The Prophet's Mantle

Front matter

BY CHRISTABEL R. COLERIDGE AUTHOR OF "WAYNFLETE" "THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE GOOD" ETC. "/ will lift up mine eyes unlo the hills" LONDON ISBISTER AND COMPANY LIMITED 15 & 16 TAVISTOCK ST. covent garden Printed by Ballantvne, Hanson &•* Co. London &* Edinburgh CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. THE WEDDING GUEST ..... 7 II. THE NEW PUPIL ...... 19 III. A THRILLING ROMANCE 30 IV. KIRK ANDREW 43 V. THE GREV MAN 57 VI. WHITEBURY 69 VII. AUNT AND NIECE 83 VIII. THE WHITEBURY BALL 95 IX. LOVE'S FLAME 108 X. COUSINS 120 XI. DAYLIGHT 133 XII. COMMONPLACES I49 XIII. CONFIDENCES ....... 162 XIV. "AFTER ALL" 174 XV. ALMOST 187 XVI. UNDER THE GREY MAN 198 XVII. THE WHITEBURY OMNIBUS .... 213 XVIII. TOM REPTON 228 XIX. HUSBAND AND WIFE ......

Chapter I The Wedding Guest

At a quarter to eight on the morning of the fifth of January, 188-, George Gladwyn was leaning out of his bedroom window at Ashdew Rectory, to see the sunrise. The shrubs and turf of the garden were white with snow, a driving mist dimmed the heavy square tower of the old church and was hardly lightened by the feeble pinkish rays that were struggling up into the eastern sky, while a cold and dying moon shed a faint glimmer over the clearer west. Schoolboys of seventeen are not as a rule fond of getting up before the sun, but George, with a thick ulster hastily buttoned over him, was stretching his rough light brown head as far as possible round the corner, staring with wide open grey eyes and lifted brows out into the foggy air. "The day is not yet born," he muttered to himself, heedless that his rosy cheeks were getting blue with cold, and that the birth of the day was not likely to be worth waiting for.

The church clock chimed the three-quarters as the garden gate clicked, and an old man muffled up in a red comforter trotted hurriedly up to the front door. " Hey, Parker, what's up ? " shouted George from above. "Good 'evins, sir! How you took me by surprise ! It's a licensed wedding due at eight, and I've come up to see if Mr. Gladwyn's had the notice." " By Jove ! " cried George. " Old Mark's first wedding ! I must go and see if he knows how to splice them properly ! " He slipped back into his room and had tumbled into presentable clothes and run downstairs before the young curate-in-charge came hurrying out in answer to the message. "Get back to bed, George," he said savagely, " I don't want you to come playing the fool." "I am coming to give you countenance," said George. " I've been to look on at many a penny wedding, I don't believe you ever saw one unless you had rehearsals at St. Dunstan's. I say, come along.

There's the party in the sly from Slingford station." The newly ordained curate, left by the sudden illness and absence of his rector to make his own way in his new parish, hurried round to the vestry door, while George lingered for a moment, and watched the shabby yellow sly, drawn by an old piebald horse, ploughing its way through three inches of snow up the lane from the village. The sly stopped at the unswept churchyard path, and four people, two men and two ladies, got out. They tramped up the path careless of the snow, the ladies together, one man with them and the other following. " Can't imagine which are the happy couple," thought George, as the old clerk opened the south door of the church, and the party went in past the queer old tombstone with the nymph weeping over a laurel wreath on a broken pillar, under the Norman arch of the old porch in the cold darkness of the empty church.

George followed them, pausing as they went up the narrow passage, between the high pews, into a chancel almost blocked by pulpit and reading-desk, just as the young curate came out of the vestry and took his place in front of an altar shrouded by ample folds of crumpled brown holland. The church with its heavy columns and low browed arches was dark, but the chancel was darker still, full of tall choir stalls, and overhang ing mural tablets, and with the daylight only beginning to struggle through the three narrow coloured lights of the east window. George perceived that his brother could not see the prayer-book in his hand. There were no lamps, for evening services were unknown in Ashdew. He slipped round into the vestry, where the old clerk was still fumbling, seized on a slat candlestick with a mould candle in it, lit it by a match from his own pocket, and carried it in as Mark was beginning the service with some difficulty and hesitation.

George came and stood beside him holding the candle so that its light fell on the book. He stood so straight upright and wore such a solemn countenance as almost to lend an air of ecclesi astical propriety to his impromptu contrivance. He might have been heading a procession, but all the while he was keenly noting the wedding party. The ladies were dressed in long fashionably cut fur cloaks. That of the bride covered her entirely, and seemed to sit loosely on a slim angular figure. She wore a grey hat and feathers, and a gauze veil was tied over her face, and in the dim light quite concealed it. Her hair was dark, and knotted low on her neck ; as she stood it slowly unrolled and fell down straight to her waist in a thick mane. The other lady was taller and stouter, and wore a bonnet and a black lace veil.

The gentleman who seemed in command of the party was well dressed, middle aged, and handsome ; he had, in George's eyes, a military air. The bridegroom wore a long travelling coat, and held his face down into the collar of it. He was tall, and stood with his hands in his pockets, perhaps because they were cold. Mark read carefully in rather an ill-assured voice, which he had not quite learned to manage, so that after a hurried beginning, he adjured George and the clerk to declare any just cause against this marriage, and required and charged the pair to mention any just cause or impediment to it, in tones that echoed down the empty aisles and seemed to be given back by the darkness. George listened for the names which were supplied on a slip of paper. " Norman Gerard, wilt thou take Helena Wini fred — " and Norman Gerard faintly growled his assent ; but Helena Winifred in her turn spoke out, "I will!" in an earnest young voice, as if she emphatically meant it.

So through all the service the bridegroom grunted his answers like a school-boy excusing himself to a master. The elder man gave him the ring, and the bride put out a little red childish hand from the folds of her cloak to receive it. As it touched her finger it brought some new influence with it, she began to shake and quiver, and while the young minister, too nervous and inexperienced to know where to make cuts, read every word of the appointed service, she was evidently suppressing sobs. As Mark closed the book, the struggling sunlight broke through the gloom — caught a fiery glow from a saint's robe in the east window, and slung it on a skull and crossbones which adorned a mural tablet over the vestry door. It caught George's eye as he turned, still carrying the candle, and under the grim device he read, " Sacred to the Memory of Mahalah Steptoe," a name queer enough to stick in any one's memory.

He led the way back into the dark vestry, and stood as still as if he had been a candlestick. The elder lady sank into a chair, and the bride stood near her, without a word. The bridegroom turned his back and stared out of the window, while the elder man sat down at the table and filled up the register, all but the chief signatures, and then said, rather sharply, "Now then, Gerard," and the young man sat down and wrote in a rapid scrawl," Norman Gerard Wentworth." His friend had already written "Bachelor, aged 21." He looked at it, then got up and turned his back again. " Now for you, my dear young lady," said the gentleman agreeably as he blotted and covered the bridegroom's age. The bride, who had recovered from her agita tion, sat down and wrote with her red, childish fingers, in the clear, upright hand of the modern school-girl, " Helena Winifred Wynne."

" That will do, I will finish it," said the gentle man, and as the girl rose and walked away, he wrote, "Spinster, aged 18." Then as he rose, the elder lady ejaculated tear fully and abruptly, "Oh — it's done — and I hope there's a blessing on it 1 " " Surely," said the gentleman with becoming gravity, as she put her hand emotionally on his arm. Mark, who had all this time been, spite of the temperature, growing hotter and redder, remarked nervously : " It's — it's a very early hour in the morning, and very unpleasant weather for a wedding." " Yes — my son is going abroad hurriedly," said the leader of the party, as he sat down and wrote " Richard Wentworth, widower's " signature as witness to the marriage — then looking at George : " Perhaps this young gentleman will sign the book ? " "Yes," said George, setting down the candle, " I'll witness it ; I shan't forget it either."

George Daniel Gladwyn added his name, and then Mr. Wentworth said agreeably : " Now, Gerard, I am afraid we are rather hurried ; take — Mrs. Wentworth back to the carriage." The young man turned like an automaton, and offered his arm to his bride. She took it, and they walked down the church, and, as far as George could see, never spoke to each other. "The usual fee, with many thanks," said Mr. Wentworth, giving an envelope to Mark and putting a coin into Parker's hand : " Good morning." He gave his arm to the lady and they hurried after the young couple, and all four got into the sly and drove away again in the direction of the station. " Well, I'm blessed ! " ejaculated Parker, as he perceived a half-sovereign in his palm. " Those are queer customers." " But there was the licence all correct ; I couldn't have refused to perform the ceremony ?

" said Mark anxiously, as he stuck his envelope into his pocket. " No, sir ; it was all correct. I don't see as we had a choice," said Parker, as he turned the church key in the lock, while the brothers went back to breakfast. " I say, Mark, you'll hear of this again, I bet ! Very queer customers, indeed ! That chap was no more twenty-one than I am, and I don't believe the bride was grown up." " Don't you think so ? " said Mark nervously ; " the man was a gentleman ; I didn't notice the woman." " Oh, her voice was ladylike, though emotional," said George. " Certainly, they all had unfortunately high-falutin' names for people engaged in some secret villainy." " This is what I don't like," said Mark, opening his envelope and showing a five-pound note. " Surely people don't always fee a strange parson at this rate ?

" " Matrimony would come expensive if they did," said George. " I should think the Gretna Green blacksmith used to get well paid though." " I shall send it back," said Mark, " to the address he put in the register. If there was anything queer I won't profit by it." "Right you are," said George; "you're still uncorrupted by your profession ; I thought per haps you'd put it in the plate." " Your tongue runs away with you," said Mark professionally enough, while George made a face and went on with his breakfast. He spent the morning with a Greek play be fore his eyes and this strange incident before his mind. It wove itself into a story ; verses of a wild ballad began to ring in his mental ears : " And the saint's eyes shed On the Death's Head fierce red." " Southey would have liked the subject.

Rudyard Kipling could make it go," thought George as rhymes floated through his mind : " ' Love ' — ' Above ' — ' Hate ' — ' Fate.' ' " By Jove, I'll make something of it ! If Cole ridge did ' The Ancient Mariner ' in a morning's walk, why shouldn't I do — the — ' The Scourging Fire ' — good title. I'll soon see what it means. I'll go and skate ! What, Mark, writing your first sermon ? Oh, I say, invoke the spirit of our ancestor, the Prophet of Wardale, who preached on a tub. Do it extempore." George returned after dark, with " The Scourg ing Fire " still unfinished and with a big bump on his shoulder, acquired in endeavouring vainly to do a figure of eight backwards. " I say, Mark," he said, " I believe you will be had up for bigamy or the abduction of an heiress, or the marriage of infants, or something in that line.

I came back by train from Potterton to Slingford, and at Potterton there was Mr. Norman Gerard Wentworth, as sure as you're alive, by himself in the train. Never a sign of Helena Winifred ! I'd know him anywhere — a good looking chap with a long nose, and if he's twenty- E one I'll eat him. He may be in the sixth at his school." " Well, I can't help it 1 " said Mark savagely. His unusual discomfort was not appeased when the five-pound note with his dignified letter of refusal came back from the Dead Letter Office with " Not known here " scrawled across the address. " It would make a farce as well as a ballad," said George with interest.

Chapter II The New Pupil

George Gladwyn had not been giving entire satisfaction at his public school, and had there fore been taken away by his mother — his father, a clergyman who had held a good living and a canonry, was dead — and had been sent to read with a tutor for a scholarship at Cambridge. There was no harm in him, the headmaster said, and he was extremely able, so much so as to keep a high place, but he was desultory and unpunctual — in fact, odd. Not only was his proper work neglected, while he pottered over some study not in the school curriculum, but what was even more difficult to deal with, he had forgotten an important cricket match through going off to hunt for some Druidical remains twenty miles off. Besides, he had too many friends and was always being asked out. He would be better in a family than at school.

Three autumn months in Mr. Fleming's family in Longhurst Rectory had made him quite at home there, and when he returned after the Christmas holidays Fanny, the little daughter of the house, ran merrily out to meet him. " Come in, George," she cried ; " come into the drawing room and have some tea Mother's at the mothers' meeting, and Daddy has taken the new pupil for a walk." " New pupil ! Is there a new fellow ? " said George, following her into the drawing-room, where incredibly shabby carpets and curtains and wicker arm-chairs somehow harmonised delightfully with inlaid tables, old china, and abundant books. "Yes, and a new puppy," said Fanny; "he's such a lamb ! Here he is ! " " The pupil ! Oh, the puppy," said George, receiving into his arms a hairy ball and sitting down on the fender-stool.

" It's a black lamb," he said. " Hope the pupil isn't another. What's his name ? " " Mr. Norman. And, George, mother says that now there are two, I am to say ' Mr. Gladwyn,' because it's more proper, and I am getting big." " Oh, I say," said George, " that's bosh. Am I to call you Miss Fleming ? " "No, I don't think I'm big enough for that," said Fanny, bringing a painted milking stool, and setting a cup of tea and some cake on it by George's side. She had very deft and gentle movements, and the prettiest little hands ever possessed by a damsel of thirteen, which clasped the puppy with tender skill, as she lifted him away from George and held him as if he had been a baby. Then she began to exchange news with George, and to tell him first of the great fact, that she was presently going to school, and then of Christmas festivities at Longhurst.

There had been a dance at the park, and she had enjoyed it immensely. " Plenty of partners ? " said George. " Oh yes," said Fanny, " I had to divide up the last dance into three." " Really ? " George's shaggy brown eyebrows lifted, and his grey eyes rounded into a dreamy stare. He gazed at Fanny as if he was meditating on her statement, and yet as if he was quite indifferent to her presence. She was a very pretty girl, with brown hair curling softly at the ends, blue eyes and a rose-leaf complexion. "George," she said, offering him the tea-cake, "j'ou're mooning ! " " I beg your pardon, Fanny. I was only wondering why I " " Oh, I don't know why," said Fanny, kissing the puppy. " It's a world-old problem," said George dreamily. "Write a poem about it," said Fanny, with the absence of reverence usually displayed by the friends of incipient poets.

" There have never been real poems about anything else," said George, " but I have written a ballad, Fanny, it's very fine. It's called ' The Scourging Fire.' It begins : 1 The fire of love burns below, shines above, It falls in dark corners.' " " Hark ! " interrupted Fanny, " they're coming in. You don't want the new one to begin by hearing you spout ! " George stopped with perfect cheerfulness and stood up, as a grey-haired, kindly faced clergyman came in followed by a slim youth. " Ha, George, here you are," said Mr. Fleming. " Here's a new companion for you. Gladwyn will be able to show you an owl's nest or two, Norman, not to say a mare's nest once in a way. I don't know what else you'll get from him.'1 The lads shook hands, and Norman remarked pleasantly that Longhurst was an awfully pretty place ; then they all separated to dress.

George went to unpack, and as he heard Mrs. Fleming come in, rushed downstairs to greet her, and to inquire loudly and eagerly, how Tom Repton was getting on. Had he been to church on Christmas Day? " No, but he brought Fanny some holly for the decorations." "Ah, beginning on the human side, that's good, I've been working up the arguments for him, I think " " My dear George, you're not ready for dinner." George was used, apparently, to be snuffed out when in full career, he tore upstairs again, and if his new companion heard the colloquy through the half-open door of the pupil's sitting room, he made no sign. The dinner bell pro duced George, dressed and beaming, and ready to examine young Norman critically in the lamp light. The new-comer was a tall, well-made fellow, with regular features and a brown skin, a long nose, and straight eyebrows, dark and delicately drawn.

George gave a great start and fell suddenly silent. His sharp eyes had recognised Gerard Norman Wentworth, the hero of the mysterious marriage at which he had so recently assisted. He perceived at once that neither his name nor his face had struck on any chord of memory. " Norman " was quite at his ease, well bred and civil, responding to his tutor's conversation, and paying the proper attention to Mrs. Fleming like any other gentlemanly youth on a similar occasion. For once George quite failed to take the lead and only said, " Yes, sir," and " No, sir," like the shy school-boy which he was not. "And where have you spent your holidays, Gladwyn ? " said Mr. Fleming, presently. " I've been with my eldest brother, sir, at his curacy," said George. For his life he couldn't mention Ashdew, and the question as to where the curacy was was not put.

When the two lads went to their own quarters, after dinner, Norman behaved exactly as any one else might have done, asked about the ways of the place, volunteered the information that he was reading for an army exam, in the summer, but that his mother did not like him to be more than three months at a regular crammer's, and that a cousin of his had been at Fleming's and liked it. " Yes, it's awfully jolly," said George, " and Mr. Fleming is a wide-minded man. But he won't cram us. He can't." George's large eyes were fixed in a thoughtful stare, as various courses of action pictured them selves before his imagination. Should he make a casual remark about Ashdew and see what happened ? He recollected that the bridegroom at that strange wedding had stood with his back to him and had never looked up, but he must have known that some one had been there hold ing the candle.

Should he tell Mr. Fleming that this correct and quite ordinary new pupil was a married man ? It was characteristic of George that he realised fully that this step might involve serious consequences. Should he write to Mark and ask his opinion ? He had not the slightest value for it. On the whole he thought that he would wait a little while before he did anything. The situation was intensely interesting to him and he wanted to study it fully. The oddest part of it was that there was nothing odd about Norman. He had come from a public school, and had brought the most proper tastes and behaviour with him. He played golf and tennis, did his work with intelligence but without enthusiasm, never fell into gloomy silence, or behaved in any way becoming the possessor of a guilty secret. He was quite nice in the house, but did not throw himself into the affairs of the place with George's enthusiasm.

If he was reticent, he was so reticent that no one could suppose that he had anything to conceal. George was alone in the pupils' room after a few days, when Fanny put her head in at the door. She was not allowed to go there. " George," she said, " Mr. Norman's going to make me a rabbit-hutch. You don't mind ? It's good for him, you know, to have interests." " Fanny," said George, " it's part of the femi nine nature to humbug." " I never humbug," said Fanny, with tears in her eyes, and an air of unmistakable sincerity, " but I thought you might be vexed, as you said you would." " Well, I'm not," said George, with equal honesty. "All right, we'll join at finding him interests for his good." Fanny laughed, and ran away, as " Mr. Norman's " step was heard in the passage. " I like these diggings," he said, as he got out his books, " the Flemings are all a good sort.

Fanny is a jolly little thing." " Yes," said George. " I'm going to get her to stay with my little sisters." " I haven't any sisters," said Norman, " I have never been accustomed to girls." "There are six of us," said George, "four girls and my brother and me. Mark is a curate. He began last Christmas. He is at an odd little country place, with the queerest old church you ever saw, full of owls and jackdaws, and monu ments. It's called " " Norman, my dear follow," said Mr. Fleming, entering hastily, "here's a telegram for you, waiting for an answer." Longhurst was far from town or station, and telegrams were not matters of daily occur rence. Norman pulled the telegram open, and his healthy brown face went pale. " It's — it's my father," he said, breathlessly, " I must go, sir, at once." Mr. Fleming took the telegram and read, " Mrs. Wentworth to G. Norman.

Come at once, your father dangerously ill." There was the usual rush of preparation and sympathy. Mr. Fleming went to order the trap, Mrs. Fleming put up sandwiches, Fanny flew about on errands, George helped, and won dered. Norman came down ready, his tutor already held the reins, prepared to drive him to the station. The boy shook hands with Mrs. Fleming. " I'm awfully obliged for your kindness. I'm very sorry " he said, in a changed, agitated manner. They were gone in another moment, and Mrs. Fleming sighed, partly from sympathy, partly, perhaps, because she knew that when desirable pupils are telegraphed away, they do not always come back. "Who is Mrs. Wentworth?" said George, picking up the telegram. "His mother. He took the name of some relative who left him money, quite recently." " I can't round on the poor chap now," thought George.

A few days brought a letter. Norman's father was dead, their affairs were unsettled and he could not come back to Longhurst. He was very sorry, he had been very happy, and he wished he could have stayed. " It's a pity," said Mr. Fleming, with a sigh, " I wonder what the poor fellow will do." " So do I," said George, thoughtfully. There came over him, as he stood wondering, a sort of realisation of what it would be to be hampered at eighteen by a secret marriage ; of what that scene in Ashdew Church really meant for its chief actor. The impression was as strong as an experience. It conveyed to George a profound sense of the responsibility of speaking, and the consequence was that he kept silence. He felt that he knew better what it meant for Norman than the young man knew himself. He understood.

Chapter III

A THRILLING ROMANCE In a cold east wind, on sticky clay, among loud voiced birds and budding copses, George Gladwyn and Fanny Fleming were gathering primroses for the Easter decorations. George had continued reading during the holidays, and Fanny had returned from the first half-term at school, full of her experiences and eager to pour them out, as she sat on a moss-grown log, tying the primroses into neat bunches with her small red fingers, while George listened with the interest of a genial elder brother. " You know," said Fanny, " that Mrs. Fenwick, where I boarded, got Norman for Daddy. She was very sorry he didn't stay. But, poor fellow, his mother died almost directly after his father, and it turned out that there wasn't nearly so much money as they thought. So he can't go into the army, and has gone abroad."

"Really," said George with interest, "not so much money as they thought? How remarkable ! " " It's very sad, I think, but oh, George, there's such a nice girl there. Mrs. Fenwick's her cousin. We're the greatest friends. I mend her pencils, and sew on her buttons, and keep her books from getting lost at the High School, and she tells me the most beautiful stories. She's nearly sixteen, and in the upper fifth, but though I'm only in the third, she doesn't despise me ! " " You don't say so ! " " No," said Fanny, " she confides in me. She told me that she hated her aunt." " Oh I say ! Is that a proper sentiment ? "Why, you see," said Fanny, "she says that her aunt has warped her mind. She brought her up to believe that Charles I. and Mary Queen of Scots were quite perfect, and when Nella found out at school that they were not — that Charles I. told lies, first of all she stood up and contradicted the form-mistress, and then she read and read until she was obliged to change her mind.

And then in the noblest way, she recanted in public. But she says her aunt has retarded her develop ment by making her give her warmest affections and freshest enthusiasms to — to obsolete and archaical opinions ! So she hates her 1 " " My stars, Fanny ! I never heard you use so many long words in my life ! " "I did tell her I didn't see why it mattered, but if you just saw her sitting up in bed, with her eyes shining, her eyes are a sort of yellow, which is very beautiful, you'd think anything mattered, I'm sure ! " " I wonder if I should stand up and contradict the rector ! " "You often do," said Fanny with spirit, "and I believe you would like her immensely, because she always gets high marks in literature and she means to be an author, though she is an heiress. But anybody would publish her stories !

There was one, it quite reminded me of 'The Scourging Fire.' And it wasn't finished either." " Do tell me about it," said George. " I can't do justice to it," said Fanny with reverence ; " but it was about a noble maiden whose wicked step-mother made her marry a young knight because her father had wronged him. She had his money you see, so she had to marry him to give it back. And she did it as a splendid act of reparation. But when he was marrying her, somehow, I don't quite see why, she felt very much ashamed, and then it struck her that it was a nasty mean trick of him to marry her for her money, though it was noble of her to marry him. Do you see ? " " Yes," said George. " She confronted the great problem of self-sacrifice. Well, how did they settle it ? " " It's not settled. Their destiny, she said, was still on the knees of the gods.