Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  But what she was to see, before many minutes were past, or the sermon over in her mind, was a dapper figure approaching between the old flowers and the spruce hedges, a figure in riding breeches, swinging a cutaway coat in his walk.

  It was Sidney, ridden over from Cambridge on a hired horse. Gwynneth had time to come out of the summer-house to meet him, but none to think. So he had given her a kiss before she realised what that meant — and knew in her heart that it must be the last. And the next moment she saw that he was displeased.

  “So here you are!” was his verbal greeting: “I’ve been looking for you all over the shop.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said poor Gwynneth. “If you had only let us know — —”

  “Oh, that’s all right; I took my risk, of course.”

  He looked her up and down, as she stood in the sunlight, tall and comely, her state of mind instinctively and successfully concealed; and the brown tinge came upon his handsome face as the annoyance vanished. Endearments fell from his lips, but now she made him keep his distance, though so tactfully that he obviously did not realise his repulse. Gwynneth looked at him for an instant with great compassion; then she led the way into the summer-house, her mind made up.

  “You haven’t been here all the morning, have you?” he went on. “No, I see you haven’t; there are your gloves.”

  “Yes.”

  “Been for a walk?”

  “Well, I did go for one.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Sidney, struck at last by her manner.

  “I’ve been to church!”

  “What! Over to Linkworth and back?”

  “No.”

  Her tone trembled; he was not helping her at all.

  “Then what church did you go to, and what on earth’s up with you, darling?”

  “I went to our own church.”

  “But I thought that Lakenhall chap only came in the afternoon?”

  “He doesn’t go to the church.”

  Sidney stared an instant, and was on his feet the next. “You don’t mean to say you’ve been up to the church talking to — to Carlton?” he cried.

  “No, not talking to him.”

  “Then do you mind telling me what you do mean?”

  Gwynneth did her best to explain the occasion and to describe the service, but found herself unable to do the subject justice in a few words, and drifted into a nervous enthusiasm as she went. Sidney’s eyes seemed smaller than when she began; she had never known he had so sharp a chin. But he heard her out, standing in the doorway, and not always looking her way; it was when averted that his face looked so hard. When she had finished he gave her his whole attention, and was some time regarding her, his hands in his pockets, without a word.

  “So you deliberately went to hear that blackguard!”

  “You needn’t call him that,” said Gwynneth, hotly.

  “But I do.”

  “I should be ashamed to abuse him after all he has done!”

  “That doesn’t alter what — what you apparently and very properly know nothing about, Gwynneth.”

  “And I don’t want to know!” cried the girl, indignant at his tone. “I only say, whatever he has done, he has paid very bitterly for it, and made such amends as were never made by anybody I ever heard of. He may have been all you say. He is more than all that I can say now!”

  “And what do you say?” inquired Sidney, with polite contempt.

  “That we shall honour ourselves in future by honouring him, and dishonour ourselves by continuing to dishonour him. He has had his punishment, and look how he has borne it! Why, he has done what was never done in the world before by one solitary man.”

  Gwynneth stopped breathless. Sidney eyed her coolly, his nostrils curling. “So that’s your opinion,” he sneered.

  “It’s a good deal more than that,” cried Gwynneth. “It’s my fixed conviction and personal resolve.”

  “To honour that fellow, eh?”

  Gwynneth coloured.

  “To the extent of attending his services when I happen to be here,” she said. And Sidney gave her a pregnant look — a more honest look — angry and determined as her own.

  “And what about me?” he said. “What if I object?”

  Gwynneth was slow to answer, to tell him the sharp truth outright.

  “Do you mean to go your own way in spite of me, in spite of the governor, in spite of all of us?”

  Gwynneth saw that she could not remain at the hall and follow such a course. So this question went unanswered like the last, though for a different reason. Meanwhile Sidney was accounting for her silence to his own satisfaction, and he now conceived that the moment had arrived for him to play the strong man.

  “Look here, Gwynneth,” said he, “this is all rot and bosh, and worse — if you’ll take my word for it. And you must take my word, and take it on trust in a thing like this, or you never will in anything. I tell you this fellow Carlton is the most unspeakable skunk. But it isn’t a thing we can discuss together. Isn’t that enough for you? Isn’t my wish enough, in a thing like this, which I know all about and you don’t? Have I got to enforce it while we’re still engaged? If so — —”

  Gwynneth had raised her head slowly, and at last she spoke.

  “We are not engaged, Sidney,” she said quietly.

  “Not — engaged?”

  “It has never been a proper engagement.”

  “A proper engagement!” Sidney gasped. “Not a public one, if you like! What difference does that make?”

  “No difference. It only makes it — easier — —”

  “What does it make easier?” he demanded fiercely.

  Gwynneth was choking with humiliation. It was some moments before she could command her voice. Her distress was pitiful; but the young man was already busy pitying himself. A sudden change had come over Sidney. It was not in all respects a change for the worse. His cynical aplomb had already disappeared, leaving a tremulous, an angry, but a human being behind. So Gwynneth felt a leaning to him even at the last; but this time she knew her mind.

  And she spoke it with equal candour and humility: it was all her fault: she could never forgive herself; but he would forgive her, when he saw for himself what the woman will always see quicker than the man. She liked him better than anybody she knew; that week at Cambridge had been the happiest week in her life; one day they would, they must, be good friends again. Meanwhile they had both made a miserable mistake. This was not love.

  “Speak for yourself,” cried Sidney, all bitterness and mortification. “And I never believed in a woman before,” he groaned; “my God, I never shall again!”

  And he strode out savagely into the sun; but a different Sidney was back next moment, one that reminded Gwynneth of the very old days, when he would pass her whistling with his dog. A sneer was on his lips, and his dry eyes glittered.

  “I beg your pardon for making a scene, Gwynneth; it isn’t in my line, as you know, and I apologise. But do you mind telling me when you discovered that you had — changed?”

  “I have not changed, Sidney. That is my shame.”

  “Do you mean that you never did care about me?”

  “Never in that way. I am ashamed to say it — more humiliated and ashamed than you can ever know. But it’s the truth.”

  “Yet at the First Trinity ball, I remember, if you don’t — —”

  His tone was more than Gwynneth could endure.

  “Yes, I remember,” she cried; “and I can explain it, though explanations are no excuse. Sidney, you know what my life was until the last few months? Happy enough in heaps of ways, but not the least gaiety in it; and suddenly I felt the want of it. I felt it first abroad, and you met that want in your May-week in a way beyond my dreams. You may sneer at me now, but you were awfully nice to me then, and I shall never, never forget it. You were so nice that I honestly did think for a little that you met every other want as well! Yet I tell you now, what I tried to tell you once before, that when
once you had spoken nothing was the same. It was like touching a bubble. The bubble had burst.”

  “You felt like that from the first?”

  Gwynneth turned away, for now they were both upon their feet, restlessly hovering between the summer-house and the sunlight.

  “And yet it has taken you two months to tell me,” pursued Sidney without remorse.

  “I know; it was dreadful of me; yet I could not tell you till I was absolutely certain, and it is not so easy to be certain of oneself in such things. If you find no difficulty, Sidney, then you might pity those who do. Nevertheless, I did write, on my birthday, when you sent me those beautiful pearls. Sidney, you must take them back — for my sake. I meant to send them back at once, but you know what I heard that very morning! It may have been cowardly and weak, but how could I tell you I did not love you the moment I knew I was to have a little money of my own? It’s hard enough as it is; but I had not the pluck for that. Yet it is hard enough now,” repeated Gwynneth, with great feeling; “and you haven’t made it easier, Sidney. No, I don’t mean anything you may have said; you have not said more than I deserve. But you tempted me — you little know how you have tempted me — to be dishonest with you to the end. It would have been so easy to make poor Mr. Carlton the whole cause, and not to have told you the truth at all!”

  “Then I wish to God you had done so!” Sidney cried out, revealing the character of his wound unawares, yet once more human, young, and vain. Moreover there was passion enough in his eyes and voice, as there had been in his wooing. “Besides,” he continued, “poor Mr. Carlton, as you call him, is the cause, I don’t care what you say. Curse him! Curse him, body and soul!”

  Gwynneth was outside in the sun, doubly adorable now that he had lost her, and for other reasons too. Her sweet skin was flushed, and even her tears inflamed the unhappy young man. He looked at her long and passionately, then muttered venom through his teeth.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said it was like him, too, the blackguard!”

  “I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t want to.”

  “It’s as well,” jeered Sidney, with exceeding malice; but already she was turning away. She was turning away without one word. In an instant he had her by both wrists, as the devil possessed himself.

  “Let me go,” cried Gwynneth. “You’re hurting me!”

  “I’m not. I’m not. I’m only going to let you know the kind of beast that’s come between us.”

  Gwynneth stood with unresisting wrists. Her scorn was splendid.

  “I am not sorry to have seen you in your true colours, Sidney.”

  “You are going to see some one else in his.”

  Her scorn had destroyed his last scruple. His eyes were devilish now.

  “Let me go, you brute!”

  “There are worse, Gwynneth, there are worse. It isn’t a thing we can discuss, as I told you. But did you never notice the likeness?”

  Her blank face put the involuntary question he desired.

  “Only between the one big villain in this parish — and the one rather jolly little boy!”

  At last her wrists were released. But Gwynneth remained standing in the sun. She was not looking at Sidney; on the contrary, her face declared her oblivious to his continued presence. It was white with several kinds of horror; it was pinched with many separate pangs. So she stood a few moments, then went her way slowly, only turning with a shudder. As for him, his fever subsided as he watched; and, before the diminishing figure had passed out of the vista of cropped hedges and crude flowers, even Sidney Gleed knew himself, for once in his life, for what he was and would be to its end.

  XXVIII

  THE TURNING TIDE

  Next Sunday there was a real congregation. Yet the benches were almost as empty as before, the people herding near the porch until entreated either to occupy such seats as there were, or to leave the church. “Curiosity may have brought some of you here,” said Mr. Carlton; “but I earnestly hope that none will remain in that spirit.” The benches were full in a minute, and many had still to stand. All the next week Robert Carlton spent in sawing more planks to one length, and more props to one height for their support. And on the third Sunday his church was packed.

  The summer of 1887 was, however, a remarkable one. And the month of August was an ideal month for the inauguration of open-air services, where there were trees.

  In those hot still days came visitors of every type, and in greater numbers than Robert Carlton desired. The tide had turned; he was early aware of his danger now. Again and again it became his own sore duty to remind this one or the other, distantly perhaps, yet none the less unmistakably, of that which they might forget, but he never. Their open admiration tried him acutely. He did like it a little for its own sake, after five years’ ostracism; more for the fresh purchase it gave him over simple hearts; but he was very hard on himself for liking it at all. On the other hand, he knew that it must put many a mind, the subtler minds, more than ever against him. It also renewed his own shame. So it was not admiration that he wanted at all; it was confidence, forgiveness, love; and these if possible by degrees. It was not possible, and Robert Carlton had to suffer in turn from the saddler, the schoolmaster, and the rest. The first would come to hedge and hedge with a view to Sir Wilton’s imminent return; the next would intercept him as he came away, learn what he had been saying, and forthwith step across to the church to let the reverend know how the schoolmaster’s character impressed itself upon a man of his experience. It was an unattractive trait in Fuller that he questioned everybody’s sincerity but his own, albeit his strictures were not seldom justifiable. He talked, however, as though for years he had been the one and only philanthropist to hold any dealings with the rector; at last it became necessary to set him right on the point, which Mr. Carlton did with a mild account of his illness and the sexton’s aid.

  “I do wish I’d ha’ known,” said Fuller, with perfect truth; “I do wish I’d ha’ known an’ had the nursun of yer, reverend, instead o’ him. And he never come near you no more; so I should expect.”

  “But you tell me he’s very ailing, Fuller.”

  “He haven’t been ailun all these years.”

  “We — we had a little tiff in the end. It was my fault. I wonder if he’d see me now?”

  “I’ll make him, reverend, I’ll tell him he’s got to.”

  “No, Fuller, I can’t allow that. Besides, he has not got to do anything of the sort; he has turned dissenter, and may prefer me to stop away. Nevertheless I shall call, if only to ask how he is.”

  There was no need to ask, in the event. The old sexton was failing fast, and “not long for this world,” as his daughter announced in front of him. The poor man was in bed, and very dirty, but as sensible as he ever had been; and he welcomed the rector with cadaverous grins.

  “They tell me,” he whispered, “you fare to finish the church with your own two hands. You’re a wonderful man, sir — and I’m another.”

  “You are, indeed. Why, you must be nearly ninety, Busby?”

  “Eighty-eight, sir, come next September. But I wasn’t thinkun o’ my age, sir. Do you remember that little varmin I swallered out ‘f a pond?”

  “I remember.”

  “I’ve killed that, sir!”

  And the sunken eyes shone like lamps.

  “I congratulate you, Busby.”

  “I killed that two year ago; and you’ll never guess how!” The ex-sexton proceeded to rehearse the various remedies he had tried in vain. “I killed that with bacca-smoke,” he concluded in sepulchral triumph. “It was the minister’s idea. I had to swaller the bacca-smoke instead o’ puffun that out, an’ that choked that in three pipes!”

  The rector said it must be a great relief to be rid of such an incubus. Busby, however, with a sick man’s reluctance to admit any alleviating circumstance in his case, was not so sure about that. He sometimes fared to wish he had the little varmin back. Croap, croap, croap! That ha
d been wonderful good company after all. The ex-sexton was not too ill to wax eloquent upon his favourite topic. And the tenor of his talk was that mankind had been building churches since the world began, but what other man had lived for years with a live frog on his chest?

  Their religious dispute was evidently forgotten, and Mr. Carlton did not feel it incumbent upon him to risk another in the circumstances of the case. On the way home the other egotist waylaid him, with his opinion of old Busby’s hallucination and general sanity since the saddler could remember him.

  “But half the village and half the county is the same, reverend. Silly Suffolk!”

  “Yet you’re a Suffolk man yourself, Fuller,” observed Mr. Carlton, mildly.

  “Yes, reverend, but there was corn in Egypt, if you recollect.”

  Meanwhile the building still went on, and was rapidly nearing a point beyond which Carlton himself could not proceed unaided. That point was the last window; the others were all finished. He had left out the single mullions and all the tracery. They might be added afterwards by an expert hand. They were not essential to the windows, which were ready for glazing as they were. But the east window was another affair. It must have its two mullions as before, with the quatrefoil tracery which had remained undamaged in the west window opposite. All this was beyond the self-taught hewer of coursed rubble and of gargoyles; the arch itself must be two feet wider than any he had yet attempted; but on a worthy east window he had set his heart.

  Such was the dilemma in which Robert Carlton found himself at the end of August, and there seemed only one thing to be done. He must call for aid at last, and now he knew that aid would come, for he had received various offers of assistance since the beginning of the month. Some of these were from local firms which had refused his work in the beginning; Carlton had promised that if he called for tenders he would consider theirs; and now call he must. Yet he could not bring himself to do so all at once.