Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  I see again by the simple process of shutting my eyes, the little party of five — for Jean, our servant, had rejoined us — who on that summer day rode over the hills to Caylus, threading the mazes of the holm-oaks, and galloping down the rides, and hallooing the hare from her form, but never pursuing her; arousing the nestling farmhouses from their sleepy stillness by joyous shout and laugh, and sniffing, as we climbed the hill-side again, the scent of the ferns that died crushed under our horses’ hoofs — died only that they might add one little pleasure more to the happiness God had given us. Rare and sweet indeed are those few days in life, when it seems that all creation lives only that we may have pleasure in it, and thank God for it. It is well that we should make the most of them, as we surely did of that day.

  It was nightfall when we reached the edge of the uplands, and looked down on Caylus. The last rays of the sun lingered with us, but the valley below was dark; so dark that even the rock about which our homes clustered would have been invisible save for the half-dozen lights that were beginning to twinkle into being on its summit. A silence fell upon us as we slowly wended our way down the well-known path.

  All day long we had ridden in great joy; if thoughtless, yet innocent; if selfish, yet thankful; and always blithely, with a great exultation and relief at heart, a great rejoicing for our own sakes and for Kit’s.

  Now with the nightfall and the darkness, now when we were near our home, and on the eve of giving joy to another, we grew silent. There arose other thoughts — thoughts of all that had happened since we had last ascended that track; and so our minds turned naturally back to him to whom we owed our happiness — to the giant left behind in his pride and power and his loneliness. The others could think of him with full hearts, yet without shame. But I reddened, reflecting how it would have been with us if I had had my way; if I had resorted in my shortsightedness to one last violent, cowardly deed, and killed him, as I had twice wished to do.

  Pavannes would then have been lost almost certainly. Only the Vidame with his powerful troop — we never knew whether he had gathered them for that purpose or merely with an eye to his government — could have saved him. And few men however powerful — perhaps Bezers only of all men in Paris would have dared to snatch him from the mob when once it had sighted him. I dwell on this now that my grandchildren may take warning by it, though never will they see such days as I have seen.

  And so we clattered up the steep street of Caylus with a pleasant melancholy upon us, and passed, not without a more serious thought, the gloomy, frowning portals, all barred and shuttered, of the House of the Wolf, and under the very window, sombre and vacant, from which Bezers had incited the rabble in their attack on Pavannes’ courier. We had gone by day, and we came back by night. But we had gone trembling, and we came back in joy.

  We did not need to ring the great bell. Jean’s cry, “Ho! Gate there! Open for my lords!” had scarcely passed his lips before we were admitted. And ere we could mount the ramp, one person outran those who came forth to see what the matter was; one outran Madame Claude, outran old Gil, outran the hurrying servants, and the welcome of the house. I saw a slender figure all in white break away from the little crowd and dart towards us, disclosing as it reached me a face that seemed still whiter than its robes, and yet a face that seemed all eyes — eyes that asked the question the lips could not frame.

  I stood aside with a low bow, my hat in my hand; and said simply — it was the great effect of my life— “VOILA Monsieur!”

  And then I saw the sun rise in a woman’s face.

  The Vidame de Bezers died as he had lived. He was still Governor of Cahors when Henry the Great attacked it on the night of the 17th of June, 1580. Taken by surprise and wounded in the first confusion of the assault, he still defended himself and his charge with desperate courage, fighting from street to street, and house to house for five nights and as many days. While he lived Henry’s destiny and the fate of France trembled in the balance. But he fell at length, his brain pierced by the ball of an arquebuse, and died an hour before sunset on the 22nd of June. The garrison immediately surrendered.

  Marie and I were present in this action on the side of the King of Navarre, and at the request of that prince hastened to pay such honours to the body of the Vidame as were due to his renown and might serve to evince our gratitude. A year later his remains were removed from Cahors, and laid where they now rest in his own Abbey Church of Bezers, under a monument which very briefly tells of his stormy life and his valour. No matter. He has small need of a monument whose name lives in the history of his country, and whose epitaph is written in the lives of men.

  NOTE. — THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF VIDAME DE BEZERS, AS THEY APPEAR IN THE ABOVE MEMOIR FIND A PARALLEL IN AN ACCOUNT GIVEN BY DE THOU OF ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE INCIDENTS IN THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW: “AMID SUCH EXAMPLES,” HE WRITES, “OF THE FEROCITY OF THE CITY, A THING HAPPENED WORTHY TO BE RELATED, AND WHICH MAY PERHAPS IN SOME DEGREE WEIGH AGAINST THESE ATROCITIES. THERE WAS A DEADLY HATRED, WHICH UP TO THIS TIME THE INTERVENTION OF THEIR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS HAD FAILED TO APPEASE, BETWEEN TWO MEN — VEZINS, THE LIEUTENANT OF HONORATUS OF SAVOY, MARSHAL VILLARS, A MAN NOTABLE AMONG THE NOBILITY OF THE PROVINCE FOR HIS VALOUR, BUT OBNOXIOUS TO MANY OWING TO HIS BRUTAL DISPOSITION (ferina natura), AND REGNIER, A YOUNG MAN OF LIKE RANK AND VIGOUR, BUT OF MILDER CHARACTER. WHEN REGNIER THEN, IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT GREAT UPROAR, DEATH MEETING HIS EYE EVERYWHERE, WAS MAKING UP HIS MIND TO THE WORST, HIS DOOR WAS SUDDENLY BURST OPEN, AND VEZINS, WITH TWO OTHER MEN, STOOD BEFORE HIM SWORD IN HAND. UPON THIS REGNIER, ASSURED OF DEATH, KNELT DOWN AND ASKED MERCY OF HEAVEN: BUT VEZINS IN A HARSH VOICE BID HIM RISE FROM HIS PRAYERS AND MOUNT A PALFREY ALREADY STANDING READY IN THE STREET FOR HIM. SO HE LED REGNIER — UNCERTAIN FOR THE TIME WHITHER HE WAS BEING TAKEN — OUT OF THE CITY, AND PUT HIM ON HIS HONOUR TO GO WITH HIM WITHOUT TRYING TO ESCAPE. AND TOGETHER, WITHOUT PAUSING IN THEIR JOURNEY, THE TWO TRAVELLED ALL THE WAY TO GUIENNE. DURING THIS TIME VEZINS HONOURED REGNIER WITH VERY LITTLE CONVERSATION; BUT SO FAR CARED FOR HIM THAT FOOD WAS PREPARED FOR HIM AT THE INNS BY HIS SERVANTS: AND SO THEY CAME TO QUERCY AND THE CASTLE OF REGNIER. THERE VEZINS TURNED TO HIM AND SAID, “YOU KNOW HOW I HAVE FOR A LONG TIME BACK SOUGHT TO AVENGE MYSELF ON YOU, AND HOW EASILY I MIGHT NOW HAVE DONE IT TO THE FULL, HAD I BEEN WILLING TO USE THIS OPPORTUNITY. BUT SHAME WOULD NOT SUFFER IT; AND BESIDES, YOUR COURAGE SEEMED WORTHY TO BE SET AGAINST MINE ON EVEN TERMS. TAKE THEREFORE THE LIFE WHICH YOU OWE TO MY KINDNESS.” WITH MUCH MORE WHICH THE CURIOUS WILL FIND IN THE 2ND (FOLIO) VOLUME OF DE THOU.

  THE NEW RECTOR

  Weyman followed up his first novel with a traditional domestic story, which was serialised in the Cornhill magazine, before being published in two volumes in 1891. Weyman’s choice of a realist, domestic drama (rather than the kind of action adventure story that would later win him fame and popularity) reflects the way in which he was still finding his niche as a writer – indeed, the publication of novels in more than one volume was itself beginning to die out by 1891, as books became more affordable to produce and buy. This decidedly old-fashioned feel (even for the novel’s original readers) perhaps explains why so few copies of the novel were ordered by booksellers and librarians, which has led to the book being hard to find today.

  Title page of the first edition

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  CHAPTER XV.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  CHAPTER XX.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  CHAPTER XXIII.
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br />   CHAPTER XXIV.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  CHAPTER I.

  “LE ROI EST MORT!”

  The king was dead. But not at once, not until after some short breathing-space, such as was pleasant enough to those whose only concern with the succession lay in the shouting, could the cry of “Long live the king!” be raised. For a few days there was no rector of Claversham. The living was during this time in abeyance, or in the clouds, or in the lap of the law, or in any strange and inscrutable place you choose to name. It may have been in the prescience of the patron, and, if so, no locality could be more vague, the whereabouts of Lord Dynmore himself, to say nothing of his prescience, being as uncertain as possible. Messrs. Gearns & Baker, his solicitors and agents, should have known as much upon this point as any one; yet it was their habit to tell one inquirer that his lordship was in the Cordilleras, and another that he was on the slopes of the Andes, and another that he was at the forty-ninth parallel — quite indifferently — these places being all one to Messrs. Gearns & Baker, whose walk in life had lain for so many years about Lincoln’s Inn Fields that Clare Market had come to be their ideal of an uncivilized country.

  And more, if the whereabouts of Lord Dynmore could only be told in words rather far-sounding than definite, there was room for a doubt whether his prescience existed at all. For, according to his friends, there never was a man whose memory was so notably eccentric — not weak, but eccentric. And if his memory was impeccable, his prescience — But we grow wide of the mark. The question being merely where the living of Claversham was during the days which immediately followed Mr. Williams’s death, let it be said at once that we do not know.

  Mr. Williams was the late incumbent. He had been rector of the little Warwickshire town for nearly forty years; and although his people were ready enough to busy themselves with the question of his successor, he did not lack honor in his death. His had been a placid life, such as suited an indolent and easy-going man. “Let me sit upon one chair and put up my feet on another, and there I am,” he was once heard to say; and the town repeated the remark and chuckled over it. There were some who would have had the parish move more quickly, and who talked with a sneer of the old port-wine kind of parson. But if he had done little good, he had done less evil. He was kindly and open-handed, and he had not an enemy in the parish. He was regretted as much as such a man should be. Besides, people did not die commonly in Claversham. It was but once a year, or twice at the most, that any one who was any one passed away. And so, when the event did occur the most was made of it in an old-fashioned way. When Mr. Williams passed for the last time into his churchyard, there was no window which did not, by shutter or blind, mark its respect for him, not a tongue which wagged foul of his memory. And then the shutters were taken down and the blinds pulled up, and every one, from Mr. Clode, the curate, to the old people at Bourne’s Almhouses, who, having no affairs of their own, had the more time to discuss their neighbors’, asked, “Who is to be the new rector?”

  On the day of the funeral two of these old pensioners watched the curate’s tall form as he came gravely along the opposite side of the street, to fall in at the door of his lodgings with two ladies, one elderly, one young, who were passing so opportunely that it really seemed as if they might have been waiting for him. He and the elder lady — she was so plump of figure, so healthy of eye and cheek, and was dressed besides with such a comfortable richness that it did one good to look at her — began to talk in a subdued, decorous fashion, while the girl listened. He was telling them of the funeral, how well the archdeacon had read the service, and what a crowd of Dissenters had been present, and so on: and at last he came to the important question.

  “I hear, Mrs. Hammond,” he said, “that the living will be given to Mr. Herbert of Easthope, whom you know, I think? To me? Oh, no, I have not, and never had, any expectation of it. Please do not,” he added, with a slight smile and a shake of the head, “mention such a thing again. Leave me in my content.”

  “But why should you not have it?” said the young lady, with a pleasant persistence. “Every one in the parish would be glad if you were appointed. Could we not do something or say something — get up a petition or anything? Lord Dynmore ought, of course, to give it to you. I think some one should tell him what are the wishes of the parish. I do indeed!”

  She was a very pretty young lady, with bright brown eyes and hair and rather arch features, and the gentleman she was addressing had long found her face pleasant to look upon; but at this moment it really seemed to him as the face of an angel. Yet he only answered with a kind of depressed gratitude. “Thank you, Miss Hammond,” he said. “If good wishes could procure me the living, I should have an excellent reason for hoping. But as things are, it is not for me.”

  “Pooh! pooh!” said Mrs. Hammond cheerily, “who knows?” And then, after a few more words, they went on their way, and he turned into his rooms.

  The old women were still watching. “I don’t well know who’ll get it, Peggy,” said one, “but I be pretty sure of this, as he won’t! It isn’t his sort as gets ‘em. It’s the lord’s friends, bless you!”

  So it appeared that she and Mr. Clode were of one mind on the matter. But was that really Mr. Clode’s opinion? It was when the crow opened its beak that it dropped the piece of cheese; and so to this day the wise man has no chance or expectation of this or that until he gets it. And if a patron or a patron’s solicitor has for some days had under his paperweight a letter written in a hand that bears a strange likeness to the wise man’s — a letter setting forth the latter’s claims and wisdom — what of that? That is a private matter, of course.

  Be that as it may, there was scarcely a person in Claversham who did not give some time that evening, and on subsequent evenings too, to the interesting question who was to be the new rector. The rector was a big factor in the town-life. Girls wondered whether he would be young, and hoped he would dance. Their mothers were sanguine that he would be unmarried, and their fathers that he would play whist. And one questioned whether he would buy Mr. Williams’s stock of port, and another whether he would dine late. And some trusted that he would let things be, and some hoped that he would cleanse the stables. And only one thing was certain and sure and immutably fixed — that, whoever he was, he would not be able to please everybody.

  Nay, the ripple of excitement spread far beyond Claversham. Not only at the archdeacon’s at Kingsford Carbonel, five miles away among the orchards and hopyards, was there much speculation upon the matter, but even at the Homfrays’, of Holberton, ten miles out beyond the Baer Hills, there was talk about it, and bets were made across the billiard-table. And in more distant vicarages and curacies, where the patron was in some degree known, there were flutterings of heart and anxious searchings of the “Guardian” and Crockford. Those who seemed to have some chance of the living grew despondent, and those who had none talked the thing over with their wives after the children had gone to bed, until they persuaded themselves that they would die at Claversham Rectory. Middle-aged men who had been at college with Lord Dynmore remembered that they had on one occasion rowed in the same boat with him; and young men who had danced with his niece thought secretly that, dear little woman as Emily or Annie was, they might have done better. And a hundred and eleven letters, written by people who knew less than Messrs. Gearns & Baker of the Andes, seeing that they did not know that Lord Dynmore was there or thereabouts, were received at Dynmore Park and forwarded to London, and duly made up into a large parcel with other correspondence by Messrs. Gearns & Baker, and so were despatched to the forty-ninth parallel — or thereabouts.

  CHAPTER II.

  “VIVE LE ROI!”

  It was at the beginning of the second week in October that Mr. Williams died; and, the weather in those parts being peculiarly fine and bright for the time of year, men stood about in the churchyard with bare heads, and caught no colds. And it continued so for some days after the funeral. But not ev
erywhere. Upon a morning, some three perhaps after the ceremony at Claversham, a young gentleman sat down to his breakfast, only a hundred and fifty miles away, under such different conditions — a bitter east wind, a dense fog, and a general murkiness of atmosphere — that one might have supposed his not over-plentiful meal to be laid in another planet.

  The air in the room — a meagrely furnished, much littered room, was yellow and choking, and the candles burned dimly in the midst of yellow halos. The fire seemed to be smouldering, and the owner of the room had to pay some attention to it before he sat down and found a letter lying beside his plate. He glanced at it doubtfully. “I do not know the handwriting,” he muttered, “and it is not a subscription, for they never come in an east wind. I am afraid it is a bill.”

  The letter was addressed to the Rev. Reginald Lindo, St. Barnabas Mission House, 383 East India Dock Road, London, E. After scrutinizing it for a moment, he pulled a candle toward him and tore open the envelope.

  He read the letter slowly, his teacup at his lips, and, though he was alone, his face grew crimson. When he had finished it he turned back and read it again, and then flung it down and, starting up, began to walk the room. “What a boy I am!” he muttered. “But it is almost incredible. Upon my honor it is almost incredible!”

  He was still at the height of his excitement, now sitting down to take a mouthful of breakfast and now leaping up to pace the room, when his housekeeper entered and said that a woman from Tamplin’s Rents wanted to see him.