had heard stray words in Long Stow concerning Gwynneth's departure and
its reason as alleged. "I should have liked you to see the church," was
all he said.
"And do you know," rejoined Gwynneth, speaking out her mind at last,
"that I am in no great hurry to see it? I know it is foolish of me--for
no one man could have finished such a work--no other man living would
have got as far as you did without a soul to help you! Yet somehow I
don't so much want to see the church that they came in and finished; it
would spoil the picture that I can see so plainly now, and always
shall--of the stones you cut and the walls you built with your own two
hands--and every other hand against you!"
She was holding out her own. Carlton looked from it to her face, a
strange surprise in his eyes. He had wriggled out of one of his gloves,
and was twisting it round the iron paling at the corner where they
stood.
"May I come no further?" he said.
"No, I could not think of taking you another yard out of your way. And
it is really not so very many yards from where we stand!"
Gwynneth smiled brightly; but her voice was the very firm one of this
half-hour of her existence. And ever afterwards she was to marvel why
neither smile nor words were an effort to her at the time: so his
presence supported her to the end, when the clasp of that indomitable
hand, now bare, and horny even through her glove, left Gwynneth
outwardly unmoved. She returned his pressure with honest warmth; her
smile was kind and bright; then the cold mist fell between them in a
widening yellow gulf, with a diminishing patter of firm footsteps, that
Carlton could hear when the nurse's streamers had quite disappeared in
the fog.
And he stood where he was to hear the last of her; and still he stood,
wishing he had disregarded tact, and persisted in his escort, whether it
embarrassed her or not, if only to find out where her hospital was. He
felt inclined to call before leaving town; already there was something
that he wished he had said; he kept saying it to himself as he wandered
back through dark gardens and a desert park.
"So you prefer to think of it before the roof was on, as I managed to
make it by myself! You are the first to say that or to feel it--except
me! And I have put the feeling down; thank God, I have got it under; yet
it is a help to know that one other felt the same. Perhaps it was a
human feeling; but in me at least it was unworthy. God help me! But in
you it is sweet, and to me very wonderful . . . that you should
understand and sympathise . . . a young girl like you!"
This whole fatality left the man sadly unsettled; tired and yet restless
in body and soul; humbly thankful for a woman's sympathy after so long,
and so much, yet the prey of a new depression. A woman's sympathy! Or
was it only a woman's pity? No, she understood; but it mattered little
to Robert Carlton; there could be no second woman in his life. That he
had always felt; but he was not sure that he had ever before defined the
feeling. It was a part of his eternal punishment; but he was quite sure
that he had not previously regarded it in that light.
A coxcomb Carlton had never been; he had no suspicion of the kind of
impression he had made upon Gwynneth; his sole concern was the
impression which she had made on him. Like the rest of the world, she
was flying to extremes; only in her case, if she especially magnified
the good, it was because she was still ignorant of the original evil. It
could be nothing else; but his feeling about himself was more complex.
He alone knew how much or how little of the highest and the best in him
had redeemed that passion born of passion which had blighted his life.
It was of further significance that for years Carlton had not looked
upon his life as blighted. The blight fell upon the shining vision of
the woman he could have loved. And all had been so sudden that the man
was dazed.
He could not eat, though he was hungry; nor rest, though tired to the
bone. He would go out again. It was good to be out, even in a London
fog, which was nothing to the fogs he remembered, for there was no
question of groping one's way; one could see it for fifty yards, often
for more. But now there was not even a small magenta sun; it was the
middle of the brief December afternoon when Robert Carlton left his
hotel; and near its close before he found himself in Kensington Gardens
once more. He hardly knew what brought him there. It was partly, but not
altogether, a sentimental impulse. Carlton had also some idea of finding
the hospital if he could, some hope of seeing Gwynneth again, if only to
assure himself that his imaginings of the last few hours had made her
other than what she was. And then he could rectify those omissions of
the morning; but neither was this all; a strong inexplicable attraction
drew him straight to the spot where he had stood so long after Gwynneth
was gone.
And Gwynneth herself was standing there again!
He was almost upon her before he saw her in the dusk, then those long
lawn streamers leapt like lightning to his eyes; and now he was creeping
backwards across the path. But she had not heard him, or she did not
heed: her back was turned, and bent, for she was leaning over the iron
paling which he had grasped before. And she shook with tears.
Carlton was shaking, too; passion had taken him by the shoulders, and
was shaking the strength out of his heart. Horror had driven him back,
passion was spurring him on again. If she loved him--if she loved
him--then the hand of God was in all this.
He was back upon the spot where recognition had come. Oh, yes, it was
she! She had given a little cry; she was stooping lower over the paling;
her voice was unmistakable. Then she rose, half turning, and he saw her
profile plain. She was raising something to her eyes; in another moment
it was at her lips, and she was kissing it, and sobbing over it,
whatever it might be.
Carlton thought he knew what it was, and conceived a new horror of
himself in his involuntary capacity of spy. Yet instinctively he was
feeling in both overcoat pockets at once; in one there was a single
glove; in the other nothing at all. Cold with shame, but shivering with
excitement, the man stood torn between the newborn desire of his eyes,
and the fixed resolve of his soul. But he could not tear himself from
the spot--nor was it any longer necessary. Gwynneth was gone herself;
gone without seeing him; out of sight this time in an instant. And
Robert Carlton, white, trembling, but himself--the man with a will at
least--was listening a second time to the failing music of her feet, his
own planted firmly on the walk.
XXXI
ADVENT EVE
The bishop arrived on the Saturday afternoon. He was still the same
little old man, with the side-whiskers and the long mouth, the queer
voice and the ungainly limp; and Robert Carlton found him neither more
nor less cordial than at their last dread interview; but he asked to see
the church before it was too dark.
All was in readiness at last. But the cocoanut matting in the aisle and
transepts, and the maroon axminster in the chancel, had only been laid
that day. As yet there was no stained glass, and only the east window
and the west were mullioned as of old; but through the latter a wintry
sun poured thick red beams, already too much aslant to touch the floor,
but just falling upon the altar with its glimmering candlesticks, its
rich green cover, its violet frontal, all three gifts from the hall. The
bishop heard this without remark, his mouth a mere seam. But he approved
of the rows of rush-seated chairs in place of pews, and he admired the
simple pulpit of pitch pine. There was a pleasant smell of pitch pine in
the church. All the woodwork was of this wood, including the ceiling and
all panelling; and the pores of the fragrant timber were not stopped up
with varnish. The new red hassocks looked very bright under each chair,
and the new black prayer-books shone like polished jet on the book-rests
behind them. In the south transept, a space was boarded off for the new
organ; and here chaos had still a corner to itself; nor was either the
lighting or the heating apparatus quite complete. Oil-stoves were
already burning, however, at various points, and their odour compared
unfavourably with that of the pitch pine.
"I do not want you to catch cold to-morrow," said Carlton, as he locked
the door behind them when they left.
"Tut!" said the bishop, "I am not such an old man that you need coddle
me."
Nor did he look a day older for all these years, as they went out
together into the raw red sunset. But Robert Carlton seemed almost to
have caught him up: he had come back from London so haggard and
hollow-eyed.
They talked very little until the evening. Carlton had servants now,
that very widow who had been the first to desert him being head and
chief once more; and she signalised the occasion by serving one of the
soundest meals of her career. But it was in the long low study, now a
study pure and simple, and an infinitely tidier one than aforetime, that
the bishop smoked his after-dinner pipe like any deacon, while Carlton
also tasted his first tobacco for five years and a half. And still they
were strangely silent, until the occurrence of an incident, little in
itself, but great with suggestion.
There was a tiny patter on the worn carpet, and all at once the bishop
beheld a big brown mouse seated upright within a few inches of his
companion's boot. The bishop exclaimed, and the mouse fled with a
scuttle and a squeak.
"I tamed him," Carlton explained with a slight access of colour. "The
house is overrun with them, but this fellow lets none of the others in
here."
The bishop was slow to follow up his exclamation. He certainly was a man
of fewer words than formerly.
"You ought not to have made yourself such an anchorite," he said at
last. "You might have smoked your pipe--you say that's your first--and
written to me sooner!"
So that still rankled. Carlton was not altogether surprised.
"My lord," said he, "how could I? You had advised me to live anywhere
else, and yet here I was!"
"The circumstances justified you, Mr. Carlton. I could not foresee such
circumstances, I assure you. I heard of them, however, at the time."
Carlton had never written till the five years were nearly up, when it
became a necessary preliminary to the resumption of those offices from
which he had been debarred; but, when he did write, he had done so to
such effect that certain other preliminaries had been foregone.
"Though you did not write," continued the bishop, "Sir Wilton Gleed did.
We had some correspondence about you, and we disagreed; that is one
reason why I declined his invitation and accepted yours. I would not
mention it, only you are now such excellent friends. And I understand
that he himself makes no secret of his former attitude towards you."
"On the contrary, he has expressed the most generous regret for the line
he took."
"He may well regret it," said the bishop.
But Carlton had accepted his old enemy's aid, and would not hear ill of
him, whatever he might think. "It was natural enough," he murmured.
"What! To prevent you from making the one reparation in your power? To
have you boycotted right and left? To trump up a criminal charge? To
force you, a clergyman, to remain in your own parish, labouring like a
convict by the year together? To trample the cloth underfoot in the eyes
of all the world?"
"Oh," groaned Carlton, "it was I who did that! I alone am to blame for
that--I alone!"
He leant his elbows on the chimney-piece, his face in his hands; for
stand he must if he was only to hear harsh words--that night of all
nights! Carlton was unprepared for such severity at this stage; and
infinitely hurt; for at his worst, when he deserved no sympathy at all,
the bishop had shown much more. But behind his back the blazing eyes
were quenched, and the long mouth relaxed.
"No, no," a softer voice said; "you have done just the opposite--just
the opposite. You have been hard enough upon yourself; but the world was
harder on you--once."
There was kindness in the rasping voice, but no enthusiasm. None other
had made so little of the mere physical feat of this man; and to him
the tone was unmistakable.
"I know what you mean," said Carlton, turning round, his own eye alight.
"You think the world is going to the other extreme!"
"It generally does," replied the bishop. "I do not mean to be unkind."
"You are not, my lord--unless you think I haven't seen this for myself!"
The bishop nodded gravely to himself.
"You would see the danger. I am sure of that. You must want to hear the
last of what you have done; superhuman and heroic in itself--I am the
first to admit it--it is nevertheless the last chapter of a book which
you must want to close once and for all. The last chapter recalls the
first. Close the book; put it behind you; start afresh."
Robert Carlton stood looking down with a curious smile upon his haggard
face.
"That is exactly what I am going to do," said he.
"But the parish must do the same; they must help you. Let them also
think no more of the past, either remote or immediate."
"They must think of what they will," rejoined Carlton, queerly. "They
cannot help me much longer, nor I them. I am resigning the living, my
lord."
"Resigning it?" cried the bishop.
"I intend to do so to-morrow night. It always has been my intention. But
you are the first whom I have told."
"I'm glad to hear that!" the bishop exclaimed, as he scrambled to his
feet another being. "You have taken my breath away! My dear fellow, let
me dissuade you from any such course."
Carlton shook his head.
"My work here is done."
"It is just beginning!"
"No, it is done. I have given my parishioners the church I owed them,
since they lost their last church through me. I set them once an example
for which I shall pray to be forgiven till my life's end; but now,
please God, I have at least shown them that because a man falls it need
not be utterly and for ever. He can rise; or, at any rate, he can try.
God knows I have tried; and they know it; and it may help them in their
own day of bitter trouble. But it was you, my lord, who first helped me,
by bidding me never despair. I have tried to teach your lesson; that is
all."
"But you have not finished," the bishop urged, gently. "Go on teaching
it--go on."
"No. It is no sudden thought. I undertook in the beginning, when Sir
Wilton Gleed wanted to turn me out forcibly, to go of my own accord when
I had built the church. He may forget it, but I do not."
"Then I devoutly hope he will not accept your resignation!"
"He must. I have made my arrangements. There is need of clergy in the
far corners of our empire, greater need than here. There was an
Australian at the hotel I have been staying at in London, and he has
shown me my field. I am going out to offer my services to the Bishop of
Riverina, and I am relying upon a word from you for their acceptance. I
hope to sail at the beginning of next month; my passage is already
taken."
"I suppose you took it when you were in town?" the bishop grumbled.
Carlton coloured in an instant.
"I did--but I had long been thinking of it," he said, hastily. "Oh, my
lord, in my place you would do the same! How could I continue here to be
smiled on by these poor people? It was easier when they looked the other
way, when I lived in this room alone, doing everything for myself, and
not a soul came near me. How can I settle down again to a prosperous
life--here of all places--with my child in the parish, and his poor
mother . . . That is what they all forget in the generous warmth of
their reaction; but the more they forget, the more keenly I remember.
Ah! do you think I ever have forgotten--for an hour--for a moment--since
I left off working with my hands?"
One of these was stretched in the direction of the churchyard; and the
bishop read its touching testimony for the first time.
"There," whispered Carlton, in strange excitement, "there lies one . . .
whose ruin and whose death are at my door. I don't forget--I never have
forgotten. I have paid, and I will pay till the end. And there shall be
no other woman . . ."
His tongue failed him; his face was grief-stricken; the whole man was
changed. So then the human being, his bishop, knew that there was
another woman in his heart already; recalled the most terrible part of
this man's confession to him, years before; and presently plucked him by
the sleeve. And the voice that Robert Carlton heard, as he leaned once
more with his elbow on the chimney-piece, and his face between his
hands, was the voice of their last interview, at the bishop's palace, in
the blank forenoon of a wet summer's day.
"Forgive me," it said, "for I also have misjudged you in my turn. But
now I see--but now I see, and am ashamed . . . Your life has been hard,
my brother, but it has been brave! You have been through the depths, but
you have also touched the heights, and I think that God must be very
near you to-night. I see now that you are right to go; you are both
nobler and wiser than I thought; may happiness, and peace, and love
itself go with you first or last. Let us kneel together before I leave
you, and humbly pray that it may still be so!"
When the bishop retired, Robert Carlton returned to his study, and
prayed by himself until a knock at the outer door brought him to his
feet, much startled; for it was eleven at night.
He was still more startled when he reached the door, for there stood a
soldier straight and tall, sunburnt and jaunty; a medal with clasps and
the Egyptian star upon his scarlet breast; a smile behind the trim
moustache; right hand at the salute. It was only after a prolonged stare
that Carlton recognised the smart young man.
"George Mellis?" he cried. "Come in--come in!"
"That's me, sir," said George, entering like a machine. "But--can it be
you, Mr. Carlton?"
And his smile vanished as the lamplight fell upon the grey hairs and the
deep furrows which made the clergyman look nearly twice his years.
"Yes, George. I have aged a little. But so have you."
"Oh, I'm all right," said the young soldier with his fine eyes on the
other's face; "but I want to kill somebody, that's all!"
"I should have thought you'd done enough of that at the wars," rejoined
Carlton, smiling. "Come, George, it's you I want to hear about. Of
course I have heard of you. So you enlisted in the Grenadiers, and you
got straight to Tel-el-Kebir; and that's the clasp, and not the only
one! And now you're a colour-sergeant, and certain of your stripes, they
tell me; you're a great hero in the village, George; and yet I have
heard them complain that you never even came back to show yourself after
the war."
"I haven't come back to show myself now, Mr. Carlton."
And the young fellow looked rather grim above his brass and scarlet.
"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
"Nor have you, sir. But can't you guess why I've come back for the first
time to-night?"
Carlton considered, and suddenly his hollow eyes lit up; but those of
the grenadier had lighted first.
"Was it--was it really to--to be here to-morrow, George?"
"That was it, sir--and nothing else! I'd heard how you were building it
up with your own----"
"Never mind that, George."
"I heard it from Tom Ivey, who found me out in barracks not long since,
and gave me all the Long Stow news. That's how I came to hear of the
consecration to-morrow. He said he was coming down for it, and I said I
would too if I could get leave; and I did; and we've come down together
to-night."
Neither of them had dreamt of intruding at that hour; but Mellis had
seen the old light in the old window, and felt he must just come up to
shake hands. Yes, he would come in gladly after church to-morrow. No, he
had seen no one else to speak to as yet, except Mrs. Musk; and the
grenadier stood confused.
"Where did you see her?"
"Driving away from the Flint House."
"That old woman at this time of night?"
"Musk is bad, and she was going for the doctor herself. I offered to go
instead, but she had the girl with her, and there was no stopping them."
"Bad!" echoed Carlton. "He has been bad for weeks; he may be dying--and
all alone!" He dashed from the room, but was back next moment in his
wideawake. "I must go to him, George! He will hate it, but I must go.
Open the door, and I'll put out the light; if he's dying I shall stay."
It was a clear keen night with a worn moon curling in the west; and the
hard road rang like a drum as red-coat and black ran elbow to elbow down
the village, jerking a word here and there as they went.
"Been bad long, sir?"
"Sciatica for years; only just taken to his bed."
"Sciatica shouldn't kill."
"This must be something else. The man is old--and the one enemy I have
left!"
They ran on. Before the Flint House came first its meadow and then its
garden wall, with the gate left open, and a rude drive twisting through
trees to the side of the house. "This way," said Carlton; and in half a
minute they were at the side door. This also had been left open. Carlton
lowered his voice, his hand upon the latch.
"You wait here, like a good fellow. If he will not let me say one
word--if he orders me out--then you must come up instead. If he is so
ill that his wife goes herself at midnight for the doctor, then he is
too ill to be left with no one in the house but a child of five!"
Carlton's concern was not a little for the child. Suppose he had
awakened to call and call in vain--perhaps to run for succour to a
corpse! The thought made Carlton shudder as he found his way through
passages with which he had been permitted to become familiar after
Georgie's accident. At the head of the stairs there was Georgie's room;
the father had to pass it; and could not, without peeping in.
For this door was ajar, and a night-light burning on the chest of
drawers. Georgie was breathing gently in his cot. Carlton approached on
tip-toe, and stood gazing downward with clasped hands. Boisterous and
robust upon his feet, the boy looked still a baby in his sleep; his face
was so round and innocent; his hands seemed such toys; and the light
hair, too seldom cut, was lightest at the roots, and still curly at the
ends, as it lay upon the pillow where his last movement had tossed it.
It was a sweet face, even with the great eyes closed; the eyelashes
looked so much longer and darker against the pure skin; they were many
shades darker than the hair; and the eyebrows were assuming a very
delicate definition of their own. The mouth was beautiful. That brown
little hand was perfectly shaped. Carlton bent over, and kissed the warm
smooth cheek with infinite tenderness; then went upon his knees, and
prayed over the child, and for him, and for his future, out of the
fulness of a brimming heart. He forgot that Musk's death would make a
difference to the child and to himself; for the moment he forgot that
Musk was in any danger of dying, and that this was his house. He and his
child were alone together once more, it might be for the last time, one
never knew.
"God keep you, my own poor boy, and lead you not into temptation, but
deliver you from evil, for ever and ever, Amen."
He stooped once more over the cot, pushed the long hair back, running
his fingers through it gently, and kissed the pure forehead again and
again. And it seemed to Robert Carlton--but the night-light was very
dim--that at the last his son had smiled upon him in his sleep.
XXXII
THE SECOND TIME
In Musk's room there was more light. It lay under the closed door like a
yellow rod. Carlton knocked gently. There was no answer. He knocked
louder. Not a sound from within. Then the chill fell on him, and he
entered ready for any discovery but the one he was to make.
Neither the quick nor the dead lay within.
A fire was burning as well as the lamp; the very bed looked warm, but
was not; the sick man must have left it some minutes at least.
The lame man, the man who could not walk, had left his bed if not the
house! Carlton caught up the lamp to go in search. And even on the
landing a voice came hailing him from the region below.
"Mr. Carlton! Mr. Carlton! Quick, sir, quick!"
George Mellis was still at the side door, and in the lamplight the other
could not see an inch beyond.
"Have you found him, George? He's not in bed!"
"Who--Musk? No, sir, no!"
"Then what have you seen?"
The grenadier had a wet skin, a quivering lip, a starting eye.
"Oh, I can't tell you, sir! I may be wrong. God grant it! But give me
the lamp, and go outside and look for yourself!"