The Massingham affair
Page 9
"Was this where the shot struck?"
"Yes." Mr Verney had moved forward and was touching the place with his hands. "It was fired from inside the dining-room. It was a curious thing, seeing and hearing it in so confined a space—I seemed to be watching the myriad colours of it spreading out like a fan, like a woman's jewelled fan being opened in the light. I wrote a description of it to the Smedwick Mercury, you may remember."
Justin did remember: and a very ridiculous letter it had seemed to him at the time. But he was in no mood to laugh now, for there was something touching in the old man's earnestness.
"The main charge missed you, of course?" he said.
"Oh yes, and my daughter too, most providentially. If it had been worse than a few pellets that ricocheted we should have been killed without a doubt ... and then those two unfortunate men . . ."
"I take it, Rector, you've no doubt it was those men?"
The old man was gazing at him with astonishment in his very blue short-sighted eyes. "My dear boy, what can you mean? Didn't we see them in this very room? Didn't they leave their footprints in the lane? Why, if young Tom Merrick I was speaking of had only heard them passing and come out he would have caught the pair of them red-handed."
THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
There was a pause and then Justin said slowly: "I thought the Merricks' house was uphill, in the village?"
"So it is, my boy: the farm. But Tom lived in the bothy by the bridge—you must have seen it. That's where my daughter went: straight down Church Lane in their very tracks, the scoundrels!"
"And Tom heard her, presumably?"
"Oh yes, thank God for it! He heard her coming—stumbling on the road, he said."
Justin drank his wine and went thoughtfully back to Smedwick by the highway, asking himself a question that kept yielding a surprising answer. It was quite driven out of his mind, however, by the sight of the Reverend Mr Lumley waiting for him in the drawing-room of 'The Laurels'.
"He has confessed!" Mr Lumley cried, leaping to his feet in his enthusiasm at sight of his ally. "God be praised for it." Apparently the great event for which he had been working had occurred some hours earlier, after evensong, in St Bede's Vicarage, to which Sugden had been bidden. "And he has agreed that I may tell you everything," the good man confided in high excitement.
Justin had been told 'everything' before in the course of his professional experience and he had come to distrust the word. "You seem very dubious," said Mr Lumley, noticing this.
"Not in the least."
"You expected it, then?"
"Not that either. I congratulate you."
"It is a matter for rejoicing, certainly," the Vicar reproved him, "but you will remember it is God's work, not mine. A sinner has come to repentance."
"If belatedly," murmured the solicitor.
"Yes, my dear sir, but he has come, and there is the point of it. He has come. Let me tell you how it happened. We were in my study. He seemed in a mood to submit to God with humility, acknowledging his sins. Perhaps my sermon had had some part in it. We talked and he said he was a sinful man. So I asked him outright if he had been at Massingham that night. Well, at that the poor fellow turned the most deathly pale, he literally gasped for breath." The
Vicar's moon face seemed to grow even paler and the words came out staccato. " 'Oh sir,' he said, 'you've hurt me, you've hurt me, sir,' and he kept repeating it. He asked for a glass of water and I gave it to him, I quite feared for him, he seemed so ill. But his colour came back after a while, so I said to him, 'Is it true you were at Mr Ver-ney's?' and he said, 'Oh sir, but I was not the man who fired the shot.'"
"Yes?" said Justin, and waited.
"Implying that he knew that man. That he had been at Verney's at the time and knew him."
"Quite. Did he have anything more to say?"
"No, he didn't."
Justin never gave way to the sense of disappointment and possibly of outrage that some men might have felt at having their expectations let down with such a bump because he had had no expectations and knew that in the Vicar's shoes he would not have achieved anything at all. "An admirable beginning," he commended him warmly, and meant it.
Mr Lumley looked relieved. "I was afraid that you were going to say something different. I was afraid you were displeased with me."
"However could you think that?"
"Because I should have had it in writing, I suppose. And because it sounds so little when you examine it. Not even a real confession."
"It was a confession right enough."
"Do you truly think so? My dear sir, I can't tell you how much you relieve my mind. It certainly seemed what we were wanting. Poor fellow, there was honest contrition there. I sensed a desire to atone, but the flesh is weak. He may draw back."
"Then we must prevent it: we must join forces. Would he see me, do you suppose?"
"I think he might. I will find out tomorrow and send you a note to let you know what he says and where we should meet. Try to be patient."
All next morning Justin sat in his office and applied himself to the conveyances, beautiful in their pink and green ribbons, and to the clients Harris showed in to him. But as the shadows lengthened and the murk of the afternoon invaded the room he became restless and wandered to the window overlooking the square. People were hurrying home, wrapped tightly in their overcoats; he saw someone's hat go flying; and rivulets of rain were dribbling down the panes, mak-
THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
ing a maze of the points of light that sprang up one by one in the shops across the way.
"Nothing from Mr Lumley?" he asked of Harris, who brought in coffee soon after four o'clock. He had not felt so fidgety since he had been a youth in old Rees's office waiting for six o'clock to strike and release him into the live world outside, which never seemed so ad-ventureful as at the end of the day. He remembered best the winter nights: the ticking of the clock, the scratching of pens in ledgers long closed. There had always seemed to be a wind rattling at the windows, adding its voice to the burble and hiss of the gas, and so it was tonight, with the curtains asway and the fire billowing smoke into the room.
At half-past five, when he had almost given up hope of the message coming that day, a note was handed in asking him to be outside the King's Arms Hotel at six; and precisely to the minute, while the clocks were striking, he heard the rapid sound of footsteps approaching and the figure of the Vicar bounced into the lamplight like a genie.
"Is that you, my dear fellow?"
Not a word of explanation, Justin noted, of why such a meeting-place should have been chosen or why the Vicar had not simply called at his office, which was less than a furlong from the King's Arms. 'It would serve him right if the word went round that he was inside the taproom,' Justin thought, visualising the scene, for the notion of Mr Lumley and strong liquors in the same ring was captivating and opened up prospects he would have liked to explore. But clearly the Vicar was in no mood for badinage, and they had no sooner shaken hands than Justin found himself being marched at speed over the cobbles of the market-place in the direction of Bewley.
Arrived there, in the bleak street down which the wind came howling, driving before it great gusts and pellets of rain, the pace of the advance slowed down a little. It seemed to Justin that the elements alone were not to blame for this, for the grip on his arm had slackened, as though his friend were developing doubts—presumably of a non-theological nature—about the whole enterprise. "Did he ask for me?" he managed to shout into the Vicar's ear as they reached the corner of a tenement out of the worst fury of the gale.
"He agreed you might come," was the cautious answer.
"Oh."
THE QUEST: 1899
"You must remember he's been distressed and in great confusion of mind. It would be foolish to expect too much."
Justin murmured that he would try to avoid expecting anything, as he had managed to do for some time, but a gust of wind blew the words away; and when they
were next in shelter, near Sugden's door, the Vicar was bellowing at him: "He's incalculable. He's afraid of company—a most nervous man, most difficult and confused."
"As who isn't around here?"
But fortunately Mr Lumley did not hear this: he had pushed open the door of the tenement and was leading the way into the stale air of a hall in pitch darkness except for a slat of light under a door directly to their left. "Strike a match, my dear fellow," he urged in a whisper that sounded much louder than the clarion call of his voice in the wild night outside. "We go up a floor."
"So be it."
"Better mind your step. There's a loose board half-way up. The bannisters are most untrustworthy. If you'd care to follow me."
Justin struck another match and by its flickering gleam they went up, one behind the other, treading warily, drawing from the boards beneath them a protesting sound like a groan. "These old houses!" the Vicar said as they reached the narrow landing off which two doors opened. "A disgrace to the town. Yet such is the sense of property in our enlightened times. There are landlords drawing a good rent from these"—and he pointed to the walls from which the plaster was flaking in deep blisters like sores.
Justin was looking about him, holding his third match high above his head. They had stopped opposite the right-hand door: to the left was another, no doubt once the abode of the roadman Green: and in the same warren Miss Binns also had existed, and Sugden's mother too. "How many people live here?" he asked.
"A dozen or so. It might provide stabling for four horses if the hunt didn't protest about the overcrowding. But you will see what these worthy folk have made of their pittance."
The Vicar's voice had risen; and suddenly the door they were facing opened, and over his friend's shoulder Justin saw the figure of a man in shirtsleeves without collar or tie: dark eyes, a yellowing, drawn face, clean shaven, with a domed forehead from which the hair receded. "So you heard us, George!" sang out the Vicar in a hearty voice.
THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
The man hesitated. He had one of those tight-skinned faces that are particularly revealing of thoughts, and Justin saw that what he most desired was to slam the door on them. But the parochial smile had already invaded the room; the clerical foot was inside the door. "This is George Sugden. George, this is Mr Deny, the solicitor from Bank Chambers."
"Pleased to meet the gentleman," Sugden said.
"You'll find him a great help to us."
"If you say so, sir, I'm sure."
It was Justin's first experience of the peculiar hazards of parish visiting and he felt a deep embarrassment, but there was nothing he could do about it; he was in the presence of experts.
"A raw night, George." Indeed they could hear the buffets of the gale against the old porous walls of the house, and somewhere a window was rattling with desperate urgency as though someone were forcing his way in. "There'll be snow on the way maybe."
By this time, without even appearing to be trying, the Vicar had succeeded in edging himself into such a position that only force or gross rudeness could have kept him out. But Justin had had no doubt from the start who would win this battle of manoeuvre: he entered with the supporting troops and looked around him, finding himself in a room about fifteen feet square, lit by tallow candles and warmed by a wood fire. At the far end from them was an empty bed, the marital couch', as the Vicar would certainly have called it, and another and more rudimentary one in which three children lay. The room was scrupulously clean. It looked larger than it was, there was so little furniture, but the walls were hung with Biblical prints and texts, and on the mantelpiece stood a handsomely dressed doll with a mantilla on her head.
"This is Carmen," said the Vicar, introducing them. "A fine young lady, isn't she? If Mary were awake we would hear more about her ancestry, which is Spanish from the look of her. But Robert is awake, I see. We must talk quietly, for it wouldn't do to keep a young fellow from his beauty sleep. How old is Robert now?"
"Nearly nine, sir."
"How they grow." The Vicar had moved close to the bed, looking down at the children huddled together under the blanket, the boy in the centre with eyelids drooping, mouth slightly open to reveal four new buck teeth seemingly many sizes too large. "Master Robert is quite the prize scholar," he said. "Mr Sharp of Sheffield, like our
good friend Copperfield before him. Can we talk safely, do you think?"
"Any minute now, sir," Sugden said.
"And your wife's out, it appears. How is she, by the way?"
"Middling. Much as can be expected, sir."
"We must count our blessings, George. It's one obligation of a Christian, and perhaps the one we forget most easily. But there! I didn't come to preach you a sermon. If anything's to be learnt tonight it must come from you, if you understand me."
"I do in a way, sir."
"I hope you'll talk to Mr Deny as you talked to me and think of him as one of us, someone who wants to help us. You can be sure of his discretion."
"You mean nothing will go further, sir? Then I don't quite see. ... No offence, sir, but why's he here? We don't want to waste the gentleman's time."
Mr Lumley's sigh was one of unnatural resignation. 'The meek shall inherit the earth,' his expression seemed to say, 'but let the inheritance come soon.' By nature a missionary, whose impulse in his own words was to rut a man in the stomach with a penny loaf and then give him a tract', it was only with difficulty that he had brought himself to this prolonged wrestling with a conscience; it made him feel like Jacob with his angel. But having made the match, he had no intention of giving up until he had subdued Satan and his own unbridled ardour into the bargain. "Mr Deny is here because you agreed he should come," he reasoned patiently. "You told me I might invite him, so I sent him a message and very kindly he came."
"No harm done, sir. I'm glad to see the gentleman."
"But it seems to me, George, that you have developed doubts in this matter and I want to remove them, so that we all know where we stand. You made a verbal statement to me about your part in the affair at Mr Verney's."
"And a great load off my conscience, sir."
A gust of wind swept down the chimney, billowing the smoke out into the room and affecting the Vicar's bronchial tubes to such a degree that he lost track of himself, causing him to splutter to Justin quite crossly: "What was I saying?"
"You were referring to the statement Sugden made."
"Oh yes. Now, George, we've had many a talk about this. I've tried to show you your duty as I see it and as I pray and believe you
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THE MASSINGHAM AFFAIR
yourself have come to see it. You know at last you did wrong: a very great wrong in allowing two innocent men to suffer."
"I know it, sir."
"But you are making restitution, George, little by little. If the hardest part, the law's punishment, still lies ahead for you, the great decision is made, and that is what matters in the sight of God. All we need now are the means to turn righteous thoughts into the righteous act of self-sacrifice and confession."
There was silence in the room, broken only by one of the children turning on the rusty springs of the bed. Then Sugden murmured: "I don't quite understand that, sir."
"Don't you? Surely it's clear enough. You repent. All well and good. But how does that fact by itself benefit others? No man saves his soul at the expense of his fellows. You must know that from what you've been taught and what your Bible says."
"It says that, sir, no doubt."
"Well then? I don't see any problem."
"Where's this gentleman come into it?"
"He comes into it," replied the Vicar, speaking with an awful slowness, "firstly because we agreed he might come, and secondly because if we are to translate your good intentions into deeds we need his help in the taking of a statement in due legal form which will clear Milligan and Kelly and make your guilt quite plain to everyone. Does that answer your question, George?"
Apparently it did.
"Yes, sir, thank you, sir. I'll not be makin' any statement. I've changed me mind."
VI
As they struggled home through the wind and the sleet, Mr Lumley never ceased to bewail the calamity that had descended like a thunderbolt on his head. The gale was so strong that Justin did not hear everything, but occasional snatches reached him out of the night: ". . . extraordinary decision ... a soul apparently prepared . . . work wasted . . . not himself . . . powers of Satan. . . ." By the time they had reached the comparative shelter of the market-place the threads of discourse become connected and the Vicar could be heard blaming himself for everything. "It was no fault of yours, my dear
fellow. Admittedly he seems to have been nervous of you and terrified of any mention of the law, but it was on my urging that you came and you said nothing that could have been misconstrued— nothing. I take the blame entirely. What can have changed him? Was it perhaps my reminding him of the harder road ahead?"
For an eternity at the Vicarage, in the cubicle of a study amid the litter of a dedicated life, the good man debated this problem, referring occasional points to his friend before answering them himself. As he talked he regained courage and, his natural buoyancy returning, began to rebuke sin instead of merely suffering it. "It was a wicked act. But the man himself is not wicked at heart, only misguided and afraid. I am confident he can be saved. All we need to do is to keep faith. I will never abandon Sugden."