last touch, 
 the key that opened all the sluices. 
 
 The other things must also be reckoned with. And he 
 ached, oh ! but he ached piteously and with his besetting 
 sin, an unreasonable tenderness towards folly! It was hard 
 on the Bishop. 
 
 His part in this amazing muddle was to sting the girl's 
 pride, her grit, her interest, practically back to life, and 
 sweep all trace of unnecessary martyrdom from the horizon. 
 
 " It seems to me," he said, his tone harshened with ner- 
 vousness, " that you've been binding most unnecessary 
 burdens upon your back, my child ; heaping quite un- 
 necessary rocks of difficulty in your path, and George's 
 too. All conscience and high principle, no doubt, but that 
 doesn't soften the points of the rocks which, so far as I 
 can discern, have been reducing your feet, that will insist 
 upon treading their jagged and unnecessary heights, to a 
 pulpy impotence, and all with a mistaken notion of saving 
 George, and serving him." 
 
 He paused to look at her, for in his heart he adored the 
 serving woman, and loved survivals. In this character 
 George Winnington's wife had always deeply interested 
 him. 
 
 " It's built up, this barrier between her and George," he 
 reflected, in the silence of his soul, " this ridiculous barrier, 
 by a perfect mountain of dulness and bad air and un- 
 grateful tasks amongst the ungrateful poor, and want of 
 clothes, and of delicate food and amusement curates also 
 enter largely into it. But I can't be telling her all this." 
 
 " But instead of serving and saving George," he proceeded, 
 sighing, " by this unnecessary habit of self-sacrifice, you're 
 laying a rod in pickle for him, and likewise a lot of uncalled 
 for remorse, which must prove most detrimental to his 
 professsional career. How do you imagine that George 
 will feel, my dear, when he finds you out? He's a man, 
 and responsible for the woman he loves. Any pain that 
 has rent you will rend him threefold. Don't mistake me ; 
 I don't say he's not to blame. He's made of rare materials, 
 this George of yours, his soul is proud and humble, and as 
 white as the light, and he's ardent bless me, but he's very
 
 328 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 ardent and a purblind march onward isn't modem war- 
 fare, and we must keep up with the times. It's youth and 
 hurry, and want of humour that's the matter with George, 
 and a zeal so fiery that it's apparently scorched yours, 
 which needs badly, I perceive, some blowing up. 
 
 " A little more courage, a little more humour, and when 
 you've ceased to weep together, you and George, over this 
 infinite sorrow, you'll be laughing together merrily, the 
 tears behind your eyes, both of you, high upon your hills. 
 There are pleasant stops for rest upon that stony way as 
 well as jagged peaks, and the incense of flowers as well as 
 the poison of weeds, and laughter will carry us quicker over 
 a stony road or up a jagged peak than ever sighing did, 
 and to laugh together is the right of youth. Anyway, unless 
 you learn to laugh in Aiken you'll wilt and require a doctor, 
 which will, indeed, be a nice look out for George. You've 
 been diligently and conscientiously building up this barrier 
 between you and George," he said abruptly, "before ever 
 you laid your dead child upon it for coping stone. Your 
 child that most wonderful gift, of God given only to the 
 woman for her woes. No man living has ever entered fully 
 into the unutterable joy and sweetness in a mother's heart. 
 Those that might, dare not. The others cannot. A child 
 that can make the impossible possible, cure the incurable, 
 join hearts poles apart, restore all the unity to life to 
 make this ultimate gift of God into an unwomanly instru- 
 ment of vengeance, a flaming sword to shut your husband 
 out of his paradise! Pretty uses, to be sure, to put child 
 of your body to ! Because the child is dead, is it no longer 
 yours and George's ? " he asked. " God never made a 
 mother's heart or stilled its cravings to sever at one eternal 
 stroke the insoluble bond that binds mother and child. 
 
 " Besides," he resumed, more briskly, " to my mind those 
 doctors were a pair of asses. I doubt if the delay did really 
 much harm. To be comparing doubts in the possible hear- 
 ing of a mother, to my mind, stamps these fellows ! And 
 if it did make this difference, so far as I can see, you are 
 both equally to blame, and that at least simplifies matters. 
 It is a bad blow, an intolerable blow, this death of your 
 first-born, and neither you nor George can worthily fight 
 it apart. You're both of you too young and too foolish, and 
 instead of bearing together this mighty blow, here you are
 
 HE FOR GOD" ONLY. 329 
 
 growing noxious weeds upon the grave of the child. You 
 must be very tired, Joan Winnington, and very crazy, before 
 such an idea could have entered into so simple and sane and 
 sweet a heart. 
 
 " Go to bed, dear child, and pray for common sense, and 
 to-morrow to-morrow, perhaps, I may be fitter to collect 
 my own wits, and prove a more able counsellor. I'm really 
 in most abominable pain. Being weak and foolish, I'll 
 confess to you now, though, what I mightn't in a more lusty 
 moment perhaps. 
 
 " That in the silence of your soul you hate and abhor a 
 host of your duties is plain enough, but I'd have you to 
 know that you never hated them so bitterly as I do a host 
 of mine. . . I hate them, you see, with all the vigour and 
 experience of a Bishop. My dear, I must get back to bed, 
 I think. Ha! Yes, do give me a hand up. What strong 
 young shoulders for all their leanness ! too strong a deal for 
 morbid imagining. And now we'll ring for my old house- 
 keeper," said he, when he was settled at. last before his fire. 
 " She will feel greatly if her mustard poultice prove in- 
 effectual, and I fear that I've dropped it." 
 
 " If if oh, I'll never forgive myself," cried Joan in- 
 coherently. 
 
 " My child, don't, I beg of you, turn that tap on. We 
 have already enough to deal with. Your arrival at this hour 
 of night under my nephew's protection, seemed to me a 
 proceeding requiring ecclesiastical supervision, and even a 
 Bishop may have his promptings of duty as well as a 
 woman." 
 
 " That that part never struck me," said Joan, with widen- 
 ing eyes, stung back to a clearer outlook. " Oh ! what have 
 I done?" 
 
 " Nothing that with a little sense and less words cannot 
 be undone. And now," he said, holding his tortured sides 
 and coughing spasmodically, " I may be going in for some 
 illness no fault of yours been on me these three days, 
 only I resented it. I loathe sickness, you see. If I'm worse 
 to-morrow, I positively forbid you," he lifted a shaking fore- 
 finger, " to stay and nurse me. Go back to your husband. 
 To begin, with, if you stayed you'd only be arousing ill- 
 feeling in my household. The only way in which I've ever 
 disobliged Mrs. Henn, my housekeeper, is in never, so far,
 
 330 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 having fallen sick. She's a born nurse. This is her hour, 
 and I can't have it spoilt by interlopers. You go to your 
 husband. Do you hear ? " he demanded sharply, half deaf 
 by reason of the clashing whirr in his fevered brain. 
 
 " I hear," she faltered. She pressed her tired head with 
 her tired hands. " And I think I know now. I I'll do 
 all you say." 
 
 " What did I say, I wonder ? " he muttered ; " I feel 
 capable of saying anything." 
 
 " You've helped me I think you you've saved me. 
 You've cleared everything." 
 
 ' Wish I could clear my own clotted senses." 
 
 ' If if you get really ill, oh ! what shall I do ? " 
 
 ' Ask George." 
 
 ' I've been so dreadful so wicked." 
 
 ' You've been nothing of the sort, simply a fool. I knew 
 I put my foot in it. What worms we are that a prick in 
 the side should send common sense flying ! Go to George," 
 said he, with laboured breath, " the very instant you can. 
 Rob's an admirable fellow, and and I wish," he murmured 
 vaguely, " you hadn't built up so unpleasant a God for your- 
 self, but," he added feverishly, " He's better, anyway, than 
 Rob. Oh ! go early ; go early." 
 
 When Mrs. Henn appeared, John Hilary was babbling of 
 modern idol worship and a libelled Heaven. Whereupon, 
 finding delirium appearing so early in the complaint, the 
 experienced woman insisted at once upon having a second 
 opinion. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 THE Bishop was woefully ill next day. Joan ached to be 
 with him, and her selfishness of the night smote her sore. 
 
 The contained resentful wrath of Mrs. Henn inexorably 
 emphasised the discomfort of Joan's state of mind, and 
 proved, we can but hope, a wholesome discipline for the 
 poor sinner. 
 
 Before he would permit himself to settle down finally 
 into vain babbling, the Bishop asked the doctor to go 
 at once with a sleeping draught to his young guest, and
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 331 
 
 gave orders that Mrs. George Winnington should not be 
 disturbed until she herself should ring. He roused him- 
 self farther to scribble a note to Rob, and then weakly 
 watched it burn. 
 
 " Better not," he murmured, sinking back upon his pil- 
 lows, "just as well he should meet her after sleep has 
 more or less restored her sanity, and her gentle heart has 
 begun to turn again to its lode-star. An occurrence more 
 strengthening to the moral fibre of both those poor young 
 people, than a thousand ghostly exhortations." 
 
 But twice in the night he sat up possessed seemingly 
 with a frantic impulse to get up and dress, till weariness 
 at last threw him. 
 
 " A muddled opportunity," he muttered. " The mul- 
 titudinous experiences of five-and-fifty going to pieces 
 before a burning in your side. A worm isn't in it ! Cut 
 a worm into a dozen bits, and he'll wriggle back into a 
 passable coherence." 
 
 And then his wits went wandering off into queer bye- 
 paths, producing dark sayings which inexpressibly shocked 
 Mrs. Henn. She sat with rigid outstretched fingers, her 
 eyes bursting from her goggles, and thanked the Lord that 
 no one but herself was present. 
 
 " After all," said the divine, groaning, " God doesn't get 
 stitches in His side, and so lose His coherence. If I'm 
 laid by, He's there. But she'd prefer me. Poor little 
 thing ! Poor wild, little mother ! " 
 
 Moved by old habit, perhaps, his glazed eyes sought 
 after an audience. 
 
 " Odd, Mrs. Henn, isn't it ? To prefer a poor poulticed 
 bishop to a great God? Such a poor thing of a bishop, 
 too," he murmured, gazing up in her face of depre- 
 cation, " that even his housekeeper forgets her upbringing 
 and treats him like a baby." 
 
 " And then, and then to to be expecting a girl with 
 a dead baby to to keep her wits. That sort goeth not 
 forth with poultices, eh ! Mrs. Henn ? " 
 
 It was half an hour before the prescribed moment for his 
 sleeping draught, but Mrs. Henn insisted then and there 
 upon his swallowing it. 
 
 She had her reward ; there came method into the 
 bishop's madness.
 
 332 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 He now went in and out of curates in a reassuring way, 
 mixing them up after an odd, yet convincing fashion, with 
 other Church abuses. 
 
 When Joan awoke at ten o'clock, the pendulum in her 
 head only slightly swung. It hurt less. Things were 
 clearing. The world and George were no longer one vast 
 horrifying blur. Everything was full of sorrow, indeed, 
 but she could see her way in the darkness. 
 
 Having bent her head before the judgment stool of 
 Mrs. Henn, she went down to meet Rob. 
 
 With returning sanity, came also self-consciousness. She 
 now saw him rather more through George's eyes. This 
 interfered somehow with his helpfulness and her dauntless 
 demand. 
 
 After some time he was a friend to keep proudly for ever. 
 As he came to her, furtively to search her face and gather 
 bitterness, her heart swelled with gratitude and affection. 
 
 Her behaviour of the day before, however she may have 
 thought, have felt, was still a marvel to her must remain 
 for ever amongst the marvels, but that it should be Rob 
 and no lesser man and no woman at all who had been 
 witness to her disorder, was her one and only consolation. 
 
 Joan's notions of friendship were simple and mighty, 
 but calculated to try the reins of a man, who like Heron 
 was so much more than friend and so much less. 
 
 His end had come, so he now plainly discovered. 
 
 " But how am I to begin to thank you ? " cried she, giving 
 him both her hands. " If you hadn't been so good so 
 good. If you hadn't been so patient and wise and 
 brought me to the Bishop, I I wonder what would have 
 happened. I I'm afraid even to wonder. I can't re- 
 member quite it's like a dreadful dream I think I was 
 mad. Don't you think I must have been mad ? " She 
 slightly shuddered. " I'm glad ; oh ! I'm glad yesterday is 
 past. But now now I'm growing sane, I think but truly 
 I am and you stand and look hopeless." 
 
 Rob felt conscientiously about after words and a 
 cheerful expression, but neither came. 
 
 Joan's face as it watched him, was amazingly sweet and 
 pleading, her attitude, leaning towards him eagerly, her 
 hands clasping one of his, a moving one. 
 
 George, to be sure, found it a very peculiarly moving
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 333 
 
 one, as having gently opened the door, he stood transfixed 
 upon the threshold. 
 
 " The third time," said some miserable, lurking devil in 
 George's ear. The same nimble fiend repeated the remark 
 in Heron's. 
 
 There was no going back this time, however, for George, 
 and as he crossed the room to his wife, his face looked 
 most extraordinarily like his father's. 
 
 He would not judge at all ; so his reason kept beating 
 into him not at all. He would wait and just be sorry 
 sorry sorry for his wife. 
 
 While she spoke to Heron there had been no earthly 
 reason why Joan should blush. He understood everything. 
 He had understood it all through. He had been with her. 
 Oh ! he would know. 
 
 But here was another matter altogether. 
 
 She had outraged George. She had failed him. Her 
 folly had been incredible, and even now even now the 
 ice of death that parted them had not quite thawed. And 
 torn with grief, Joan was still in an exaggerated mood. 
 She faltered, flushed, and trembled. 
 
 " One can hardly wonder," thought George bitterly. 
 
 " She's madder than ever," groaned Heron. 
 
 " Breakfast isn't up," he said at last, lightly ; " I'll 
 go and see if they'll let me in now to see the 
 Bishop." 
 
 George started. Face to face with Joan ; unendurable ! 
 intolerable ! That must wait. He wasn't ready. 
 
 The prosaic business of breakfast seemed the one de- 
 fence left him against himself, Joan, God, all things. 
 
 " But see, it's here all right except for the coffee," he 
 said. " Suppose we have it at once." 
 
 By the signs of iron control in the man's face, Rob saw 
 well enough that breakfast was the one single refuge left 
 the three of them. 
 
 Simultaneously each man moved to set Joan's chair at 
 the proper angle. But Heron was the nearer of the two 
 and George drew back. Joan looked oddly from one man 
 to the other. 
 
 To be guilty before George, guilty. For the very first 
 time in her life ashamed, remorseful, and still still with 
 all her trying, afraid of George's touch, and of his kiss !
 
 334 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 It was so strange, so amazing ! The pendulum began in 
 Joan's head again, and her heart sickeningly jerked. 
 
 She could hardly see to pour out the coffee, the cups 
 and things got all mixed up. 
 
 George noticed every symptom. His normal power of 
 happy detachment had forsaken him. His eyes were avid 
 for signs. But after a masterly fashion he controlled 
 himself. To Rob's anxious, distracted mind, there was 
 a certain fiendishness in the calm way in which George 
 helped his wife to bacon. 
 
 " This new vice plainly is as much as he can manage," 
 thought Rob, more used to sin. " If the truth were known 
 I daresay he's been holding a ghostly vigil all night before 
 it, the infernal thing getting its fangs all the time into 
 him. Better have gone to sleep and dreamed of his wife's 
 face." 
 
 " I rather hoped you'd get the letter in time to come last 
 night," said Rob, cutting bread. George started. 
 
 "What letter?" 
 
 " The one I sent by Hall, telling you " 
 
 " I got no letter. The landlord of the Inn came up and 
 told us that you had both gone where he did not know. 
 Who wrote the letter ? " 
 
 " Why naturally I did, and had two minutes to write it 
 in. You don't quite grasp, I fancy, how very ill Mrs. 
 Winnington was last night. She was quite unfit to travel 
 alone. I'm glad," said he boldly, " that I happened to be 
 with her." 
 
 A light shone suddenly into the darkness that beset 
 Joan, her heavy eyes were starry again. 
 
 " Oh ! George, then you just guessed I'd be here." 
 
 " No," said George, very quietly, " Miss Rebecca 
 guessed." 
 
 Joan winced as though he had struck her. 
 
 George, Rob now perceived, was helping the unfortunate 
 child to honey. 
 
 "I felt ill yesterday, dreadfully ill," she said. "But 
 I'm nearly well to-day. I I'm ready for anything." 
 
 " That's right," said her husband, his eyes on his plate. 
 
 " Will this devilish meal ever come to an end ? " thought 
 Rob, eyeing a mass of marmalade wherewith in his absent- 
 mindedness he had cumbered his own plate. " Oh, well ! "
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 335 
 
 he reflected practically, "one can make short work of 
 this." 
 
 "And after all," he thought, as he went up the stairs, 
 " my leaving the coast clear now is only to change one 
 torture for another for her. However, I'm better out of 
 it, any way. Sort of thing, this, that calls for a special 
 invitation." 
 
 He looked sorrowfully at the uneven rise and fall of 
 the Bishop's delicate nostrils ; he listened to his moaning 
 breaths; shivered at the horrid spasms of pain that rent 
 him. The beautiful, kind voice, cracked and shrill, smote 
 him hard. 
 
 " The only man that might be of any real use," thought 
 Rob, " laid by the heels." 
 
 He dearly loved the sick man, but his thoughts soon 
 flew back to the woman. " We could have been so happy 
 together, my dear, and given folly to play with you'd have 
 learnt wisdom royally; you'd never any way have been 
 driven to the insanity of last night. Oh, my dear, my 
 dear, my dear," he said, " the way of you is joy. I wonder 
 if you'll ever buckle down to the other way, and how? 
 It's a fence, I fear, that will spill an untrained rider 
 plenty of hand, poor Joan, poor Joan, but no seat and 
 and it takes time to learn." 
 
 Directly Rob had gone Joan's thin, childish hand went 
 out to seize the lapel of George's coat, but she looked 
 more guilty than ever. She flushed and stammered and 
 that after a fashion which cut George like a two-edged 
 sword. Her eyes fell, she piteously quivered. With a 
 hunted look she clung to him. 
 
 She had also clung to Heron. 
 
 But her gentleness disarmed George. What, more- 
 over, was a man to do to say ? 
 
 To feel harshly was torture enough, but to act harshly 
 to a creature so slight, so lovely, so broken with grief, it 
 was impossible to George. He tenderly soothed her, but 
 he looked away. 
 
 " I've been mad," she cried, " I've been quite, quite 
 mad. I was so tired and suddenly oh, George ! suddenly 
 the baby came between us. I must have been mad for 
 yesterday, it seemed to be for ever I didn't think I could 
 have come back to you again ! "
 
 336 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 For an eternal instant George paused. " What led you 
 to alter your intention ? " he then said. 
 
 She flushed miserably and hid her face. 
 
 " Something Captain Heron said afterwards the Bis- 
 hop. Oh ! he was very wise, he always is." 
 
 Shaken, benumbed, shocked, yet what could a man do 
 but stroke her ? 
 
 " Rob was like a city of refuge," she proceeded. " I 
 couldn't have gone to any one else. I was too stupid even 
 to think of the Bishop." 
 
 " That then was an afterthought and his ? " George's 
 hands unconsciously ceased to stroke. 
 
 " I was mad, don't you see ? He had to think of every- 
 thing. I I had to get away I knew I knew he'd under- 
 stand me perfectly I had cause to know in a way 
 
 She paused. " But I can't tell you that now not now 
 in a sort of way it's his secret." 
 
 His secret ! His secret ! The words were burning 
 George's brain. Had she been telling Rob then of this 
 perfect understanding as they stood together under the 
 trees. His secret ! Rob's ! Not to be told to him her 
 husband ! 
 
 It wasn't much, it wasn't much, but to George's tortured 
 senses the little occasion held infinity. 
 
 It was the end of the old loving, tried things, the be- 
 ginning of new, untried, repellant ones. The greatness 
 and the glory had of a sudden slipped from their lives 
 their Life rather it had been one life, grand, indissoluble, 
 complete. And what a life to break ! But what a life to 
 break ! There was no harm done, possibly no harm 
 thought. Everything would go on just the same, but with 
 oh ! what a difference ! 
 
 In a moment life had grown lonely, sordid. 
 
 To be forgiving Joan forgiving Joan ! This was the 
 first step to take ; it struck him as incredible. 
 
 The mere thought of it suffocated the obstinate heart of 
 George, his touch upon his wife grew unconsciously hard. 
 She shrank a little from it. He noticed this too. Had 
 she perhaps not shrunk from Heron's ? 
 
 Every second brought with it another thought more re- 
 volting, more despicable than the last. 
 
 " The Bishop made me see my wickedness," she said,
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 337 
 
 " what a fool I'd been my blindness. Captain Heron 
 oh ! he was very good." 
 
 All through she had carefully avoided, whenever 
 possible, mentioning Heron's name. Joan was very loyal, 
 bitterly reflected Joan's husband. 
 
 Joan, however, trembled and shook; she wanted to 
 tell George everything. How it had happened. How 
 she had gone mad. But the confusion in thought and 
 word was all coming back again, and she was so tired. 
 He would surely understand without explaining. 
 
 " George ! you do understand ? " she feebly pleaded. 
 
 " Yes, dear," said George, after a moment's pause, " I 
 understand. I think I think you'd better lie down," 
 he added. 
 
 " No will you take me home to Aiken ? The Bishop 
 said I must go and Mrs. Henn doesn't want me here. 
 And if once I lay down oh ! George take me home." 
 
 So he took her home, and in spite of the sleeping 
 draught the brain trouble did come on. For days she lay 
 in feverish semi-consciousness. But she raved in a general 
 sort of way about her baby, and her journey to reach him. 
 What she said of Heron was perhaps suggestive to a 
 warped mind, and she left George clean out. 
 
 Trust a delirious woman to complicate an already un- 
 promising situation ! 
 
 There was little danger, it seemed, in the 'illness to her 
 bodily, but mentally she needed solicitous care. 
 
 She was nervous, the doctor decided. She had suffered 
 greatly. The less comment made upon the melancholy 
 past, the better. She must not be encouraged to dwell 
 upon her grief. She must gradually return to her normal 
 life. In work lies salvation. 
 
 " Mrs. Winnington is a woman who glorifies work." Thus 
 spake the doctor to the anxious husband. 
 
 So somehow the subject of Heron and that secret of his 
 was never touched upon by husband or wife. 
 
 Joan rose from her bed with a strange, mute horror of 
 those unutterable days of despair. 
 
 George had a natural diffidence in approaching them. 
 
 And so his unheeded wound festered on quietly in his 
 heart under all its wrappings, and the jealousy that had 
 turned his father's rollicking life into a howling wilder- 
 
 32
 
 338 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 ness of scandal fastened upon George, and grew like a 
 cancer. 
 
 And Joan returned, rather silently, to her childless life. 
 
 It was madness, George felt assured, that had fallen 
 upon Joan, but it was madness that might return. This 
 was the knife in her husband's side. At any moment it 
 might return. 
 
 His calm and perfect mastery of himself had now for- 
 saken George. In and out of church did this evil thought 
 pursue him. It poisoned prayer and exhortation ; it 
 hardened psalm and hymn ; it dogged his steps. It was 
 the devil that night and day hung upon this poor saint's 
 heels. He now saw but the thickness of gloom where a 
 great light had shone. The waters had indeed gone over 
 George. Even the arrogance of the Church Militant 
 would seem to have forsaken him. 
 
 He could shoulder the world out of his path, this foolish 
 man, it seemed, but not the meanest of all the passions. 
 
 In the day sometimes he might vanquish it such as 
 George cannot live without a little victory but at night it 
 arose, a giant refreshed. He was eternally facing, and 
 fighting, and was often now tired. 
 
 This evil thing came also between him and his great 
 work. And as an inspiration the virtue had gone out of 
 Joan. 
 
 This was the bitterest drop in all the bitter cup. Night 
 after night did he now watch Joan make her little pre- 
 parations. 
 
 The increase of solicitude in her every action, the stab- 
 bing little deprecations in look and manner were an added 
 torment to George. For indeed this new elusive thing 
 that had come between her and him filled her with per- 
 plexed anxiety and to overcome it was her one desire, so 
 she tried all things. She had patiently, steadily, ab- 
 sorbedly pushed the other obstacle, that bred of her own 
 bitter grief and madness aside, but this she could not move. 
 It grew, it grew, it seemed to dull her understanding and 
 stand in the way of all her outlooks. And she had grown 
 a little afraid of questions. More than once George had 
 evaded them, and in her quiet way she was a proud 
 creature who could not brook rebuff. 
 
 And so the barren evenings dragged on impotently.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 339 
 
 George wrote, and tore up, he wrote, and wrote, and 
 wrote, but conception, thought, idea lay unresponsive in 
 the darkness, and such as through pain and pang at 
 last struggled to the light were still-born. One by one 
 his precious gifts forsook him and the face of God was 
 hidden from George. 
 
 The meekness inseparable from the spectacle of a 
 woman neatly sewing, which formerly had been to him a 
 song without words strength made perfect in weakness 
 the sweetness of womanhood suggestive of Home, self- 
 sacrifice, and the laughter of children now annoyed and 
 disturbed George. " A woman who sews will think," 
 thought he, and of what was she thinking? 
 
 Her face varied. 
 
 She was no longer absorbed in the Great Work. How 
 could she be, since she had ceased to be its inspiration? 
 She did not always think of their dead child. He knew 
 always when she did, and then his heart melted. He 
 would then have helped and consoled her, had he the 
 power. But there had fallen a veil between them, and he 
 could not lift it; he had lost the way. Joan must grieve 
 alone and think alone. She must possibly she must 
 overcome alone. For Joan, he knew, would never suffer 
 evil gladly but that was her part not his ! 
 
 George had lost the way to many a thing. 
 
 His enthusiasms had left him. His hopes had all 
 grown dim. All he could do now was to get through the 
 work given him to do, tirelessly, fiercely, well. But he had 
 no longer great and gallant thoughts wherewith to exorcise 
 either the devil or Heron. No manna fresh from Heaven 
 as in the old days to give away to every human soul that 
 came to him. He strove without ceasing to reach again 
 the heights whence he had fallen, but with the poison of 
 asps in his veins what can a man do? Striving to wrestle 
 with God he will find himself grasping a shadow. 
 
 The soldier in George might in the end have conquered, 
 had not the self-torturing poet one night brought him to 
 extremities. 
 
 Distracted by the incoherence of beauty that kept slip- 
 ping through his fingers, flashing past his eyes, dazzled and 
 balked, he glanced at Joan's attentive, solicitous face, so 
 near and yet worlds apart, and it oddly confounded him.
 
 340 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 The consuming degradation of his state of mind, his dis- 
 order his fall, struck him like a felling blow. He was 
 ashamed before her. Gently, kindly almost tenderly in 
 his agony and yet peremptorily, he told Joan that she 
 looked worn out and had better go to bed. 
 
 Joan stared with stupefaction. 
 
 He was cutting her out of his work then out of their 
 creation their only child now, since Jasper was dead. So 
 long as their lives had gone on upon the old lines Joan had 
 hoped that the old, sweet ways would one day return, but 
 this was an earthquake in their path. A great gulf she 
 on one side, George on the other. Their one bridge was 
 gone, their boats burned. This was the end of hope. 
 
 It seemed so odd, so impossible. 
 
 She wondered if George were George, if she were her- 
 self. If the room were going round, or only her head, but 
 she quietly took up her work and went. 
 
 It was after this night that in her desolation Joan's heart 
 turned at last to the poor of God, and she forgot their 
 smell. She went out humbly, yearningly, eagerly, to pour 
 upon them in full measure, flowing over, all that until 
 now she had grudgingly bestowed, and in a wistful, apolo- 
 getic way that pleased and comforted those bodies of 
 grime and woe, she sought diligently for the alchemy of 
 healing which has lain from everlasting hidden in every 
 human touch. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 AND so in ridiculous loneliness the two went their ways. 
 
 Joan drearily wondered what it all meant, and in what 
 manner she had now failed George. 
 
 George thought chiefly of Joan's head upon Heron's arm. 
 
 The abject suspicion, moreover, that divided him from 
 his wife drew George more closely to his father, in whose 
 presence Joan had suddenly grown shy. George took her 
 place for the moment, and in the surprise and exquisite 
 pleasure of it the old man, perhaps, somewhat neglected 
 Joan. 
 
 What had at last melted the heart of George towards his 
 erring parent was his new and more intimate knowledge of
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 341 
 
 sin, and of the incredible pain of it. Thus, what in the day 
 of his pride had been a mystery, became now in his day of 
 degradation, only too hideously patent. 
 
 Himself armed at a thousand points, yet with fiends 
 gnawing at his vitals, what could he have expected? how 
 dared he to judge? 
 
 With his paucity of channels and an eighteenth century 
 outlook, the old Squire could hardly have done otherwise 
 than take to drink, so George now decided, as one by one 
 his deadened sympathies awoke. 
 
 It struck him that in this matter he had been an arrant 
 prig, and that never had he helped his father. 
 
 His efforts at reparation were thus diffident and rather 
 boyish, and showed George in a fresh and charming light. 
 
 So it was after all natural enough that the old father 
 should desire to get this phase through alone with his new- 
 found son. 
 
 But it seemed to little Joan as though still another door 
 were being shut in her face. 
 
 Miss Rebecca, who had caught a wicked cold the night 
 she had gone forth to meet Joan, was in Bath, seeing what 
 the waters would do for her aching limbs. 
 
 The Bishop was slowly recovering at Mentone, Captain 
 Heron kept conscientiously in the distance, and so Joan 
 quietly and uninterruptedly got thin and white. 
 
 George saw the change with a tortured heart, and thought 
 ragingly of Heron. 
 
 When his gratified eyes drew sometimes away from George, 
 the Squire also saw it, and thought sadly of the child. 
 
 The curates saw it, but being chronically thin and white 
 themselves, they had become hardened to the state, and put 
 it down in mournful silence to Aiken and the Profession. 
 
 To be one with George in all things had often been 
 hard for Joan, and more often dull. But to be cast out of 
 his best thoughts was despair. 
 
 The keen airs of the hills had gripped her breath, but 
 the dead ones of the valley suffocated her, and every day 
 she got more tired. So tired at last did she get that she 
 grew to be afraid of her tiredness. 
 
 It was like a treacherous foe that implacably tracked 
 her that some day might trick her, and against whom she 
 had no defence, so useless had she become, so impotent.
 
 342 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 For a time she fought sturdily against the insidious 
 fatigue, but one day it suddenly struck her that the tired- 
 ness after all didn't much matter. She was now absolutely 
 indispensable to no one, and she hindered George. 
 
 And George's father and the others she had grown lonely 
 in the midst of them. 
 
 It was all very odd and very confusing, and why she 
 could not guess, but it was she also who had brought the 
 Poem to a standstill, who was sapping the quality in the 
 sermons, who instead of trimming had quenched George's 
 lamps. 
 
 For no glimmer of deterioration in George could elude 
 such love as Joan's. 
 
 Plainly, oh, plainly, she was a failure. 
 Possibly her failure had something to do with her late 
 revolt, her worldly desires, her carnal heart. She was much 
 too tired, however, to go back now to thresh these 
 things out. Besides, they had left her these wicked 
 desires. Now she rather liked dulness, and she dearly loved 
 the poor, but, after all, they had George and the curates, 
 the poor could quite easily spare her. Which shows, 
 taken altogether, that Joan's pride was going the melan- 
 choly way of her fortitude and her strength; that she 
 was very far gone, in short, upon the wretched road to 
 ruin. 
 
 One day, after a reasonable period, Rob Heron ordered 
 his manners, chastened his mind, and paid the riven pair 
 a visit. Joan's looks appalled him. But it was the in- 
 definable alteration in George, his amazing likeness to his 
 father, subdued clearly enough, and with bloody sweat, 
 no doubt to the requirements of his cloth and his calling, 
 but there notwithstanding, for seeing eyes to see, that gave 
 Rob his clues. 
 
 The kindness of George to his wife was incomparable, 
 more solicitous even than of yore, more alert, for now there 
 was duty in it. It was no longer as unconscious as his 
 breathing. 
 
 By the time the visit was over, Rob had got very near to 
 the truth. 
 
 But what to do with it was the question. 
 Truth in some cases may prove but a scurvy possession. 
 And this particular truth was a dagger in Heron's side.
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 343 
 
 After a brief period of raging scorn his natural sense of 
 justice, however, came to his aid. With a wry mouth he 
 went categorically over the various phases of the abominable 
 business, with the result that, in his opinion, George had 
 some reason upon his side. Also that to George was due 
 an explanation from some one. 
 
 Yet who can explain away an attitude, or the reasons 
 that made it pardonable, possible, explicable? Who can 
 explain the ways of a woman stark, staring mad, still less 
 her looks? 
 
 Rob was smitten with a profound and afflicting conviction 
 that in order to spare George for the demands of the Higher 
 Life Joan herself had omitted to explain in detail anything, 
 leaving the matter forsooth to the intelligence of her hus- 
 band. 
 
 " Little she knows of a man's intelligence when he has 
 sight to confound it ! " thought Captain Heron moodily. 
 
 " There's nothing left," he told himself later, " but to have 
 the thing out with the man from beginning to end, and 
 with that Winnington blood in him it will be a facer. But 
 I'll take the first opportunity, anyway." 
 
 Before seizing his opportunity, however, Rob ventured 
 upon another visit to the Vicarage, to find chaos afoot. 
 
 Joan was ill. George had been away for some days 
 helping in three missions, and had no settled place of abode. 
 Post-cards written in trains were the sole clues to his 
 rapidly changing tracks. 
 
 Joan had come in that morning only just a little whiter 
 than usual, the servants said. It was, however, the little 
 atom of whiteness too much, for Mrs. George Winnington 
 sat down idle at last, dictated one telegram to the Squire 
 and one to Miss Rebecca who had come back the day 
 before but told them on no account to disturb their 
 master, and then with a curious little laugh, she asked the 
 maids to put her to bed. 
 
 " It's so foolish," said she. " I'm really only tired ; but 
 I can't sit up any longer, or do one thing more." 
 
 For weeks there had been a plague of influenza in Aiken, 
 and Joan's hands had been full. It had been an untold 
 comfort to tire herself out for some one who couldn't spare 
 her, and she had done it thoroughly. 
 
 She had not been feeling well of late, so the horrid sensa-
 
 344 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 tions of heat and cold and giddiness that seemed to pursue 
 her she put down to the usual tiredness, and the cough 
 was, of course, the result of the river fog. Each of the 
 five curates had generally a cough just like it. So she had 
 said nothing to anyone, but had just gone on. 
 
 She knew that her people would miss her dreadfully, and 
 she could not sit alone in her lonely house. 
 
 The doctors said that Mrs. Winnington had apparently 
 got through all the violent stages of influenza about in the 
 Parish. It was the after-weakness from which she was now 
 suffering. 
 
 "There's no danger, none whatever," the Squire protested, 
 fear looking out of both his eyes. " She takes her nourish- 
 ment; she has no pain. It's fatigue, and nothing more. 
 And in this confounded air, you know and her child dead, 
 and and " 
 
 " The communion of saints," suggested Heron. 
 
 " What the devil " 
 
 " Now Mr. Winnington," said Rob, " look here, silence is 
 all very well, but some things want brutal speech. There's 
 more here than influenza. She's an amazing, old-fashioned 
 creature, Mrs. George Winnington, for all her youth : and 
 parasitical by nature and training, and being deprived of 
 her natural support she's gone to pieces. I happen to 
 know this " 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 " I mean that George is as jealous as the devil of me 
 and with some cause." 
 
 "What what ?" 
 
 " Don't excite yourself, precious little hope of any conso- 
 lation for me in the beastly business. By a piece of clumsi- 
 ness upon my part, coupled with fate, I daresay, and 
 knowledge a woman who loves and is loved knows the 
 thing when she sees it she found out that I'd be glad 
 enough to give very life and soul for her. And when she 
 went mad, she turned to me. It was all simple and frank 
 and exceedingly insane, but unfortunately George saw just 
 enough to set him off and the Winningtons, I take it, 
 have strong passions." 
 
 " Good God, man ! go on." 
 
 " Do you know nothing ? " 
 
 " Except tfiat there's the devil of a mess somewhere."
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 345 
 
 " From the moment your letter came, it seems she had a 
 wild idea that the child was very ill. Dr. Baker told her 
 the day before he died that the little chap, if ever he got 
 ill, would need stimulant. You'll remember you were 
 always against giving stimulants to children, and she knew 
 it. I say, sir, sit down, won't you. The thought got on 
 her brain, but she couldn't disturb George. He was in 
 torment about some fellow's soul, and some flaw in one of 
 his own arguments. So the poor little thing took over 
 some duty for him out of the beat of the curates, it would 
 seem, while he solved his doubts, and so lost her 
 train. 
 
 "And then those two unaccountable idiots of doctors 
 confessed to each other that if given in time the brandy 
 would have saved him. She heard them jabbering, and it 
 turned her mad ; she was morbid before, poor child. She 
 saw the child's murderer in George, and fairly ran away 
 from him. Even before she went, though, the poison was 
 working in George ; he saw he happened to see the poor 
 frenzied girl turning for help to me. No man could stand 
 it George certainly could not. You know about our mad 
 jaunt and the Bishop? But. even after that she was thank- 
 ing me in her absolutely frank, natural way good God! 
 you know her ! but George came in : you can't explain 
 that sort of thing off-hand, and I'll take my oath she's 
 never gone through it with him. It's not struck her. The 
 damned doubt has come between the two of them, and 
 you can't expect a parasite to stand up to the weather with- 
 out its tree. She's in the dust now trailing. But we can't 
 spare either her or her weakness it's her weakness, after 
 all, that inspires our strength. God! we can't spare 
 her. 
 
 " I'm off now," he hurriedly concluded, " to catch George 
 before he gets here and explain." 
 
 " Good God ! " said Jasper ; " good God ! " 
 
 " Mrs. George trusts me," said Heron softly, " tell her 
 I'm gone for George." 
 
 Jasper nodded, Heron paused for a minute to look, quick 
 with compassion, at the great tragic figure, his ruddy face 
 livid. 
 
 " The sins of the father," muttered the old man, when Rob 
 had gone.
 
 346 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " And George, poor lad, a saint, and jealousy ravaging in 
 virgin soil! Oh, God! And I not to see the thing. 
 Oh ! we're two fools together, my son and I. And between 
 us our Joan is dying." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 ARMED with the three telegrams which George had missed, 
 Heron found his man at last making a cross-country short- 
 cut from one Service to another. His back as he trudged 
 up the hill struck Rob as looking unnecessarily tired. 
 There was visible degeneration going on in the man. 
 
 " Your best station," said Rob, when George had read 
 the message, duplicated in each telegram, " is Haslope. 
 There's time and half an hour to spare. I'll walk across 
 with you." 
 
 " But pray don't trouble," said George, quickly. 
 
 " I'm afraid I must," said Rob bluntly, " I have some- 
 thing to say to you. Truth is an unpleasant weapon at the 
 best of times. When a man is staggering under a blow 
 there's a sort of cowardice in its use, but all the same it's 
 got to be spoken. We were once friends, George," he 
 went on in a quiet monotone, " you and I. We were in- 
 tended by Nature, and reason, and circumstances to be 
 friends, but we've fallen apart, divided as usual by a 
 woman and such a woman ! Too good surely for uses so 
 vulgar " 
 
 " This is hardly the time " 
 
 " It's unfortunately the only time. Your mind, it seems, 
 is poisoned with jealousy of your wife and me. Put into 
 words the thing seems rather brutal, don't you think, as 
 applied to a woman like your wife ? " He paused to col- 
 lect himself. It was a horrid grind. He would have 
 been glad even if George would swear, but George was too 
 confounded, too shocked and numb for words of any sort 
 or degree. " Any way, it's a fact," said Rob. " You can't 
 deny it. And so far as I can see you've been acting 
 accordin' "
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 347 
 
 "I- 
 
 " I won't say you've ill-treated your wife or sworn at 
 her," said Rob, with an angry shrug. " But in the pro- 
 cesses of your self-control you've, so far as I can gather, 
 broken her heart. She's not a strong, self-reliant modern 
 your wife. She's chock-full of sweet, old-fashioned 
 weaknesses. Her strength is of the strength of those dead 
 women who've been the mothers of brave men for all the 
 generations, and have kept us on our feet before modern 
 improvements came in. Of course, they'd live or die at 
 any moment for their love or their religion, those women, 
 and always be ready to fight for their children but torn 
 suddenly from their supports it's easy betting that they'd 
 do foolishly as Mrs. George is doing now " 
 
 " Say out at once what you mean," said George, stern 
 and white, his eyes flaming. 
 
 " Good God, are you mad too ? Do you think I mean 
 to imply that the woman who loves you a damn sight more 
 than you deserve has tripped in my direction ? Her 
 affection for me is about as sentimental as her cousinly 
 duty towards Miss Rebecca, but you see I happen to love 
 your wife, and love opens the eyes jealousy, on the con- 
 trary, shuts 'em. The poor little thing is dying of loneli- 
 ness and the tyranny of priest-craft, and it's you who've 
 killed her." 
 
 " Heron " 
 
 " Let me get this over, for God's sake ! Do you 
 know anything of that night, of what led to the 
 madness ? " 
 
 " Tell me what you know," said George, fiercely. 
 
 So he told him, sparing nothing. 
 
 " Women born to be inspirers of great poems," he said 
 at last, with bitter cruelty, " have grovelling sensations, un- 
 known to those of the heroic mould, born to wield hockey 
 sticks. That type, possessed by one ungovernable impulse 
 to go to the child, would have gone and left you to the 
 devil. She stayed and later on naturally, considering her 
 build and her state of health, looking upon you as the 
 child's murderer, she went mad. She likes me and I love 
 her, and so she turned to me. We got no further than the 
 Bishop's, any way. But even if we'd gone to the world's 
 end, she was still yours, and I the dog under her table,
 
 348 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 picking up crumbs, and, by God, you ought to have known 
 it. And now for so slight a cause she's dying. You must 
 kill a woman to test her love, it seems." 
 
 " Don't say any more," said George, in a low, hollow 
 voice. " I see it " 
 
 " Do you ? I doubt it." 
 
 " You love her," said George, with sudden passion. 
 " Suppose you multiply your love a thousand-fold, assume 
 that she belongs to you you, and then see her by chance 
 with her head upon another man's arm." 
 
 " Ah ! 'Twas unfortunate that," said Rob generously. 
 " It was an infernal pity. Her head was there because 
 those women for whom men make willing fools of them- 
 selves you and I, for example are parasitic, you know 
 and unless they play games their tendrils don't make 
 wood and when thrown in the dust those tendrils will go 
 out blindly after help to lift them up. I was with her all 
 through. I understood, in short, and was a trustworthy 
 support her impulses are always right that's how it 
 happened. It was folly. But it's the folly that best suits 
 our constitutions. You never met a living man, I swear, 
 who'd die or live either for a feminine hockey-stick. 
 He might exist with her at intervals." 
 
 George's face was stone. 
 
 " Man, have you no pity for me ? " said Rob at last, 
 hoarsely. " Is a Christian of bowels a lost tradition ? Do 
 you want me to begin to think that it's a pity after all 
 that she did meet you first? I've never thought that yet, 
 by God, I haven't. I've believed in you with the best of 
 them. If I hadn't well if I hadn't," he paused, " that 
 wouldn't have altered your wife I'd have done just as I 
 have done, because why because there was nothing else 
 for me to do? Well, good-bye. I haven't, to my 
 knowledge, any more pertinent remarks to make." 
 
 He nodded, and turned up the hill again. George 
 stood still for an instant, then he followed him. 
 
 " Yours is the better love of the two," he said in a low, 
 stricken voice. " You never doubted her. If if we get 
 her back I I'll be even with you some day." He half 
 turned, then turned again. " God help you," he cried. 
 " What will you do ? " 
 
 " I shall command my regiment in time, I hope. Mean-
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 349 
 
 while I shall love your wife. I've bought sorrow and am 
 quite ready to pay the price." 
 
 The men looked queerly at one another, then turned 
 in silence and went each his way. 
 
 Meanwhile Joan upon her tired feet, having got over the 
 pains and the incredible discomforts of her complaint up and 
 down the lanes and in and out the courts of Aiken, had 
 now only to wrestle painlessly with the resultant fatigue. 
 
 This gathered and grew. 
 
 There is a terrible intelligence in the painless approaches 
 to death; Joan was not so tired but that she could, a 
 little laboriously, perhaps, and in sections look things 
 round. And so death left her no single illusion in regard 
 to life. 
 
 She had tried to see things from every point of view 
 till she was too tired at last to stand any longer upright, 
 and she had seen no hope anywhere. 
 
 She could see none now. She had failed George. 
 
 She was too small plainly for heights, and George after 
 all could not dwindle to meet her size. She would hate 
 to see him even stoop, it could but emphasize her in- 
 effectuality. 
 
 Faint notions of celibacy for the Clergy would go jerk- 
 ing about her brain, but these grew grotesque and offended 
 her, so incontinently she cast them out. 
 
 And to rest, to rest for ever seemed nice. 
 
 One can't be lonely if one is resting in a confused sort 
 of dream, not longing, longing, longing till one aches. 
 Sorrow and pain are so difficult to bear alone. 
 
 Everything was altering with Joan ; the sharp lines were 
 all broken; the keenness in all things gone. As she 
 watched them all about her like trees walking odd trees 
 full of anguish and dismay she felt that she, too, should 
 have been full of this poignant sorrow, but only a faint aloof 
 interest awoke in her. 
 
 She saw everything from some strange far-away in which 
 she floated, cold and quiet. 
 
 Nothing escaped her, but nothing any longer moved her. 
 That was all past. She had done with that part. She 
 had just failed, that was all, and was too tired to begin 
 again. 
 
 Even with George it had always been dreadfully diffi-
 
 350 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 cult to be good without him but she couldn't attempt 
 to think of it not just now. 
 
 Of course, latterly her heart had sprung to the poor, and 
 suddenly her senses had forgotten all their awfulness. 
 But no thanks to her, after all. The poor had come 
 when she could no longer do without them, it was really 
 none of her doing. It could hardly, indeed, be called 
 proper goodness. 
 
 If it had been, surely George would have noticed it. 
 
 At this thought she moved restlessly. 
 
 If George had noticed she might not have got so 
 tired. 
 
 After that she struggled even less than before against 
 the load of oblivion which was weighing each moment 
 more heavily upon her. 
 
 For the selfishness of death is a mighty and conscious 
 selfishness. 
 
 She saw Beatrice shaken, trembling, throw a great 
 bunch of red roses, which with some new gentle intention 
 she had brought with her, upon the bed. She felt her 
 tears upon her hands. She heard Billy whimpering 
 hoarsely of horses, and riding, and fresh air, and bucking 
 up. His tears fell upon her face. 
 
 Even Cora and her soldier stood over her whitely and 
 pleaded. 
 
 They were all sorry. How sorry they all were ! 
 
 And yet she had failed George. It seemed odd they 
 should all be so sorry. 
 
 When nothing mattered in the whole wide world now 
 but George. Nothing in the whole wide world does 
 matter in the least but love, that sort of love and one 
 other, she confusedly thought, but she was too tired now 
 to think of this other; it was too big. She could only 
 remember the sort it was quite impossible to live without. 
 
 As the tears fell upon her soft and warm, she knew her 
 friends were kind and would have helped her. She 
 smiled gratefully, but compared with what she had missed 
 oh ! but one couldn't even try to compare. 
 
 The squire was sitting beside the fire, his white head
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 351 
 
 fallen upon his breast, a voiceless picture of despair, when 
 Miss Rebecca bore suddenly down upon him. 
 
 " Go up, Jasper," said she hoarsely, " I've turned them 
 all out. If anything will recall her to a sense of her duty 
 it will be the sight of you ! " 
 
 " You've found her out too, have you ? " he asked 
 huskily, not daring to meet her eyes. " It's too con- 
 foundedly awful, Rebecca." 
 
 " You've seen with your own eyes into the uttermost 
 depths of sorrow and if you ever break loose again " 
 short sobs broke Rebecca's stout voice " if you ever 
 break loose again, God may forgive you, Jasper the King 
 of kings can forgive all things, it's his royal prerogative 
 but I'm blessed if I will." 
 
 " I'll drink like a fish, woman," he thundered, below his 
 breath, " and we'll all go to pieces, the lot of us. She 
 holds us all in the hollow of her hand." 
 
 " Too human to die," moaned Miss Rebecca " too 
 human. But at least," she added fiercely, " she'll make 
 Heaven habitable to the vulgarest sinner. But little 
 Joan ! " she wailed, " Little Joan ! to treat us like this to 
 slip from our arms and leave life cold ! " 
 
 The old man stood up heavily and looked down upon 
 her. 
 
 And then Rebecca's despair became all at once Jasper's 
 opportunity. He lifted himself to his magnificent height 
 and spoke with confidence. " She's not dead yet, my 
 girl," he said softly. " She's got your blood in her veins. 
 This fact seems to have slipped our minds. I'll try to 
 rouse this good blood in the girl." 
 
 But Rebecca worn, reckless, and in anguish, was beyond 
 consolement. 
 
 " The most consistent woman I have ever met," she 
 sobbed. " Her death will be the one touch necessary to 
 turn George from a budding bishop into a Man." 
 
 " My dear, good Rebecca, don't give way to hysteria, 
 there's a good deal of sanity still about Providence," ex- 
 plained Jasper. 
 
 " Providence ! Then this vagary is the human sacrifice 
 possibly necessary to the making of a god." 
 
 " Oh, Rebecca. Rebecca, you to give in and then to be 
 blaming the child ! "
 
 352 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 When the Squire reached Joan's room Beatrice, he 
 found, had slipped back, and was entreating Joan in broken 
 words. 
 
 Joan listened as one who has heard all the arguments 
 before, but wishes to be courteous. 
 
 It was an abominable attitude. The Squire shuddered, 
 his arguments seemed all to melt and vanish. He gathered 
 himself together, and with a nod dismissed Beatrice. 
 
 And then a curious flickering smile about Joan's lips 
 recalled his scattered wits. 
 
 " Indifference has sent her heart asleep," he cried to 
 his soul, " and George as likely as not preaching ! " 
 
 " Now, Joan," he said sharply, " I see your little game. 
 You must chuck it, girl, and live." 
 
 At the sound of the rich, deep voice, Joan struggled 
 for a second with the deadly mist in which she lay, then 
 she opened her eyes. 
 
 " That's better," said Jasper, " now listen. Don't you 
 see, my girl, that that you're conducting yourself in short 
 like a damned Hindoo, and with the blood of Rebecca 
 Westcar in your veins ? " He paused. Joan made a 
 distinct effort to clear the blurred air, to beat her way 
 out of the confusion. Looking at George's father seemed 
 to help her a little. 
 
 " I'm I'm afraid," she slowly said, after a long pause. 
 
 " Afraid ? A girl who can love like you ? That's a lie, 
 my girl, and you know it. You're mawkish with disease 
 and over fatigue, that's what you are. It's a common, low 
 sort of thing, don't you see, to be dying in this sort of 
 way? It's underbred shouldn't have expected it of you. 
 Love has overcome a lot since the world started, can't it 
 overcome the the boredom of a trade ? " 
 
 She visibly started. Her eyes widened. Old centres 
 were being touched in her brain. 
 
 There had been so full a sympathy between her and 
 George's father, so even an understanding that he was 
 slowly growing worth while again. 
 
 " Do you understand, child ? " he softly asked, forcing 
 the tears back behind his eyes. 
 
 " I I understand. But I've got to to like the poor. 
 I I truly have, and I don't mind dulness but I think 
 I'm rather in the way "
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 353 
 
 " Look here, my girl, beware of hysteria, and let me 
 explain matters. You've had a sorrowful time of it 
 and perhaps you did go crazy a bit generally play the 
 fool, you know. In short, George has for weeks past 
 been as jealous of you and Rob Heron as the very devil. 
 And in repenting him of his fatuous sins, so far as I can 
 see, he's been letting' the wife he adores go all to pieces. 
 In George's way ? Why, God bless my soul, you're the pivot 
 upon which he turns. Buck up and get well, Joan Win- 
 nington, and don't be disgracing the blood you come of. 
 We can't spare you, my girl, any of us, but George least of 
 all. Do you want to spoil a career? Do you want to 
 nip the best bishop the Church has produced in the 
 bud? George was an honest man fool or not and his 
 goal was great before this worm of jealousy began on 
 him. The one decent thing left you to do is to get well, 
 to bring George to his senses, and refute a foul calumny 
 upon both of you. This thing you're after now affects us 
 all. To die because a man makes an arrant ass of him- 
 self there's something craven in the thing unworthy, 
 depraved. And have you no thought for me and we 
 such friends ? If you die in this unnecessary way, I'll 
 never lift up my head again. For 'tis I and mine who are 
 responsible for this curse in the boy's blood. But if my 
 sins have fallen upon George's head so, thank Heaven, 
 has my constitution. He can overcome his infernal sins. 
 If, however, the sins and the constitution only combine 
 to do to death my little daughter-in-law God, girl! can't 
 you see the end of it ? " In Joan's eyes there was slowly 
 growing the old, grave, attentive look. Jasper paused. For 
 one moment his face was uplifted to Heaven, the next it 
 toppled to Hell. 
 
 " Joan," he said hoarsely, " If you buck up and live, 
 I'll never touch another drop of whiskey, I give you my 
 solemn oath, I won't I'll be a a damned teetotaller to 
 the end of my miserable existence. It's a sporting offer, 
 girl and George will be here in ten minutes. The train's 
 in. And here's some one with some slop for you," he 
 said feebly, " drink it and buck up." 
 
 " Are you going to stay ? " he asked tenderly, when 
 Beatrice had gone. 
 
 23
 
 354 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " Things things are coming back," she said, with a 
 faint smile. 
 
 " Well," faltered Miss Rebecca, when two minutes later 
 Jasper threw himself into a chair beside her. 
 
 " I've done it, I believe," he muttered. " She's going to 
 buck up and if George is still an ass, may God forgive me. 
 Jealous of Tier of her. It's kicking the fellow wants, not 
 prayer." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Rebecca. " He can purge himself, I 
 suppose," she added sharply. 
 
 " Purge himself ! It's that Tommy rot that has done 
 it. While he was off on the purging racket she was thrust 
 out in the cold. I don't condemn the fellow," he said, re- 
 lenting, "not wholly. The thing presents difficulties. 
 You can't be repenting of a jealous mind, Rebecca, with 
 your wife hanging on to your heels. It's a complicated 
 passion," he explained mournfully, " full of shoals and pit- 
 falls. No one but he who has suffered can presume in 
 such a case to judge. I'm infernally sorry for the young 
 fool." 
 
 " He's in the hall," she cried, " go out to him." 
 
 " He's had his conscience and the other man at him 
 already," said Jasper over his shoulder, " and neither will 
 I spare him, so help me God ! " 
 
 But when he saw George he bent his head and laid his 
 hand in silence upon the boy's shoulder. 
 
 " Ah ! What can you know ? " said George, huskily. 
 " You've not lived with Joan, you've not killed her." 
 
 " Now that's wholesome. Go up, boy ! bare your soul, 
 show her what it wasn't seemly for me to divulge. Tell 
 her of your meanness, your foul doubts, your cruelty. 
 Let her see the thing oh ! my son, as you and I see it. 
 Shock her back to life and a sense of her own awful im- 
 potence, of her inaccessible heights above the like of us. 
 Show her the weakness of a a damned saint, and the 
 strength of a poor little sinner." 
 
 She was faltering still, her hand upon the latch when 
 George came to her, but her eyes had cleared, and the 
 words of George's father were astir within her. 
 
 A dawn of new desire arose upon her heart, but she 
 feared greatly. And no man can in a moment lay bare a
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 355 
 
 shameful soul, or spur back to life a heart that has lost 
 grip of it. 
 
 Days of anguish with seconds of joy, the birth and death 
 of many a hope had to be fared through before any heart 
 in that sad household came back to its normal beating. 
 But all the time that George was drawing his wife back 
 from the dreadful door, her hand was growing used again 
 to his. 
 
 " My beloved ! Oh, my beloved ! don't you see ? Don't 
 you understand ? " said George one day, when what he had 
 been telling her seemed to be punctuated by indignant 
 marks of interrogation in her brightening eyes. 
 
 " But it's so amazing. All these dreadful things to be 
 going on in your heart all that time. It truly was awful, 
 and yet it's an immense comfort. It makes things easier 
 gentler more just somehow. If they knew knew this of 
 you of you this incredible thing no sinner need ever 
 again despair- 
 
 " But, dearest- 
 
 " Oh ! There have been others, yes, of course. Peter 
 and David and the rest, but they're so far away. It it 
 wasn't like present day sinning somehow, not so helpful 
 and you're you you know." 
 
 " All the same," she added, when she had slept a little, 
 " although it's delightful to know about your wicked heart, 
 if I'd loved you rightly, with common sense, and some 
 wit, this would never have happened. I should have just 
 dug into your wicked heart till I unearthed the wickedness 
 and and filled it with love. I can now at last understand 
 many of the reasons for the celibacy of the Clergy." 
 
 " That's very likely," said George, " since you're far too 
 ill and worn out to be altogether reasonable. When you're 
 strong again you'll see in enforced celibacy an insult to 
 all women, and it lies with them to refute the calumny." 
 
 " But, George," she said shyly, " it's all delightful again 
 in the delightful things. But the Higher Things of the 
 Spirit, you know, are exactly where they were. I still 
 feel too small for them." 
 
 " The weight of six foot two of me on your shoulders, 
 poor darling, these two years has been inexorably grind- 
 ing down the Spirit in you, stifling the best in you. Now
 
 356 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 it's off just wait wait. Don't think of the past or of the 
 future; think of nothing but the present. Just rest and 
 wait, and be a little happy, my heart." 
 
 He stooped to kiss her sweet white face. 
 
 " It's too fair and seemly a Temple to be lost to God's 
 uses," he said. " And you've paid your full price in 
 sorrow. Some day God will enter in and keep dulness at 
 bay." 
 
 " But but now I like the poor. I do really, George. 
 I've got over all that. They came to me oh ! somehow 
 when I was lonely. And once in your heart they stay. 
 Now I couldn't do without them. 
 
 " I think I do really," she said, after a pause, closing 
 her dreamy eyes, " that if it had lasted much longer, I'd 
 have got even to like the brasses and things. When you've 
 sort of gone all to pieces," she said with a little laugh, 
 " you know your hands seem to want to take pity even on 
 brazen vessels." 
 
 " Oh ! Joan, Joan, Joan ! " 
 
 " George ! I didn't mean to be horrid I'm, oh ! I'm 
 just speaking aloud to myself and you're after all myself 
 so you must just listen." 
 
 " George," she said later, when again she had slept, 
 " don't mention Heaven, or God, or anything of that sort 
 for a few days. Give me that much time to myself to get 
 ready. I think I love you now in the right way or at 
 least in a rightish way, so when I sort things out, the other 
 things being right, and part of you, the best part of them 
 will come too. It's all growing easier every day, and since 
 there's a touch of you in every right thing, it ought surely 
 to be a hall-mark of sufficiency. 
 
 " I was thinking last night about such a number of things 
 and I really believe that in a place like Aiken, with the 
 Apostles dead, and curates and things everywhere, the best 
 way to keep on at things, to keep it up, you know, for 
 the oh, well, for the weaker kind, is to love and laugh. 
 That would keep things warm in your heart, don't you 
 think, and sweet? And somehow," she paused to 
 reflect, " it would take the sting out of circumstance. We 
 can laugh at ourselves, too," she hastily added, " make it 
 a sort of rule, you know. It will keep things fair, I believe
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 357 
 
 1 really do believe it might also help the Poem and the 
 sermons." 
 
 " That," said George, with his boy's laugh, " that's quite 
 certain. From now on we'll love and laugh, we two, and 
 we'll conquer all before us." 
 
 " Lovely," she murmured, " so also was your sunny out- 
 look, though, of course," she added retrospectively, " it lit 
 up everything, only sometimes sometimes it only made 
 me see the dust motes." 
 
 " Oh ! Joan ! If you knew what a worm you make me 
 feel." 
 
 " Then I must be surely delirious again ! " 
 
 " Love is so extraordinary," said Joan presently, starting 
 from her sleep with a somewhat wild look. " I've had a 
 very odd dream about love and its curious power. Do 
 you think if your father had married Rebecca that the 
 moustache would perhaps not have grown ? " 
 
 " I shouldn't go so far as to say that," said George 
 thoughtfully, " but I feel sure it would have been modi- 
 fied." 
 
 The thought seemingly was in the air, for oddly enough 
 downstairs the two old people, having lived for others 
 through the great sorrow, had just returned to themselves. 
 
 After a long, long silence the old Squire all at once 
 stood up bravely and asked Rebecca quietly if she still 
 loved him. 
 
 " Have you forgotten the moustache ? " she asked slowly 
 with an immense sadness. 
 
 " I've forgotten everything but you and my own damned 
 folly," said he. 
 
 " Do you love me ? " said she. 
 
 " Upon my soul, Rebecca, I love you now as I did when 
 I was twenty." 
 
 " I have loved you always," said Rebecca, " without 
 one day's interruption, just as I loved you when I was 
 twenty." 
 
 He reverently bowed his head. " I'll make it up to 
 you, girl ; I'll crowd it all into the years left to us. By 
 God ! I will ! " 
 
 " George," said Joan, when hours later she awoke in 
 the purple dawn to find his face as usual watching hers,
 
 358 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 " I'm glad after all that you did see me with your own 
 eyes with my head on Rob's arm, I might have forgotten 
 to tell you, you see, and it might perhaps still have left 
 something between us. Oh! It's morning, and I I 
 feel just as new ! " 
 
 THE END.
 
 A 000143658 3