The Vision Splendid

by D. K. Broster; G. Winifred Taylor

This was the letter which Horatia received at breakfast four mornings later, and which lay in her pocket all through that meal and for some time afterwards, not because she did not wish her father to see it, since he was away for the night, but because she dared not open it. In her own room, the door locked, she read it at last, once not understanding, the second time unbelieving, the third time understanding too well.

Then it dropped from the hands which she raised to hide the scorching blush that, though she was alone, spread itself from the nape of her neck to the roots of her hair, and that seemed to run like a wave of fire over her whole body. He had refused her! Under the guise of asking advice from a friend, she, Horatia de la Roche-Guyon—Horatia Grenville—had, practically, offered herself to a man, and he had refused her! And this man was Tristram!

After a few minutes, red and white by turns, she took up the letter again, and, reading it for the fourth time, she received yet a new impression. This did not seem to be Tristram at all who wrote to her; it was like the voice of someone else, or, rather, it was as though a veil hung between her and the man who had penned those words—words which, as she could see, had been chosen to spare her, words which made no reference to what the writer must have known was in her mind. But they were final enough, in all conscience!

She put the letter down on her dressing-table. Yes, that was what it was like—a dictated letter, a letter which another person had made him write....

There was something that she did not understand. She got up and began to walk about the room, the first biting shame of the repulse a little blunted by contact with her own imperious temper and by a certain bewilderment. She had a feeling that there was, somewhere, what her father would have called "hokey-pokey." And, as she arrived at that conclusion, she saw it all in a flash, and wondered how she could have been so stupid. Tristram had of course been "got hold of" by the Oriel people and had swallowed their ridiculous ideas on celibacy. That was what he meant by writing that he had come to feel his life not his own. That was, no doubt, the sort of thing they said, and that they had taught him to say; it was all a part of that miserable glorification of suffering as a part of Christianity at which her whole soul revolted.

Horatia stopped, her eyes shining with anger. Illogically enough, though she had endured many qualms since sending her letter, the receipt of his refusal made her quite sure that the real Tristram himself wanted to marry her, that "they" were preventing him. Well, they should see!

She carried this fighting mood about with her for an hour or so while she ordered the household and visited Maurice, who this morning was greatly intrigued by the presence of frost on the window-pane, a phenomenon, like many others, still strange to him. But all the while she was conscious that the spirit of resistance was slowly slipping away from her. At half-past ten she returned to her room, took out the letter and read it again, and thereafter sat a long time thinking.

No, it was not so simple. Something much more was here than the combatting of the influence of others. One thing, if one alone in life, the most ardent fighter should shrink from lifting sword against, a man's conscience. Had she not recently felt the reawakened stirrings of her own? And in this matter, however it came there, was some deep conviction of Tristram's. He could not, otherwise, have written so.

And a great and sad tenderness fell on her as, thinking of him whom she knew so well, she began to realise what he must be suffering at having to answer her thus. She forgot for a time her own shame and anger, and thought only of his long, unwavering, selfless devotion, that would do anything in the world for her, so as it was not against his conscience. Could not she, then, who had never, perhaps, been anything but a source of pain to him, could not she do something for him—take the disturbing element of herself out of his life, because, for his real happiness, she would be better gone, and go, without an attempt to hold him, to that other life where duty was calling her? ... The way was open, if she were strong enough to follow it.

But she must be sure that such a renunciation would be for Tristram's happiness. She must be sure that he really had this conviction. In her present mood she could almost have gone and asked Tristram himself, had she not known that he was away from Oxford. And the time was drawing very near when she must answer the Duchesse's letter.