“Well, can you give me their address?” the rector continued.
“Certainly!” the curate answered. Indeed he leapt at the suggestion, for it seemed to offer some chance of escape — at least a way by which he might rid himself of his visitor.
“Just write it down, that is a good fellow, then,” said the rector, unconscious of what was passing in his mind.
The curate said he would, and tore off at random — the rector was leaning his hand on the newspaper, and might at any moment be taken with a fancy to raise it — the back sheet of the first stray note that came to his fingers, and wrote the address upon it. “There, that is it,” he said; and as he gave it to Lindo — he had written it standing up and stooping — he almost pushed him away from the table. “That will serve you, I think. They may be trusted, I am told. The best you can do, I am sure, will be to place the matter in their hands at once.”
“I will write before I sleep!” the younger clergyman answered heartily. “You cannot think how the narrowness of these people provokes me! But I will not keep you now. I see you are busy. Come round early in the morning, will you, and talk it over?”
“I will come the moment I have had breakfast,” the curate answered, making no attempt to detain his visitor.
The rector thereupon going, he stood eyeing the newspaper askance until the other’s footsteps died away on the pavement outside. Then he swept it off and stood contemplating the half-dozen letters with abhorrence. He loathed and detested them. They had suddenly become to him such an incubus as his victim’s body becomes to the murderer. The desire which had tempted him to the crime was gone, and he felt them only as a burden. They were the visible proof of his shame. To keep them was to become a thief, and yet he shrank with a nervous terror quite new and strange to him from the task of returning them — of going to the study at the rectory and putting them back in the cupboard. It had been easy to get possession of them; but to return them seemed a task so thankless, and withal so perilous, that he quailed before it. With shaking hands he bundled them together and locked them in the lowest drawer of his writing table. He would return them to-morrow.
CHAPTER XV.
THE BAZAAR.
Long before noon on the next day the service of the writ at the rectory was pretty well known in the town, and the course which the churchwardens had taken was freely canvassed in more houses than one. But they had on their side all the advantages of prescription, while of the rector people said that there was no smoke without fire, and that he would not have become the subject of so many comments and strictures, and the centre of more than one dispute, without being in fault. There had been none of these squabbles in old Mr. Williams’s time, they said. Tongues had not wagged about him. But then, they added, he had not aspired to drive tandem with the Homfrays! The town had been good enough for him. He had not wanted to have everything his own way, or thought himself a little Jupiter in the place. His head had not been turned by a little authority conferred too early, and conferred, if all the town heard was true, in some very odd and unsatisfactory manner.
To know that all round you people are saying that your conceit has led you into trouble is not pleasant. And in one way and another this impression was brought home to the young rector more than once during these days, so that his cheek flamed as he passed the window of the reading-room, or caught the half-restrained sniggle in which Gregg ventured to indulge when in company. Nor were these annoyances all Lindo had to bear. The archdeacon scolded him roundly for placing the matter in the hands of the lawyers without consulting him. Mrs. Hammond looked grave. Laura seemed less friendly than a while back. Clode’s conduct was odd, too, and unsatisfactory. He was sometimes enthusiastic and loyal enough, ready to back up his superior as warmly as could be wished, and anon he would show himself the reverse of all this — sullen, repellent, and absolutely unsympathetic.
So that the rector was not having a very sunny time, albeit the heat of conflict kept him warm; and he threw back his head and set his fair pleasant face very hard as he strode about the town, his long-tailed black coat flapping behind him. He hugged himself more than ever on the one thing which his opponents could not take from him. When all was said and done, he must still be rector of Claversham. If his promotion had not brought him as much happiness as he had expected, if he had not been able to do in his new position all he had hoped, the promotion and the position were yet undeniable. Knowing so well all the circumstances of his appointment, he never gave two thoughts to the curious story Kate Bonamy had told him. He was sorry that he had treated her so cavalierly, and more than once he had thought with a regret almost tender of the girl and the interview. But, for the rest, he treated it as the ignorant invention of the enemy. Possibly on the strength of certain ‘Varsity prejudices he was a little too prone to exaggerate the ignorance of Claversham.
On the day before the bazaar a visitor arrived in Claversham, in the shape of a small, dark, sharp-featured man, with a peculiarly alert manner, whom the reader will remember to have met in the Temple. Jack Smith, for he it was — we parted from him last at Euston Station — may have come over on his own motion, or acting upon a hint from Mr. Bonamy, who, since the refusal of Gregg’s offer, had thought more and more of the future which lay before his girls. The house had seemed more and more dull, not to him as himself, but to him considering it in the night-watches through their eyes. Hitherto the lawyer had not encouraged the young Londoner’s visits, perhaps because he dreaded the change in his way of life he might be forced to make. But now, whether he had given him a hint to come or not, he received him with undoubted cordiality.
Almost the first question Jack asked, Daintry hanging over the back of his chair and Kate smiling in more subdued radiance opposite him, was about his friend, the rector. Fortunately, Mr. Bonamy was not in the room. “And how about Lindo?” he asked. “Have you seen much of him, Kate?”
“No, we have not seen much of him,” she answered, getting up to put something straight which was not much awry before.
“Father has served him with a writ, though,” Daintry explained, nodding her head seriously.
Jack whistled. “A writ!” he exclaimed. “What about?”
“About the sheep in the churchyard. Mr. Lindo turned them out,” Kate explained hurriedly, as if she wished to hear no more upon the subject.
But Jack was curious; and gradually he drew from them the story of the rector’s iniquities, and acquired, in the course of it, a pretty correct notion of the state of things in the parish. He whistled still more seriously then. “It seems to me that the old man has been putting his foot in it here,” he said.
“He has,” Daintry answered solemnly, nodding any number of times. “No end!”
“And yet he is the very best of fellows,” Jack replied, rubbing his short black hair in honest vexation. “Don’t you like him?”
“I did,” said Daintry, speaking for both of them.
“And you do not now?”
The child reddened, and rubbed herself shyly against Kate’s chair. “Well, not so much!” she murmured, Jack’s eyes upon her. “He is too big a swell for us.”
“Oh, that is it, is it?” Jack said contemptuously.
He pressed it no farther, and appeared to have forgotten the subject; but presently, when he was alone with Kate, he recurred to it. “So, Lindo has been putting on airs, has he?” he observed. “Yet, I thought when Daintry wrote to me, after you left us, that she seemed to like him.”
“He was very kind and pleasant to us on our journey,” Kate answered, compelling herself to speak with indifference. “But — well, you know, my father and he have not got on well; so, of course, we have seen little of him lately.”
“Oh, that is all, is it?” Jack answered, moving restlessly in his chair.
“That is all,” said Kate quietly.
This seemed to satisfy Jack, for at tea he surprised her — and, for Daintry, she fairly leapt in her seat — by calmly announcing that he proposed to
call on the rector in the course of the evening. “You have no objection, sir, I hope,” he said, coolly looking across at his host. “He has been a friend of mine for years, and though I hear you and he are at odds at present, it seems to me that that need not make mischief between us.”
“N — no,” said Mr. Bonamy slowly. “I do not see why it should.” Nevertheless, he was greatly astonished. He had heard that Jack and Mr. Lindo were acquainted, but had thought nothing of it. It is possible that the discovery of this friendship existing between the two led him to take new views of the rector. He continued, “I dare say in private he is not an objectionable man.”
“Quite the reverse, I should say!” Jack answered stoutly.
“You have known him well?”
“Very well.”
“Umph! Then it seems to me it was a pity he did not confine himself to private life,” ejaculated the lawyer, with some scorn. “As a rector I do not like him.”
“I am sorry for that,” Jack answered cheerfully. “But I have not known much of him as a rector, though indeed, as it happened, he brought the offer of the living straight to me, and I was the first person who congratulated him on his promotion.”
Mr. Bonamy lifted his eyes slowly from the teacup he was raising to his lips, and looked fixedly at his visitor, an expression much resembling strong curiosity in his face. If a question was on the tip of his tongue he refrained from putting it, however, and Jack, who by no means wished to hear the tale of his friend’s shortcomings repeated, said no more until they rose from the table. Then he remarked, “Lindo dines late, I expect.”
He put the question to Kate, but the lawyer answered it. “Oh, yes, he does everything which is fashionable,” he answered drily. And Jack, putting this and that together, began to see still more clearly how the land lay, and on what shoals his friend had wrecked his popularity.
About half-past eight he went to the rectory, but found that Lindo was not at home. The door was opened to him, however, by Mrs. Baker, who had often seen the barrister in the East India Dock Road, and knew him well; and she pressed him to walk in and wait. “He dined at home, sir,” she explained. “I think he has only slipped out for a few minutes.”
He followed her accordingly across the panelled hall to the study, where for a moment a whimsical smile played upon his face as he viewed its spacious comfort. The curtains were drawn, the fire was burning redly, and the lamp was turned half down. The housekeeper made as if she would have turned it up, but he prevented her. “I like it as it is,” he said genially. “This is better than No. 383, Mrs. Baker?”
“Well, sir,” she answered, looking round with an air of modest proprietorship, “it is a bit more like.”
“What would you have, Mrs. Baker?” he asked, laughing. “The bishop’s palace?”
“We may come to that in time, sir,” she answered, folding her arms demurely. “But I do not know that I would wish it! He has a peck of troubles now, and there would be more in a palace, I doubt.”
“I agree with you,” Jack replied, laughing. “Troubles come thick about an apron, Mrs. Baker.”
“Ay, the men see to that!” retorted the good lady, getting the last word and going away delighted.
Left alone, Jack lay back in an arm-chair, and, nursing his hat, wondered what Mrs. Baker would say when she discovered his connection with the Bonamys. He had not been seated in this posture two minutes before he heard the door of the house open and shut, and a man’s tread cross the hall. The next moment the study door opened, and a tall man appeared at it, and stood holding it and looking into the room. The hall lamp was behind the newcomer, and Jack, seeing that he was not the rector, sat still.
The stranger, satisfied apparently that the room was empty, stepped in and closed the door behind him; and, rapidly crossing the floor, stood before one of the bookcases. He took something — a key Jack judged by what followed — from his pocket, and with it he swiftly threw open a cupboard among the books.
There was nothing remarkable in the action; but the stranger’s manner was hurried and nervous, and the looker-on leaned forward, curious to learn what he was about. He expected to see him take something from the cupboard. Instead, the man appeared to put something in. What it was, however, Jack could not discern, for, leaning forward too far in his anxiety to do so, he upset his hat with some noise on to the floor.
The man turned on the instant as if he had been subjected to a galvanic shock, and stood gazing in the direction of the sound. Jack heard him draw in his breath with the sharp sound of sudden fear, and even by that light could see that his face was drawn and white. The barrister rose quietly in the gloom, the stranger at sight of him leaning back against the book-case as if his legs refused to support him. Yet he was the first to speak. “Who is there?” he said, almost in a whisper.
“A visitor,” Jack answered simply. “I have been waiting to see Mr. Lindo.”
The curate — for he it was — drew a long breath, apparently of relief, and in reality of such heartfelt thankfulness as he had never known before. “What a start you gave me!” he murmured, his voice as yet scarcely under his control. “I am Mr. Clode, Mr. Lindo’s curate. I was putting up some parish papers, and thought the room was empty.”
“So I saw,” Jack answered drily. “I am afraid your nerves are a little out of order.” The curate muttered something which was inaudible, and, raising his hand to the book-case, locked the cupboard door and put the key in his pocket. Then he went to the lamp and turned it up. At the same moment Jack, recovering his hat, advanced into the circle of light, and the two men looked at one another. “I am afraid if you wish to see the rector you will be disappointed,” the curate said, with something of hauteur in his voice, assumed to hide his mistrust. “He was to spend the evening at Mrs. Hammond’s. I doubt if he will be back before midnight.”
“Then I must call another time,” said Jack practically.
“If I see him first, can I tell him anything for you?” the curate persisted. Who was this man? Could he be a detective? he was wondering.
But Jack was so far from being a detective that he had already dismissed the suspicions he had at first entertained. “I think not, thank you,” he answered; “I will call again.”
“Can I give him any name?” Clode asked in despair.
“Well, you might say Jack Smith called,” the barrister answered, “if you will be so kind.”
They parted at the door, and Clode went back into the house, where he speedily learned all that Mrs. Baker knew of Mr. Smith. It dispelled his first fear. The man was not a detective; still it sent him home gloomy and ill at ease. What if so intimate a friend of the rector’s as this Smith seemed to be should tell him of his curate’s visit to the cupboard and the excuse which on the spur of the moment he had invented? It might go ill with him then. What explanation could he give? He tried to consider such a mishap impossible, or at all events unlikely; but not with complete success. More than ever he wished that he had not interfered with the letters.
To return to Jack. Such mild festivities as the bazaar were not uncommon in Claversham, but the Bonamy household at any rate had not been wont to look forward to them with anything approaching exhilaration. It is wonderful how some children growing up in any kind of social shadow learn the fact; and Daintry Bonamy, scarcely less than her sister, had come to regard the annual flower-show, the school sports, and the regatta with distaste and repugnance, as occasions of little pleasure and much humiliation. It was Mr. Bonamy’s will, however, that they should attend, though he never went himself; and times innumerable they had done so, outwardly in pretty dresses and becoming hats, inwardly in sack-cloth and ashes.
Jack’s presence changed all this, and for once the girls went up to dress quite gaily. If Kate reflected that Jack’s intimacy with the rector would be likely to bring them also into contact with him, she said nothing; and from Jack — for the present at least — it was mercifully hidden that, with all his kindness, his unfailing good-humo
r, his wit, his devotion to her, his chief attraction in the girl’s eyes lay in the fact that he was another man’s friend.
When they entered the Assembly Room it was already well filled, the main concourse being about the two stalls at the end of the room over which the archdeacon’s wife and Mrs. Hammond respectively ruled. Here the great people were mainly to be seen; and an acute observer would soon have discovered that between those who habitually hung about this end and those who surrounded the four lower stalls there was a great gulf fixed. Those on the one side of this examined the dresses of those on the other with indulgent interest, and, for the most part, through double eyeglasses; while those on the other hand either returned the compliment and made careful notes, or looked about deferentially for a glance of recognition. The man who should have bridged that gulf, who should have been equally at home with Mrs. Archdeacon and the hotel-keeper’s wife, was the rector. But as the rector had entered, the unlucky word “writ” had caught his ears, and he was in his most unpleasant humor. He felt that the whole room was talking of him — the majority with a narrow dislike, a few with sympathy. Was it unnatural that, forgetting his situation, he should throw in his lot with his friends, who were ever so much the pleasanter, the wittier, the more amusing, and present a smiling front of defiance to his opponents or those whom he thought to be such? At any rate, that was what he was doing, and no one could remark the carriage of his head or the direction of his eyes without feeling that there was something in the town complaint that the new clergyman was above his work.
Jack and his party did not at once come across him. They found enough to amuse them at the lower end of the room — the more as to the barrister the great and little with whom he rubbed shoulders were all one. Strange to say, he did not discern any great difference even in their dress! With Daintry hanging on his arm and Kate at his side he was content, until, turning suddenly in the thick of the crowd to speak to the elder girl, he saw her face turn crimson. At the same moment she bowed slightly to some one behind him. He looked round quickly, with a sharp jealous pang at his heart, to see who had called forth this show of emotion, and found himself face to face with the rector.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 30