Under which Lord? [A novel.] With twelve illustrations by A. Hopkins

Front matter

Under which Lord ? Third Volume NEW NOVELS. HIGH SPIRITS. Ey James Payn. 3 vols. crown 8vo. [Ready. DONNA QUIXOTE. By Justin McCarthy. 3 vols. crown 8vo. [November. QUEEN OF THE MEADOW. By Charles Gibbon. 3 vols. crown 8vo. [December. A NEW NOVEL. By Ouida. 3 vols. crown 8vo. [Shortly. CONFIDENCE. By Henry James, jun. 2 vols. [Shortly. CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly, W. They were seated side by side on the couch at the foot of the bed! Under which Lord f BY E. LYNN LINTON AUTHOR OF 'THE WORLD WELL LOST 'PATRICIA KEMBALL' ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. III. WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR HOPKINS Jtonbott CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1879 All rigkts reserved ' Because we hive found not yet Any way for tke world to follow Save only that ancient way ; Whosoever forsake or forget, Whose faith soever be hollow, Whose hope soever grow grey Monotones : Songs before Sunrise CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME.

CHAPTER PAGE I. The Last Appeal . . i II. To its Logical Conclusion 32 III. Backsliding 63 IV. Her Guide and"Friend 84 V. The Terrors of Judgment in VI. 'Twixt Hammer and Anvil 129 VIL The Die cast 151 VIII. The Conquered and the Conquerors . .174 IX. The Day of Triumph 195 X. Quenched 223 XI. Ebb and Flow 251 XII. Ring down the Curtain LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS to the THIRD VOLUME. "They were seated side by side on the couch at the FOOT OF THE bed" . . . Frontispiece "You do not know what you are saying " to face page 10S "We'll have no words among ourselves to-night" ,, 184 "Her hands outstretched to her child" ,,

Chapter I. The Last Appeal

All this disgraceful turmoil about Theresa Molyneux and the Honourable and Reverend Launcelot Lascelles was perhaps more painful to Ringrove Hardisty than to any other. He had the honest Englishman's sensitive pride in the purity of the women who were his friends ; and the fair fame of girls whom he had known from their infancy and who were in a manner like his sisters — the only version of sisters that he had — was specially dear to him. To make it the harder for him now, a few years ago there had been certain tentative little passages between him and Theresa. She had fancied herself in love with him when she came home from school ; and she had shown what she felt too clearly to be mistaken. He had VOL. III.) B been struck by her prettiness, flattered by her preference, and in consequence had wandered round her for a short time, asking himself if it would do, and was she really his assigned half?

Finally he decided that she was not ; and that a temperament which gave before being asked to give, was not that which he most desired in his wife. Still, he always had for her that certain tenderness and secret sense of possession which a man feels for a woman of whom he has dreamt ; and his indignation was the more bitter now because of that short time of hesitation and virtual ownership, when he had laid a few flowers of thought and fancy on the altar where the vicar had lighted such a consuming fire. Like everyone else, he understood the true state of things, and how the religion which expressed itself in hysterics and nervous exaltation was simply the passion of love under another name. And also like everyone else not committed to ritualism blindfold, he knew that Theresa had been led into this state of semi-madness by the spiritual philandering with which a celibate priesthood enforces dogmatic teaching, and that Mr. Lascelles had made love to her after his own manner.

Whether that manner had been crafty and undeclared, or open and confessed, it had been love-making all the same ; and to Ringrove and some others the vicar stood as the responsible author of all the mischief. But this was too delicate a thing for him to touch. Women, maternal and other, may take girls to task for their folly ; and fatherly men may say a word in season, of not too direct a kind, against that sleeve-wearing of the heart which attracts the daws ; but what can a young fellow do ? especially if the lines are not laid in his own country — if the one implicated is out of his beat both for age and knowledge, so that he cannot drop hints about undesirable habits and knows nothing of any damnatory antecedents, both of which well handled may be made useful as checks and refrigerators ?

A young man cannot go to a girl of his own age and say : " My dear, you are making a fool of yourself with the vicar or the curate — the captain or the lieutenant, and all the world is laughing at you." And even straightforward Ringrove felt this, and knew that it was not possible for him to lecture Theresa or advise her, to reprove or to enlighten her. But if he could not do this, he could speak to Hermione and Virginia ; and under cover of deprecating their friend's folly and deploring the scandal that it had occasioned, perhaps he might do them some little good, and open b 2 . UNDER WHLCH LORD? 4 to the hateful truth, as he saw it, the dear eyes which were so fast shut now. He saw very little of either mother or daughter in these sad later times ; only at the Sunday morning service. When he called at the Abbey as he still did— often — they were sure to be out or engaged, and he had to content himself with Richard's company only.

The two men indeed were discarded with impartial severity by the women to whom fanaticism was dearer than love ; and if Richard was held to be the Man of Sin, Ringrove took rank as his younger brother. But a man's love bears a tremendous strain when put to it ; and to Ringrove as to Richard, these beloved ones were not so much to be blamed as pitied. It was to both as it would have been had they believed in possession. A grievous thing truly, that those fair bodies should be made the strongholds of fiends ; but it was by no fault that they had been so disastrously invested. It was only a question of relative strength and weakness ; and the Evil One is so strong ! It was just about noon when Ringrove entered the drawing-room of the Abbey, and sent in his name to Mrs. Fullerton and Virginia who were in Virginia's room upstairs.

" Shall we see him ? " asked Hermione, looking per plexed and a little frightened. At this moment they were seated side by side on the couch at the foot of the bed ; watching the maid who was packing a small portmanteau of Virginia's with linen ; only with linen. No girlish possessions dating from childish times and sacred as the first beginnings of private property were added ; no pretty trinkets nor personal adornments ; no favourite books of poetry, nor photo graphs of home or friends, nor any vestige of finery: — only linen. The crucifix before which those fervent daily prayers were said with so much holy zeal, so much mistaken application — some books of devotion and that queer collection of sacred rubbish which even her mother must not see nor handle, given her with such pomp of reverence by Father Truscott — this was all that was being packed up in the little portmanteau which her father had given her two years ago ; everything else was renounced and left like the old loves and the old life.

" Yes, mamma," said Virginia after a short pause : " let us see him. It can do no harm, and I should like to say good-bye to him and to part good friends." " Oh ! we must be always good friends with him, in a way — unless we are forbidden ; I hope though that we shall not be. It makes so much talk in the place when things come to a public breakdown," said Hermione with an unwonted burst of good sense. "We ought not to mind that," returned Virginia, always on the side of uncompromising sincerity. " After all, Ringrove is a good fellow ! " said Her mione, with a strangely kind accent. " Had he been a good Churchman he would have been a splendid creature ! " " Yes ; but it is just that if ! " said Virginia with a sigh. Mother and daughter were in an abnormal state to day ; and both were of softer mood towards outside sinners than their Directors allowed, or they themselves thought right.

Though no tears had come to their eyes they were very close with each ; and had they not been restrained by the sense of sinfulness and the carnal creature, should they mourn for the joyful event that was now at hand, they would have clung to each other weeping with the illogical sorrow of women who have wilfully undertaken to carry an unnecessary cross by which they give pain to themselves and to others, under the mistaken idea that what is unnatural and disagreeable is right, what is loving and pleasant is wrong. TIIE LAST APPEAL. 7 The maid, less controlled and on a lower level of holiness altogether, was weeping bitterly ; and it did not mend matters when Virginia, laying her hand on her shoulder, said in a low sweet voice, while her face was as it were illumined by a kind of inner light : " Don't cry, Mary.

Why should you ? I am going away only for the sake of truth and holiness. There is nothing to make anyone unhappy in this? " " But the first time as you have left home alone, Miss, and no one to do your hair or see to your things ! " said Mary, crying more because of the exhortation. " You will be lost, away by yourself. It seems as if you would never come back again ! " " As for doing things for myself I shall not have much to do, as you know, Mary," answered Virginia kindly. " And my hair — that is very easily done now ! " " Yes, indeed it is ! " sighed Mary ruefully; grudging the conversion which had cost her young mistress all that artistic elaboration which would have made her '; look so pretty." " As you say, there's not so much to do now, the way you wear it ; still, I like to have the handling of it myself."

" So you will, Mary ! Miss Fullerton will be home again in ten days from this," said Hermione, looking to ? her daughter with a smile; but Virginia had turned away at that moment and was arranging something on the table. " Well ! I suppose we must go down and see Ringrove," then said Hermione. "You know what to do, Mary. Come, Virginia ! — it is getting nearly luncheon-time. Shall I ask him to stay, dear ? 1 will do just as you like." " Yes," said Virginia. " It will be better for papa." Her lip quivered as she said this ; but she mastered herself by that strange power which had come to her of late — the power by which all feeling was controlled, all expression repressed, all thought concealed ; and then they went downstairs — to receive as an act of Christian liberality the man who had once been the familiar friend and favourite guest of the house ; by the wishes of the parents and the fitness of things appointed to be one day the holder of all, Virginia herself included.

" How glad I am to find you at home ! " said Ringrove joyously, going forward to meet them as they came into the room, his face aglow with pleasure and his look and bearing that of old times, rather than belonging to the new order of things. " I have seen so little of you of late ! " he added with the loving regret which is such sweet flattery when received by love ! " That is not our fault," said Hermione gently, but ■with meaning in her reproach. " Nor mine," he answered. " I have called here so often! — but you were never at home." " We have so much to do out of doors," she returned. " I wish I saw more of you — as I used in old times before I had offended you," said Ringrove, looking at Virginia. " Then why do you not ? " asked Hermione. "It is your own doing, Ringrove. You have cut yourself off from us.

If you had been good and what you ought to have been, there would never have been this separation. And if you had liked us as much as you used to say, you would not have deserted us as you have done. Had your friendship been what I once believed it was, you would have gone with us in our new life, and have become a good Churchman as you ought. It would have given both Virginia and myself so much real happiness to have counted you as one of us. But you had not enough friendship for us even to make the trial ! " " Dear Mrs. Fullerton, this is scarcely just ! You know how truly I have always loved both you and Virginia ! " Ringrove spoke with more agitation than he could conceal. " Then why did you not come over with us ? " asked Hermione. " We did not wish you to do anything wrong. We only wanted you to become a good man and lead a religious life, as you ought to do."

" But how could I make one of a party which I look on as the enemy of national liberty and intellectual progress ?" he said. " I could not join the clerical party here, dearest Mrs. Fullerton. All the manly conscience and English feeling that I have are dead against it. I think and always have thought priestly domination the most disastrous of all the tyrannies that the world has ever seen. So how could I, as you say, go over to your side?" " Conscience ! — your pride and want of faith, your self-will and undutiful disobedience, you mean. Call things by their right names, Ringrove. We shall under stand each other better then." Hermione said this harsh-sounding speech in the sweetest voice and with the tenderest face and accent possible. It was an established formula rather than a personal accusation — something that she had been taught rather than had reasoned out for herself; as when be lievers say generally that men become sceptics that they may have freer license to do evil — that they may give way to their passions without fear of punishment — banishing God out of their world because they are afraid of Judgment.

He smiled. " Not quite so bad as that ! " he said lightly; then more gravely : " Do you seriously think, Mrs. Fullerton, that any man who knows the world can give in to a system which produces such results as that of last Sunday ? " " Ah, poor Theresa ! " she answered compassionately, but with unmistakable contempt. " We must not judge of things from her. She has always been excitable and hysterical, and lately she has been overworking herself and taxing her strength too heavily. And after all, Ringrove, an hysterical attack even at prayers, lamentable as it is, is not like a sin of intention, and must not be laid to the charge of the Church." " No, but it supplies the answer of those who refuse to give in to the new order of things," he said. " When we see, as we do, these priests as you call them, making women in love with them under the name of religion, you cannot expect that men like myself, for instance, should be desirous to strengthen their hands."

He spoke boldly, but all the same he knew that he was touching the shallows, skirting perilously close to danger. Virginia flushed painfully, and a look partly of re pulsion, partly of terror, came on her face. " It is horrible to hear you say such things, Ringrove," she said. " Because one sick girl is over-excitable, is the whole faith and practice of holiness to be slandered ? To speak of these vile things in connexion with the Church and her priests is worse than shameful ! Do you give these unholy thoughts and motives to us all? Oh it makes me weary of the world ! " she added with strange passion, clasping her hands to her forehead — " this wicked and slanderous world, where even the saints are not respected ! " " I ascribe nothing to you, Virginia, but what is perfectly sweet, pure, and holy," answered Ringrove with indescribable tenderness, but always bold and direct.

" But then you are not as other girls. You know that I think this; and you know this too, Mrs. Fullerton," turning to Hermione ; " I have never hidden from you my hope in the future, nor the depth and truth of my love for Virginia." " Hush ! hush ! " cried Virginia. " It is a sin for me to hear this ! " "How can it be a sin?" asked Ringrove. "Why should you not be loved, Virginia, as any other woman, ■I and told so like any other? The faithful love of an honest man cannot be a sin, nor yet a degradation ! " " You may not care to hear it, dear, but there is no sin in poor Ringrove's love for you. Superior himself did not say there was ! " Hermione said this with a flash of her old self — her old sympathy with romance and human passion. She was stirred more than she herself knew by Ringrove's honest fervour, and wished for the moment that Virginia would listen to him.

There was no harm in it, and there might be good. " It is a sin to me," said Virginia with a kind of horror which even her mother did not understand and which to Ringrove was simply like madness. "Oh ! that I could clear your mind of all this terrible hallucination ! " he said passionately. " There is no reason in it, Virginia ! it is not worthy of your good sense ! That you do not love me, and do not care to listen to me, I can understand ; that it should be a sin to you my saying how much I love you — that surely is the mere folly, the mere pedantry, of reserve ! " " You do not understand," she said, turning away in a hopeless manner. " No one understands ! " " Perhaps only too well," he answered with a sigh. " But hear me, Virginia. I have loved you too long and faithfully not to have earned the right to speak, and you need not be afraid of me.

What I have borne for all these years I can go on bearing, if it is your absolute will ; — for you have been the one central thought of my life for a longer time than you know of. I shall never forget you as I first saw you when I came home from the Continent, coming up the steps while I stood at the door, holding your blue frock back from your feet, your face a little raised — looking at me with pleasure then ! — your shining hair like gold about your head — exactly like the little Virgin at Venice ! I knew then what a lovely womanhood yours would be ; as pure and beautiful as hers ! " Virginia shuddered and hastily crossed herself. " This is blasphemy ! " she said in an awestruck voice. "Why do you say that, dear? Whatever else your belief makes her, was she not a woman like any other ? " he asked.

" What blasphemy is there in saying that an innocent little girl reminded me of a picture of her own girlhood, or that a lovely womanhood is of the same type as hers ? " "She was more than woman," said Virginia in a reverent voice. " She was the Divine Mother, and it is a sin to liken anyone to her." " Ah Virginia ! what a world of fanciful sin you make for yourself ! " he said with manly pity. " There is no harm in this, at least not in my eyes, or those of anyone not bound and fettered by false reverence. I would not say it if I thought it wrong, but I will not again if it pains you. I want only to tell you now, before your mother, what I have felt and thought for all these years. No ! do not turn from me, Virginia ! Let me speak straight to the point, if for the last time ! " " Let him speak, dear," said Hermione in a low voice.

" He is a good man, Virginia ; and if he does love you so much, you may yet win him over to the Church." Virginia mentally repeated a prayer to the Holy Virgin as a safeguard against what she felt to be the sin of the moment, and when she had finished she raised her mild eyes with a half-sad, half-weary look. " You can say what you like, Ringrove," she said with the feeling of one performing penance. " I will listen to you patiently. Perhaps, as mamma says, I ought." " Thank you ! " Ringrove answered tenderly ; not seeing below the surface and only grateful for the opportunity of speaking. Perhaps too — for who can limit the miraculous power of love ? — he might turn her heart to UNDER WHLCH LORD? him by the very force of his own love for her. " What you were as a young girl," he went on to say, " made me believe that when you were older you would be as you are, dear — my ideal of what a true woman should be.

I knew that if you were I should love you as I do love you ; and I hoped, and at one time believed, that you would learn to love me. I watched you as you grew up, and saw you always the same — gentle, patient, conscientious, truthful, without a particle of vanity or pretence in you, and only desirous to do what was right; and I thought that if I were not good enough for you — what man would be ! — I could still make you happy, and be a true and loving husband to you. Your father was on my side, and so at one time was this dear mother ; and with two such advocates it did not seem to me that the thing was hopeless. You should have been so happy ! I would have lived only for you, and to keep you from all sorrow. I would have loved you so well ! And the faithful love of an honest man is worth something to a woman, even though he may not be so good or pure as she," said Ringrove Hardisty with that noble simplicity of self-assertion which belongs to manly men conscious of their power, and which for the most part charms womanly women.

" I would have been glad at the time— very glad," said Hermione softly ; " and I would be glad now, Ringrove, if you were a good Churchman." " I am a Churchman," said Ringrove ; " what else can you call me ? " " A Protestant ! " murmured Hermione, in a voice of plaintive condemnation. " Whether good or not, is another question ; but, such as I am, I would have guarded her from every breath of evil as carefully as I would have kept her from all sorrow. She should never have known more of the world's sins than she knows now, and less of artificial evil. You should have been surrounded by love and honour," he continued, turning again to Virginia ; " and all that was best in myself should have been my tribute to your purity. I would have been your protector and you should have been my good angel.

We should have done the best thing that anyone can do for the world — have made a perfect home and lived a noble life ; and we should have been happy in each other, and would have done more good to our kind than we can fairly compute. You would have been an example to the whole county, a standard of womanly excellence, living the true life of woman in the quiet activities of home. Your influence would have been unbounded ; for who can limit the VOL. in. c influence of a pure woman living the honest natural life of wife and mother ? And I should have been a better man than I shall ever be now without you ! And all this hope— all this grand life— has been destroyed, for what ? If you had been born a Roman Catholic I should not have wondered so much, however sorry I might have been. You would then have been, in all probability, a nun by choice ; but, as it is, yours is a lost life " " No, no ! gained !" murmured Virginia.

" — When it might have been one as beautiful, as perfect, as anything that the noblest poet could imagine ! " Virginia turned pale and red by turns. " You allow that it would have been my vocation to be a nun had I been a Catholic?" she asked in a strange voice. ■' Yes ; and as a Catholic I would have respected your choice," he answered ; " though as a Catholic I should have deplored the false view of goodness which takes from active life the purest and finest natures to shut them up in a living tomb where they can do no good to anyone ! " "We are the last in the world to uphold the Romish Church with all its errors of doctrine and superstition," said Hermione speaking as she had been taught. " But you must in fairness allow us Anglicans the same voca tion." He shook his head. " No, I do not," he said gently.

" A woman can do better for herself and the world than by incarcerating herself and renouncing all practical usefulness. A mother is of more value than a nun." For a moment Virginia did not speak ; then she turned to Ringrove with a certain kind of decision in her very frankness that was more convincing than her mere words. " Thank you for all your goodness to me," she said, her voice low and calm without a quiver of faltering in it ; " but no man could have ever had my deepest love : — that belongs only to God and my Church. I have always liked you, as you know, but I do not think I could have ever loved you had things even remained as they were ; and now we are as far as the poles asunder." "Virginia, is it quite impossible?" said Hermione, in a moved voice. " This is your last deliberate word, Virginia ?

You reject my love and all that it would give you — all that you could do for me and society as my wife — for this pale imitation of Papistry — this playing at Roman c Catholicism?" asked Ringrove, standing like one who expects the death signal. " Mine is not a pale imitation, nor a mere play," she answered, lowering her eyes. " How can it be anything else ? " he said with his naive frankness and ignorance of esoteric meanings. "You are not a Roman Catholic, and what else but imitation and mockery is all this assumption of Roman Catholicism by the High Church party ? " " Let that part of it alone," Virginia answered again, speaking more hurriedly than was usual with her. " You were talking of yourself not of me. All I have to say is, I do renounce all that you have offered me, as all that the world could give me anywhere, for the greater gain of my choice."

" For ever, without hope of change, Virginia ? " " For ever, and I can never change ! " she returned. She held out her hand. " We part as friends, Ringrove," she said ; "but we do part. This is good-bye." Ringrove did not answer. He took her hand and carried it reverently to his lips ; then abruptly left his seat and went to the window, looking out into the garden. A dead silence fell among them all, and Hermione, who was crying, found herself wishing that Virginia had just TIIE LAST APPEAL. 21 one little corner left unconverted — one little corner which Ringrove Hardisty might have possessed. Soon after this Ringrove left, though Hermione asked him to stay quite affectionately and like her old self, having for the moment forgotten all her artificial displeasure with him, and only sorry that Virginia was so set in her renunciation ; and though Virginia too said : " Will you not ?