The Vision Splendid

by D. K. Broster; G. Winifred Taylor

It was over. And as the post-chaise jolted him back in the darkness to Oxford, Tristram's whole heart was so swamped with the thought of Horatia, what she must have gone through, how miraculously she had changed, that there was little room for the contemplation of himself. She had now what she wanted; he was sure of it; she held it in her arms. The great surprise of it, after Paris, only made him the more convinced. God had given her compensation for what she had suffered. Yet the more he thought, with all a man's touch of sentiment, about the little group in the firelight, the more that it seemed to him wonderful, beautiful, and, for Horatia, consummatory, the more did he realise the cost of selling that great possession which he might have had. Just as he had stood and looked on at mother and child this evening, so must he always stand now and look on—no more—at the sanctities of home.

And he had a sudden vision, too, of Dormer, surrounded to-morrow in church by the fair heads of his brother's many children, kneeling in the midst of a bevy who were none of his. He had once told Tristram of the whispered communications that were wont to be made to him in service-time, of the happy terror in the eyes that would follow the small pointing finger up "Little Choke-a-bone Alley" to the tomb of the girl of royal lineage choked, hundreds of years ago, "by a fish-bone, Uncle Charles!"—to the effigy which had thrilled him himself as a boy.... There are veils which the hand of a close friend is the last to touch, and whether Dormer had ever suffered as he had suffered, or whether the vision which he had always followed shone with a light so effulgent that no other joys had radiance, Tristram could never pity him. But, remembering his long patience and hope, he desired suddenly to give him a Christmas gift, and though the letter could not reach him on the feast itself, and though it cost him something to do it, he sat down, when he got back, and told him what he had kept from him yesterday, that he had indeed, at last, sold whatsoever he had.

And, when he offered the Eucharist for the first time on Christmas morning, he made his own oblation, mingled of pain and joy.

CHAPTER V

(1)

The Rector had just closed the door of his study on the retreating form of Mary Straker, a blushing village damsel who had come to impart to him the news of approaching matrimony. Mr. Grenville had a peculiar interest in the announcement, for some three years previously he had intervened to shield her inamorato from the consequences of a poaching adventure, and had emigrated him up to Yorkshire as a groom. The grateful swain had now written to his betrothed to inform her that he had saved enough money to marry upon, and that he intended to return this spring for the ceremony, and would Mary please tell his Reverence so, and he hoped, with his best respects, as his Reverence would say the words over them come Easter.

Mr. Grenville was pleased, and went smiling to the window. Drumming on the pane a moment, he looked out at the young green of March, and hoped Tom Hollings and little Polly would be happy. In his parish the Rector was something of a matchmaker. He had an obscure conviction that one had only to put two people together and they would hit it off somehow; in fact he had always taken a rosy view of marriage—until the marriage of his own daughter. He thought of that now, and, suddenly sighing, came away from the window.

He was really worried about Horatia, in spite of the fact that she looked distinctly better since her return three months ago. But she seemed sometimes as if she would never recover from her sadness. She had lost her habit of teasing him; she was, for her, rather too sweetly reasonable. And yet he could not help her. Poor darling! he could not bear to think that she knew so much of evil, and had grown so much older in such a short time. In some ways the thing that he most resented in the whole unhappy affair was the smirching of her innocence. While he was in Paris he had been really shocked at the Duchesse's broad views when, with her accustomed frankness, she had laid before him the reason for his grandson's premature arrival, emphasising the fact that she was annoyed not with Armand's conduct in itself, but with his carelessness. And though he was half unwilling to listen to Martha, there were things which she insisted on telling him, prefacing them with "And I think you ought to know, Sir."

But because Armand was dead he thought of him now as "that poor young man," and, to his mind, his tragic removal somehow whitewashed his conduct and made it "better not to think of it." At the same time he did not fail, in his inmost heart, to feel that removal a direct work of Providence, and was deeply ashamed of this feeling, especially when he considered Maurice's fatherless condition. Often, indeed, watching him with his mother, was Mr. Grenville struck with the pathos of the situation. He loved to see them together, especially when Horatia did not know that he was looking at them; she seemed to him so beautifully maternal, and he could hardly believe that there had been a time when she did not care for the child.

Mr. Grenville began to pace up and down, his hands behind his back, and not for the first time did he wonder whether the comfort which he was powerless to give Horatia might not, after all, come from another quarter. He had, for his part, a distinct objection to second marriages, and had acted on it in his own case, but he would be easier to Horatia than he had been to himself. Horatia was still so young, the fatherless Maurice so tiny, her married life—her unhappy married life—had been so short ... eighteen months! Then the presence of Tristram, still unmarried and, as far as he knew, unchanged in his feelings towards Horatia, seemed to him almost providential. Tristram Hungerford indeed was steadfastness incarnate; he could not conceive of his changing. But, of course, he did not know what Tristram thought of second marriages. In any case, however, his present attitude was very proper, not intruding upon Horatia's grief. Besides, he was probably waiting till he had a living. Yet, second marriages...