Thorne Guy
A Lost Cause
"I have got the two Hamlyns out of the house at last," he whispered. "They were distressing the patient greatly. I insisted, however. We had a row on the stairs – fortunately, I don't think the patient could hear it. I'm sorry, doctor, but I had to use a little physical persuasion to the young one."
"Never mind, Coxe," Hibbert answered. "I'll see that nothing comes of it. They won't dare to do anything. I will see to that. Is Miss Pritchett ready? Can we go up?"
"Yes," the young man answered, looking curiously at the four priests and the grave girl who was with them in her gay summer frock. "Miss Davies is there."
He was a big, young Scotsman, with a profound contempt for religion, but skilled and tender in his work, nevertheless.
"Will you come up?" Hibbert whispered, taking him a little apart from the others.
"I'd rather be excused, old man," he answered. "Call me if I'm wanted. I can't stand this mumbo-jumbo, you know!"
Hibbert nodded curtly. He understood the lad very well. "Will you follow me, Father?" he said to Blantyre.
Blantyre put on his surplice and stole. Then they all went silently up the wide stairs, with their soft carpet and carved balusters, into the darkened chamber of death.
The dying woman was propped up by pillows. Her face was the colour of grey linen, the fringes of hair she wore in health were gone.
A faint smile came to her lips. Then, as she saw Lucy, she called to her in a clear, thin voice that seemed as if it came from very far away.
"Kiss me, my dear," she said; "forgive me."
Lucy kissed the old, wrinkled face tenderly. Her tears fell upon it in a sacrament of forgiveness and holy amity.
"I want just to say to all of you," Miss Pritchett said, "that I have been untrue to what I really believed, and I have helped the enemies of the Faith. I never forgot your teaching, Father, I knew all the time I was doing wrong. I ask all of you to forgive me as I believe Jesus has forgiven me."
A murmur of kindliness came from them all.
"Then I can go in peace," she gasped. Then with a faint and pathetic shadow of her old manner she turned to Gussie. "Hush!" she said. "Stop sniffling, Miss Davies! I am very happy. Now, Father – "
Her eyes closed and her hands remained still. They saw all earthly thoughts die out of the wrinkled old face, now turned wholly to God.
They all knelt save the vicar, who had placed the oil in an ampulla upon a table.
Then he began the 71st Psalm. "In Thee, O Lord, have I put my trust, let me never be put to confusion: but rid me, and deliver me, in Thy righteousness, incline Thine ear unto me, and save me."
There was no sound in the chamber save that of the ancient Hebrew song.
"Forsake me not, O God, in mine old age, when I am grey-headed: until I have showed Thy strength unto this generation, and Thy power to all them that are yet for to come.
"Thy righteousness, O God, is very high: and great things are they that Thou hast done; O God, who is like unto Thee?"
Then, all together, they said the antiphon: "O Saviour of the world, who by Thy Cross and precious Blood hast redeemed us, save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord."
The central figure in the huge four-post bed lay still and waxen. But when the priest came up to it with the oil, the eyes opened and looked steadfastly into his face.
He dipped his thumb into the silver vessel and made the sign of the Cross on the eyes, the ears, the lips, the nostrils, and the hands, saying each time as he did so:
"Through this unction, and of His most tender mercy, may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed."
The whispering words that brought renewal of lost innocence to the dying woman sank into Lucy's heart, never to leave it. In the presence of these wondrous mysteries, death, and death vanquished by Christ, sin purged and forgiven in the Sacrament, her resolution was made. She knew that she would fix her eyes upon the Cross, never to take them from it more.
She saw her brother bending over the still figure, his white surplice ghostlike in the gloom of the hangings, as he wiped the anointed parts with wool.
Then Stephens brought him a basin of clear water and he washed his hands.
Raising his arm, he said:
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, may this anointing with oil be to thee for the purification of thy mind and body, and may it fortify and defend thee against the darts of evil spirits. Amen."
Two more prayers were said and then came the Blessing.
All rose from their knees. As Lucy slipped from the room, she saw the doctor was bending over the waxen figure in the bed.
She heard her brother and his two assistant priests beginning other prayers, in a louder voice, a sort of litany, it seemed.
She found Carr was beside her descending the stairs.
"What is that?" she whispered.
"The prayers for the commendation of a departing soul; she is going. God rest her and give her peace."
"Amen," said Lucy.
They came down into the hall, where they stood for a moment quite alone. Both were greatly agitated, both felt drawn together by some great power.
"How beautiful it is!" Carr said at length. "Our Lord is with her. May we all die so."
"Poor, dear woman!"
"In a few moments she will be in the supreme and ineffable glory of Paradise. I want to see trees and flowers, to think happily of the wonderful mercy and goodness of God among the things He has made. I should like to walk in the park for an hour, to hear the birds and see the children play. Will you come with me?"
"Yes, I will come."
He took her hand and bowed low over it.
"I have a great thing to ask of you," he said.
They walked soberly together until they came to the railed-in open space. To each the air seemed thick with unspoken thoughts.
The park was a poor place enough. But flowers grew there, the grass was green, it was not quite Hornham. They sat upon a bench and for a minute or two both were silent. Lucy knew a serenity at this moment such as she had hardly ever known. She was as some mariner who, at the close of a long and tempestuous voyage, comes at even-tide towards harbour over a still sea. The coastwise lights begin to glimmer, the haven is near.
In her mind and heart, at that moment, she was reconciled to and in tune with all that is beautiful in human and Divine.
She sat there, this well-known society girl, who, all her life, had lived with the great and wealthy of the world, in great content. In the "park" of Hornham, with the poor clergyman, she knew supreme content.
In a low voice that shook with the intensity of his feeling and yet was resolute and informed with strength, Carr asked Lucy to be his wife.
She gave him her hand very simply and happily. A river that had long been weary had at last wound safe to sea. That she should be the wife of this man was, she knew, one of the gladdest and most merciful ordinances of God.
CHAPTER XIII
THE ARCHBISHOP AND THE HAMLYNS
"Gussie Davies says that she's sure that Miss Pritchett hasn't added a codicil," said Mr. Sam Hamlyn, coming into the inner room at the offices of the Luther League.
Mr. Hamlyn, Senior, had been at work for some hours, but his son had only just arrived in the Strand. It was the day after Miss Pritchett's death, and Sam had remained in North London to make a few inquiries.
"What a blessing of Providence," said the secretary. "There's something to be said for a ritualistic way of dying, after all! If it 'adn't been for her messing about with the oil and that, she'd have sent for her solicitor and cut the League out of her will! The priests have been 'oist with their own petard this time."
"I wonder how much it'll be," Sam said reflectively.
"I don't anticipate a penny less than two thousand pound," said Mr. Hamlyn, triumphantly. "P'raps a good bit over. You see, we got 'er just at the last moment. It was me taking the consecrated wafer did it. She woke up as pleased as Punch, it gave her strength for the afternoon, and had the lawyer round at once. I never thought she'd go off so sudden, though."
"Nor did I, Pa. Well, it's a blessing that she was able to contribute her mite towards Protestant Truth before she went."
"What?" said Mr. Hamlyn sharply; "mite? – has Gussie Davies any idea of 'ow much the legacy is, then?"
"I only spoke figuratively like, Father."
"How you startled me, Sam!" said the secretary, his face resuming its wonted expression of impudent good humour.
"How's the cash list to-day?" Sam asked.
"Pretty fair," answered his father, "matter of five pound odd. It's me getting hold of that wafer, it's sent the subscriptions up wonderful. I wouldn't part – "
Sam, who was sitting with his back to the door of the room, saw his father's jaw drop suddenly. His voice died away with a murmur, his face went pale, his eyes protruded.
The younger man wheeled round his chair. Then he started up, with an exclamation of surprise and fear.
Both the Protestant champions, indeed, behaved as if they had been discovered in some fraud by an agent of the law.
Two people had come suddenly into the room, without knocking or being announced. The secretaries saw the blanched face of a clerk behind them.
During its existence, the Luther League had welcomed some fairly well-known folk within its doors.
This afternoon, however, a most unexpected honour had been paid to it – probably the reason of Hamlyn's extreme uneasiness.
A broad, square man of considerable height, with a stern, furrowed face, wearing an apron and gaiters, stood there, with a thunder-cloud of anger on his face.
It was His Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Lord Huddersfield was with him.
The Archbishop looked steadfastly at Hamlyn for a few seconds. His face was terrible.
In the presence of the great spiritual lord who is next to the royal family in the precedence of the realm, the famous scholar, the caustic wit, the utter force and power of intellect, the two champions were dumb. Hamlyn had never known anything like it before. The fellow's bounce and impudence utterly deserted him.
The Archbishop spoke. His naturally rather harsh and strident voice was rendered tenfold more penetrating and terrifying by his wrath.
"Sir," he said, in a torrent of menacing sound, "you have profaned the Eucharist, you have mocked the holy things of God, you have made the most sacred ordinance of our Lord a mountebank show. You boast that you have purloined the Consecrated Bread from church, you have exhibited it. Restore it to me, wretched man that you are. By the authority of God, I demand you to restore it; by my authority as head of the English Church, I order you."
Hamlyn shrank from the terrible old man clothed in the power of his great office and the majesty of his holy anger, shrank as a man shrinks from a flame.
With shaking hands he took a bunch of keys from his pocket. He dropped them upon the floor, unable to open the lock of the safe.
Young Hamlyn picked them up. He turned the key in the wards with a loud click and pulled at the massive door until it slowly swung open.
Lord Huddersfield knelt down.
Hamlyn took from a shelf a little box that had held elastic bands.
The Archbishop started and flushed a deep crimson.
He took a pyx from his pocket and reverently took out the desecrated Host from the box, placing it in the pyx.
Then, with a face that was suffused to a deep purple, he touched the kneeling peer upon the shoulder. Lord Huddersfield rose with a deep sob of relief.
The Archbishop looked once at Hamlyn, a look the man never forgot.
Then the two visitors turned and went away as swiftly and silently as they had come.
It was a long time before either father or son spoke a word.
At last Hamlyn cleared his throat and mouthed a sentence. It would not come. All that Sam could catch were the words
