there, at the church, and seated on the very wall which he had been
building a fortnight before, surveying his work.
Had some one been carrying it on in his absence? Or was it only that one
noticed no difference from day to day, but all the difference in the
world after an unaccustomed absence? Yes, this was it; and he drew the
deep breath which his first idea had checked.
Still it was wonderful: one wall seemed so much higher, another so much
cleaner than before; and yet there was no stone either laid or scraped
which Carlton did not recognize at a glance, with sudden memories of
special travail; and the string was still where he had stretched it to
keep the line. He had under-estimated his progress at the time; that was
all; but again it was as though the sap was rising in his heart.
The very tangle of blackened timber, which still cumbered nine-tenths of
the inner area, no longer struck Carlton as the unconquerable chaos it
had appeared on that bitter day which seemed so many days ago; yet, when
he laid white hands upon such a beam as he had easily shouldered then,
he could not lift it an inch. Ah, that day! It would take him weeks to
undo its evil work. The wet feet and the cutting wind, he could feel
them both again, with the sweat freezing on his body, and every pore an
open door to death. There was the ridge of red-stemmed firs, too far
east to blunt the cold steel of that deadly wind; and here beneath him
the barrier he had been building last, and must finish now before he did
another thing. How firm and true was this top course, that he had laid
that day with the bony fingers at his throat! Well, he would have died
with a good day's work behind him . . . It must have been a very near
thing . . . he wondered how near when the sexton came, and why the
sexton had come at all. The man had never given a good reason. He had
only just fared to think there might be something wrong.
On the way indoors, the invalid stopped at a tree. It was one of the
horse-chestnuts; and already every delicate extremity was swollen and
sticky to the touch; and the birds sang of summer in the branches.
Carlton passed on with the short, quick steps of a feeble person in a
hurry. Rivers were running in his heart; he wanted to be where he could
kneel.
XX
THE WAY OF PEACE
Three years later the man was still alone, and the church still growing
under his unaided but untiring hand. Indeed, from one end, it looked
almost ready for the roof, the west gable rising salient through the
trees, with the original window intact underneath. But this window was
the exception, the sole survivor from the fire, and for the past year
the rest had been one long impediment. Even now, only the three single
lights, in either transept and to the right of the porch respectively,
had been wrought to a finish from sill to arch; a mullioned window was
just begun; the remainder all yawned to the sky in ragged gaps of
varying width. But the village looked daily on the one good end, flanked
by the west walls of either transept, which happened not to have a
window between them, and were consequently finished. And the village was
softening a little towards its outcast, though no man said so above his
breath; nor was a living soul known to have been near him all these
years, unless it was the new sexton to dig a grave, or a Lakenhall
curate to make an entry in the parish register.
There had, however, been one or two others; the first knocking at the
study door on the evening of the first funeral, some months after
Carlton's illness.
Carlton was reading at the time. His heart stopped at the sound. It was
repeated before he could bring himself to open the door.
"Tom Ivey!"
"That's me, sir; may I come in?"
"Surely, Tom."
The hulking mason entered awkwardly, and refused a chair. His large
frame bulked abnormally in a ready-made suit of stiff black cloth. He
seemed to take up half the room, as he stood and glowered, a full-length
figure of surly embarrassment and dark resolve.
"There was a funeral to-day," he began at last.
"I know."
"That was my poor mother, Mr. Carlton."
"Yes, I heard. Tom, I'm so sorry for you!"
Their hands flew together, and were one till Carlton winced.
"There's nothun to be sorry for," said Tom, with husky philosophy. "Her
troubles are over, poor thing. So's one o' mine! You can start me
to-morrow."
"Start you, Tom?"
"Yes, sir, I mean to work for you now. I'd like to see the man who'll
stop me! You've shown 'em all the man you are; now that's _my_ turn."
And the broad face beamed and darkened with alternate enthusiasm and
defiance. Carlton beheld it with parted lips and startled eye; and so
they stood through a long silence, till Carlton sat down with a smile.
It was a singularly gentle smile, as he leant back in his worn old
chair, and the lamplight fell upon his face.
"After all these months," he murmured; "after all these months!"
"I fare to hide my face when I count 'em up," admitted Ivey, bitterly.
"But what was the good of comun when I couldn't come for good? And how
could I in poor mother's time? It'd have meant--there's no sayun what
that wouldn't have meant."
"You mean as regards Sir Wilton?"
"I do, Mr. Carlton."
"He will have been a good friend to you?"
"Oh, yes."
"Did those repairs, did he?"
"Yes," sighed Ivey, "he was better than his word about them; you would
hardly know the place now. It made a lot of difference to mother. And I
had the job."
"Oh!"
"He's kept me busy, I must say. I've never wanted work."
"Until now, I suppose?"
"To tell you the truth, sir, I'm at work for him still."
"For Sir Wilton Gleed?"
"Yes--odd jobs about the estate."
"Then my good fellow, what do you mean by offering yourself to me?"
"Mean?" exclaimed Ivey, his black determination leaping into flame. "I
mean as I've made up my mind to give him the go-by for you. I'd have
done that long ago if it hadn't been for mother; but better late than
never. You've shown 'em the man you are, and now that's my turn. Look at
what you've done with your own two hands--there'll be other two from
to-morrow! You shan't work yourself right to death before my eyes. Why,
your hair's white with it already!"
Carlton wheeled further from the lamp.
"Not white," he murmured.
"But that is, sir. When did you look in a glass?"
"I don't know."
"Then do you look to-morrow. That's white as snow. And your beard's
grey."
"It's certainly too long," said Carlton, covering half with his hand.
"And your hand--your hand!"
It was scarred and horny as the mason's own. Carlton removed it from the
light, but said nothing.
"That's done its last day's work alone," cried Tom. "I start with you
to-morrow, whether you want me or not. I'll show 'em! I'll show 'em!"
And he stood nodding savagely to himself.
"My dear fellow, you can't behave like that."
The words fell softly after a long silence.
"Why can't I?"
Carlton gave innumerable reasons.
"It would put us both in the wrong," was the last. "Go on working for
Sir Wilton--at any rate for another year. You owe it to him, Tom. And
don't you fret about me; I am a happier man than I ever deserved to be
again. Last winter it was different; but God has shown me infinite mercy
and compassion. And now He has sent you to me, as a sign that even man
may forgive me in the end! That is enough for me, Tom. You cannot do
more for me than you have done to-night. But your duty you must do, by
God's help, as long as it is as clear as it is now. Don't bother your
head about me! I am getting into the knack. Perhaps by the time I come
to the roof--if I ever do--the want of a church may induce others to
help me finish mine. Then, if you like, you shall come back; but I won't
have you made an outcast on my account; one is enough."
There were no more visits from Tom Ivey. This one came to the ears of
Sir Wilton; and that diplomatist instead of playing into the enemy's
hands by discharging his man, capped all his kindness to the mason by
getting him the offer of an irresistible berth in that London district
for which he himself sat. Thus Sir Wilton removed a wavering ally, and
at the same time renewed the lease of his allegiance.
Carlton heard of it some months later, when there was another funeral,
and the Lakenhall curate came in again to make the entry. This curate
was a gentleman. He had a good heart and better tact. He not only
conversed with Carlton as with the perfectly normal clergyman, in
perfectly normal circumstances, but he would prolong these conversations
as far as he deemed possible without exciting a suspicion of the
profound pity which inspired him. He would bring bits of local gossip,
or the latest national event; once he let fall that Sidney Gleed was up
at Cambridge, and said to stand a chance of "coxing the eight," while
Lydia was now a Mrs. Goldstein, the mistress of a splendid mansion in
Holland Park, and another up the Thames. It was from the same source
that Carlton obtained belated news of George Mellis, who had come
through two campaigns without a scratch, yet never been back to play the
hero on his native heath. In a word this curate, who was a very young
and rather commonplace fellow, came soon to stand for the outside world,
the world of newspapers and talk, to Robert Carlton, who liked him none
the less because his older eye saw through the artless arts with which
the lad sought to mask his charity.
The visitations of this curate, who also conducted the one weekly
service in the village school, was a little arrangement between those
fast friends, Sir Wilton Gleed and Canon Wilders, who would have been
interested to learn the way in which their delegate improved the rare
occasion of a funeral. For marriages and baptisms the Long Stow folk had
taken to walking across the heath to Linkworth.
Early in the second year there came a visitor whom Robert Carlton knew
at a glance, though he had never before seen him in the flesh. This was
a person with the appearance of a rather dissipated sporting man, who
tooled tandem through the village, and pulled up at the ruins in broad
daylight. The thing was thus a scandal from the first moment of its
occurrence, and the cockaded groom was beset by horrified rustics before
his master's red neck had disappeared among the low and ragged walls.
Carlton had withdrawn into the invisible seclusion of the west end,
where he was nervously scraping at the nearest stone when the visitor
appeared, only to stop short with a whistle.
"I thought this was the church the parson was building with his own
hands?"
"So it is, my lord."
"And you are what he calls his own hands!"
"No, I am he."
The visitor stared.
"You the parson?"
"I know I don't look like one," admitted Carlton, glancing from his
ruined hands to the shabby clothes in which he worked; "nor can I fairly
consider myself one at present. Yet I am still the only rector of this
parish, and it was I who wrote to your lordship about the stone. Yours
are the only quarries in this part of the country. The stone I am now
using came from them. But it is just finished, and unless you will let
me have some more I may have to stop; otherwise I believe that I could
build up to the roof, in time, without assistance."
"And why should you?"
"My church was burnt down through my own--fault."
"I know all about that," said his lordship. "What I ask is, why should
you insist upon building it up single-handed?"
"I didn't insist originally," sighed Carlton. "It is a very long story."
The earl regarded him with a pair of very penetrating little eyes; he
was an ugly man with an ugly reputation, but one of those who take as
little trouble to conceal their worst characteristics as to display
their best.
"To be quite frank with you," said he, "I happen to know something of
your story; and I consider it a jolly sight more discreditable to others
than to you. That's _my_ opinion, and I don't care who knows it. So you
are really and literally doing this thing with your own two hands?"
"Literally--as yet."
"And who looks after you?"
"Oh, no one comes near me; but I am bound to say that I have learnt to
look pretty well after myself. I have found it absolutely necessary for
my work."
"Cookin' for yourself, and all that sort of thing?"
"Cooking and even killing when necessary."
"Is the boycott as wide and as bad as all that?"
"It is no worse than I deserve."
The visitor, looking sharply to see whether this was cant, was convinced
of its sincerity at a glance, though he loudly disagreed with the
opinion.
"I call it a jolly shame," said he; "but I'm not going to hurt your
feelings by expressing mine. I'm the last man to rake up the past. But
it would be a different thing if you had really fired the church; that
was the last iniquity, charging you with that! How do I know you didn't?
There was a young friend of mine on the bench, and I had it from him as
a fact, with a jolly lot more besides. Now show me what you've done
before I go."
This did not take a minute; there was so little to show for the first
long year and more of scraping, re-pointing, or rebuilding from the
ground. Save at the end where they had stood talking, there was
scarcely a wall that reached to their shoulders, and their tour of
inspection was closely followed from the road. It was conducted with few
words on either side, though the noble Earl muttered several which would
not have been muttered in other company. In the end he made a startling
undertaking. He would not only send as much more stone as was required,
but neither the stuff nor its delivery should cost Mr. Carlton a penny.
Carlton turned a deeper bronze, but begged as a favour to be allowed to
pay. The new church was his debt to the parish. It was the one debt that
he would pay. The uttermost farthing and the least last stone were to
have come out of his own pocket. That had been his undertaking; it was
still his heart's ambition; but as such he saw its unworthy side; and
would place himself in his lordship's hands, sooner than be swayed by
false pride in such a matter.
"Then you shall pay through the nose!" the other promised him; "and I'm
damned if I don't think all the more of you. I beg your pardon. I was
trying not to swear. But I never could stand parsons, and I suppose
it'll shock you when I tell you straight that you're the best I've
struck! You're a man, you are, and I take off my hat to you."
He did so openly before the wide eyes and wider mouths of those watching
from the road; and so ended an incident which Sir Wilton Gleed described
as one of the most scandalous in all his experience. "Birds of a
feather," was, however, his ready and untiring comment; and the saying
went from door to door, as "not guilty but don't do it again," had gone
before it; for there is nothing like a timeworn saying to crystallise a
widespread sentiment.
This one did not come to Robert Carlton's ears, but he was perhaps the
first to whom the obvious comment had occurred, and its easy
justification did a little damp the glow in which his latest champion
had left him. It were better to have won the allegiance of a better man.
Yet who was he to judge his fellows? He had forfeited the right to
criticise another. Let him then be truly and duly thankful; for with
each waning year he had more and more occasion. Surely the heart of man
was beginning at last to soften towards an erring brother, who repented
very bitterly of his sin, and who was doing faithfully the little that
he could to undo the least of his sin's results. Ah, that he could have
done more! Ah, that by dying he could bring the dead to life!
He was only a man; he could only suffer in his turn. That he had done,
was doing, and was still to do. And he thanked God for it again; so much
of the old spirit still endured. Yet was he none the less thankful for
every token of pardon or of pity from mere men. He knew that many would
justly execrate his name until the end. He knew of one at least who
would never forgive him in this life.
This one came on a moonlight night in the spring of this fourth year;
came limping into the churchyard, leaning on his great stick, and
growling savagely to himself; little suspecting that he had Carlton
caught in the ruins, listening, watching, fascinated, from one of those
ragged interstices with which even his perseverance and even his
ingenuity could scarcely cope. To be exact, it was, or was to be, the
mullioned window in the south transept; and as Musk advanced past this
angle of the building, the clergyman first leant, then crept, over the
sill to watch him.
He stole into the open. Musk had his back turned; his shoulders were
very round. Carlton knew well at what grave the other stood staring, and
his heart stirred heavily within him. Oh, his wickedness! Oh, his sin!
How could there be any forgiveness, in heaven or on earth, for him a
clergyman? The poor old man, so old, so bent! He must speak to him; he
must throw himself at his feet; so bent, so lame! Oh, that that stick
might strike the life out of him then and there!
He was creeping forward; suddenly he stopped. Musk was stooping, moving
his stick to and fro across the grave, with a sweeping movement, as of a
scythe. What was he doing? Carlton remembered--divined--and his blood
ran cold. The snowdrops were out; he had put some on the grave. It had
no stone, no name. It was only the tidiest and the greenest mound in all
the churchyard. He saw to that. And yet his flowers desecrated it; must
be swept to the winds . . .
Musk had come away. He was looking at the south wall where it had
obviously been rebuilt. Carlton was skulking in the porch. The high moon
fell heavily on the upturned face, covering it with white patches and
black wrinkles; and these were working like a seething mass; but for a
long time the great frame stood motionless. Then, in a flash, a huge
fist flew from the huge shoulder, struck the sandstone a sickening blow,
swung round and was shaken at the rectory through the trees until the
blood dripped from the mangled knuckles. Carlton was so near that he
could both see and hear the heavy drops. He drew further within the
porch: he had also seen his enemy's face.
Carlton had the fair mind and the true eye of the exceptional man. He
saw most things immediately as they really were, not as he wished to see
them, still less as they affected himself. He saw the moonlit face of
Jasper Musk for many a day. It did not haunt him. He could have
dismissed the vision from his mind at will; he preferred to consider it
calmly in a white light. There was hate undying and invincible. There
was something to respect. Carlton compared the petty though persistent
enmity of Sir Wilton Gleed with the great dumb hatred of Jasper Musk;
the last was inexorable as it was just; the first not wholly one or the
other, or Carlton was mistaken in the smaller man. Sir Wilton might be
the last man on earth to forgive him, yet in the very end he would
follow the world, supposing for a moment that the world ever led. But
Jasper Musk would hate the harder as the hate of others dwindled and
died.
This conviction cast no new shadow across Carlton's life, but it brought
a new name into his prayers, and put the fine edge on an old anxiety. He
had always been anxious about his child, though in the beginning that
sense had been overborne by others. Now, however, it was acute enough.
What was becoming of the boy? Did he live? Was Musk bringing him up?
Was he kindly treated? Yes, yes, they would be kind enough! Carlton
trusted his enemy there; but his own position was none the less grieving
as he came to realise what it was. He had no position at all towards the
child--no rights, no control, no voice, no _locus standi_ whatsoever.
Was it better so, or worse? What were they teaching the child? Would he
also grow up to deny God, and to execrate the name of his unworthy
minister?
Yes, it was a shadow; but no new one; it only fell heavier and stretched
further than before. And gradually Carlton became obsessed with the idea
that he must do something, take some step, give some earnest of
voluntary responsibility, no matter what new humiliation awaited him.
But what to do, what step to take, for the best! As life grew a very
little easier in other ways that have been shown, this problem came upon
Carlton as a fresh complication, and as a poignant reminder of his
original wickedness. It was not, however, a problem to be solved out of
hand. It required infinite thought, and ceaseless prayer for that right
judgment for which Robert Carlton now again looked upward as well as
within. But while he thought, and even while he prayed, the walls were
still growing under his hands.
And in his work he was strangely and serenely happy; there were no more
spasmodic joys and qualms. Enormous difficulties lay between him and the
impossible roof. He was at once artist and man enough to be stimulated
by these. He drew in chalk, upon the bare floors of his disused rooms,
full-size diagrams of all his arches, divided into as many parts as
there were to be stones, according to the easy rule set forth in his
precious book. Then he collected all the boxes, tin, wood, and
cardboard, that he could find upon the premises, and cut these up into
numbered patterns coinciding exactly with the diagrams on the floor,
thus providing himself with evening occupation for a whole winter, and
having all in readiness by the spring. Summer, however, found him still
in travail with the mullioned window in the north transept; and the
mullion and the tracery he was omitting altogether; the bare arch beat
him long enough.
Prolonged solitude may debase a man to the savage or exalt him to the
saint; it never leaves him the mere man he was. Robert Carlton was still
too human to merit for a moment the hyperbole of saint; nevertheless he
developed in his loneliness several of those traits which are less of
this world than of a better. His mind dwelt continuously upon holy
things; it had ceased altogether to feed upon itself. He had suffered no
more sickness, either of body or of soul, such as that which had
threatened to destroy both in the first awful winter. The whole man was
chastened, purified, simplified and refined, by the consuming fires
through which he had passed. His faith had never been stronger than it
was now; it had never, never been so near in sheer simplicity to the
faith of a little child. In a word, and little as he knew it, this great
sinner, proven libertine, suspected incendiary, was now living in the
very sight and smile of God; and even His humblest creatures loved and
trusted him as never in the days of prosperity and good report; for now
he loved them first. Nature, indeed, had not endowed him with that
sympathetic insight into inferior life--that genius for herself--which
is born in most people who are to have it at all. To Robert Carlton the
talent only came in his lonely and dishonoured prime, as the solace of
his exile, as a new interest and occupation for his mind, and surely
also as a sign of grace returning. There grew upon him in these years
the knowledge and love of very little things, trodden under foot or
brushed aside until now; a larger passion for nature in all her moods,
and all their manifestations; and, above all, the equal peace and
independence of him to whom the grasses whisper and the elements sing.
So one wind braced him to titanic effort, and another confirmed him in
patient toil, and another relaxed both mind and members in merited ease;
so he came to know the birds about him, almost as a shepherd knows his
sheep, and even to discover some individuality beneath the feathers.
There was one huge sparrow, a perfect demon for the crumbs which Carlton
strewed every morning near the scene of his day's work, so that he might
not be quite alone. The lowest human qualities came out in this small
bird until finally, and with infinite ingenuity, it was trapped,
rationed, and compelled to watch a feast of the smaller fry through the
wires of a cage. Then there was a robin which in time came to perch upon
the solitary's hat while he worked; only in the beginning were there
crumbs in the brim. And again there was a starling that entertained him
by the hour together, and all for love, from an elder-bush close to the
shed.