Yet, after all, Dormer was not asleep. The fire to which Mrs. Thwaites had paid special attention was burning with the disturbing brilliance which comes to a fire when one is in bed and desires the dark, and, lying wakeful, he watched it leaping on the faded chintzes. And he, too, was going through a dark hour.
The austerity of Charles Dormer's religion was the measure of its passion. Knight and lover, he was set upon a quest, whereof the road was holiness, and the end—God. And that he might not follow wandering fires he had looked back for guidance to the first ages of the Church, to the training of the confessors and martyrs, who had learnt of the divine pattern from those who had themselves seen the Lord. In this school of character he found no comfortable complacency, no sickly sentimentality, but hardness, and reality and the cross.
From a boy, just as he had been sure that he was called to serve God as a priest, so had he been certain that he would never marry. It fitted in, therefore, with his own instinct when he came to realise that the Fathers had given honour to those who lived the life of sacrifice for the kingdom of Heaven's sake, and that, taking literally the words of their Master and of St. Paul, they had applied them in particular to the priesthood. The memory that an almost renaissance love of the beautiful had once entered into fierce conflict with this ideal disposed him to follow still more closely the principles of asceticism. To observe the primitive duty of fasting during the first decades of the nineteenth century, and that in an Oxford college, might have seemed a task likely to tax the highest ingenuity, but others besides Charles Dormer accomplished it. Like his friend Hurrell Froude, though unknown to him, he devised methods of self-chastisement which would have seemed morbid and ludicrous not only to that generation but also to its descendants. Of their extent Keble knew a little and Tristram guessed. And now Dormer himself suspected—in fact he partly knew—that his own self-discipline was partly responsible for his state of health. Had he been right, or was it after all only some subtle form of pride or self-will that had set him on this path? Perhaps he had been making an idol both of his warfare with himself and of his work, and this was why he was going to be taken away from both ... At any rate it was clearly God's Will that he should be thus taken away, and therefore, however hard, it was the best for him.... Tristram, too, was coming with him, and he fell asleep, as the fire died down, wondering why it had been so easy to persuade him to this course.
When he came downstairs next morning, after breakfasting, by orders, in his room, Dormer discovered Tristram engaged with maps and guide-books, in the business-like mood of one who intends to get things settled up at once. They talked over plans for about an hour; after which, since there was a gleam of sun, he was commanded to wrap up and come for a walk.
He laughed, and rallied Tristram on his despotism, but it was pleasant enough, and he obeyed it. There had been no snow the previous day; it was yet to come. They walked between the bare hedgerows, still talking plans, discussing the rival attractions of Sicily and Corfu, settling how, when Dormer was well enough, they would take the opportunity of seeing Naples and Rome, and possibly Florence, and returning by sea, perhaps, from Leghorn, if they got as far north. Animation grew upon both of them as they realised the delightful possibilities of their journey, and was not damped when a sudden storm of sleet, descending on them, drove them into an open shed by the side of the road, where, seated on the shafts of a hay-waggon, they continued for a while, scarcely conscious of the change of place.
At last, however, the subject suddenly ran dry, and Tristram, getting up, went to the doorway to see if the storm were over.
"I am afraid we must make up our minds to another quarter of an hour or so," he reported. "I do trust that you are not cold, Charles. Pull your cloak properly about you."
Dormer obeyed, and then, still sitting on the shaft, he launched a disturbing question.
"What did you mean last night, Tristram, when you said that there was no hurry for your ordination? Is it that you are glad to get away because of all that has happened, or is there something else?"
Tristram hesitated a second, then he took the plunge. "I am glad to get away, but there is something else."