The Challoners

by E. F. Benson

That filled the ear. For the eye there were blue distances, blue shadows of racing clouds, the sun, and more near the budding trees, and in the dingle below the woods of Chartries a million daffodils. Helen had forgotten that they were there, waiting for her, and she came on them suddenly, and stood quite still a moment with a long pause of pure and complete delight. The place was carpeted with them; they all danced and shone and sang together like the morning stars. And as she looked her eyes grew dim with happy tears.

“Dear God,” she said, “thank you so much.”

Yes, indeed, it was spring; and as she walked on she repeated the word over and over again to herself, finding a magic in it. It was everywhere: the sky and the sun were full of it, it burst in those myriad blossoms from the dark, wholesome soil; it was spring that set this good wind blowing, it bubbled and chuckled in the chalk-stream, with its waving weeds and bright glimmering beds of pebbles. Above all, it was in her own heart on this glorious morning, till she thought it must almost burst, too, so overflowing was it with sheer, unreasoning happiness.

Indeed, Martin had been quite right when he had told Karl how happy she was, and though she did not reason to herself about it, the cause was abundantly clear. For the last six months she had lived at home, through days and weeks of ever-recurring difficulties, and with each, as it presented itself, she had dealt smilingly, patiently. She had made up her mind on her visit to Cambridge that her duty was clear and obvious, nothing striking nor picturesque was in the least required, she was neither going to renounce her future happiness, nor, on the other hand, to throw all else aside and grasp at it. No heroic knot-cutting measures of any kind were indicated, except the quiet, unobtrusive heroism of taking up again, quite simply, quietly, and naturally, all the straightforward, familiar little duties of her home life which again and again she had found so tedious. Nor had they been in themselves less tedious. Only here was the difference,—she had ceased to look upon them from any point of view except one, namely, that it was quite distinctly her business to do them. That she had found to be sufficient; it was enough day by day to get through with them without expenditure of thought as to whether they were distasteful or not, and her work, her daily bread, had somehow been sweet and wholesome and nourishing. Truly, if, as Karl had said, Martin had been growing out of knowledge, his twin also would be scarcely recognisable.

And bread, bread of the soul, had come to her; her table had been laid in the wilderness, and happiness, royal inward happiness of a very fine and unselfish sort, in the midst of a thousand things which made for unhappiness, had blossomed in her. A thousand times she had been tempted to say, “It is doing no good. Why should I put off what is waiting for me when my renunciation does not help father in any way?” But a thousand times she had just not said it; and now, at the end of these difficult months, she could without egoism look back and see what infinite good had been done. That her father should in any way alter his own convictions about her marriage she had never expected; but what had been gained was that he saw now, and consciously saw, that she was in the very simplest language “being good.”

But it had been difficult enough for all concerned, except perhaps for Aunt Clara, who was scarcely capable of emotion, and often Helen’s heart had bled for her father. It had been most terrible of all when Martin had joined the Roman Church. His letter to his father—Helen winced when she thought of it now—had arrived on Sunday morning, and he had found it on the breakfast-table when he had come back from the early celebration. It was a manly, straightforward letter enough, stating that he had not yet gone over, but had practically determined to. If his father wished he would come down to Chartries, and talk it over with him, and give to his advice and counsel the very fullest possible consideration. And at the end he expressed very bluntly and sincerely, as was his way, the sorrow and the pain that he knew the news would cause his father.

The sheet fell from his hand, and Helen, who was making tea, looked up. She saw the colour rise in her father’s face; the arteries in his neck and temples swelled into cords, and his eyes with pupils contracted to pin-pricks looked for the moment like the eyes of a madman. Then he spoke, his voice vibrating with suppressed furious anger.

“Martin is going to join the Roman Church,” he said. “From the day he does so, Helen, never speak to me of him again. He is dead to me, remember.”

That was a week before Christmas, and for more than a month after that Martin’s name had literally hardly crossed his father’s lips. The boy had come down to stay with his uncle once, but Mr. Challoner had absolutely refused to see him. He had even wished Helen not to; but on this occasion, for the only time during all that long winter, she had quietly but quite firmly disobeyed him. It was then first, too, as one looking down from barren rocks of a mountain-range, that she saw, though still far off, the harvest that was ripening in these long, patient months of her living here with her father. Before going to Chartries she had thought best to go into his study and tell him that she was doing so.

“I am going to see Martin,” she said, wondering and very nervous as to how her father would take it. “And I wanted to tell you, father, before I went, that I was going.”