A TURN OF FORTUNE’S WHEEL.
CYRIL CULVERHOUSE lived his useful life, full of thought and care for
others, honoured, beloved, but with a deep and settled sadness at his
heart. He could not forget the woman he loved, he could not forgive
himself for having doubted her. Both their lives were blighted by
that mistake; and yet, looking back, he knew that he had tried to do
his duty. Love seemed a snare of Satan, and he had cut himself free
from its meshes. But after that meeting in the churchyard all his
doubts vanished, his judgment wavered no longer. There is a power in
simple truth, when we meet it face to face, that is stronger than all
reasoning upon a chain of possibilities.
He was convinced for ever of her guiltlessness, in the hour when
he believed her irrevocably lost to him. Could he ever forget that
meeting--that one despairing kiss--the sight of her lying at his feet
among the rank grass that grows on graves? And she had confessed her
love for him, by flying from a loveless marriage.
Could he follow her?--search this wide world for her? How small a
penance would it be to wander over all the earth for her sake! But he
felt he had no right to pursue her. He had wronged her too deeply to
persecute her by a pursuit which no sign from her invited. It was for
her to make that sign--it was for her to pity and pardon him.
‘Let me go on doing my duty,’ he said to himself, ‘and if it is God’s
will that I am to be happy in that way, happiness will come to me. Yes,
it will come some day, when I least look for it, as the angels came to
Abraham.’
So he went on with his simple unpretending life, working with a quiet
earnestness which achieved wonders. It was one of his chief gifts to
do all things quietly. He worked almost as silently as the bounteous
fertilizing sun.
The school was thriving under Emmanuel Joyce’s care. The widow’s heart
did verily sing for joy, so sweet was her new life amidst rural sights
and sounds, after the squalid misery of the Bridford courts and alleys.
The Vicar was delighted to have his old pupil back again. All the cares
of the parish were lifted off his shoulders when he had Cyril for his
curate. He knew that, if he was luxuriating in scholarly idleness,
there was nothing being neglected. When he was wanted Cyril called upon
him, and he obeyed the call. He gave of his substance freely at Cyril’s
bidding. There could not have been a better alliance. Clement Dulcimer,
all sweetness and light, shedding smiles and kindliness upon his
parishioners, Cyril Culverhouse, the earnest worker, not withholding
reproof when it was needful. Between them they made Little Yafford a
model parish, an ideal republic, in a small way.
The Vicar had taken a great fancy to the new schoolmaster. Joyce’s
love of books was in itself a passport to Mr. Dulcimer’s favour. He
invited the young man to spend an evening with him occasionally,
and Emmanuel revelled in long hours of talk upon far-reaching
questions--conversations from which Mr. Dulcimer let himself slip
insensibly into a monologue, and poured forth his stores of curious
uncatalogued knowledge. In one thing only he was rather hard upon the
aspiring student. He set his face strongly against Emmanuel’s poetic
efforts.
‘They are as good as most of the prize poems it has been my lot to
read,’ he said, after he had conscientiously gone through Emmanuel’s
little collection of manuscript verses, ‘but then you see a prize poem
is generally the flattest thing in life. As intellectual efforts they
do you credit, and as mental training I’ve no doubt the composition
of them has been serviceable to you. But I will not be so weak as
to say go on writing verses. There are about twenty poets born in a
century, and about twenty thousand rhymesters. Shall a wise man waste
his life--his brief precious sum of days and hours--in labouring to
develop the rhymester into the poet? Why, the poet knows himself for a
poet before he is twenty. The man upon whom that mantle has fallen, the
man who is born to wear that crown, cannot be mistaken about himself.
Look at Pope, Chatterton, Shelley, Byron, Keats--boy poets all. And
is a man who has not put forth that supreme flower of genius in his
youth to go on cudgelling his brain for rhymes, in the hope that labour
will make him a poet? It is the stuff behind the rhymes that is wanting
in him. He has nothing to say. But he thinks if he can say nothing
melodiously--to somebody else’s tune--that he may make himself a poet.
Wasted labour, idle delusion. Go into philosophy, natural science,
criticism, history--anything you like, my dear young friend--the field
is wide, and in these studies a man can make himself. God makes poets.’
Emmanuel took the lesson to heart, humiliating as it was. For a long
time he had hugged the idea that he was a poet. That electro-plated
verse of his, modelled upon the verse of other singers, had for his
deluded ear the ring of genuine silver. Granted that there were only
twenty poets born in a century. It seemed to him no less hard that
he could not be one of the twenty. He had no pity for the nineteen
thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine versifiers, self-deluded like
himself, and doomed to disappointment as bitter.
It took him some time to recover from the shock which his self-esteem
had received from Mr. Dulcimer’s candour. At first it seemed to him
that if he could not be a poet he could be nothing else. Those other
fields of intellectual labour in which the Vicar invited him to work,
offered no attraction. They were all dry and barren; he saw no flowers
to be gathered there. Ambition seemed dead within him, now that a judge
in whom he believed had told him that he was not an incipient Byron.
‘You never write of an evening now, Emmanuel,’ his mother said to him,
when the shortening days of September brought them together by their
cheerful fireside. ‘I hope you haven’t grown tired of your pen?’
‘I have,’ he answered. ‘What’s the use of writing trash?’
‘Oh, Emmanuel, how can you talk so? I’m sure I never read sweeter
verses than yours.’
‘Yes, mother, you think them sweet because I am your son. You wouldn’t
care a straw for them if they were written by a stranger. Come, I’ll
read you a bit of real poetry, and you’ll see the difference.’
He opened his well-used Milton, and read the hymn on the Nativity. He
knew those noble verses by heart, and declaimed them well.
‘What do you think of that mother?’ he asked, when he had finished.
‘I don’t understand it all, dear,’ she answered meekly, ‘there are
so many heathen idols in it. But it’s poetry that rings like a great
brazen bell, and there’s more words in it than in yours.’
‘Yes, mother, that’s it. The man who wrote that was a born poet. He
could do what he liked with the language, and make it ring like sound
metal. My verse is like a poor little cracked sheep-bell, and sounds no
better than tin. And I haven’t above a quarter of the English language
in my vocabulary. I’ve read a great deal, but the words don’t come to
my finger ends in all their wealth and variety, as they did to Shelley
and Keats. No, mother, I’m no poet. Mr. Dulcimer is a good judge. If I
write anything it must be prose.’
‘I hope Mr. Dulcimer hasn’t been putting you out of conceit with
yourself, Emmanuel.’
‘He has only told me the truth, mother. That’s always good for a man
to know, though it takes him aback sometimes to hear it.’
‘I should be very sorry to see you give up your pen, dear,’ said the
mother, persistently. ‘I should be so proud if I could live to see you
an author.’
‘Well, mother, I will try to write a book, if it is only to please
you. I will write something for my pupils—a book that may be useful
and popular in schools all over England. The English history my boys
read seems to me very dull and dry. I think I’ll try my hand at a boy’s
history of England. I fancy I could make it interesting.’
‘I’m sure you could,’ said the mother, fondly.
Here at least in this quiet schoolhouse parlour was happiness almost
perfect. It was a delight to Cyril Culverhouse, when he dropped in for
half an hour on his homeward way, to see how well this one good work of
his had prospered.
A great change in Cyril’s fortune was at hand--a change that came upon
him as an almost overwhelming blow, for it gave a new colour to his
life, and made the problem of existence doubly difficult.
Walking home to his lodgings one September afternoon with Mr.
Dulcimer, Cyril met the village postman.
‘Any letters for me, Sparkes?’ asked the Vicar.
Cyril was not curious enough to inquire about his letters. He expected
no pleasant tidings. Who should write to him? He stood alone in the
world, for he did not hope that his cousin would ever regard him with
friendliness again.
‘No, sir, there ain’t none for you,’ replied Sparkes; ‘but there’s a
letter for you, Mr. Culverhouse, from Indy.’
Kenrick had written then, after all, thought Cyril, moved at the idea.
Distance and lapse of time had softened the natural bitterness of his
feelings.
And then and there, in deliberate defiance of the postal rules and
regulations, Sparkes handed the curate a thin miserable-looking letter,
in a black-edged envelope, addressed by a strange hand.
The Vicar and Cyril both looked at it, horror-struck.
‘Your cousin has been killed,’ cried Mr. Dulcimer.
Cyril felt the same apprehension. He knew no one in India except his
cousin. This letter in a strange hand must bring evil tidings.
He opened the envelope hurriedly, with a shaking hand, as he and Mr.
Dulcimer stood side by side in the quiet country road. The Vicar read
the letter over Cyril’s shoulder.
Yes, it brought the news both feared.
‘SIR,--It is with deep regret that I write to inform you of the death
of your cousin, Sir Kenrick Culverhouse. He was shot in a skirmish
with the Burmese, which took place on the night of July 27th. They
came down upon our camp unexpectedly during the night, and were
repulsed with considerable loss, but unhappily your cousin, who was
always reckless in exposing himself to the enemy’s fire, received
a fatal shot while leading his company in close pursuit of the
retreating Burmese.
‘There will, I hope, be some consolation to you, as his nearest
relative, in knowing how nobly he did his duty throughout the last
eighteen months, and how thoroughly he won the respect of his
regiment, from the highest to the lowest. For my own part, I feel his
death as a personal loss, and it will be long before I shall cease to
deplore it.
‘I have the honour to be
‘Your obedient servant,
‘MALCOLM DONALDSON.’
‘That is the colonel of his regiment,’ said the Vicar. ‘Poor Kenrick!
Do you know, I had a presentiment that he would never come back to us.
Hard to remember that he left us under such miserable circumstances.’
Cyril was silent for some moments, and then he said, suddenly, with
intense earnestness,--
‘Would to God that I rather than he had drawn the lot of death!’
‘The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of
the Lord,’ said the Vicar, solemnly. ‘We cannot choose our path in
life, Cyril. Fate has not been kind to Kenrick. This is a heavy blow
for both of us. For my own part, I feel as if I had lost a son. You
and Kenrick have been as sons to me.’
‘And to me he was like a brother,’ said Cyril. ‘We parted in
unkindness. _That_ is a bitter thing to remember.’
‘I do not think you can blame yourself, Cyril, because your cousin’s
engagement ended unhappily.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Cyril. ‘It is just possible I may have influenced
Beatrix at the last.’
And then he told Mr. Dulcimer, as a good Catholic might tell his
spiritual director, about that meeting in the churchyard.
‘I hardly know what I said,’ he confessed, remorsefully; ‘I was beside
myself. I knew in that moment she still loved me, that I had never
ceased to love her--that I had been mad--foolish--besotted when I
doubted her. I knew all this, and that to-morrow was to make her my
cousin’s wife. I know not what mad words I may have said to her--words
wild and strong enough to constrain her to break with Kenrick.’
‘I am not sure of that,’ said Mr. Dulcimer, thoughtfully. ‘I have
a shrewd suspicion that Beatrix was meditating breaking off her
engagement when she was so eager to redeem the Culverhouse mortgages.
If she had meant to be his wife she might just as well have waited till
they were married. But she was so impetuous, so determined. She bore
down all opposition from Scratchell. Yes, I believe that she had made
up her mind to jilt poor Kenrick, and that she meant the liberation of
his estate as an atonement.’
This was some kind of consolation to Cyril, who thought of his cousin
with a remorseful grief that was very real. And now, when those first
days of mourning for the dead were over, he began to think of his own
position, which was full of perplexity.
Kenrick’s death had made him master of Culverhouse Castle. He had new
ties, new duties. His first thought was to repay Miss Harefield the
fifty thousand pounds. The lawyers had dawdled about the matter, Mr.
Dulcimer had been careless, and Kenrick’s parting injunction had not
been obeyed.
Cyril went to Mr. Scratchell and told him that he should mortgage
the estate directly it passed into his possession, and restore Miss
Harefield’s money.
‘She meant it for my cousin Kenrick, and not for me,’ he said. ‘I
should feel myself a thief if I retained the use of her money a day
longer than I am obliged.’
It was agreed therefore that the money should be refunded as soon
as Cyril found himself in a position to raise money upon his newly
acquired estate. He was now Sir Cyril, an empty honour which he had no
intention of parading among the simple people who only knew him as ‘the
parson,’ and who might possibly think a baronet less approachable and
sympathetic in their difficulties and griefs than plain ‘mister.’