There were marks of teeth on his right boot, but no marks at all on his
body. Fright—or fright following on that evening's frenzy—had killed
him.
He was buried three days later, and Mr. Raymond read the service. No
rain had fallen, and the blood of the three hounds still stained the
gravel dividing the grave from the porch, where the crowd had shot them
down.
For awhile his death made small difference to the family at the Parsonage.
They had fought the shadow of his enmity and proved it for what it was;
a shadow and little else. But they had scarcely realized their success,
and wondered why the removal of the shadow did not affect them more.
About this time Taffy began to carry out a scheme which he and his
father had often discussed, but hitherto had found no leisure for—the
setting up of wooden crosses on the graves of the drowned sailormen.
They had wished for slate: but good slate was expensive and hard to
come by, and Taffy had no skill in stone-cutting. Since wood it must
be, he resolved to put his best work into it. The names, etc., should
be engraved, not painted merely. Some of the pew-fronts in the church
had panels elaborately carved in flat and shallow relief—fine Jacobean
designs, all of them. He took careful rubbings of the narrowest, made
tracings, and set to work to copy them on the face of his crosses.
One afternoon, some three weeks after the Squire's funeral, he happened
to return to the house for a tracing which he had forgotten, and found
Honoria seated in the kitchen and talking with his father and mother.
She was dressed in black, of course, and either this or the solemnity
of her visit gave her quite a grown-up look. But to be sure, she was
mistress of Tredinnis now, and a child no longer.
Taffy guessed the meaning of her visit at once. And no doubt this act of
formal reconciliation between Tredinnis House and the Parsonage had cost
her some nervousness. When he entered his parents stood up and seemed
just as awkward as their visitor. "Another time, perhaps," he heard his
father say. Honoria rose almost at once, and would not stay to drink
tea, though Humility pressed her.
"I suppose," said Taffy next day, looking up from his Virgil, "I suppose
Miss Honoria wants to make friends now, and help on the restoration?"
Mr. Raymond, who was on his knees fastening a loose hinge in a pew-door,
took a screw from between his lips.
"Yes, she proposed that."
"It must be splendid for you, dad!"
"I don't quite see," answered Mr. Raymond, with his head well inside
the pew.
Taffy stood up, put his hands in his pockets, and took a turn up and
down the aisle.
"Why," said he, coming to a halt, "it means that you have won. It's
victory, dad, and _I_ call it glorious!" His lip trembled. He wanted
to put a hand on his father's shoulder, as any other comrade would. But
his abominable shyness stood between.
"We won long ago, my boy." And Mr. Raymond wheeled round on his knees,
pushed up his spectacles, and quoted the famous lines, very solemnly
and slowly:
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
"I see," Taffy nodded. "And—I say, that's jolly. Who wrote it?"
"A man I used to see in the streets of Oxford, and always turned to
stare after: a man with big oddly shaped feet and the face of a god—a
young tormented god. Those were days when young men's thoughts tormented
them. Taffy," he asked, abruptly, "should you like to go to Oxford?"
"Don't, father!" The boy bit his lip to keep back the tears. "Talk of
something else—something cheerful. It has been a splendid fight, just
splendid! And now it's over I'm almost sorry."
"What is over?"
"Well, I suppose—now that Honoria wants to help—we can hire workmen and
have the whole job finished in a month or two at farthest: and you——"
Mr. Raymond stood up, and leaning against a bench-end examined the thread
of the screw between his fingers.
"That is one way of looking at it, no doubt," he said, slowly; "and I
hope God will forgive me if I have put my own pride before His service.
But a man desires to leave some completed work behind him: something to
which people may point and say, '_he_ did it.' There was my book, now:
for years I thought that was to be my work. But God thought otherwise
and—to correct my pride, perhaps—set me to this task instead. To
set a small forsaken country church in order and make it worthy of His
presence—that is not the mission I should have chosen. But so be it:
I have accepted it. Only, to let others step in at the last and finish
even this—I say He must forgive me, but I cannot."
"Your book ... you can go back to it and finish it."
"I have burnt it."
"Dad!"
"I burned it. I had to. It was a temptation to me, and until I lifted
it from the grate and the flakes crumbled in my hands, the surrender
was not complete."
Taffy felt a sudden gush of pity. And as he pitied, suddenly he understood
his father.
"It had to be complete?"
"Either the book or the surrender. My boy"—and in his voice there
echoed the aspiration and the despair of the true scholar who abhors
imperfection and incompleteness in a world where nothing is either perfect
or complete, "it is different with you. I borrowed you, so to say, for
the time. Without you I must have failed; but this was never your work.
For myself, I have been humble and learnt my lesson; but, please God,
you shall be my Solomon and be granted a temple to build."
Taffy had lost his shyness now. He laid a hand on his father's sleeve.
"We will go on, then."
"Yes, we will go on."
"And Jacky? Where has he been? I haven't seen him since the Squire died."
Mr. Raymond searched in his coat-pocket and handed over a crumpled
letter. It ran:—
"DEAR FRIEND.—This is to say that you will not see me no more. The
dear Lord tells me I have made a cauch of it. He don't say how, all He
says is go and do better somewheres else.
"Seems to me a terrable thing to think _Religion_ can be bad for anny
man. It have done me such powars of good. The late Moyle esq he was like
a dirty pan all the milk turned sour no mattar what. Dr friend I pored
Praise into him and it come out Prayer and all for him self. But the
dear Lord says I was to blame as much as Moyle esq so must do bettar
next time but feel terrable timid.
"My respects to Masr Taffy. Dr friend I done my best I come like
_Nicodemus_ by night. Seeming to me when Christians fall out tis over
what they pray for. When they _praise God_ forget diffnses and I cant
think where the quaraling comes in and so no more at present from
"Yours respflly
"J. Pascoe."
After supper that night, in the Parsonage kitchen, Humility kept rising
from her chair, and laying her needlework aside to re-arrange the pans
and kettles on the hearth. This restlessness was so unusual that Taffy,
seated in the ingle with a book on his knee, had half raised his head
to twit her when he felt a hand laid softly on his hair, and looked up
into his mother's eyes.
"Taffy, should you like to go to Oxford?"
"Don't, mother!"
"But you can." The tears in her eyes answered his at once. She turned
to his father. "Tell him——"
"Yes, my boy, you can go," said Mr. Raymond; "that is, if you can win
a scholarship. Your mother and I have been talking it over."
"But—" Taffy began and could get no farther. He knew nothing of his
parents' affairs except that they were poor: he had always supposed,
almost desperately poor.
"We have money enough, with care," said Mr. Raymond.
But the boy's eyes were on his mother. Her cheeks, usually so pale,
were flushed; but she turned her face away and walked slowly back to her
chair. "The lace-work," he heard her say: "I have been saving ... from
the beginning——"
"For this?" He followed and took her hand. With the other she covered
her eyes; but nodded.
"O mother—mother!" He knelt and let his brow drop on her lap. She ceased
to weep; her palms rested on his bowed head, but now and then her body
shook with a sob that would not be restrained. And but for the ticking
of the tall clock there was silence in the room.
It was wonderful; and the wonder of it grew when they recovered themselves
and fell to discussing their actual plans. In spite of his idolatry,
Mr. Raymond could not help remembering certain slights which he, a poor
miller's son, had undergone at Christ Church. He had chosen Magdalen,
which Taffy knew to be the most beautiful of all the colleges; and the
news that his name had been entered on the college books for years past
gave him a delicious shock. It was now July. He would matriculate in
the October term, and in January enter for a demyship. But (the marvels
followed so fast on each other's heels) there would be an examination
held in ten days' time—actually in ten days' time—a "Certificate"
examination, Mr. Raymond called it—which would excuse the boy not only
the ordinary Matriculation test, but Responsions too. And, in short,
Taffy was to pack his box and go.
"But the subjects?"
"You have been reading them and the prescribed books for four months
past. And I have had sets of the old papers by me for a guide. Your
mathematics are shaky—but I think you should do well enough."
It was now Humility's turn, and the discussion plunged among shirts and
collars. Never had evening been so happy; and whether they talked of
mathematics or of collars, Taffy could not help observing how from time
to time his father's and mother's eyes would meet and say, as plainly
as words, "We have done rightly," "Yes, we have done rightly."
And the wonder of it remained next morning, when he awoke to a changed
world and took down his books with a new purpose. Already his box had
been carried into old Mrs. Venning's room, and his mother and grandmother
were busy, the one packing and repacking, the other making a new and
important suggestion every minute.
He was to go up alone, and to lodge in Trinity College, where an old
friend of Mr. Raymond's, a resident fellow just then abroad and spending
his Long Vacation in the Tyrol, had placed his own room at the boy's
service.
To see Oxford—to be lodging in college! He had to hug his mother in
the midst of her packing.
"You will be going by the Great Western," she said. "You won't be seeing
Honiton on your way."
When the great morning came, Mr. Raymond travelled with him in the van
to Truro, to see him off. Humility went upstairs to her mother's room,
and the two women prayed together.
They also serve who only stand and wait.