By What Authority?

by Robert Hugh Benson

Now the two ladies in front of her were just coming up with the skirts of the crowd; and there was an exclamation or two of astonishment as the women and children saw who it was that was coming. Then there came the furious scream of a man, and the crowd parted, as three men came reeling out together, two of them trying with all their power to restrain a fighting, kicking, plunging man in long black skirts, who tore and beat with his hands. The three ladies stopped for a moment, close together; and simultaneously the struggling man broke free and dashed back into the crowd, screaming with anger and misery.

“Marion, Marion—I am coming—O God!”

And Isabel saw with a shock of horror that sent her crouching and clinging close to Mistress Margaret, that it was the Rector. But the two men were after him and caught him by the shoulders as he disappeared; and as they turned they faced Lady Maxwell.

“My lady, my lady,” stammered one, “we mean him no harm. We——” But his voice stopped, as there came a sudden silence, rent by a high terrible shriek and a splash; followed in a moment by a yell of laughter and shouting; and Lady Maxwell threw herself into the crowd in front.

There were a few moments of jostling in the dark, with the reek and press of the crowd about her; and Isabel found herself on the brink of the black pond, with Lady Maxwell on one side, and Piers on the other keeping the crowd back, and a dripping figure moaning and sobbing in the trampled mud at Lady Maxwell’s feet. There was silence enough now, and the ring of faces opposite stared astonished and open-mouthed at the tall old lady with her grey veiled head upraised, as she stood there in the torchlight and rated them in her fearless indignant voice.

“I am ashamed, ashamed!” cried Lady Maxwell. “I thought you were men. I thought you loved my husband; and—and me.” Her voice broke, and then once more she cried again. “I am ashamed, ashamed of my village.”

And then she stooped to that heaving figure that had crawled up, and laid hold tenderly of the arms that were writhed about her feet.

“Come home, my dear,” Isabel heard her whisper.

It was a strange procession homeward up the trampled turf. The crowd had broken into groups, and the people were awed and silent as they watched the four women go back together. Isabel walked a little behind with her father and Anthony, who had at last been able to come forward through the press and join them; and a couple of the torchbearers escorted them. In front went the three, on one side Lady Maxwell, her lace and silk splashed and spattered with mud, and her white hands black with it, and on the other the old nun, each with an arm thrown round the woman in the centre who staggered and sobbed and leaned against them as she went, with her long hair and her draggled clothes streaming with liquid mud every step she took. Once they stopped, at a group of three men. The Rector was sitting up, in his torn dusty cassock, and Isabel saw that one of his buckled shoes was gone, as he sat on the grass with his feet before him, but quiet now, with his hands before him, and a dazed stupid look in his little black eyes that blinked at the light of the torch that was held over him; he said nothing as he looked at his wife between the two ladies, but his lips moved, and his eyes wandered for a moment to Lady Maxwell’s face, and then back to his wife.

“Take him home presently,” she said to the men who were with him—and then passed on again.