And she looked down with emotion on the girl thus blindly marching to a veiled future, unable, by no fault of her own, to distinguish her lovers from her foes. Had a lie, ever yet, in human history, justified itself? So this pure moralist!—to whom morals had come, silently, easily, irresistibly, as the sun slips into the sky.
"Oh, I'll look after her," said Hester shortly; "why, of course I will. I'm very glad she's going to Paris—it'll be good for her. And as for you"—she bent forward like a queen, and lightly kissed Catharine on the cheek—"I daresay I'll remember what you've said—you're a great, great dear! It was luck for Mary to have got you for a mother. But I'm all right—I'm all right!"
* * * * *
When the Elsmeres were gone, Hester still sat on alone in the drawing-room. The lamp had burnt dim, and the little room was cold.
Presently she slipped her hand into the white bodice she wore. A letter lay there, and her fingers caressed it. "I don't know whether I love him or not—perhaps I do, and perhaps I don't. I don't know whether I believe Uncle Richard—or this letter. But—I'm going to find out! I'm not going to be stopped from finding out."
And as she lay there, she was conscious of bonds she was half determined to escape, half willing to bear; of a fluttering excitement and dread. Step by step, and with a childish bravado, she had come within the influences of sex; and her fate was upon her.
CHAPTER XVIII
Meanwhile, amid this sensitive intermingling of the thoughts and feelings of women, there arose the sudden tumult and scandal of the new elements which had thrust themselves into what was already known to the religious world throughout England as "the Meynell case." During November and December that case came to include two wholly different things: the ecclesiastical suit in the Court of Arches, which, owing to a series of delays and to the illness of the Dean of the Court, was not to be heard in all probability before February, and the personal charges brought against the incumbent of Upcote Minor.
These fresh charges were formally launched by Henry Barron, the chief promoter also, as we know, of the ecclesiastical suit, in a letter written by him to Bishop Craye, on the very night when Alice Puttenham revealed her secret to Catharine Elsmere. But before we trace the effect of the letter, let us look for a moment at the general position of the Movement when this second phase of Meynell's connection with it began.
At that time the pending suits against the Modernist leaders—for there were now five instituted by different bishops, as test cases, in different parts of England—were already the subject of the keenest expectation and debate not only in church circles, but amid sections of the nation which generally trouble themselves very little about clerical or religious disputes. New births of time were felt to be involved in the legal struggle; passionate hopes and equally passionate fears hung upon it. There were old men in quiet country parsonages who, when they read the Modernist and followed the accounts of the Movement, were inclined to say to themselves with secret joy and humility that other men were entering into their labours, and the fields were at last whitening to harvest; while others, like Newman of old, had "fierce thoughts toward the Liberals," talked and spoke of Meynell and the whole band of Modernist clergy as traitors with whom no parley could be kept, and were ready to break up the Church at twenty-four hours' notice rather than sit down at the same table of the Lord with heretics and Socinians.