paid all debts, and distributed the various legacies. The
sale of furniture took place last Monday. I now have pleasure
in enclosing you a complete and I think final account, by
which you will see that there is a sum in hand of L43 due to
you as residuary legatee. I am afraid this will seem a
disappointing result, but as you were doubtless aware (though
I was not when I had the pleasure of seeing you), the greater
part of your Aunt's property passed under a Deed of
Settlement, and it seems she had been dipping heavily into
the capital of the remainder for some years past.
Believe me,
Faithfully yours,
EDWARD LODGERS.
For a minute the only sounds were the snapping of Ralph's jaws, and
Eileen's rapid breathing. Then she said:
"You never said a word about a Settlement. I suppose you got it muddled
as usual!"
Ralph did not answer, too deep in his anger with the old woman who had
left that 'fat chough' a hundred pounds to provide him--Ralph--with
forty-three.
"You always believe what you want to believe!" cried Eileen; "I never
saw such a man."
Ralph went to Ipswich on the morrow. After going into everything with
the lawyer, he succeeded in varying the account by fifteen shillings,
considerably more than which was absorbed by the fee for this interview,
his fare, and hotel bill. The conduct of his Aunt, in having caused him
to get it into his head that there was no Settlement, and in living on
her capital, gave him pain quite beyond the power of expression; and
more than once he recalled with a shudder that slightly quizzical look
on her dead face. He returned to Eileen the following day, with his
brain racing round and round. Getting up next morning, he said:
"I believe I can get a hundred for that car; I'll go up and see about
it."
"Take this too," said Eileen, handing him the emerald pendant. Ralph
took it with a grunt.
"Lucky," he muttered, "emeralds are a rising market. I bought it on
purpose."
He came back that night more cheerful. He had sold the car for L65, and
the pendant for L42--a good price, for emeralds were now on the fall!
With the cheque for L43, which represented his expectations, he proved
that they would only be L14 out on the whole business when the fowls and
fowl-house had been paid for; and they would have the fowls--the price
of eggs was going up. Eileen agreed that it was the moment to develop
poultry-keeping. They might expect good returns. And holding up her
face, she said:
"Give me a kiss, dear Ralph?"
Ralph gave it, with his thirsty eyes fixed, expectant, on something
round the corner of her head, and the smile, which never moved, on his
cheeks.
After all there was her reversion! They would come into it some day.
1919.
III
MANNA
I
The Petty Sessions court at Linstowe was crowded. Miracles do not happen
every day, nor are rectors frequently charged with larceny. The interest
roused would have relieved all those who doubt the vitality of our
ancient Church. People who never went outside their farms or plots of
garden, had walked as much as three miles to see the show. Mrs. Gloyn,
the sandy-haired little keeper of the shop where soap and herrings,
cheese, matches, boot-laces, bulls'-eyes, and the other luxuries of a
countryside could be procured, remarked to Mrs. Redland, the farmer's
wife, ''Tis quite a gatherin' like.' To which Mrs. Redland replied,
''Most like Church of a Sunday.'
More women, it is true, than men, were present, because of their greater
piety, and because most of them had parted with pounds of butter,
chickens, ducks, potatoes, or some such offertory in kind during the
past two years, at the instance of the rector. They had a vested
interest in this matter, and were present, accompanied by their grief at
value unreceived. From Trover, their little village on the top of the
hill two miles from Linstowe, with the squat church-tower, beautifully
untouched, and ruined by the perfect restoration of the body of the
building, they had trooped in; some even coming from the shore of the
Atlantic, a mile beyond, across the downs, whence other upland square
church-towers could be viewed on the sky-line against the grey January
heavens. The occasion was in a sense unique, and its piquancy
strengthened by that rivalry which is the essence of religion.
For there was no love lost between Church and Chapel in Trover, and the
rector's flock had long been fortified in their power of 'parting' by
fear lest 'Chapel' (also present that day in court) should mock at his
impecuniousness. Not that his flock approved of his poverty. It had
seemed 'silly-like' ever since the news had spread that his difficulties
had been caused by a faith in shares. To improve a secure if moderate
position by speculation, would not have seemed wrong, if he had not
failed instead, and made himself dependent on their butter, their
potatoes, their eggs and chickens. In that parish, as in others, the
saying 'Nothing succeeds like success' was true, nor had the villagers
any abnormal disposition to question the title-deeds of affluence.
But it is equally true that nothing irritates so much as finding that
one of whom you have the right to beg is begging of you. This was why
the rector's tall, thin, black figure, down which a ramrod surely had
been passed at birth; his narrow, hairless, white and wasted face, with
red eyebrows over eyes that seemed now burning and now melting; his
grizzled red hair under a hat almost green with age; his abrupt and
dictatorial voice; his abrupt and mirthless laugh--all were on their
nerves. His barked-out utterances, 'I want a pound of butter--pay you
Monday!' 'I want some potatoes--pay you soon!' had sounded too often in
the ears of those who had found his repayments so far purely spiritual.
Now and then one of the more cynical would remark, 'Ah! I told un _my_
butter was all to market.' Or, 'The man can't 'ave no principles--he
didn't get no chicken out o' me.' And yet it was impossible to let him
and his old mother die on them--it would give too much pleasure 'over
the way.' And they never dreamed of losing him in any other manner,
because they knew his living had been purchased. Money had passed in
that transaction; the whole fabric of the Church and of Society was
involved. His professional conduct, too, was flawless; his sermons long
and fiery; he was always ready to perform those supernumerary
duties--weddings, baptisms, and burials--which yielded him what revenue
he had, now that his income from the living was mortgaged up to the
hilt. Their loyalty held as the loyalty of people will when some great
institution of which they are members is endangered.
Gossip said that things were in a dreadful way at the Rectory; the
external prosperity of that red-brick building surrounded by laurels
which did not flower, heightened ironically the conditions within. The
old lady, his mother, eighty years of age, was reported never to leave
her bed this winter, because they had no coal. She lay there, with her
three birds flying about dirtying the room, for neither she nor her son
would ever let a cage-door be shut--deplorable state of things! The one
servant was supposed never to be paid. The tradesmen would no longer
leave goods because they could not get their money. Most of the
furniture had been sold; and the dust made you sneeze 'fit to bust
yourself like.'
With a little basket on his arm, the rector collected for his household
three times a week, pursuing a kind of method, always in the apparent
belief that he would pay on Monday, and observing the Sabbath as a day
of rest. His mind seemed ever to cherish the faith that his shares were
on the point of recovery; his spirit never to lose belief in his divine
right to be supported. It was extremely difficult to refuse him; the
postman had twice seen him standing on the railway line that ran past
just below the village, 'with 'is 'at off, as if he was in two
minds-like.' This vision of him close to the shining metals had
powerfully impressed many good souls who loved to make flesh creep. They
would say, 'I wouldn' never be surprised if something 'appened to 'im
one of these days!' Others, less romantic, shook their heads, insisting
that 'he wouldn' never do nothin' while his old mother lived.' Others
again, more devout, maintained that 'he wouldn' never go against the
Scriptures, settin' an example like that!'
II
The Petty Sessions court that morning resembled Church on the occasion
of a wedding; for the villagers of Trover had put on their black clothes
and grouped themselves according to their religious faiths--'Church' in
the right, 'Chapel' in the left-hand aisle. They presented all that rich
variety of type and monotony of costume which the remoter country still
affords to the observer; their mouths were almost all a little open,
and their eyes fixed with intensity on the Bench. The three
magistrates--Squire Pleydell in the chair, Dr. Becket on his left, and
'the Honble' Calmady on his right--were by most seen for the first time
in their judicial capacity; and curiosity was divided between their
proceedings and observation of the rector's prosecutor, a small baker
from the town whence the village of Trover derived its necessaries. The
face of this fellow, like that of a white walrus, and the back of his
bald head were of interest to everyone until the case was called, and
the rector himself entered. In his thin black overcoat he advanced and
stood as if a little dazed. Then, turning his ravaged face to the Bench,
he jerked out:
'Good morning! Lot of people!'
A constable behind him murmured:
'Into the dock, sir, please.'
Moving across, he entered the wooden edifice.
'Quite like a pulpit,' he said, and uttered his barking laugh.
Through the court ran a stir and shuffle, as it might be of sympathy
with his lost divinity, and every eye was fixed on that tall, lean
figure, with the shaven face, and red, grey-streaked hair.
Entering the witness-box, the prosecutor deposed as follows:
'Last Tuesday afternoon, your Honours, I 'appened to be drivin' my cart
meself up through Trover on to the cottages just above the dip, and I'd
gone in to Mrs. 'Oney's, the laundress, leavin' my cart standin' same as
I always do. I 'ad a bit o' gossip, an' when I come out, I see this
gentleman walkin' away in front towards the village street. It so
'appens I 'appened to look in the back o' my cart, and I thinks to
meself, That's funny! There's only two flat rounds--'ave I left two 'ere
by mistake? I calls to Mrs. 'Oney, an' I says, "I 'aven't been absent,
'ave I, an' left ye two?" "No," she says, "only one--'ere 'tis! Why?"
she says. "Well," I says, "I 'ad four when I come in to you, there's
only two now. 'Tis funny!" I says. "'Ave you dropped one?" she says.
"No," I says, "I counted 'em." "That's funny," she says; "perhaps a
dog's 'ad it." "'E may 'ave," I says, "but the only thing I see on the
road is that there." An' I pointed to this gentleman. "Oh!" she says,
"that's the rector." "Yes," I says, "I ought to know that, seein' 'e's
owed me money a matter of eighteen months. I think I'll drive on," I
says. Well, I drove on, and come up to this gentleman. 'E turns 'is
'ead, and looks at me. "Good afternoon!" he says--like that. "Good
afternoon, sir," I says. "You 'aven't seen a loaf, 'ave you?" 'E pulls
the loaf out of 'is pocket. "On the ground," 'e says; "dirty," 'e says.
"Do for my birds! Ha! ha!" like that. "Oh!" I says, "indeed! Now I
know," I says. I kept my 'ead, but I thinks: "That's a bit too
light-'earted. You owes me one pound, eight and tuppence; I've whistled
for it gettin' on for two years, but you ain't content with that, it
seems! Very well," I thinks; "we'll see. An' I don't give a darn whether
you're a parson or not!" I charge 'im with takin' my bread.'
Passing a dirty handkerchief over his white face and huge gingery
moustache, the baker was silent. Suddenly from the dock the rector
called out: 'Bit of dirty bread--feed my birds. Ha, ha!'
There was a deathly little silence. Then the baker said slowly:
'What's more, I say he ate it 'imself. I call two witnesses to that.'
The Chairman, passing his hand over his hard, alert face, that of a
master of hounds, asked:
'Did you see any dirt on the loaf? Be careful!'
The baker answered stolidly:
'Not a speck.'
Dr. Becket, a slight man with a short grey beard, and eyes restive from
having to notice painful things, spoke.
'Had your horse moved?'
''E never moves.'
'Ha, ha!' came the rector's laugh.
The Chairman said sharply:
'Well, stand down; call the next witness.--Charles Stodder, carpenter.
Very well! Go on, and tell us what you know.'
But before he could speak the rector called out in a loud voice:
'Chapel!'
'Hsssh! Sir!' But through the body of the court had passed a murmur, of
challenge, as it were, from one aisle to the other.
The witness, a square man with a red face, grey hair, whiskers, and
moustache, and lively excitable dark eyes, watering with anxiety, spoke
in a fast soft voice:
'Tuesday afternoon, your Worships, it might be about four o'clock, I was
passin' up the village, an' I saw the rector at his gate, with a loaf in
'is 'and.'
'Show us how.'
The witness held his black hat to his side, with the rounded top
outwards.
'Was the loaf clean or dirty?'
Sweetening his little eyes, the witness answered:
'I should say 'twas clean.'
'Lie!'
The Chairman said sternly:
'You mustn't interrupt, sir.--You didn't see the bottom of the loaf?'
The witness's little eyes snapped.
'Not eggzactly.'
'Did the rector speak to you?'
The witness smiled. 'The rector wouldn' never stop me if I was passin'.
I collects the rates.'
The rector's laugh, so like a desolate dog's bark, killed the bubble of
gaiety rising in the court; and again that deathly little silence
followed.
Then the Chairman said:
'Do you want to ask him anything?'
The rector turned. 'Why d' you tell lies?'
The witness screwing up his eyes, said excitedly:
'What lies 'ave I told, please?'
'You said the loaf was clean.'
'So 'twas clean, so far as I see.'
'Come to Church, and you won't tell lies.'
'Reckon I can learn truth faster in Chapel.'
The Chairman rapped his desk.
'That'll do, that'll do! Stand down! Next witness.--Emily Bleaker. Yes?
What are you? Cook at the rectory? Very well. What do you know about the
affair of this loaf last Tuesday afternoon?'
The witness, a broad-faced, brown-eyed girl, answered stolidly:
'Nothin', zurr.'
'Ha, ha!'
'Hssh! Did you see the loaf?'
'Noa.'
'What are you here for, then?'
'Master asked for a plate and a knaife. He an' old missus ate et for
dinner. I see the plate after; there wasn't on'y crumbs on et.'
'If you never saw the loaf, how do you know they ate it?'
'Because ther' warn't nothin' else in the 'ouse.'
The rector's voice barked out:
'Quite right!'
The Chairman looked at him fixedly.
'Do you want to ask her anything?'
The rector nodded.
'You been paid your wages?'
'Noa, I 'asn't.'
'D'you know why?'
'Noa.'
'Very sorry--no money to pay you. That's all.'
This closed the prosecutor's case; and there followed a pause, during
which the Bench consulted together, and the rector eyed the
congregation, nodding to one here and there. Then the Chairman, turning
to him, said:
'Now, sir, do you call any witnesses?'
'Yes. My bell-ringer. He's a good man. You can believe him.'
The bell-ringer, Samuel Bevis, who took his place in the witness-box,
was a kind of elderly Bacchus, with permanently trembling hands. He
deposed as follows:
'When I passed rector Tuesday arternoon, he calls after me: "See this!"
'e says, and up 'e held it. "Bit o' dirrty bread," 'e says; "do for my
burrds." Then on he goes walkin'.'
'Did you see whether the loaf was dirty?'
'Yaas, I think 'twas dirrty.'
'Don't _think_! Do you _know_?'
'Yaas; 'twas dirrty.'
'Which side?'
'Which saide? I think 'twas dirrty on the bottom.'
'Are you sure?'
'Yaas; 'twas dirrty on the bottom, for zartain.'
'Very well. Stand down. Now, sir, will you give us your version of this
matter?'
The rector, pointing at the prosecutor and the left-hand aisle, jerked
out the words:
'All Chapel--want to see me down.'
The Chairman said stonily:
'Never mind that. Come to the facts, please.'
'Certainly! Out for a walk--passed the baker's cart--saw a loaf fallen
in the mud--picked it up--do for my birds.'
'What birds?'
'Magpie and two starlings; quite free--never shut the cage-door; well
fed.'
'The baker charges you with taking it from his cart.'
'Lie! Underneath the cart in a puddle.'
'You heard what your cook said about your eating it. Did you?'
'Yes, birds couldn't eat all--nothing in the house--Mother and
I--hungry.'
'Hungry?'
'No money. Hard up--very! Often hungry. Ha, ha!'
Again through the court that queer rustle passed. The three magistrates
gazed at the accused. Then 'the Honble' Calmady said:
'You say you found the loaf under the cart. Didn't it occur to you to
put it back? You could see it had fallen. How else could it have come
there?'
The rector's burning eyes seemed to melt.
'From the sky. Manna.' Staring round the court, he added: 'Hungry--God's
elect--to the manna born!' And, throwing back his head, he laughed. It
was the only sound in a silence as of the grave.
The magistrates spoke together in low tones. The rector stood
motionless, gazing at them fixedly. The people in the court sat as if at
a play. Then the Chairman said:
'Case dismissed.'
'Thank you.'
Jerking out that short thanksgiving, the rector descended from the dock,
and passed down the centre aisle, followed by every eye.
III
From the Petty Sessions court the congregation wended its way back to
Trover, by the muddy lane, 'Church' and 'Chapel,' arguing the case. To
dim the triumph of the 'Church' the fact remained that the baker had
lost his loaf and had not been compensated. The loaf was worth money; no
money had passed. It was hard to be victorious and yet reduced to
silence and dark looks at girding adversaries. The nearer they came to
home, the more angry with 'Chapel' did they grow. Then the bell-ringer
had his inspiration. Assembling his three assistants, he hurried to the
belfry, and in two minutes the little old tower was belching forth the
merriest and maddest peal those bells had ever furnished. Out it swung
in the still air of the grey winter day, away to the very sea.
A stranger, issuing from the inn, hearing that triumphant sound, and
seeing so many black-clothed people about, said to his driver:
'What is it--a wedding?'
'No, zurr, they say 'tis for the rector, like; he've a just been
acquitted for larceny.'
* * * * *
On the Tuesday following, the rector's ravaged face and red-grey hair
appeared in Mrs. Gloyn's doorway, and his voice, creaking like a saw,
said:
'Can you let me have a pound of butter? Pay you soon.'
What else could he do? Not even to God's elect does the sky always send
down manna.
1916.
IV
A STRANGE THING
Not very long ago, during a sojourn in a part of the West country never
yet visited by me, I went out one fine but rather cold March morning for
a long ramble. I was in one of those disillusioned moods that come to
writers, bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of confidence, a prey to that
recurrent despair, the struggle with which makes the profession of the
pen--as a friend once said to me--"a manly one." "Yes"--I was thinking,
for all that the air was so brisk, and the sun so bright--"nothing comes
to me nowadays, no flashes of light, none of those suddenly shaped
visions that bring cheer and warmth to a poor devil's heart, and set his
brain and pen to driving on. A bad, bad business!" And my eyes,
wandering over the dip and rise, the woods, the moor, the rocks of that
fine countryside, took in the loveliness thereof with the profound
discontent of one who, seeing beauty, feels that he cannot render it.
The high lane-banks had just been pollarded, one could see right down
over the fields and gorse and bare woods tinged with that rosy brown of
beech and birch twigs, and the dusty saffron of the larches. And
suddenly my glance was arrested by something vivid, a sort of black and
white excitement in the air. "Aha!" I thought, "a magpie. Two! Three!
Good! Is it an omen?" The birds had risen at the bottom of a field,
their twining, fluttering voyage--most decorative of all bird
flights--was soon lost in the wood beyond, but something it had left
behind in my heart; I felt more hopeful, less inclined to think about
the failure of my spirit, better able to give myself up to this new
country I was passing through. Over the next rise in the very winding
lane I heard the sound of brisk church bells, and not three hundred
yards beyond came to a village green, where knots of men dressed in the
dark clothes, light ties, and bowler hats of village festivity, and of
women smartened up beyond belief, were gathered, chattering, round the
yard of an old, grey, square-towered church.
"What's going on?" I thought. "It's not Sunday, not the birthday of a
Potentate, and surely they don't keep Saint days in this manner. It must
be a wedding. Yes--there's a favour! Let's go in and see!" And, passing
the expectant groups, I entered the church and made my way up the aisle.
There was already a fair sprinkling of folk all turned round towards
the door, and the usual licensed buzz and whisper of a wedding
congregation. The church, as seems usual in remote parishes, had been
built all those centuries ago to hold a population in accordance with
the expectations of its tenet, "Be fruitful and multiply." But the whole
population could have been seated in a quarter of its space. It was
lofty and unwarmed save by excitement, and the smell of bear's-grease.
There was certainly more animation than I had ever seen or savoured in a
truly rural district.
The bells which had been ringing with a sort of languid joviality, fell
now into the hurried crashing which marks the approach of a bride, and
the people I had passed outside came thronging in. I perceived a young
man--little more than a boy, who by his semi-detachment, the fumbling of
his gloved hands, and the sheepishness of the smile on his good-looking,
open face, was obviously the bridegroom. I liked the looks of him--a cut
above the usual village bumpkin--something free and kind about his face.
But no one was paying him the least attention. It was for the bride they
were waiting; and I myself began to be excited. What would this young
thing be like? Just the ordinary village maiden with tight cheeks, and
dress; coarse veil, high colour, and eyes like a rabbit's; or
something--something like that little Welsh girl on the hills whom I
once passed and whose peer I have never since seen? Bending forward, I
accosted an apple-faced woman in the next pew. "Can you tell me who the
bride is?"
Regarding me with the grey, round, defensive glance that one bestows on
strangers, she replied:
"Aw, don't 'ee know? 'Tes Gwenny Mara--prettiest, brightest maid in
these parts." And, jerking her thumb towards the neglected bridegroom,
she added: "He's a lucky young chap. She'm a sunny maid, for sure, and a
gude maid tu."
Somehow the description did not reassure me, and I prepared for the
worst.
A bubble, a stir, a rustle!
Like everyone else, I turned frankly round. She was coming up the aisle
on the arm of a hard-faced, rather gipsy-looking man, dressed in a
farmer's very best.
I can only tell you that to see her coming down the centre of that grey
church amongst all those dark-clothed people, was like watching the
dance of a sunbeam. Never had I seen a face so happy, sweet, and
radiant. Smiling, eager, just lost enough to her surroundings, her hair
unconquerably golden through the coarse veil; her dancing eyes clear
and dark as a peat pool--she was the prettiest sight. One could only
think of a young apple-tree with the spring sun on its blossom. She had
that kind of infectious brightness which comes from very simple
goodness. It was quite a relief to have taken a fancy to the young man's
face, and to feel that she was passing into good hands.
The only flowers in the church were early daffodils, but those first
children of the sun were somehow extraordinarily appropriate to the
wedding of this girl. When she came out she was pelted with them, and
with that miserable confetti without which not even the simplest souls
can pass to bliss, it seems. There are things in life which make one
feel good--sunshine, most music, all flowers, many children, some
animals, clouds, mountains, bird-songs, blue sky, dancing, and here and
there a young girl's face. And I had the feeling that all of us there
felt good for the mere seeing of her.