The Challoners

by E. F. Benson

“Religion?”

“Yes; it had occurred to you, too, then. What do you expect?”

Helen sat with her chin resting on her hand a moment without replying.

“I don’t know,” she said, at length. “Don’t let us think about it just now, Frank. Let this afternoon be perfect. But I can tell you this, that though it may possibly be very painful, it will make no difference to me. I shall be very sorry—very, very sorry, but—— That ‘but’ is you, if you understand.”

“Thank you, my darling,” said he.

Mr. Challoner carried a very thankful heart with him as he went on his various errands that afternoon. To see Helen happily married was a constant desire and prayer of his, and though he would with willingness and thankfulness have given her to the keeping of any good man who could support her and a family, he did not attempt to disguise from himself the satisfaction he felt at her having made what is vulgarly called “a great match.” She had the gifts which should enable her to fill a great position, and to play a great part worthily was a bigger and a finer thing,—though he had said “duty was duty and there is neither less nor greater” than to work on a smaller scale. More than that, he had, with all his personal unworldliness, a good deal of pride of race, which Frank with his undeniable birth and breeding gratified. For the man himself, also, he felt a very decided liking and respect; he was an admirable landlord, in spite of his avowed laziness; he was generally considered to get through the day’s work with credit. In the House of Lords, also, he had already achieved a certain reputation for eminent common sense; and though to advocates of extremes his speeches might appear commonplace, that was rather the fault of those who held an extreme view. In other words, he lent his wealth and position to the support of moderation, much as Lord Flintshire had done.

Another matter dearer to Mr. Challoner’s heart than the obscurities of fiscal affairs was that Frank was, if not a pillar, at any rate a very sound piece of the fabric in the twin-towered building called “Church and State.” His patronage was always given to clergy of moderate views who did not indulge in what Mr. Challoner called “idolatrous and Romish practices,” while, on the other hand, he always voted dead against any attempt to subtract from the power or position of the English Church as by law established. “A staunch Churchman,” said Mr. Challoner to himself, as he walked with his long, rapid strides through the pathway hedged about with the yellowing corn.

For the time his disappointments about Martin were forgotten. There, it is true, his dreams about his boy’s future had been dispelled by a rude and bitter awakening, but here, at any rate, was something which he had never dreamed being realised, and without overestimating the force and value of education and the influences which spring from environment and mode of life, he believed that Helen would assuredly live her mature and wider life on the lines in which she had been brought up. So in this marriage he saw a strong weapon forged of steel and wielded by a loyal hand in defence of his mistress the Church. He knew well the immense power which in England a territorial magnate is possessed of; how by the mere fact of his wealth and position he can control the course of wide issues. Hitherto Frank had done just that; he had always ranged himself on the side of education and religion, or rather he had ranged the inert weight of all he represented there, while he himself had keenly pursued the artistic things of life. But now Helen, with all the influence of her home and upbringing strong within her, would come to add life to this solid weight, making it an active and potent instead of a passive instrument of good. He almost envied the girl,—such opportunity was given to few only, and on her would the responsibility and the glory rest.

His district-visiting that afternoon had taken him into the farthest limits of his parish, and a three-mile walk into the glories of the sunset lay before him when he turned homewards. A flush of colour, vivid and delicate as the cheek of youth, incarnadined the west, over which a few light fleeces of crimson cloud hung like flames, and further up from the horizon a belt of aqueous green melted into the transparent blue of the sky overhead. The sun had already sunk behind the tawny line of swelling down, and the water-meadows by the Itchen, where his path lay, were full of dusky and deepening shadows. Right down the centre ran the lucent stream, reflecting on its surface the blue and the green and the flush of the sunset sky. Rooks cawed their way homeward to where the elms of Chartries showed black against the luminous west, and to the left of the long gabled façade of house-roof rose the grey gothic tower of his church, the lodestar of his life, the mistress of his heart. That was the realest thing in all the world to him; all that was beautiful at this magic hour in earth and sky was but a path that conducted his soul thither; all that he loved on earth was only the shadow and faint similitude of the great love of his which centred there. Nothing had any real existence except in its relation to that; everything else was but an avenue to an anti-chamber in the house of many mansions. And as his eye first caught sight of the grey, cross-surmounted tower, he stopped a moment, uncovered his head, and with closed eyes stood still in a Presence more poignantly there with him than any. Through his impatience with ways and methods not his own, through his intolerance of that of which he had no ability of comprehension, through his instinctive dismissal of all that seemed to him unessential in life, whether it was the benediction of the evening hour, the piano-playing of Martin, the sweet eyes of Helen, through all, at moments like these, when his human emotions were most aroused, his view pierced triumphant and saw only the cross of Christ pointing heavenward. Towards that, and that alone, the essential nature of the man was directed, even as the compass-needle, though deflected and distracted by other neighbouring agencies, is essentially undeviating and loyal in its allegiance to the north. His disapprovals, his censorious judgments, his want of sympathy for what he did not understand were only the husk of the man, and it was the very strength of his central devotion that made him intolerant of any who seemed to lapse in things great or small from his own measure of fervour. Extreme cases, indeed, the case of the Jew, the Turk, the infidel, he left with faith to the mercy of God, though his human comprehension did not see how they could be capable of receiving it. He did not know; he left them before the throne of Infinite Compassion, and turned his thoughts elsewhere, to his own work of ministering to the sick and needy, to the cultivation of the intellect, the usury of that sterling talent given to man, and all that should make a man more capable of worship, a fitter instrument in the hand of the great Artificer.

The rose colour in the west faded to the nameless and indescribable hue of the hour after sunset, a single spangle of a star flashed in the vault of velvet sky, and dusk, like the slow closing of tired eyes, fell layer after layer over field and copse and river. Lights began to twinkle in the cottages of the village; day with its joys and its work and its rewards was over, and rest was ordained for the world and its myriads. Instinctively the mood of the tranquil hour gained on him, his foot abated a little from the vigour of its stride, the active fervour of his brain cooled a little, and a very human tenderness rose and suffused his thoughts. Here in the church-yard, which he was now crossing, stood the plain marble slab with its lettering, now twenty-four years old, below which lay the remains of her who had been the one passion, short and sweet and bitter, of his life. How often in those years had he wondered, with aching longing for light, what was the design of that interlude, what was the correct reading, so to speak, of the passion that had for a year so absorbed and mastered and overwhelmed him. His wife and he had no spiritual affinity; his love for her had not raised and inspired him, and he, strong and loving as he had been, had not helped her with any success towards the strenuous and active service which he knew to be the bounden duty of every living soul. Had his passion, then, been merely a casual, carnal longing, a frailty of the flesh? Often and often he had been afraid to answer that question honestly, but to-night, as he paused for a moment by the grave, that doubt assailed him no longer, and instead a strange yearning and regret for a missed opportunity took its place. Had he dealt wisely and gently with that sun-lit child? Had he failed to realise what a child she was, and been harsh and deficient in tenderness to a little one?