"Remember, Lord, Thou didst not make me good.
Or if Thou didst, it was so long ago
I have forgotten--and never understood,
I humbly think."
GEORGE MACDONALD.
On a sunny September day Dick the absentee was gathered to his fathers
at Riff.
Is there any church in the world as beautiful as the old church of Riff
where he was buried?--with its wonderful flint-panelled porch; with the
chalice, host, and crown carved in stone on each side of the arched
doorway as you go in; beautiful still in spite of the heavy hand of
Cromwell's men who tore all the dear little saints out of their niches
in the great wooden font cover, which mounts richly carved and dimly
painted like a spire, made of a hundred tiny fretted spires, to the very
roof of the nave, almost touching the figures of the angels leaning with
outstretched wings from their carved and painted hammerbeams. In spite
of all the sacrilege of which it has been the victim, the old font cover
with the coloured sunshine falling aslant upon it through the narrow
pictured windows remains a tangle of worn, mysterious splendour. And
the same haggard, forlorn beauty rests on the remains of the carved
screen, with its company of female saints painted one in each panel.
Poor saints! savagely obliterated by the same Protestant zeal, so that
now you can barely spell out their names in semicircle round their
heads: Saint Cecilia, Saint Agatha, Saint Osyth.
But no desecrating hand was laid on the old oaken benches with their
carved finials. Quaint intricate carvings of kings and queens, and
coifed ladies kneeling on tasselled cushions, and dogs licking their own
backs,--outlandish dogs with curly manes and shaved bodies and rosetted
tails,--and harts crowned and belted with branching antlers larger than
their bodies, and knights in armour, and trees with acorns on them so
big that each tree had only room for two or three, and the ragged staff
of the Earls of Warwick with the bear. All these were spared, seeing
they dealt with man and beast, and not with God and saint. And by
mistake Saint Catherine and her wheel and Saint Margaret and her dragon
were overlooked and left intact. Perhaps because the wheel and the
dragon were so small that the destroyers did not recognize that the
quaint little ladies with their parted hair were saints at all. And
there they all are to this day, broken some of them, alas!--one of them
surreptitiously mutilated by Dick as a small boy,--but many intact
still, worn to a deep black polish by the hands of generation after
generation of the sturdy people of Riff taking hold of them as they go
into their places.
The Manvers monuments and hatchments jostle each other all along the
yellow-plastered walls: from the bas-relief kneeling figure of the first
Roger Manvers, Burgess of Dunwich, to the last owner, John Manvers, the
husband of Lady Louisa Manvers.
But their predecessors, the D'Urbans and de Uffords, had fared ill at
the hands of Dowsing and his men, who tore up their brasses with "orate
pro anima" on them, and hacked their "popish" monuments to pieces,
barely leaving the figures of Apphia de Ufford, noseless and fingerless,
beside her lord, Nicholas D'Urban of Valenes. One Elizabethan brass
memorial of John de la Pole, drowned at Walberswick, was spared,
representing a skeleton, unkindly telling others that as he is we soon
shall be, which acid inscription no doubt preserved him. But you must
look up to the hammerbeams if you care to see all that is left of the
memorials of the D'Urbans and De la Poles and the de Uffords, where
their shields still hang among the carved angels.
Dick had not been worthy of his forbears, and it is doubtful whether if
he had had any voice in the matter he would have wished to be buried
with them. But Roger brought his coffin back to Riff as a matter of
course.
His death had caused genuine regret among the village people, if to no
one else. They had all known him from a boy. There had been a reckless
bonhomie about him which had endeared him to his people, in a way that
Roger, who had to do all the disagreeable things, could not expect. In
time past, Dick had fought and ferreted and shared the same hunk of cake
and drunk out of the same mug with half the village lads of Riff. They
had all liked him, and later on in life, if he would not or could not
attend to their grievances or spend money on repairs, he always "put his
hand in his pocket" very freely whenever he came across them. Even the
local policeman and the bearers decorously waiting at the lychgate had
sown their few boyish wild oats in Dick's delightful company. He was
indissolubly associated with that short heyday of delirious joy; he had
given them their one gulp from the cup of adventure and escapade. They
remembered the taste of it as the hearse with its four plumed black
horses came in sight between the poplars along the winding road from
Riebenbridge. Dick had died tragically at thirty-three, and the kindly
people of Riff were sorry.
Janey and Roger were the only chief mourners, for at the last moment
Harry had been alarmed by the black horses, and had been left behind
under the nurse's charge. They followed the coffin up the aisle, and sat
together in the Squire's seats below the step. Close behind them, pale
and impassive, sitting alone, was Jones the valet, perhaps the only
person who really mourned for Dick. And behind him again was a crowd of
neighbours and family friends, and the serried ranks of the farmers and
tenants.
In the chancel was the choir, every member present except Mrs. Nicholls,
Dicks foster-mother, who was among the tenantry. So the seat next to
Annette was empty, and to Mr. Stirling down by the font it seemed as if
Annette were sitting alone near the coffin.
Janey sat and stood and knelt, very pale behind her long veil, her
black-gloved hands pinching tightly at a little Prayer Book. She was not
thinking of Dick. She had been momentarily sorry. It is sad to die at
thirty-three. It was Roger she thought of, for already she knew that no
will could be found. Roger had told her so on his return from Paris two
days ago. A sinister suspicion was gradually taking form in her mind
that her mother on her last visit to Dick in Paris had perhaps obtained
possession of his will and had destroyed it, in the determination that
Harry should succeed. Janey reproached herself for her assumption of her
mother's treachery, but the suspicion lurked nevertheless like a shadow
at the back of her mind. Was poor Roger to be done out of his
inheritance? for by every moral right Hulver ought to be his. Was
treachery at work on _every_ side of him? Janey looked fixedly at
Annette. Was she not deceiving him too? How calm she looked, how pure,
and how beautiful! Yet she had been the mistress of the man lying in his
coffin between them. Janey's brain seemed to shake. It could not be. But
so it was. She shut her eyes and prayed for Roger, and Dick, and
Annette. It was all she could do.
Roger, beside her, kept his eyes fixed on a carved knob in front of him.
He knew he must not look round, though he was anxious to know whether
Cocks and Sayler had seated the people properly. His mind was as full of
detail as a hive is full of bees. He was tired out, and he had earache,
but he hardly noticed it. He had laboured unremittingly at the funeral.
It was the last thing he could do for Dick, whom he had once been fond
of, whom he had known better than anyone, for whom he had worked so
ruefully and faithfully; who had caused him so many hours of
exasperation, and who had failed and frustrated him at every turn in his
work for the estate.
He had arranged everything himself, the distant tenants' meals, the
putting up of their horses. He had chosen the bearers, and had seen the
gloves and hat-bands distributed, and the church hung with black. His
mind travelled over all the arrangements, and he did not think anything
had been forgotten. And all the time at the back of his mind also was
the thought that no will was forthcoming, even while he followed the
service.
"Dick might have left Hulver to me. '_We brought nothing into the world
and it is certain we can carry nothing out._' Poor old Dick! I dare say
he meant to. But he was too casual, and had a bee in his bonnet. But if
he had done nothing else, he ought to have made some provision for Mary
Deane and his child. He could not tell Molly would die before him. '_For
a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday._' Seeing Harry is
what he is and Janey is to have Noyes, Dick might have remembered me. I
shall have to work the estate for Harry now, I suppose. Doesn't seem
quite fair, does it? '_O teach us to number our days: that we may apply
our hearts unto wisdom._' Never heard Black read the service better.
He'll be a bishop some day. And now that Dick has forgotten me, how on
earth am I ever to marry? '_Man that is born of woman hath but a short
time to live and is full of misery._' That's the truest text of the
whole lot."
Roger looked once at Annette, and then fixed his eyes once more on the
carved finial of the old oaken bench on which he was sitting, where his
uncle had sat before him, and where he could just remember seeing his
grandfather sit in a blue frock-coat thirty years ago. He looked for the
hundredth time at the ragged staff of the Warwicks carved above the
bear, the poor bear which had lost its ears if it ever had any. His hand
in its split glove closed convulsively on the bear's head. _How was he
going to marry Annette!_
Annette's eyes rested on the flower-covered coffin in front of her, but
she did not see it. She was back in the past. She was kneeling by Dick's
bed with her cheek against the pillow, while his broken voice whispered,
"The wind is coming again, and I am going with it."
The kind wind had taken the poor leaf at last, the drifting shredded
leaf.
And then she felt Roger look at her, and other thoughts suddenly surged
up. Was it possible--was it possible--that Dick might part her and
Roger? Their eyes met for an instant across the coffin.
Already Roger looked remote, as if like Dick he were sinking into the
past. She felt a light touch on her hand. The choir had risen for the
anthem.