gate, and in each of the far corners of the glebe. Night fell upon him
sawing a huge tie-beam through and through to shift it, and sawing with
all the irritable energy of the unwilling workman, very remarkable in
him. And for once he was glad to put on his coat.
What could have happened to the dog? Its master could scarcely eat for
wondering. Now he sat frowning heavily. Anon his brow cleared, and a
fixed purpose glittered in his eyes. A little later he was in the
village street once more.
XVIII
THE NIGHT'S WORK
The night was as dark as it could possibly be. The day's mist still
lingered, impervious to stars, and there was no moon. Carlton was not
sorry, for he had no wish to be seen by more people than was absolutely
necessary; neither was he allowing for the shabby tweeds he had
unearthed to work in, for his cloth cap and untrimmed beard, which
obliterated the clergyman and changed the man.
He had not gone far before he stopped in astonishment. He had met no
one, and the village was as dark as the firmament; in the first few
cottages there were no lights at all. Carlton groped his way up the path
of one, and knocked twice without receiving an answer or detecting any
sound within. It was as though his sin had driven his parishioners to
the four winds.
He went on with increasing amazement, still without encountering a soul;
then swerved of a sudden from the middle of the road, and hugged the
wheatfield wall on the right-hand side while passing the Flint House on
the left. Here were lights, and more. The front door stood open, pouring
a broken beam of lamplight into the road. And on the single step,
leaning upon his great stick, towered the silhouette of Jasper Musk,
only less colossal than his shadow in the lighted slice of road.
Carlton half expected a challenge, and passed slowly and openly; instead
of slinking as his shame dictated. But there was neither word nor sign
of recognition from the gigantic figure on the step; and the lights
ended where they had begun. There were none beneath the gabled thatch
immediately beyond the wheatfield; and so for another hundred yards; not
a glimmer to right or left, with the single exception of a lattice
window over the post-office, where the bed-ridden Mrs. Ivey lay as she
had been lying for many months. Carlton saw the shadow of a flower-pot
on the widow's blind; no doubt it was the geranium he had taken her in
early summer; he remembered placing it on the sill. His pace quickened.
He was now at the long lane leading to the Plough and Harrow; and there
at last were the missing lights. The inn was lit up in every window, and
not only the unmistakable sound, but the very smell of feasting
travelled to the road, where Robert Carlton hesitated longer than his
wont. He might as well go home. It was quite bad enough to face his
people piece-meal. On the other hand, there was the dog; a
characteristic fixity of purpose in its owner; and a natural curiosity
to know more of the entertainment that could empty every home.
The front of the inn revealed nothing after all. The brilliantly lighted
parlour was deserted by all but a single attendant behind the bar; the
scene of revelry was audibly the barn at the back. The inn itself had
once been a farm-house, and this barn came in for all the festivals.
Carlton peered through the parlour window, and nodded to himself. The
face within was new to him, but that might well prove an advantage. It
was the florid face of a stout young man, passing the time with a
newspaper and a cigar, the first of which he threw aside to answer the
incomer's questions.
No, he had seen nothing of any collie dog; but he was a stranger
himself, only come to lend a hand for the night. Black and tan collie,
but more black than tan? No; the only dogs he had seen all day were the
governor's tyke and a thoroughbred bitch belonging to the young
gentleman at the hall.
"But have a drink," said the stout young man, reaching for a tankard.
Carlton declined civilly, though not without betraying some
astonishment.
"That's free beer to-night, old man," explained the other.
"Indeed?"
"I'm here to serve ut. Change your mind?"
"No, thank you."
"Then I will."
And the young man drew a foaming pint, while a burst of revelry came
through the inner doors, but slightly deadened by its passage through
the open air.
"May I ask what is going on?" inquired Carlton.
"That's the biggest spread ever seen in Long Stow," said the stout
youth, drawing his sleeve along his lips and turning a shade more florid
than before.
"Not the harvest-home already?"
"No; that's a dinner given by the squire to every sowl in the
parish--men, women, an' kids--all but one."
The questioner stood absorbed.
"All but one," repeated the temporary barman with knowing emphasis. And
he winked as he leant across the bar.
"Ah!"
"Their reverend ain't here--not much!"
"I don't suppose he is. And why is the squire doing this sort of thing
on this scale?"
"Why, in honour of the victory, to be sure."
"What victory?"
"Why, the one we've just had in Egypt. Tel-el----but here that is, in
the _Bury Post_, and a fair jaw-breaker, too."
It was the first newspaper which Robert Carlton had seen for several
weeks. His _Standard_ subscription had run out at mid-summer; he had
never renewed it. The world had renounced him utterly, and so must he
renounce the world. To live as he was living, and yet to have an ear for
the busy hum--he could not do it. For already he recognized the
startling truth: it was its very completeness which rendered his
isolation endurable.
Yet his eyes glistened as he ran them down the stirring columns, and his
tanned face wore a coppery glow as he returned the paper across the bar.
"Thanks very much," he said. "I am glad to have seen that."
"Is it the first you've heard of it?"
"Yes; I don't often see a paper."
The young barman was eyeing him up and down, from the old tweed trousers
to the old cloth cap.
"On the tramp, are you?"
Carlton did not choose to reply.
"Yet you seemed to know all about their reverend here!"
"Who does not?" cried the man in tweeds, with involuntary bitterness.
"Ah, you may well say that! And what do _you_ think of him?"
"I think the same as everybody else."
"That he's the biggest blackguard unhung?"
"Indeed, one of them!"
"That's what the young gentleman from the hall say, when he was in here
this afternoon. But the governor, Master Palmer--O Lord! how he do hate
him! 'Unhung?' he say. 'Why, hangun's too good for him.' An' so it is,
come to think of it: to go and do what _he_ done, an' to top all by
settun fire to his own church!"
"Come," said Carlton, "that wasn't proved."
"But everybody know it, bless you!"
"Though the charge was dismissed in open court?"
"Bah! 'Not guilty, but don't do that again!'"
And the stout youth nodded sagely over his tankard's rim.
"So that's the opinion of the neighbourhood, is it?"
"That is, and that's not likely to change."
Carlton was not astonished. He had foreseen this even from the
prisoner's dock, in that pause of the proceedings when he had felt
ashamed of his facility in self-defence, a haunting doubt of the
propriety of his defending himself at all. And yet the virile instinct
which had inspired him then was not yet dead in his breast; he could not
let all this pass; the conversation was none of his seeking, yet he must
say something more.
"I have never stuck up for him," he began; "but give even him his due!
What possible object could a man have in burning down his own church?"
"What I asked the governor," replied the barman. "'Dog in the manger,'
he say; 'didn't want the next man to reap where he've sowed. What's
more, that give him an excuse for stoppun in the place,' he say."
Carlton was under no temptation to confute these arguments; his only
difficulty was to suppress a smile.
"So his people don't think any the better of him for getting himself
off, eh?"
"The better? That's made them right mad! The governor here, he say that
was the gift of the gab and nothun else; all parsons have their fair
share; but this here reverend, he do seem to be a holy terror, an' no
mistake. A gentleman like Sir Wilton Gleed haven't a chance agen him; so
they're all a-sayun, all but Sir Wilton himself. The young gent who was
in here this afternoon, he was a-sayun as how the squire wouldn't have
the reverend's name so much as spoken at the hall; and he's never been
heard to name it himself since the day of the trial, he's that mad. But
have you heard the latest?"
Carlton had heard quite enough, and his hand was on the latch, nor did
he withdraw it as he turned his head.
"Against the reverend?" inquired he.
"That's it," said the young barman with renewed gusto. "And I nearly let
you go without tellun you!"
"What has he been doing now?"
Carlton was curious to hear.
"That's not what he've been doün, but what keep comun o' what he've
done," his informant said ominously. "The latest is that some young chap
would go to the devil because the reverend had, so he 'listed, and he've
been in the very battle there's all this to-do about!"
Of Mellis's enlistment Carlton had heard; the rest was news indeed; and
his hand tightened on the latch.
"Has anything happened to him, then?" he faltered, sick at heart.
"Not as we know on yet," said the stout youth, hopefully. "But the lists
ain't in, and, if this young chap's killed, everybody says it'll be
another death at the reverend's door."
"So they want his blood!" exclaimed Carlton. "But what they say is
true."
As he opened the door a burst of cheering came round from the barn.
"That's for the squire," he left the barman saying. "He've been on his
legs these ten minutes."
The outcast had shut the door behind him, and was groping his way in a
darkness no deeper than before, though perfectly opaque after the
strong light within.
"And one cheer more!" screamed a voice from the barn.
Carlton need scarcely have left his rectory to have heard the final
roar. Yet it was not the end.
"And three groans . . ."
This voice was hoarse; the name was lost in the night; but the outcast
well knew whose it was. And he stopped instinctively, standing firm upon
his feet while the groans were given--as though they lashed him like
wind and rain. Then he turned his face to the storm. He could not help
it. There was more clapping of the hands. Something further was to come;
he might as well hear what.
The barn was a clash of violent lights and impenetrable shade. Its
outlines were inseparable from the sky; but its great doors had been
flung flush with their wall, which gaped twenty feet from jamb to jamb.
This space, illumined by slung lanterns and naked candle-light, and
streaked with tables, which ran the full length of the barn, stood out
like the lighted stage of a darkened theatre. Outside hovered the
unworthy element which the smallest community cannot escape, or the
largest charity embrace; these vagabonds were absolutely invisible to
those within; and were themselves too dazzled and disgusted to take note
of each addition to their number.
Sir Wilton Gleed, on his legs once more, at the high table furthest from
the doors, was making that preliminary pause which is a little luxury of
the habitual orator and an embarrassing necessity to the novice. He was
supported by the schoolmaster on one side and by his own son on the
other. The former wore the shiny flush which was the badge of every
reveller visible from without; but that was not many while all heads
were turned towards the squire.
Sir Wilton began by observing, with sparkling eyes, that he was very
sorry to hear that name: he himself would have preferred such an
occasion to pass over without a reminder of the fact that they had a
leper in their midst. It was many moments before the speaker was
suffered to proceed; then he repeated the successful epithet at the top
of his voice, and drove it home with a synonym; recovering his own
composure during a second outburst, and continuing with conspicuous
self-restraint. Now that the matter had come up, he would not let it
drop, even upon that inappropriate occasion, without one word from
himself; but, he promised them, it should be his last public utterance
on the subject, in that parish at all events, as it was most certainly
his first. And another deliberate pause ended in a sudden gesture and a
new tone.
"What's the use of talking?" exclaimed the squire. "The law of England
is against us; there's no more to be said while the law remains what it
is. I'm not thinking of my brother magistrates' decision the other day;
it would ill become me to pass one single syllable of comment upon that.
No, gentlemen, I confine my criticism to that law which empowers a
clergyman, convicted of the vilest villainy, to retain his living in
the teeth of every protest, and to continue poisoning the clean air of
this parish by wilfully remaining in our midst."
"Shame! Shame!"
"Shame or no shame," cried Sir Wilton, "I intend to bring the matter
before Parliament itself"--a further outburst of vociferous
approval--"intend to lay this very case before the House of Commons at
the earliest possible opportunity. And I think that I can promise you
some amendment of the law before another year is out. Meanwhile"--and
Sir Wilton raised his hand to quell renewed enthusiasm--"meanwhile let
us respect the law while it lasts. In signifying our detestation of this
monstrous wrong, let us be careful not to drift into the wrong
ourselves. There must be no more broken windows, mind!"
And it was now a single finger that Sir Wilton Gleed held up.
"But," he continued, "what we can do--what we are justified in
doing--what it is our bounden duty to do--is henceforth to ignore this
man's very existence in our midst."
"Don't call him a man!"
"That's a devil out of hell!"
"Man or devil," cried Sir Wilton, "let us absolutely ignore his
existence among us. Don't go near him; don't even turn to look at him as
you pass. There he is--pretending to rebuild the church--posing as a
martyr--really laughing in his sleeve and crowing over all right-minded
men. We shall see who laughs last! Meanwhile, take no notice of him, one
way or the other; forbid your children the churchyard, if not that end
of the village altogether; nothing that can feed the morbid appetite for
notoriety which makes me sometimes think the man's a lunatic after all.
But if he dares to show his nose among you, that's another thing; hunt
him out of it as you would hunt a mad dog! He won't show himself twice.
But for the present my advice to you is to leave the cur in his kennel,
and the lazar in the lazar-house!"
The unseen listener left amid the musketry of prolonged clapping,
mingled with a banging of tables, and a dancing of glass and silver,
that followed him into the outer darkness as a sound of cymbals and big
drums. He was not sorry to have heard what he had heard: in his position
it was a distinct advantage to know the worst that was being said.
Certainly he would not go into the village again without necessity--as
certainly as he would do so the moment such necessity arose. It was as
well, however, to go prepared. The present experience might rank as a
narrow escape; but Robert Carlton would not have been without it if he
could.
He began to think better of his opponent. So he was going to Parliament
as the final court! That was legitimate; that he could admire. There is
infinite stimulus in the man who does not know when he is beaten--to an
adversary resembling him in that respect. And this seemed to be the one
characteristic common to Mr. Carlton and Sir Wilton Gleed.
Yet the outcast felt a little hardened. And his critical faculty, always
keen, though only of himself unsparing, went insensibly to work upon the
new material, even as he strode on through the deserted village, not to
give up his dog just yet.
"I believe he had that speech by heart, for all its opening. It came too
pat."
That was Carlton's first conclusion. The next made him stop dead.
"I'll be shot if the whole function wasn't a peg to hang that speech
on!"
And on he went with a short laugh of scornful conviction; there was no
doubt whatever in his mind; but the speech was not worth a second
thought. There was Glen to find, and there was George Mellis to think
about, since think he must. Poor lad! Yes, that was his fault again; the
people were right; he would be blood-guilty if the boy fell. One thing,
however, was quite certain: if the worst news came it could be trusted
to come to him; meanwhile he could pray for his friend, as his heart was
praying now, a clean sky above him, and the untrammelled air of an open
country all around.
The village had been left behind; the Lakenhall road followed for half a
mile, then left at a tangent in its turn; and this open country, upon
which Carlton of all men had the audacity to trespass, was the vast
rabbit-warren of Sir Wilton Gleed. The dog might be caught in one of the
traps; that was at once its master's fear and hope; for a broken leg
would mend, and his one friend think twice before deserting him again.
Carlton could even enjoy the prospect of the cripple's complete
dependence upon himself: it would be something to be indispensable to
living creature now. But meanwhile he could neither see nor hear
anything of his dog, though he walked, and stopped, and whistled till he
was tired, and then called, "Glen! Glen! Glen!" No sound came back to
him in reply; not even the echo of his own voice; and at midnight he
gave up the search.
At midnight also the Long Stow festivities culminated in the National
Anthem, its secular companion, and much hoarse roystering on the way
home; all this as Carlton approached the village; and for once he was
deterred. To march into the middle of a tipsy crowd, freshly inflamed
against himself, was to provoke a brawl at best. He would go round
instead by the river that flowed parallel with the village street. So he
crossed at the lock near the mill at this end of Long Stow, and
recrossed by the white wood bridge on the Linkworth road at the other
end. But this was an hour later; for three-quarters had been wasted
opposite the Flint House, with its river frontage of trim mead and wild
garden, and a very faint light in one back room.
By this time all was so still that the returning rector became the
earlier aware of an erratic lantern and tell-tale voices in the road
ahead; and he was walking slowly to let these people pass the rectory
gate, when in the light went lurching before his eyes. He hurried
softly. The intruders were half-way up the drive, whispering thickly,
but leaving a continuous sound in their wake, from something or other
that they had in tow. Carlton followed on the grass, a horrible
suspicion already in his heart; but he recognised their voices first.
"Where shall we plant ut? Which is his winder?"
"That there near the end. O Lord, what a lark!"
"Yes--to think he come talkun to me while you was all in the barn. The
cheek! But here's his answer for him."
The first and last speaker was the stout young barman from the Plough
and Harrow; the other was Jim Cubitt, an unworthy character who had been
turned out of the choir some months before. And Robert Carlton's
"answer" was his missing dog, lying dead in the lantern's light, with
particles of gravel glistening in his lacklustre coat.
At this, the climax of his long night's search, with its ironic
interludes--all as honey matched with this--a very madness seized on
Carlton, so that he sprang out of the dark into the lighted area where
these two young ruffians stood, and fell upon them like a fiend. Not a
word was said; there was no time even for a cry. But Cubitt came first,
and had the muddled senses shaken out of him and new ones kicked in
before his comrade could so much as attempt a rescue. This, however, the
young barman did so gamely that the ex-chorister was flung in a heap and
his champion sent tripping over him with a boxing crack upon the jaw.
And Carlton towered breathless, his fists still doubled, waiting for the
fallen youths to rise and fall again.
The one from the public-house merely sat upright, ruefully and sullenly
enough, but with a sound discretion which the Long Stow lout had the wit
to imitate.
"_We_ never 'urt your dorg," the former vowed. "He was dead before I see
him, and I don't know now who done ut. I never knew anything about that
till after you was in to-night, when I heared who it must ha' been."
"I don't care!" cried Carlton, in a fury still. "You helped to drag it
here--my poor dog! You would spite me like that, you whom I never saw
before to-night! You're worse than Jim Cubitt; he at least had an old
grievance against me; and you're both of you worse than the man who did
this foul thing, whoever he may be, and I don't want to know. Out of my
sight, both of you, and spread this as far as you please: what you got
from me, and what you did to get it. You'll find yourselves the martyrs
of the countryside!"
"I'm sorry," said the young barman, getting up. "I'm sorry, and I can't
say no fairer, 'cept that I must ha' been an' got right tight. But I
ain't tight now. I'm not a Long Stow chap, sir, and I shall tell them,
where I come from, that you're a man, whatever else you are. But as to
spreadun, I don't think I shall do much o' that; what do you say, mate?"
"I never killed his dog," said the former choirman.
Nor did Carlton ever actually know, or seek finally to ascertain, the
author of a deed even more detestable than it had appeared at first
sight. For when the study lamp had been brought out into the still
night, the first thing it revealed was that the poor beast had been
neither shot nor poisoned; its brains had been beaten out. And Carlton
felt as though his own heart had been beaten out with them, as he
fetched a spade from the shed, and dug a grave by lamplight a few yards
from his study door.
XIX
THE FIRST WINTER
The last leaf had filtered from the elms; the horse chestnuts had long
been bare. And now there was no more cover for the blackened stump of
Long Stow church, in its ring of rotting leaves, and its meshes of trunk
and twig, than for the guilty genius of this mournful spot. All the
world could see him now, and gauge the crass pretence of his
preposterous task; there was no deceiving such a wise little world; but
it had been requested not to look, and was accordingly content with
passing glimpses of a drama in which its interest was indeed upon the
wane. There were some things, however, which even a docile and
phlegmatic community could not help noticing as winter set in. It might
not be honest work, but it was making a thin man thinner. And he was
always at it. Yet it no longer seemed to give him any pleasure. Indeed,
his face was changed. Its dominant expression was grim and dogged. There
were no more lights and shadows. It was the face of a workman who has
lost interest in his work. Nevertheless, the work went on.
It went on in all weathers. At first Carlton had tried devoting the wet
days to indoor work. He had cleaned his house from top to bottom,
emptied most of the rooms, stored furniture in the others, and covered
with sheets like a careful housewife. Not that he cared greatly for his
things; but his hermitage should not grow foul. The two rooms which he
retained in use were the kitchen and his study (in which Carlton slept),
with the flagged scullery for his bath. The rest of the house he shut
up, after robbing his picture-frames to patch the broken windows, which
he treated so ingeniously that they looked quite wonderful from the
road; but on windy nights the constant rattle and the occasional crash
were one long outcry for putty and a glazier. There was no more to be
done indoors. And still it rained. So one day he marched through the
village (unmolested after all), and it was duly ascertained that he had
taken a return ticket to Felixstowe, of all places, apparently for
change of air. But through the very next day's rain he could be seen
(and heard) very busy at his walls: in a suit of oilskins and a
sou'wester. Thus the work went on once more.