The Case of Richard Meynell

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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Meynell too was conscious of Dornal as somewhere near him in the still, beautiful place, but only vaguely. He was storm-beaten by the labour and excitement of the preceding weeks, and these moments of rest in the Cathedral were sometimes all that enabled him to go through his day. He endeavoured often at such times to keep his mind merely vacant and passive, avoiding especially the active religious thoughts which were more than brain and heart could continuously bear. "One cannot always think of it—one must not!" he would say to himself impatiently. And then he would offer himself eagerly to the mere sensuous impressions of the Cathedral—its beauty, its cool prismatic spaces, its silences.

He did so to-day, though always conscious beyond the beauty, and the healing quiet, of the mysterious presence on which he "propped his soul."…

Conscious, too, of a dear human presence, closely interwoven now with his sense of things ineffable.

Latterly, as we have seen, he had not been without some scanty opportunities of meeting Mary Elsmere. In Miss Puttenham's drawing-room, whither the common anxiety about Hester had drawn him on many occasions, he had chanced once or twice on Miss Puttenham's new friend. In the village, Mrs. Flaxman was beginning to give him generous help; the parish nurse was started. And sometimes when she came to consult, her niece was with her, and Meynell, while talking to the aunt either of his people or of the progress of the heresy campaign, was always keenly aware of the girlish figure beside her—of the quick, shy smile—the voice and its tones.

She was with him in spirit—that he knew—passionately knew. But the barriers between them were surely insurmountable. Her sympathy with him was like some warm, stifled thing—some chafing bird "beating up against the wind."

For a time, indeed, he had tried to put love from him, in the name of his high enterprise and its claims upon him. But as he sat tranced in the silence of the Cathedral that attempt finally gave way. His longing was hopeless, but it enriched his life. For it was fused with all that held him to his task; all that was divinest and sincerest in himself.

One of the great bells of the Cathedral struck the quarter. His moment of communion and of rest broke up. He rose abruptly and left the Cathedral for the crowded streets outside, thinking hard as he walked of quite other things.

The death of Mrs. Sabin in her son's cottage had been to Meynell like a stone flung into some deep shadowed pool—the ripples from it had been spreading through the secret places of life and thought ever since.

He had heard of the death on the morning after it occurred. John Broad, an inarticulate, secretive fellow, had come to the Rectory in quest of the Rector within a few hours of its occurrence. His mother had returned home, he said, unexpectedly, after many years of wanderings in the States; he had not had very much conversation with her, as she had seemed ill and tired and "terrible queer" when she arrived. He and his boys had given up their room to her for the night, and she had been very late in coming downstairs the following morning. He had had to go to his work, and when he came back in the evening he found her in great pain and unable to talk to him. She would not allow him to call any doctor, and had locked herself in her room. In the morning he had forced the door and had found her dead. He did not know that she had seen anybody but himself and his boys since her arrival.