The village had been left behind; the Lakenhall road followed for half a mile, then left at a tangent in its turn; and this open country, upon which Carlton of all men had the audacity to trespass, was the vast rabbit-warren of Sir Wilton Gleed. The dog might be caught in one of the traps; that was at once its master’s fear and hope; for a broken leg would mend, and his one friend think twice before deserting him again. Carlton could even enjoy the prospect of the cripple’s complete dependence upon himself: it would be something to be indispensable to living creature now. But meanwhile he could neither see nor hear anything of his dog, though he walked, and stopped, and whistled till he was tired, and then called, “Glen! Glen! Glen!” No sound came back to him in reply; not even the echo of his own voice; and at midnight he gave up the search.
At midnight also the Long Stow festivities culminated in the National Anthem, its secular companion, and much hoarse roystering on the way home; all this as Carlton approached the village; and for once he was deterred. To march into the middle of a tipsy crowd, freshly inflamed against himself, was to provoke a brawl at best. He would go round instead by the river that flowed parallel with the village street. So he crossed at the lock near the mill at this end of Long Stow, and recrossed by the white wood bridge on the Linkworth road at the other end. But this was an hour later; for three-quarters had been wasted opposite the Flint House, with its river frontage of trim mead and wild garden, and a very faint light in one back room.
By this time all was so still that the returning rector became the earlier aware of an erratic lantern and tell-tale voices in the road ahead; and he was walking slowly to let these people pass the rectory gate, when in the light went lurching before his eyes. He hurried softly. The intruders were half-way up the drive, whispering thickly, but leaving a continuous sound in their wake, from something or other that they had in tow. Carlton followed on the grass, a horrible suspicion already in his heart; but he recognised their voices first.
“Where shall we plant ut? Which is his winder?”
“That there near the end. O Lord, what a lark!”
“Yes — to think he come talkun to me while you was all in the barn. The cheek! But here’s his answer for him.”
The first and last speaker was the stout young barman from the Plough and Harrow; the other was Jim Cubitt, an unworthy character who had been turned out of the choir some months before. And Robert Carlton’s “answer” was his missing dog, lying dead in the lantern’s light, with particles of gravel glistening in his lacklustre coat.
At this, the climax of his long night’s search, with its ironic interludes — all as honey matched with this — a very madness seized on Carlton, so that he sprang out of the dark into the lighted area where these two young ruffians stood, and fell upon them like a fiend. Not a word was said; there was no time even for a cry. But Cubitt came first, and had the muddled senses shaken out of him and new ones kicked in before his comrade could so much as attempt a rescue. This, however, the young barman did so gamely that the ex-chorister was flung in a heap and his champion sent tripping over him with a boxing crack upon the jaw. And Carlton towered breathless, his fists still doubled, waiting for the fallen youths to rise and fall again.
The one from the public-house merely sat upright, ruefully and sullenly enough, but with a sound discretion which the Long Stow lout had the wit to imitate.
“We never ‘urt your dorg,” the former vowed. “He was dead before I see him, and I don’t know now who done ut. I never knew anything about that till after you was in to-night, when I heared who it must ha’ been.”
“I don’t care!” cried Carlton, in a fury still. “You helped to drag it here — my poor dog! You would spite me like that, you whom I never saw before to-night! You’re worse than Jim Cubitt; he at least had an old grievance against me; and you’re both of you worse than the man who did this foul thing, whoever he may be, and I don’t want to know. Out of my sight, both of you, and spread this as far as you please: what you got from me, and what you did to get it. You’ll find yourselves the martyrs of the countryside!”
“I’m sorry,” said the young barman, getting up. “I’m sorry, and I can’t say no fairer, ‘cept that I must ha’ been an’ got right tight. But I ain’t tight now. I’m not a Long Stow chap, sir, and I shall tell them, where I come from, that you’re a man, whatever else you are. But as to spreadun, I don’t think I shall do much o’ that; what do you say, mate?”
“I never killed his dog,” said the former choirman.
Nor did Carlton ever actually know, or seek finally to ascertain, the author of a deed even more detestable than it had appeared at first sight. For when the study lamp had been brought out into the still night, the first thing it revealed was that the poor beast had been neither shot nor poisoned; its brains had been beaten out. And Carlton felt as though his own heart had been beaten out with them, as he fetched a spade from the shed, and dug a grave by lamplight a few yards from his study door.
XIX
THE FIRST WINTER
The last leaf had filtered from the elms; the horse chestnuts had long been bare. And now there was no more cover for the blackened stump of Long Stow church, in its ring of rotting leaves, and its meshes of trunk and twig, than for the guilty genius of this mournful spot. All the world could see him now, and gauge the crass pretence of his preposterous task; there was no deceiving such a wise little world; but it had been requested not to look, and was accordingly content with passing glimpses of a drama in which its interest was indeed upon the wane. There were some things, however, which even a docile and phlegmatic community could not help noticing as winter set in. It might not be honest work, but it was making a thin man thinner. And he was always at it. Yet it no longer seemed to give him any pleasure. Indeed, his face was changed. Its dominant expression was grim and dogged. There were no more lights and shadows. It was the face of a workman who has lost interest in his work. Nevertheless, the work went on.
It went on in all weathers. At first Carlton had tried devoting the wet days to indoor work. He had cleaned his house from top to bottom, emptied most of the rooms, stored furniture in the others, and covered with sheets like a careful housewife. Not that he cared greatly for his things; but his hermitage should not grow foul. The two rooms which he retained in use were the kitchen and his study (in which Carlton slept), with the flagged scullery for his bath. The rest of the house he shut up, after robbing his picture-frames to patch the broken windows, which he treated so ingeniously that they looked quite wonderful from the road; but on windy nights the constant rattle and the occasional crash were one long outcry for putty and a glazier. There was no more to be done indoors. And still it rained. So one day he marched through the village (unmolested after all), and it was duly ascertained that he had taken a return ticket to Felixstowe, of all places, apparently for change of air. But through the very next day’s rain he could be seen (and heard) very busy at his walls: in a suit of oilskins and a sou’wester. Thus the work went on once more.
By Christmas every stone that was to stand had been scraped and pointed; a few sound ones had been scraped and relaid; here and there an entirely new stone had been cut to fit the place of one charred out of shape; but in the lower courses such instances were rare, too rare to suit his own creative taste, but Carlton was determined to deal with the lowest courses first, and to raise all the walls to his own height before finishing one. In the case of those which were to contain windows, it might be well to pause at the sill; the windows alone might take him a couple of years. Meanwhile these were the walls which had suffered most, and first let him reach the sills: if he did that within the next six months Carlton thought he would be lucky. For his progress was as that of the insect which builds the reef; it was often imperceptible even to himself; yet always the work was going on.
The man was all muscle now; spare at his best, he had scarcely an ounce of mere flesh left. Yet, for his work’s sake, he made wonderfully regular meals, often with a relis
h; and twice in the autumn killed a sheep, having cold mutton for many days in the colder weather. But the preliminary tragedy and the ultimate waste were equally disgusting, and his normal needs seemed better met by predatory visits to the hen-yard. Practice made him a fair baker and a moderate cook; but, as he had never been particular about his food, and his only object was to maintain bodily strength, he sometimes defeated his end, and added the dejection of dyspepsia to all other ills. Otherwise the physical life suited Carlton; he was out all day long; and the worst discomforts rarely followed him into the open air. At his work, for instance, he was always warm; indoors, only when he went to bed. He never had a fire, except to cook by; thus he still had a few coals left, but he doubted whether anybody would sell him any more. There was, however, all the half-burnt woodwork of the church; most of this would burn again; and, with economy, might keep him in firing throughout the term of his suspension. Meanwhile, lamp, rug, and overcoat gave all the heat that Carlton would allow himself in the study. Once, when his stock of paraffin had run out, he had to tramp for fresh supplies into a town where his face was unknown; and that experience made him more than ever economical of such fuel as he had.
Unparalleled position for an endowed clergyman of the Church of England, the incumbent of an enviable living, an Oxford man, a man of family, a zealous High Churchman, an enlightened and alluring preacher, towards the latter end of the nineteenth century! Scandalous priest though he had also proved himself, his case was as pitiable as unique; a pariah in his own parish; the outcast of his own people; an inland Crusoe, driven to the traditional expedients of the castaway, and living the very life of such within sight and hail of a silent and unseeing world. It was a position which few men would have faced for an instant. This man maintained it throughout the winter. And throughout the winter his work went on. And the spring found him technically sane.
But his brain bore it better than his heart. Some vital part of him was certain to suffer. His brain escaped altogether, his body for a time; but his heart was hard within him; all his prayers could not soften it; and presently he lost the power even to pray.
This was the meaning of the changed face seen from the road, in the days and weeks succeeding the Long Stow celebration of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir. Thereafter it was the face of one in the coils of malignant despair. But the more gradual and substantial change, in such a man, was terrible beyond deduction from its mere outward shadow.
Here was no sudden and sweeping infidelity; no plucking of loose roots from a shallow soil. Shallow this man was not, nor easily shaken in the least of his convictions. His general tenets stood intact. He still believed in the efficacy, under God, of earnest and worthy prayer. But he could no longer believe in the efficacy of his own prayers. They were not worthy: that was the whole truth. They were earnest enough, but utterly unworthy, and it was better not to pray at all.
His most passionate prayers had been for his own forgiveness, for the restoration of his own peace of mind, for the blessing of God upon his own little labours; selfish prayers, one and all; and he saw the selfishness at last. It shocked him. He tried to stamp it out, this new and obtrusive egoism; but he failed. Denied all contact with his fellow-creatures, with only his own wishes to consult, his own work to do, his own heart to probe, his own life to discipline, the man was an egoist before he knew it; and it was only through his prayers that he ever discovered it at all. They were not only unanswered; they no longer brought their own momentary comfort, as heretofore. Of old it had been much more than momentary; now it was no comfort at all. There must be some reason for this; he asked himself what reason; and the answer was this revelation of the true character of his prayers. They were poisoned at the fount. He tried to purify them, but all in vain. Self would creep in. So then he prayed only for a renewal of the faculty of pure and unselfish prayer. And this was the most passionate of all his prayers. But it also was unanswered. So he prayed no more.
He was unforgiven: so Carlton explained it to himself. And a little brooding convinced him of his idea. If God had forgiven him, He would have shown some sign of His clemency through men. But what had men done? They had broken his windows; they had burnt his church; they had closed up every avenue to such poor atonement as was in his power; they had forced him into a position which he had never sought, though for a little it had consoled him; then tried, by false accusation, to force him out of it; and now they had cut him off from themselves, had set him apart as a thing eternally unclean, had even stooped to destroy the one dumb being that clung to him in his exile!
The murder of the dog was no little thing in itself; coming at the foot of such a list, at the bitter end of a night of bitterness, it was the last drop that petrified a truly humble and a strenuously contrite heart.
But it did not petrify his hand; and the work of that hand went on without ceasing, save on that day which was now the Day of Rest indeed — and nothing more. The other six, his energies were redoubled. If he was now more than ever a traitor to his Master, well, there was still this one thing that he could do for the Master’s sake. And he did it with all his might.
No day was too wet for him; no day was too cold. His fingers might turn blue, his moustache might freeze; it is beside the point that the winter chanced to be too mild for the latter contingency. While five fingers could control the chisel, and the other hand strike true, no weather could have deterred him. And no weather did.
So the New Year came, and the work went on through January and February without a break. But the month of March, as it often will, made late amends for the insipidity of its predecessors. A spell of colourless humidity was broken by bright skies and a keen wind; the latter grew bitter with the day; the former darkened before it was time. And when Robert Carlton opened his study doors next morning, to air the room while he took his bath, a little snowdrift came tumbling in through the outer one.
Carlton looked forth upon a white world in dazzling contrast to the clear dark grey of a starless sky; at first there was no third tint. But every moment seemed lighter than the last, and presently the trees showed brittle and black as ever against the sky; for the drifted snow lay everywhere but on their waving branches; and the wind blew hard and bitter as before.
Carlton bathed grimly in broken ice; he was not going to be baffled by a little snow. He was very gradually rebuilding the east end, using the old stones where he could, but cutting more new ones than he had bargained for. He could not help it. This wall was going up. It was too near the lane. It should hide the builder’s head before he left it for another wall. It was up to his thighs already.
So all that day he laboured with his feet in the snow, and only his legs entrenched against the cutting wind. The stones were ready; he now prepared them by the course. They had only to be carried from the shed with mortar mixed expressly overnight; but to avoid dropping them in the slush and snow, each stone was laid out of hand; and a considerable muscular exertion thus followed by a prolonged niggling with trowel and plummet and transverse string, and this in the fangs of the wind, as often as twice or thrice an hour. It was the hardest day yet. But it was also the most successful. The entire course was laid by half-past three in the afternoon.
In earlier days Carlton would undoubtedly have given way to that spontaneous elation for which he had been wont to pay so dearly; now a tired man crept back to his bed, without a thought beyond the next hour’s rest (he had seldom been so tired), and the meal that he must then prepare as mere munition of war. Yet on his study threshold he paused and turned, as doomed men may at the door of the dreadful shed.
There was little in the scene itself to stamp it on the mind. Already the snow was beginning to disappear; but the sky was still hard and clean; and the east wind cut to the bone. The ridge of firs, cresting the ploughed uplands beyond the lane, notched the bleak sky with dark cockades on russet stems; white clouds floated above, a white moon hung higher. A robin hopped in the snow at Carlton’s feet; he was a good friend to the birds, and ha
d not forgotten them that morning. Somewhere a blackbird sung him indoors; somewhere a starling smacked its beak. And this was all; but Robert Carlton carried the impression to his grave.
Instead of sleeping for an hour, he slept far into the night; and spent the rest of it in misery between bouts of shivering and of intolerable heat. His throat was on fire, to quench it he coughed, and already his cough hurt queerly. In the morning the man was ill enough to know that he was going to be worse. He took characteristic measures while he could.
It was a fine instinct which had inspired him to economise his coal; now was the time when that little hoard might save his life. But he had only one scuttle, and for the moment felt baffled; then he dried his bath, and put the coals in that, thus eventually getting them to the study in one load. These exertions hurt Carlton like his cough. In both cases it was as though his body had been transfixed. His head swam with the pain. Yet next moment he was reeling back for wood; and not less than ten infernal minutes did he spend on such errands, a furious fever alone sustaining him. It was constructive suicide, yet not to have these things was certain death. Now it was all the alcohol in the house, in a bottle that had lasted nearly a year; now a basin of eggs, of which he had always a fair store indoors; now pail upon pail of water for his kettle. Carlton had been a great visitor of the sick, and seen many a death from the disease he was preparing to resist. He had therefore a rough idea of what to do for himself; he was only doubtful as to how long he might be able to do anything at all. The lightest breath had now become a pang. Already he was alarmingly ill, and must inevitably grow much worse. But he did not intend to die. He trusted the constitution of a lean and hardy race, and he trusted his own nerve.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 196