Come Rack! Come Rope!. Robert Hugh Benson

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СКАЧАТЬ cried. "Why, what do you know of him?"

      He was amazed at her vehemence. She had drawn herself clear of his arm and was looking at him full in the face.

      "I met him on the moor," he said. "I had some talk with him. I got his blessing."

      "You got his blessing! Why, so did I, after the mass, when you were gone."

      "Then that should join us more closely than ever," he said.

      "In Heaven, perhaps, but on earth—" She checked herself again. "Tell me what you thought of him, Robin."

      "I thought it was strange that such a man as that should live such a rough life. If he were in the seminary now, safe at Douay—"

      She seemed a shade paler, but her eyes did not flicker.

      "Yes," she said. "And you thought—?"

      "I thought that it was not that kind of man who should fare so hardly. If it were a man like John Merton, who is accustomed to such things, or a man like me—"

      Again he stopped; he did not know why. But it was as if she had cried out, though she neither spoke nor moved.

      "You thought that, did you, Robin?" she said presently, never moving her eyes from his face. "I thought so, too."

      "But I do not know why we are talking about Mr. Simpson," said the lad.

       "There are other affairs more pressing."

      "I am not sure," said she.

      "Marjorie, my love, what are you thinking about?"

      She had turned her eyes and was looking out through the little window. Outside the red sunlight still lay on the crags and slopes beyond the deep valley beneath them, and her face was bright in the reflected brightness. Yet he thought he had never seen her look so serious. She turned her eyes back to him as he spoke.

      "I am thinking of a great many things," she said. "I am thinking of the

       Faith and of sorrow and of love."

      "My love, what do you mean?"

      Suddenly she made a swift movement towards him and took him by the lapels. He could see her face close beneath his, yet it was in shadow again, and he could make out of it no more than the shadows of mouth and eyes.

      "Robin," she said, "I cannot tell you unless God tells you Himself. I am told that I am too scrupulous sometimes. … I do not know what I think, nor what is right, nor what are fancies. … But … but I know that I love you with all my heart … and … and that I cannot bear—"

      Then her face was on his breast in a passion of weeping, and his arms were round her, and his lips on her hair.

      IV

      Dick found his master a poor travelling companion as they rode home. He made a few respectful remarks as to the sport of the day, but he was answered by a wandering eye and a complete lack of enthusiasm. Mr. Robin rode loosely and heavily. Three or four times his mare stumbled (and no wonder, after all that she had gone through), and he jerked her savagely.

      Then Dick tried another tack and began to speak of the company, but with no greater success. He discoursed on the riding of Mrs. Fenton, and the peregrine of Mr. Thomas, who had distinguished herself that day, and he was met by a lack-lustre eye once more.

      Finally he began to speak of the religious gossip of the countryside—how it was said that another priest, a Mr. Nelson, had been taken, in London, as Mr. Maine had been in Cornwall; that, it was said again, priests would have to look to their lives in future, and not only to their liberty; how the priest, Mr. Simpson, was said to be a native of Yorkshire, and how he was ridden northwards again, still with Mr. Ludlam. And here he met with a little more encouragement. Mr. Robin asked where was Mr. Simpson gone to, and Dick told him he did not know, but that he would be back again by Easter, it was thought, or, if not, another priest would be in the district. Then he began to gossip of Mr. Ludlam; how a man had told him that his cousin's wife thought that Mr. Ludlam was to go abroad to be made priest himself, and that perhaps Mr. Garlick would go too.

      "That is the kind of priest we want, sir," said Dick.

      "Eh?"

      "That is the kind of priest we want, sir," repeated Dick solemnly. "We should do better with natives than foreigners. We want priests who know the county and the ways of the people—and men too, I think, sir, who can ride and know something of sport, and can talk of it. I told Mr. Simpson, sir, of the sport we were to have to-day, and he seemed to care nothing about it!"

      Robin sighed aloud.

      "I suppose so," he said.

      "Mr. John looked well, sir," pursued Dick, and proceeded to speak at length of the FitzHerbert troubles, and the iniquities of the Queen's Grace. He was such a man as was to be found throughout all England everywhere at this time—a man whose religion was a part of his politics, and none the less genuine for that. He was a shrewd man in his way, with the simplicity which belongs to such shrewdness; he disliked the new ways which he experienced chiefly in the towns, and put them down, not wholly without justice, to the change of which religion formed an integral part; he hated the beggars and would gladly have gone to see one flogged; and he disliked the ministers and their sermons and their "prophesyings" with all the healthy ardour of prejudice. Once in the year did Dick approach the sacraments, and a great business he made of it, being unusually morose before them and almost indecently boisterous after them. He was feudal to the very heart of him; and it was his feudality that made him faithful to his religion as well as to his masters, for either of which he would resolutely have died. And what in the world he would do when he discovered, at Easter, that the objects of his fidelity were to take opposite courses, Robin could not conceive.

      As they rode in at last, Robin, who had fallen silent again after Dick's last piece of respectful vehemence, suddenly beat his own leg with his whip and uttered an inaudible word. It seemed to Dick that the young master had perceived clearly that which plainly had been worrying him all the way home, and that he did not like it.

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      I

      Mr. Manners sat in his parlour ten days after the beginning of Lent, full of his Sunday dinner and of perplexing thoughts all at once. He had eaten well and heartily after his week of spare diet, and then, while in high humour with all the world, first his wife and then his daughter had laid before him such revelations that all the pleasure of digestion was gone. It was but three minutes ago that Marjorie had fled from him in a torrent of tears, for which he could not see himself responsible, since he had done nothing but make the exclamations and comments that should be expected of a father in such a case.

      The following were the points for his reflection—to begin with those that touched him less closely.

      First that his friend Mr. Audrey, whom he had always looked upon with reverence and a kind of terror because of his hotness in matters of politics and religion, had capitulated to the enemy and was to go to church at Easter. Mr. Manners himself СКАЧАТЬ