A Lost Cause

by Guy Thorne

Carr flushed up. The destitution in his parish had been a constant grief to him during the last few weeks. He had not known where to turn to relieve it. He had prayed constantly that help might be forthcoming. He broke out into a nervous torrent of thanks which came from his very heart, becoming eloquent as he went on and revealing, unconsciously enough, much of his inward self to them. They were all touched and charmed by the man's simplicity and earnestness. He showed a great love for the poor as he talked. Sympathy for suffering and kindness towards it are not rare things in England. We are a charitable folk, take us in the mass. But this quality of personal love for the outcast and down-trodden is not so often met with. It is a talent, and Carr possessed it in a high degree.

A step in their intimacy was marked that night; all felt drawn more closely to the Evangelical vicar. He stood alone; his life seemed cheerless to them all and their sympathy was his—though he had never made the least parade of his troubles. Moreover, the three clergy of St. Elwyn's were beginning to find out, with pleased surprise, how near he was to them in the great essentials, how Catholic his views were. Already much of Carr's dislike to the ceremonial of St. Elwyn's was fading away. He had witnessed it, found that there was absolutely no harm in it, that it did not stand between the soul and God, but even sometimes assisted in the journey upwards. He did not endorse it as yet, he did not contemplate anything of the sort for himself or his people, but he saw the good there and found nothing to disgust or harm.

Later on that evening, Dr. Hibbert came in, and there was music. Lucy played and sang to them, and Carr, who had a fine baritone, sang an old favourite or two, college songs, Gaudeamus Igitur, John Peel, and the like.

Then, while the four other men took a hand at whist—if only Mr. Hamlyn could have seen the "devil's picture books" upon the table!—Carr had a long, quiet talk with Lucy Blantyre. He found himself telling her much of his work and hopes, of his early life in a bleak Northumberland vicarage, of Cambridge, and the joyous days when he rowed three in the King's boat and all the skies were fair.

Now and then, when he would have withdrawn into himself again, fearing that he was boring her, she encouraged him to go on. With her cheque in his pocket, he went home in a glow that night. He thought constantly of her, and when he went to bed, he looked curiously in the mirror, turning away from it with a sigh, a shake of the head, and the chilling memory that the girl was rich, allied to great families, a personage in London society, and that a poor gentleman toiling in Hornham could never be a mate for such as she was.

Three or four days after the incident of the subscription, Lucy received a letter from Agatha Poyntz, who was staying with the St. Justs in Berkeley Square. The letter begged Lucy to "come up to town" for an afternoon. A theatre party had been formed, which was to consist of Agatha herself, Lady Lelant, a young married cousin of hers, and James Poyntz. Lucy was begged to come and complete the party. They were to go to tea afterwards at the Savoy or somewhere, and Lucy could drive home in the evening. The letter was quite imperative in its demand for Lucy's presence, and the girl had a shrewd suspicion who it was that had inspired it. Her last few letters from Poyntz had been almost, so she fancied, leading up to just some such occasion as this which was now proposed.

She thought it all over during the morning of that day. Her mind wavered. A few weeks ago she knew that she would not have hesitated for a moment. Whatever her answer might eventually be to what James Poyntz had to say, she would have gone to the tryst and listened to him. To hear him pleading, to see this scion of an ancient and honourable house, this big-brained man, pleading for her, would be sweet. Every woman would feel that. But now she hesitated very much. She hardly owned it to herself, but a very different figure was coming to have a continual place in her thoughts. A graver figure, a less complex figure, and one invested with a dignity that was not of this world, a dignity that the peer's son had not.

For now, most indubitably, a new element was coming into her life, one that had not been there before.

And there was yet another cause for her hesitation. She had come to see that the supremely important thing in life was religion; she knew that it was going to be so for her. She wasn't bigoted, she realised the blameless life that many people who did not believe in our Lord appeared to live. But that was not the point. Works were good, they were a necessary concomitant of any life that was to be bound up with hers. But faith was a paramount necessity also. She had no illusions about James Poyntz. She did not think, as less keen-sighted girls have thought of atheist lovers, that she could ever bring him to the Faith. She knew quite well that it would be impossible, that he was one of those folk to whom the "talent" of faith does not seem to have been given, and who will have to begin all over again in the next world, learning the truths of Christianity like children.

While she was thinking out the question of acceptance or refusal, her eye caught a date on her tablets. It was the date of the theatre party and also of a meeting to be held during the afternoon in the public hall at Hornham, at which Father Blantyre had consented to hold public argument upon the legalities of ritual and the truth of Catholic dogma with some of the Luther Lecturers.