patriotic to such a mass of corruption and abomination as our Chinese
Government? I can understand a patriotic Russian, a patriotic Egyptian,
nay, even a patriotic Turk; but a patriotic Chinaman--why, the very
notion is palpably absurd. Listen, my dear sir; you ask me if I could
live in China. No, I couldn't; and for the best of all possible
reasons--they wouldn't let me. You don't know what the furious prejudice
and blind superstition of that awful country really is. Before I had
been there three months they would accuse me either of foreign
practices or, what comes to much the same thing, of witchcraft; and
they would put me to death by one of their most horrible torturing
punishments--atrocities which I could not even mention in an English
drawing-room. That is the sort of Damocles' sword that is always hanging
over the head of every Europeanized Chinaman who returns against his own
free will to his native land."
I was startled and surprised. It seemed so natural and simple to be
talking under Mrs. Bouverie Barton's big chandelier with this
interesting young man, and yet so impossible for a moment to connect him
in thought with all the terrible things that one had read in books about
the prisons and penal laws of China. That a graduate of London
University, a philosopher learned in all the political wisdom of
Ricardo, Mill, and Herbert Spencer, should really be subject to that
barbaric code of abominable tortures, was more than one could positively
realize. I hesitated a moment, and then I said, "But of course they will
never recall you."
"I trust not," he said quietly; "I pray not. Very likely they will let
me stop here all my lifetime. I am an assistant interpreter to the
Embassy, in which capacity I am useful to Pekin; whereas in any home
appointment I would of course be an utter failure, a manifest
impossibility. But there is really no accounting for the wild vagaries
and caprices of the Vermilion Pencil. For aught I know to the contrary,
I might even be recalled to-morrow. If once they suspect a man of
European sympathies, their first idea is to cut off his head. They
regard it as you would regard the first plague-spot of cholera or
small-pox in a great city."
"Heaven forbid that they should ever recall you," I said earnestly; for
already I had taken a strong fancy to his strange phenomenon of Western
education grafted on an immemorial Eastern stock; and I had read enough
of China to know that what he said about his probable fate if he
returned there permanently was nothing more than the literal truth. The
bare idea of such a catastrophe was too horrible to be realized for a
moment in Eaton Place.
As we drove home in our little one-horse brougham that evening, my wife
and Effie were very anxious to learn what manner of man my Chinese
acquaintance might really be; and when I told them what a charming
person I had found him, they were both inclined rather to laugh at me
for my enthusiastic description. Effie, in particular, jeered much at
the notion of an intelligent and earnest-minded Chinaman. "You know,
Uncle darling," she said in her bewitching way, "all your geese are
always swans. Every woman you meet is absolutely beautiful, and every
man is perfectly delightful--till Auntie and I have seen them."
"Perfectly true, Effie," I answered; "it is an amiable weakness of mine,
after all."
However, before the week was out Effie and Marian between them would
have it that I must call upon Chung and ask him to dine with us at
Kensington Park Terrace. Their curiosity was piqued, for one thing; and
for another thing, they thought it rather the cheese in these days of
expansive cosmopolitanism to be on speaking terms with a Chinese
_attache_. "Japanese are cheap," said Effie, "horribly cheap of late
years--a perfect drug in the market; but a Chinaman is still, thank
Heaven, at a social premium." Now, though I am an obedient enough
husband, as husbands go, I don't always accede to Marian's wishes in
these matters; but everybody takes it for granted that Effie's will is
law. Effie, I may mention parenthetically, is more than a daughter to
us, for she is poor Tom's only child; and of course everybody connected
with dear Tom is doubly precious to us now, as you may easily imagine.
So when Effie had made up her mind that Chung was to dine with us, the
thing was settled; and I called at his rooms and duly invited him, to
the general satisfaction of everybody concerned.
The dinner was a very pleasant one, and, for a wonder, Effie and Marian
both coincided entirely in my hastily formed opinion of Mr. Chung. His
mellow silvery voice, his frank truthful manner, his perfect freedom
from self-consciousness, all pleased and impressed those stern critics,
and by the end of the evening they were both quite as much taken with
his delightful personality as I myself had originally been. One link
leads on to another; and the end of it all was that when we went down
for our summer villeggiatura to Abbot's Norbury, nothing would please
Marian but that Mr. Chung must be invited down as one of our party. He
came willingly enough, and for five or six weeks we had as pleasant a
time together as any four people over spent. Chung was a perfect
encyclopaedia of information, while his good humour and good spirits
never for a moment failed him under any circumstances whatsoever.
One day we had made up a little private picnic to Norbury Edge, and were
sitting together after luncheon under the shade of the big ash tree,
when the conversation happened to turn by accident on the small feet of
Chinese ladies. I had often noticed that Chung was very reticent about
China; he did not like talking about his native country; and he was most
pleased and most at home when we treated him most like a European born.
Evidently he hated the provincialism of the Flowery Land, and loved to
lose his identity in the wider culture of a Western civilization.
"How funny it will be," said Effie, "to see Mrs. Chung's tiny feet when
you bring her to London. I suppose one of these days, on one of your
flying visits to Pekin, you will take to yourself a wife in your
country?"
"No," Chung answered, with quiet dignity; "I shall never marry--that I
have quite decided in my own mind."
"Oh, don't say that," Marian put in quickly; "I hate to hear men say
they'll never marry. It is such a terrible mistake. They become so
selfish, and frumpish, and old-bachelorish." Dear Marian has a high
idea of the services she has rendered to society in saving her own
fortunate husband from this miserable and deplorable condition.
"Perhaps so," Chung replied quietly. "No doubt what you say is true as a
rule. But, for my own part, I could never marry a Chinawoman; I am too
thoroughly Europeanized for that; we should have absolutely no tastes or
sympathies in common. You don't know what my countrywomen are like, Mrs.
Walters."
"Ah, no," said my wife contemplatively; "I suppose your people are all
heathens. Why, goodness gracious, Mr. Chung, if it comes to that, I
suppose really you are a heathen yourself!"
Chung parried the question gracefully. "Don't you know," said he, "what
Lord Chesterfield answered to the lady who asked him what religion he
professed? 'Madam, the religion to which all wise men belong.' 'And what
is that?' said she. 'Madam, no wise man ever says.'"
"Never mind Lord Chesterfield," said Effie, smiling, "but let us come
back to the future Mrs. Chung. I'm quite disappointed you won't marry a
Chinawoman; but at any rate I suppose you'll marry somebody?"
"Well, not a European, of course," Marian put in.
"Oh, of course not," Chung echoed with true Oriental imperturbability.
"Why _of course_?" Effie asked half unconsciously; and yet the very
unconsciousness with which she asked the question showed in itself that
she instinctively felt the gulf as much as any of us. If Chung had been
a white man instead of a yellow one, she would hardly have discussed the
question at issue with so much simplicity and obvious innocence.
"Well, I will tell you why," Chung answered. "Because, even supposing
any European lady were to consent to become my wife--which is in the
first place eminently improbable--I could never think of putting her in
the terribly false position that she would have to occupy under
existing circumstances. To begin with, her place in English society
would be a peculiar and a trying one. But that is not all. You must
remember that I am still a subject of the Chinese Empire, and a member
of the Chinese Civil Service. I may any day be recalled to China, and of
course--I say 'of course' this time advisedly--it would be absolutely
impossible for me to take an English wife to Pekin with me. So I am
placed in this awkward dilemma. I would never care to marry anybody
except a European lady; and to marry a European lady would be an act of
injustice to her which I could never dream of committing. But
considering the justifiable contempt which all Europeans rightly feel
for us poor John Chinamen, I don't think it probable in any case that
the temptation is at all likely to arise. And so, if you please, as the
newspapers always put it, 'the subject then dropped.'"
We all saw that Chung was in earnest as to his wish that no more should
be said about the matter, and we respected his feelings accordingly; but
that evening, as we sat smoking in the arbour after the ladies had
retired, I said to him quietly, "Tell me, Chung, if you really dislike
China so very much, and are so anxious not to return there, why don't
you throw off your allegiance altogether, become a British subject, and
settle down among us for good and all?"
"My dear fellow," he said, smiling, "you don't think of the
difficulties, I may say the impossibilities, in the way of any such plan
as you propose. It is easy enough for a European to throw off his
nationality whenever he chooses; it is a very different thing for an
Asiatic to do so. Moreover, I am a member of a Legation. My Government
would never willingly let me become a naturalized Englishman; and if I
tried to manage it against their will they would demand my extradition,
and would carry their point, too, as a matter of international courtesy,
for one nation could never interfere with the accredited representative
of another, or with any of his suite. Even if I were to abscond and get
rid of my personality altogether, what would be the use of it? Nobody in
England could find any employment for a Chinaman. I have no property of
my own; I depend entirely upon my salary for support; my position is
therefore quite hopeless. I must simply let things go their own way, and
trust to chance not to be recalled to Pekin."
During all the rest of Chung's visit we let him roam pretty much as he
liked about the place, and Effie and I generally went with him. Of
course we never for a moment fancied it possible that Effie could
conceivably take a fancy to a yellow man like him; the very notion was
too preposterously absurd. And yet, just towards the end of his stay
with us, it began to strike me uneasily that after all even a Chinaman
is human. And when a Chinaman happens to have perfect manners, noble
ideas, delicate sensibility, and a chivalrous respect for English
ladies, it is perhaps just within the bounds of conceivability that at
some odd moments an English girl might for a second partially forget his
oblique eyelids and his yellow skin. I was sometimes half afraid that it
might be so with Effie; and though I don't think she would ever herself
have dreamed of marrying such a man--the physical barrier between the
races is far too profound for that--I fancy she occasionally pitied poor
Chung's loneliness with that womanly pity which so easily glides into a
deeper and closer sentiment. Certainly she felt his isolation greatly,
and often hoped he would never really be obliged to go back for ever to
that hateful China.
One lovely summer evening, a few days before Chung's holiday was to end,
and his chief at the Embassy expected him back again, Marian and I had
gone out for a stroll together, and in coming home happened to walk
above the little arbour in the shrubbery by the upper path. A seat let
into the hedge bank overhung the summer-house, and here we both sat down
silently to rest after our walking. As we did so, we heard Chung's voice
in the arbour close below, so near and so clear that every word was
quite distinctly audible.
"For the last time in England," he was saying, with a softly regretful
cadence in his tone, as we came upon him.
"The _last_ time, Mr. Chung!" The other voice was Effie's. "What on
earth do you mean by that?"
"What I say, Miss Walters. I am recalled to China; I got the letters of
recall the day before yesterday."
"The day before yesterday, and you never told us! Why didn't you let us
know before?"
"I did not know you would interest yourselves in my private affairs."
"Mr. Chung!" There was a deep air of reproach in Effie's tone.
"Well, Miss Walters, that is not quite true. I ought not to have said it
to friends so kind as you have all shown yourselves to be. No; my real
reason was that I did not wish to grieve you unnecessarily, and even now
I would not have done so, only----"
"Only----?"
At this moment I for my part felt we had heard too much. I blushed up to
my eyes at the thought that we should have unwittingly played the spy
upon these two innocent young people. I was just going to call out and
rush down the little path to them; but as I made a slight movement
forward, Marian held my wrist with an imploring gesture, and earnestly
put her finger on my lips. I was overborne, and I regret to say I
stopped and listened. Marian did not utter a word, but speaking rapidly
on her fingers, as we all had learnt to do for poor Tom, she said
impressively, "For God's sake, not a sound. This is serious. We must and
ought to hear it out." Marian is a very clever woman in these matters;
and when she thinks anything a point of duty to poor Tom's girl, I
always give way to her implicitly. But I confess I didn't like it.
"Only----?" Effie had said.
"Only I felt compelled to now. I could not leave without telling you how
deeply I had appreciated all your kindness."
"But, Mr. Chung, tell me one thing," she asked earnestly; "why have they
recalled you to Pekin?"
"I had rather not tell you."
"I insist."
"Because they are displeased with my foreign tastes and habits, which
have been reported to them by some of my fellow-_attaches_."
"But, Mr. Chung, Uncle says there is no knowing what they will do to
you. They may kill you on some absurd charge or other of witchcraft or
something equally meaningless."
"I am afraid," he answered imperturbably, "that may be the case. I don't
mind at all on my own account--we Chinese are an apathetic race, you
know--but I should be sorry to be a cause of grief to any of the dear
friends I have made in England."
"Mr. Chung!" This time the tone was one of unspeakable horror.
"Don't speak like that," Chung said quickly. "There is no use in taking
trouble at interest. I may come to no harm; at any rate, it will not
matter much to any one but myself. Now let us go back to the house. I
ought not to have stopped here with you so long, and it is nearly dinner
time."
"No," said Effie firmly; "we will not go back. I must understand more
about this. There is plenty of time before dinner: and if not, dinner
must wait."
"But, Miss Walters, I don't think I ought to have brought you out here,
and I am quite sure I ought not to stay any longer. Do return. Your Aunt
will be annoyed."
"Bother Aunt! She is the best woman in the world, but I must hear all
about this. Mr. Chung, why don't you say you won't go, and stay in
England in spite of them?"
Nobody ever disobeys Effie, and so Chung wavered visibly. "I will tell
you why," he answered slowly; "because I cannot. I am a servant of the
Chinese Government, and if they choose to recall me, I must go."
"But they couldn't enforce their demand."
"Yes, they could. Your Government would give me up."
"But Mr. Chung, couldn't you run away and hide for a while, and then
come out again, and live like an Englishman?"
"No," he answered quietly; "it is quite impossible. A Chinaman couldn't
get work in England as a clerk or anything of that sort, and I have
nothing of my own to live upon."
There was a silence of a few minutes. Both were evidently thinking it
out. Effie broke the silence first.
"Oh, Mr Chung, do you think they will really put you to death?"
"I don't think it; I know it."
"You know it?"
"Yes."
Again a silence, and this time Chung broke it first. "Miss Effie," he
said, "one Chinaman more or less in the world does not matter much, and
I shall never forgive myself for having been led to grieve you for a
moment, even though this is the last time I shall be able to speak to
you. But I see you are sorry for me, and now--Chinaman as I am, I must
speak out--I can't leave you without having told you all I feel. I am
going to a terrible end, and I know it--so you will forgive me. We shall
never meet again, so what I am going to say need never cause you any
embarrassment in future. That I am recalled does not much trouble me;
that I am going to die does not much trouble me; but that I can never,
could never possibly have called you my wife, troubles me and cuts me to
the very quick. It is the deepest drop in my cup of humiliation."
"I knew it," said Effie, with wonderful composure.
"You knew it?"
"Yes, I knew it. I saw it from the second week you were here; and I
liked you for it. But of course it was impossible, so there is nothing
more to be said about it."
"Of course," said Chung. "Ah, that terrible _of course_! I feel it; you
feel it; we all feel it; and yet what a horrible thing it is. I am so
human in everything else, but there is that one impassable barrier
between us, and I myself cannot fail to recognize it. I could not even
wish you to feel that you could marry a Chinaman."
At that moment--for a moment only--I almost felt as if I could have said
to Effie, "Take him!" but the thing was too impossible--a something
within us rises against it--and I said nothing.
"So now," Chung continued, "I must go. We must both go back to the
house. I have said more than I ought to have said, and I am ashamed of
myself for having done so. Yet, in spite of the measureless gulf that
parts us, I felt I could not return to China without having told you.
Will you forgive me?"
"I am glad you did," said Effie; "it will relieve you."
She stood a minute irresolute, and then she began again: "Mr. Chung, I
am too horrified to know what I ought to do. I can't grasp it and take
it all in so quickly. If you had money of your own, would you be able to
run away and live somehow?"
"I might possibly," Chung answered, "but not probably. A Chinaman, even
if he wears European clothing, is too marked a person ever to escape.
The only chance would be by going to Mauritius or California, where I
might get lost in the crowd."
"But, Mr. Chung, I have money of my own. What can I do? Help me, tell
me. I can't let a fellow-creature die for a mere prejudice of race and
colour. If I were your wife it would be yours. Isn't it my duty?"
"No," said Chung. "It is more sacrifice than any woman ought to make for
any man. You like me, but that is all."
"If I shut my eyes and only heard you, I think I could love you."
"Miss Effie," said Chung suddenly, "this is wrong, very wrong of me. I
have let my weakness overcome me. I won't stop any longer. I have done
what I ought not to have done, and I shall go this minute. Just once,
before I go, shut your eyes and let me kiss the tips of your fingers.
Thank you. No, I will not stop," and without another word he was gone.
Marian and I stared at one another in blank horror. What on earth was to
be done? All solutions were equally impossible. Even to meet Chung at
dinner was terrible. We both knew in our heart of hearts that if Chung
had been an Englishman, remaining in heart and soul the very self-same
man he was, we would willingly have chosen him for Effie's husband. But
a Chinaman! Reason about the prejudice as you like, there it is, a thing
not to be got over, and at bottom so real that even the very notion of
getting over it is terribly repugnant to our natural instincts. On the
other hand, was poor Chung, with his fine delicate feelings, his
courteous manners, his cultivated intellect, his English chivalry, to go
back among the savage semi-barbarians of Pekin, and to be put to death
in Heaven knows what inhuman manner for the atrocious crime of having
outstripped his race and nation? The thing was too awful to contemplate
either way.
We walked home together without a word. Chung had taken the lower path;
we took the upper one and followed him at a distance. Effie remained
behind for a while in the summer-house. I don't know how we managed to
dress for dinner, but we did somehow; and when we went down into the
little drawing-room at eight o'clock, we were not surprised to hear that
Miss Effie had a headache and did not want any dinner that evening. I
was more surprised, however, when, shortly before the gong sounded, one
of the servants brought me a little twisted note from Chung, written
hurriedly in pencil, and sent, she said, by a porter from the railway
station. It ran thus:--
"DEAR MR. WALTERS,
"Excuse great haste. Compelled to return to town immediately. Shall
write more fully to-morrow. Just in time to catch up express.
"Yours ever,
"CHUNG."
Evidently, instead of returning to the house, he had gone straight to
the station. After all, Chung had the true feelings of a gentleman. He
could not meet Effie again after what had passed, and he cut the Gordian
knot in the only way possible.
Effie said nothing to us, and we said nothing to Effie, except to show
her Chung's note next morning in a casual, off-hand fashion. Two days
later a note came for us from the Embassy in Chung's pretty incisive
handwriting. It contained copious excuses for his hasty departure, and a
few lines to say that he was ordered back to China by the next mail,
which started two days later. Marian and I talked it all over, but we
could think of nothing that could be of any use; and after all, we said
to one another, poor Chung might be mistaken about the probable fate
that was in store for him.
"I don't think," Effie said, when we showed her the letter, "I ever met
such a nice man as Mr. Chung. I believe he is really a hero." We
pretended not to understand what she could mean by it.
The days went by, and we went back again to the dull round of London
society. We heard nothing more of Chung for many weeks; till at last one
morning I found a letter on the table bearing the Hong Kong postmark. I
opened it hastily. As I supposed, it was a note from Chung. It was
written in a very small hand on a tiny square of rice-paper, and it ran
as follows:--
"Thien-Shan Prison, Pekin, Dec. 8.
"MY DEAR FRIEND,
"Immediately on my return here I was arrested on a charge of
witchcraft, and of complicity with the Foreign Devils to introduce
the Western barbarism into China. I have now been in a loathsome
prison in Pekin for three weeks, in the midst of sights and sounds
which I dare not describe to you. Already I have suffered more than
I can tell; and I have very little doubt that I shall be brought to
trial and executed within a few weeks. I write now begging you not
to let Miss Effie hear of this, and if my name happens to be
mentioned in the English papers, to keep my fate a secret from her
as far as possible. I trust to chance for the opportunity of
getting this letter forwarded to Hong Kong, and I have had to write
it secretly, for I am not allowed pen, ink, or paper. Thank you
much for your very great kindness to me. I am not sorry to die, for
it is a mistake for a man to have lived outside the life of his own
people, and there was no place left for me on earth. Good-bye.
"Ever yours gratefully,
"CHUNG."
The letter almost drove me wild with ineffectual remorse and regret. Why
had I not tried to persuade Chung to remain in England? Why had I not
managed to smuggle him out of the way, and to find him some kind of
light employment, such as even a Chinaman might easily have performed?
But it was no use regretting now. The impassable gulf was fixed between
us; and it was hardly possible even then to realize that this amiable
young student, versed in all the science and philosophy of the
nineteenth century, had been handed over alive to the tender mercies of
a worse than mediaeval barbarism and superstition. My heart sank within
me, and I did not venture to show the letter even to Marian.
For some weeks the days passed heavily indeed. I could not get Chung out
of my mind, and I saw that Effie could not either. We never mentioned
his name; but I noticed that Effie had got from Mudie's all the books
about China that she could hear of, and that she was reading up with a
sort of awful interest all the chapters that related to Chinese law and
Chinese criminal punishments. Poor child, the subject evidently
enthralled her with a terrible fascination; and I feared that the
excitement she was in might bring on a brain fever.
One morning, early in April, we were all seated in the little
breakfast-room about ten o'clock, and Effie had taken up the outside
sheet of the _Times_, while I was engaged in looking over the telegrams
on the central pages. Suddenly she gave a cry of horror, flung down the
paper with a gesture of awful repugnance, and fell from her chair as
stiff and white as a corpse. I knew instinctively what had happened, and
I took her up in my arms and carried her to her room. After the doctor
had come, and Effie had recovered a little from the first shock, I took
up the paper from the ground where it lay and read the curt little
paragraph which contained the news that seemed to us so terrible:--
"The numerous persons who made the acquaintance of Chung Fo Tsiou, late
assistant interpreter to the Chinese Embassy in London, will learn with
regret that this unfortunate member of the Civil Service has been
accused of witchcraft and executed at Pekin by the frightful Chinese
method known as the Heavy Death. Chung Fo Tsiou was well known in London
and Paris, where he spent many years of his official life, and attracted
some attention by his natural inclination to European society and
manners."
Poor Chung! His end was too horrible for an English reader even to hear
of it. But Effie knew it all, and I did not wonder that the news should
have affected her so deeply.
Effie was some weeks ill, and at first we almost feared her mind would
give way under the pressure. Not that she had more than merely liked
poor Chung, but the sense of horror was too great for her easily to cast
it off. Even I myself did not sleep lightly for many and many a day
after I heard the terrible truth. But while Effie was still ill, a
second letter reached us, written this time in blood with a piece of
stick, apparently on a scrap of coarse English paper, such as that which
is used for wrapping up tobacco. It was no more than this:--
"Execution to-day. Keep it from Miss Effie. Cannot forgive myself
for having spoken to her. Will you forgive me? It was the weakness
of a moment: but even Chinamen have hearts. I could not die without
telling her.--CHUNG."
I showed Effie the scrap afterwards--it had come without a line of
explanation from Shanghao--and she has kept it ever since locked up in
her little desk as a sacred memento. I don't doubt that some of these
days Effie will marry; but as long as she lives she will bear the
impress of what she has suffered about poor Chung. An English girl could
not conceivably marry a Chinaman; but now that Chung is dead, Effie
cannot help admiring the steadfastness, the bravery, and the noble
qualities of her Chinese lover. It is an awful state of things which
sometimes brings the nineteenth century and primitive barbarism into
such close and horrible juxtaposition.
_THE CURATE OF CHURNSIDE._
Walter Dene, deacon, in his faultless Oxford clerical coat and broad
felt hat, strolled along slowly, sunning himself as he went, after his
wont, down the pretty central lane of West Churnside. It was just the
idyllic village best suited to the taste of such an idyllic young curate
as Walter Dene. There were cottages with low-thatched roofs, thickly
overgrown with yellow stonecrop and pink house-leek; there were
trellis-work porches up which the scented dog-rose and the fainter
honeysuckle clambered together in sisterly rivalry; there were pargeted
gable-ends of Elizabethan farmhouses, quaintly varied with black oak
joists and moulded plaster panels. At the end of all, between an avenue
of ancient elm trees, the heavy square tower of the old church closed in
the little vista--a church with a round Norman doorway and dog-tooth
arches, melting into Early English lancets in the aisle, and finishing
up with a great Decorated east window by the broken cross and yew tree.
Not a trace of Perpendicularity about it anywhere, thank goodness: "for
if it were Perpendicular," said Walter Dene to himself often, "I really
think, in spite of my uncle, I should have to look out for another
curacy."
Yes, it was a charming village, and a charming country; but, above all,
it was rendered habitable and pleasurable for a man of taste by the
informing presence of Christina Eliot. "I don't think I shall propose
to Christina this week after all," thought Walter Dene as he strolled
along lazily. "The most delightful part of love-making is certainly its
first beginning. The little tremor of hope and expectation; the
half-needless doubt you feel as to whether she really loves you; the
pains you take to pierce the thin veil of maidenly reserve; the triumph
of detecting her at a blush or a flutter when she sees you coming--all
these are delicate little morsels to be rolled daintily on the critical
palate, and not to be swallowed down coarsely at one vulgar gulp. Poor
child, she is on tenter-hooks of hesitation and expectancy all the time,
I know; for I'm sure she loves me now, I'm sure she loves me; but I must
wait a week yet: she will be grateful to me for it hereafter. We mustn't
kill the goose that lays the golden eggs; we mustn't eat up all our
capital at one extravagant feast, and then lament the want of our
interest ever afterward. Let us live another week in our first fool's
paradise before we enter on the safer but less tremulous pleasures of
sure possession. We can enjoy first love but once in a lifetime; let us
enjoy it now while we can, and not fling away the chance prematurely by
mere childish haste and girlish precipitancy." Thinking which thing,
Walter Dene halted a moment by the churchyard wall, picked a long spray
of scented wild thyme from a mossy cranny, and gazed into the blue sky
above at the graceful swifts who nested in the old tower, as they curved
and circled through the yielding air on their evenly poised and powerful
pinions.
Just at that moment old Mary Long came out of her cottage to speak with
the young parson. "If ye plaze, Maister Dene," she said in her native
west-country dialect, "our Nully would like to zee 'ee. She's main ill
to-day, zur, and she be like to die a'most, I'm thinking."
"Poor child, poor child," said Walter Dene tenderly. "She's a dear
little thing, Mrs. Long, is your Nellie, and I hope she may yet be
spared to you. I'll come and see her at once, and try if I can do
anything to ease her."
He crossed the road compassionately with the tottering old grandmother,
giving her his helping hand over the kerbstone, and following her with
bated breath into the close little sick-room. Then he flung open the
tiny casement with its diamond-leaded panes, so as to let in the fresh
summer air, and picked a few sprigs of sweet-briar from the porch, which
he joined with the geranium from his own button-hole to make a tiny
nosegay for the bare bedside. After that, he sat and talked awhile
gently in an undertone to pale, pretty little Nellie herself, and went
away at last promising to send her some jelly and some soup immediately
from the vicarage kitchen.
"She's a sweet little child," he said to himself musingly, "though I'm
afraid she's not long for this world now; and the poor like these small
attentions dearly. They get them seldom, and value them for the sake of
the thoughtfulness they imply, rather than for the sake of the mere
things themselves. I can order a bottle of calf's-foot at the grocer's,
and Carter can set it in a mould without any trouble; while as for the
soup, some tinned mock-turtle and a little fresh stock makes a really
capital mixture for this sort of thing. It costs so little to give these
poor souls pleasure, and it is a great luxury to oneself undeniably.
But, after all, what a funny trade it is to set an educated man to do!
They send us up to Oxford or Cambridge, give us a distinct taste for
AEschylus and Catullus, Dante and Milton, Mendelssohn and Chopin, good
claret and _olives farcies_, and then bring us down to a country
village, to look after the bodily and spiritual ailments of rheumatic
old washerwomen! If it were not for poetry, flowers, and Christina, I
really think I should succumb entirely under the infliction."
"He's a dear, good man, that he is, is young passon," murmured old Miry
Long as Walter disappeared between the elm trees; "and he do love the
poor and the zick, the same as if he was their own brother. God bless
his zoul, the dear, good vulla, vor all his kindness to our Nully."
Halfway down the main lane Walter came across Christina Eliot. As she
saw him she smiled and coloured a little, and held out her small gloved
hand prettily. Walter took it with a certain courtly and graceful
chivalry. "An exquisite day, Miss Eliot," he said; "such a depth of
sapphire in the sky, such a faint undertone of green on the clouds by
the horizon, such a lovely humming of bees over the flickering hot
meadows! On days like this, one feels that Schopenhauer is wrong after
all, and that life is sometimes really worth living."
"It seems to me often worth living," Christina answered; "if not for
oneself, at least for others. But you pretend to be more of a pessimist
than you really are, I fancy, Mr. Dene. Any one who finds so much beauty
in the world as you do can hardly think life poor or meagre. You seem to
catch the loveliest points in everything you look at, and to throw a
little literary or artistic reflection over them which makes them even
lovelier than they are in themselves."
"Well, no doubt one can increase one's possibilities of enjoyment by
carefully cultivating one's own faculties of admiration and
appreciation," said the curate thoughtfully; "but, after all, life has
only a few chapters that are thoroughly interesting and enthralling in
all its history. We oughtn't to hurry over them too lightly, Miss Eliot;
we ought to linger on them lovingly, and make the most of their
potentialities; we ought to dwell upon them like "linked sweetness long
drawn out." It is the mistake of the world at large to hurry too rapidly
over the pleasantest episodes, just as children pick all the plums at
once out of the pudding. I often think that, from the purely selfish and
temporal point of view, the real value of a life to its subject may be
measured by the space of time over which he has managed to spread the
enjoyment of its greatest pleasures. Look, for example, at poetry, now."
A faint shade of disappointment passed across Christina's face as he
turned from what seemed another groove into that indifferent subject;
but she answered at once, "Yes, of course one feels that with the higher
pleasures at least; but there are others in which the interest of plot
is greater, and then one looks naturally rather to the end. When you
begin a good novel, you can't help hurrying through it in order to find
out what becomes of everybody at last."
"Ah, but the highest artistic interest goes beyond mere plot interest. I
like rather to read for the pleasure of reading, and to loiter over the
passages that please me, quite irrespective of what goes before or what
comes after; just as you, for your part, like to sketch a beautiful
scene for its own worth to you, irrespective of what may happen to the
leaves in autumn, or to the cottage roof in twenty years from this. By
the way, have you finished that little water-colour of the mill yet?
It's the prettiest thing of yours I've ever seen, and I want to look how
you've managed the light on your foreground."
"Come in and see it," said Christina. "It's finished now, and, to tell
you the truth, I'm very well pleased with it myself."
"Then I know it must be good," the curate answered; "for you are always
your own harshest critic." And he turned in at the little gate with her,
and entered the village doctor's tiny drawing-room.
Christina placed the sketch on an easel near the window--a low window
opening to the ground, with long lithe festoons of faint-scented jasmine
encroaching on it from outside--and let the light fall on it aslant in
the right direction. It was a pretty and a clever sketch certainly, with
more than a mere amateur's sense of form and colour; and Walter Dene,
who had a true eye for pictures, could conscientiously praise it for its
artistic depth and fulness. Indeed, on that head at least, Walter Dene's
veracity was unimpeachable, however lax in other matters; nothing on
earth would have induced him to praise as good a picture or a sculpture
in which he saw no real merit. He sat a little while criticizing and
discussing it, suggesting an improvement here or an alteration there,
and then he rose hurriedly, remembering all at once his forgotten
promise to little Nellie. "Dear me," he said, "your daughter's picture
has almost made me overlook my proper duties, Mrs. Eliot. I promised to
send some jelly and things at once to poor little Nellie Long at her
grandmother's. How very wrong of me to let my natural inclinations keep
me loitering here, when I ought to have been thinking of the poor of my
parish!" And he went out with just a gentle pressure on Christina's
hand, and a look from his eyes that her heart knew how to read aright at
the first glance of it.
"Do you know, Christie," said her father, "I sometimes fancy when I hear
that new parson fellow talk about his artistic feelings, and so on, that
he's just a trifle selfish, or at least self-centred. He always dwells
so much on his own enjoyment of things, you know."
"Oh no, papa," cried Christina warmly. "He's anything but selfish, I'm
sure. Look how kind he is to all the poor in the village, and how much
he thinks about their comfort and welfare. And whenever he's talking
with one, he seems so anxious to make you feel happy and contented with
yourself. He has a sort of little subtle flattery of manner about him
that's all pure kindliness; and he's always thinking what he can say or
do to please you, and to help you onward. What you say about his
dwelling on enjoyment so much is really only his artistic sensibility.
He feels things so keenly, and enjoys beauty so deeply, that he can't
help talking enthusiastically about it even a little out of season. He
has more feelings to display than most men, and I'm sure that's the
reason why he displays them so much. A ploughboy could only talk
enthusiastically about roast beef and dumplings; Mr. Dene can talk about
everything that's beautiful and sublime on earth or in heaven."
Meanwhile, Walter Dene was walking quickly with his measured tread--the
even, regular tread of a cultivated gentleman--down the lane toward the
village grocer's, saying to himself as he went, "There was never such a
girl in all the world as my Christina. She may be only a country
surgeon's daughter--a rosebud on a hedgerow bush--but she has the soul
and the eye of a queen among women for all that. Every lover has
deceived himself with the same sweet dream, to be sure--how
over-analytic we have become nowadays, when I must needs half argue
myself out of the sweets of first love!--but then they hadn't so much to
go upon as I have. She has a wonderful touch in music, she has an
exquisite eye in painting, she has an Italian charm in manner and
conversation. I'm something of a connoisseur, after all, and no more
likely to be deceived in a woman than I am in a wine or a picture. And
next week I shall really propose formally to Christina, though I know by
this time it will be nothing more than the merest formality. Her eyes
are too eloquent not to have told me that long ago. It will be a
delightful pleasure to live for her, and in order to make her happy. I
frankly recognize that I am naturally a little selfish--not coarsely and
vulgarly selfish; from that disgusting and piggish vice I may
conscientiously congratulate myself that I'm fairly free; but still
selfish in a refined and cultivated manner. Now, living with Christina
and for Christina will correct this defect in my nature, will tend to
bring me nearer to a true standard of perfection. When I am by her side,
and then only, I feel that I am thinking entirely of her, and not at all
of myself. To her I show my best side; with her, that best side would
be always uppermost. The companionship of such a woman makes life
something purer, and higher, and better worth having. The one thing that
stands in our way is this horrid practical question of what to live
upon. I don't suppose Uncle Arthur will be inclined to allow me
anything, and I can't marry on my own paltry income and my curacy only.
Yet I can't bear to keep Christina waiting indefinitely till some
thick-headed squire or other chooses to take it into his opaque brain to
give me a decent living."
From the grocer's the curate walked on, carrying the two tins in his
hand, as far as the vicarage. He went into the library, sat down by his
own desk, and rang the bell. "Will you be kind enough to give those
things to Carter, John?" he said in his bland voice; "and tell her to
put the jelly in a mould, and let it set. The soup must be warmed with a
little fresh stock, and seasoned. Then take them both, with my
compliments, to old Mary Long the washerwoman, for her grandchild. Is my
uncle in?"
"No, Master Walter," answered the man--he was always "Master Walter" to
the old servants at his uncle's--"the vicar have gone over by train to
Churminster. He told me to tell you he wouldn't be back till evening,
after dinner."
"Did you see him off, John?"
"Yes, Master Walter. I took his portmantew to the station."
"This will be a good chance, then," thought Walter Dene to himself.
"Very well, John," he went on aloud: "I shall write my sermon now. Don't
let anybody come to disturb me."
John nodded and withdrew. Walter Dene locked the door after him
carefully, as he often did when writing sermons, and then lit a cigar,
which was also a not infrequent concomitant of his exegetical labours.
After that he walked once or twice up and down the room, paused a
moment to look at his parchment-covered Rabelais and Villon on the
bookshelf, peered out of the dulled glass windows with the crest in
their centre, and finally drew a curious bent iron instrument out of his
waistcoat pocket. With it in his hands, he went up quietly to his
uncle's desk, and began fumbling at the lock in an experienced manner.
As a matter of fact, it was not his first trial of skill in
lock-picking; for Walter Dene was a painstaking and methodical man, and
having made up his mind that he would get at and read his uncle's will,
he took good care to begin by fastening all the drawers in his own
bedroom, and trying his prentice hand at unfastening them again in the
solitude of his chamber.
After half a minute's twisting and turning, the wards gave way gently to
his dexterous pressure, and the lid of the desk lay open before him.
Walter Dene took out the different papers one by one--there was no need
for hurry, and he was not a nervous person--till he came to a roll of
parchment, which he recognized at once as the expected will. He unrolled
it carefully and quietly, without any womanish trembling or
excitement--"thank Heaven," he said to himself, "I'm above such nonsense
as that"--and sat down leisurely to read it in the big, low,
velvet-covered study chair. As he did so, he did not forget to lay a
notched foot-rest for his feet, and to put the little Japanese dish on
the tiny table by his side to hold his cigar ash. "And now," he said,
"for the important question whether Uncle Arthur has left his money to
me, or to Arthur, or to both of us equally. He ought, of course, to
leave at least half to me, seeing I have become a curate on purpose to
please him, instead of following my natural vocation to the Bar; but I
shouldn't be a bit surprised if he had left it all to Arthur. He's a
pig-headed and illogical old man, the vicar; and he can never forgive
me, I believe, because, being the eldest son, I wasn't called after him
by my father and mother. As if that was my fault! Some people's ideas
of personal responsibility are so ridiculously muddled."
He composed himself quietly in the arm-chair, and glanced rapidly at the
will through the meaningless preliminaries till he came to the
significant clauses. These he read more carefully. "All my estate in the
county of Dorset, and the messuage or tenement known as Redlands, in the
parish of Lode, in the county of Devon, to my dear nephew, Arthur Dene,"
he said to himself slowly: "Oh, this will never do." "And I give and
bequeath to my said nephew, Arthur Dene, the sum of ten thousand pounds,
three per cent. consolidated annuities, now standing in my name."--"Oh
this is atrocious, quite atrocious! What's this?" "And I give and
bequeath to my dear nephew, Walter Dene, the residue of my personal
estate"--"and so forth. Oh no. That's quite sufficient. This must be
rectified. The residuary legatee would only come in for a few hundreds
or so. It's quite preposterous. The vicar was always an ill-tempered,
cantankerous, unaccountable person, but I wonder he has the face to sit
opposite me at dinner after that."
He hummed an air from Schubert, and sat a moment looking thoughtfully at
the will. Then he said to himself quietly, "The simplest thing to do
would be merely to scrape out or take out with chemicals the name
Arthur, substituting the name Walter, and _vice versa_. That's a very
small matter; a man who draws as well as I do ought to be able easily to
imitate a copying clerk's engrossing hand. But it would be madness to
attempt it now and here; I want a little practice first. At the same
time, I mustn't keep the will out a moment longer than is necessary; my
uncle may return by some accident before I expect him; and the true
philosophy of life consists in invariably minimizing the adverse
chances. This will was evidently drawn up by Watson and Blenkiron, of
Chancery Lane. I'll write to-morrow and get them to draw up a will for
me, leaving all I possess to Arthur. The same clerk is pretty sure to
engross it, and that'll give me a model for the two names on which I can
do a little preliminary practice. Besides, I can try the stuff Wharton
told me about, for making ink fade on the same parchment. That will be
killing two birds with one stone, certainly. And now if I don't make
haste I shan't have time to write my sermon."
He replaced the will calmly in the desk, fastened the lock again with a
delicate twirl of the pick, and sat down in his arm-chair to compose his
discourse for to-morrow's evensong. "It's not a bad bit of rhetoric," he
said to himself as he read it over for correction, "but I'm not sure
that I haven't plagiarized a little too freely from Montaigne and dear
old Burton. What a pity it must be thrown away upon a Churnside
congregation! Not a soul in the whole place will appreciate a word of
it, except Christina. Well, well, that alone is enough reward for any
man." And he knocked off his ash pensively into the Japanese ash-pan.
During the course of the next week Walter practised diligently the art
of imitating handwriting. He got his will drawn up and engrossed at
Watson and Blenkiron's (without signing it, _bien entendu_); and he
spent many solitary hours in writing the two names "Walter" and "Arthur"
on the spare end of parchment, after the manner of the engrossing clerk.
He also tested the stuff for making the ink fade to his own perfect
satisfaction. And on the next occasion when his uncle was safely off the
premises for three hours, he took the will once more deliberately from
the desk, removed the obnoxious letters with scrupulous care, and wrote
in his own name in place of Arthur's, so that even the engrossing clerk
himself would hardly have known the difference. "There," he said to
himself approvingly, as he took down quiet old George Herbert from the
shelf and sat down to enjoy an hour's smoke after the business was over,
"that's one good deed well done, anyhow. I have the calm satisfaction of
a clear conscience. The vicar's proposed arrangement was really most
unfair; I have substituted for it what Aristotle would have rightly
called true distributive justice. For though I've left all the property
to myself, by the unfortunate necessity of the case, of course I won't
take it all. I'll be juster than the vicar. Arthur shall have his fair
share, which is more, I believe, than he'd have done for me; but I hate
squalid money-grubbing. If brothers can't be generous and brotherly to
one another, what a wretched, sordid little life this of ours would
really be!"
Next Sunday morning the vicar preached, and Walter sat looking up at him
reflectively from his place in the chancel. A beautiful clear-cut face,
the curate's, and seen to great advantage from the doctor's pew, set off
by the white surplice, and upturned in quiet meditation towards the
elder priest in the pulpit. Walter was revolving many things in his
mind, and most of all one adverse chance which he could not just then
see his way to minimize. Any day his uncle might take it into his head
to read over the will and discover the--ah, well, the rectification.
Walter was a man of too much delicacy of feeling even to think of it to
himself as a fraud or a forgery. Then, again, the vicar was not a very
old man after all; he might live for an indefinite period, and Christina
and himself might lose all the best years of their life waiting for a
useless person's natural removal. What a pity that threescore was not
the utmost limit of human life! For his own part, like the Psalmist,
Walter had no desire to outlive his own highest tastes and powers of
enjoyment. Ah, well, well, man's prerogative is to better and improve
upon nature. If people do not die when they ought, then it becomes
clearly necessary for philosophically minded juniors to help them on
their way artificially.
It was an ugly necessity, certainly; Walter frankly recognized that fact
from the very beginning, and he shrank even from contemplating it; but
there was no other way out of the difficulty. The old man had always
been a selfish bachelor, with no love for anybody or anything on earth
except his books, his coins, his garden, and his dinner; he was growing
tired of all except the last; would it not be better for the world at
large, on strict utilitarian principles, that he should go at once?
True, such steps are usually to be deprecated; but the wise man is a law
unto himself, and instead of laying down the wooden, hard-and-fast lines
that make conventional morality so much a rule of thumb, he judges every
individual case on its own particular merits. Here was Christina's
happiness and his own on the one hand, with many collateral advantages
to other people, set in the scale against the feeble remnant of a
selfish old man's days on the other. Walter Dene had a constitutional
horror of taking life in any form, and especially of shedding blood; but
he flattered himself that if anything of the sort became clearly
necessary, he was not the man to shrink from taking the needful measures
to ensure it, at any sacrifice of personal comfort.
All through the next week Walter turned over the subject in his own
mind; and the more he thought about it, the more the plan gained in
definiteness and consistency as detail after detail suggested itself to
him. First he thought of poison. That was the cleanest and neatest way
of managing the thing, he considered; and it involved the least
unpleasant consequences. To stick a knife or shoot a bullet into any
sentient creature was a horrid and revolting act; to put a little
tasteless powder into a cup of coffee and let a man sleep off his life
quietly was really nothing more than helping him involuntarily to a
delightful euthanasia. "I wish any one would do as much for me at his
age, without telling me about it," Walter said to himself seriously. But
then the chances of detection would be much increased by using poison,
and Walter felt it an imperative duty to do nothing which would expose
Christina to the shock of a discovery. She would not see the matter in
the same practical light as he did; women never do; their morality is
purely conventional and a wise man will do nothing on earth to shake it.
You cannot buy poison without the risk of exciting question. There
remained, then, only shooting or stabbing. But shooting makes an awkward
noise, and attracts attention at the moment; so the one thing possible
was a knife, unpleasant as that conclusion seemed to all his more
delicate feelings.
Having thus decided, Walter Dene proceeded to lay his plans with
deliberate caution. He had no intention whatsoever of being detected,
though his method of action was simplicity itself. It was only bunglers
and clumsy fools who got caught; he knew that a man of his intelligence
and ability would not make such an idiot of himself as--well, as common
ruffians always do. He took his old American bowie-knife, bought years
ago as a curiosity, out of the drawer where it had lain so long. It was
very rusty, but it would be safer to sharpen it privately on his own
hone and strop than to go asking for a new knife at a shop for the
express purpose of enabling the shopman afterwards to identify him. He
sharpened it for safety's sake during sermon-hour in the library, with
the door locked as usual. It took a long time to get off all the rust,
and his arm got quickly tired. One morning as he was polishing away at
it, he was stopped for a moment by a butterfly which flapped and
fluttered against the dulled window-panes. "Poor thing," he said to
himself, "it will beat its feathery wings to pieces in its struggles;"
and he put a vase of Venetian glass on top of it, lifted the sash
carefully, and let the creature fly away outside in the broad sunshine.
At the same moment the vicar, who was strolling with his King Charlie on
the lawn, came up and looked in at the window. He could not have seen in
before, because of the dulled and painted diamonds.
"That's a murderous-looking weapon, Wally," he said, with a smile, as
his glance fell upon the bowie and hone. "What do you use it for?"
"Oh, it's an American bowie," Walter answered carelessly. "I bought it
long ago for a curiosity, and now I'm sharpening it up to help me in
carving that block of walnut wood." And he ran his finger lightly along
the edge of the blade to test its keenness. What a lucky thing that it
was the vicar himself, and not the gardener! If he had been caught by
anybody else the fact would have been fatal evidence after all was over.
"Mefiez-vous des papillons," he hummed to himself, after Beranger, as he
shut down the window. "One more butterfly, and I must give up the game
as useless."
Meanwhile, as Walter meant to make a clean job of it--hacking and hewing
clumsily was repulsive to all his finer feelings--he began also to study
carefully the anatomy of the human back. He took down all the books on
the subject in the library, and by their aid discovered exactly under
which ribs the heart lay. A little observation of the vicar, compared
with the plates in Quain's "Anatomy," showed him precisely at what point
in his clerical coat the most vulnerable interstice was situated. "It's
a horrid thing to have to do," he thought over and over again as he
planned it, "but it's the only way to secure Christina's happiness." And
so, by a certain bright Friday evening in August, Walter Dene had fully
completed all his preparations.
That afternoon, as on all bright afternoons in summer, the vicar went
for a walk in the grounds, attended only by little King Charlie. He was
squire and parson at once in Churnside, and he loved to make the round
of his own estate. At a certain gate by Selbury Copse the vicar always
halted to rest awhile, leaning on the bar and looking at the view across
the valley. It was a safe and lonely spot. Walter remained at home (he
was to take the regular Friday evensong) and went into the study by
himself. After a while he took his hat, not without trembling, strolled
across the garden, and then made the short cut through the copse, so as
to meet the vicar by the gate. On his way he heard the noise of the
Dennings in the farm opposite, out rabbit-shooting with their guns and
ferrets in the warren. His very soul shrank within him at the sound of
that brutal sport. "Great heavens!" he said to himself, with a shudder;
"to think how I loathe and shrink from the necessity of almost
painlessly killing this one selfish old man for an obviously good
reason, and those creatures there will go out massacring innocent
animals with the aid of a hideous beast of prey, not only without
remorse, but actually by way of amusement! I thank Heaven I am not even
as they are." Near the gate he came upon his uncle quietly and
naturally, though it would be absurd to deny that at that supreme moment
even Walter Dene's equable heart throbbed hard, and his breath went and
came tremulously. "Alone," he thought to himself, "and nobody near; this
is quite providential," using even then, in thought, the familiar
phraseology of his profession.
"A lovely afternoon, Uncle Arthur," he said as composedly as he could,
accurately measuring the spot on the vicar's coat with his eye
meanwhile. "The valley looks beautiful in this light."
"Yes, a lovely afternoon, Wally, my boy, and an exquisite glimpse down
yonder into the churchyard."
As he spoke, Walter half leaned upon the gate beside him, and adjusted
the knife behind the vicar's back scientifically. Then, without a word
more, in spite of a natural shrinking, he drove it home up to the haft,
with a terrible effort of will, at the exact spot on the back that the
books had pointed out to him. It was a painful thing to do, but he did
it carefully and well. The effect of Walter Dene's scientific prevision
was even more instantaneous than he had anticipated. Without a single
cry, without a sob or a contortion, the vicar's lifeless body fell over
heavily by the side of the gate. It rolled down like a log into the dry
ditch beneath. Walter knelt trembling on the ground close by, felt the
pulse for a moment to assure himself that his uncle was really dead, and
having fully satisfied himself on this all-important point, proceeded to
draw the knife neatly out of the wound. He had let it fall in the body,
in order to extricate it more easily afterward, and not risk pulling it
out carelessly so as to get himself covered needlessly by tell-tale
drops of blood, like ordinary clumsy assassins. But he had forgotten to
reckon with little King Charlie. The dog jumped piteously upon the body
of his master, licked the wound with his tongue, and refused to allow
Walter to withdraw the knife. It would be unsafe to leave it there, for
it might be recognized. "Minimize the adverse chances," he muttered
still; but there was no inducing King Charlie to move. A struggle might
result in getting drops of blood upon his coat, and then, great heavens,
what a terrible awakening for Christina! "Oh, Christina, Christina,
Christina," he said to himself piteously, "it is for you only that I
could ever have ventured to do this hideous thing." The blood was still
oozing out of the narrow slit, and saturating the black coat, and Walter
Dene with his delicate nerves could hardly bear to look upon it.
At last he summoned up resolution to draw out the knife from the ugly
wound, in spite of King Charlie, and as he did so, oh, horror! the
little dog jumped at it, and cut his left fore-leg against the sharp
edge deep to the bone. Here was a pretty accident indeed! If Walter Dene
had been a common heartless murderer he would have snatched up the
knife immediately, left the poor lame dog to watch and bleed beside his
dead master, and skulked off hurriedly from the mute witness to his
accomplished crime. But Walter was made of very different mould from
that; he could not find it in his heart to leave a poor dumb animal
wounded and bleeding for hours together, alone and untended. Just at
first, indeed, he tried sophistically to persuade himself his duty to
Christina demanded that he should go away at once, and never mind the
sufferings of a mere spaniel; but his better nature told him the next
moment that such sophisms were indefensible, and his humane instincts
overcame even the profound instinct of self-preservation. He sat down
quietly beside the warm corpse. "Thank goodness," he said, with a slight
shiver of disgust, "I'm not one of those weak-minded people who are
troubled by remorse. They would be so overcome by terror at what they
had done that they would want to run away from the body immediately, at
any price. But I don't think I _could_ feel remorse. It is an incident
of lower natures--natures that are capable of doing actions under one
set of impulses, which they regret when another set comes uppermost in
turn. That implies a want of balance, an imperfect co-ordination of
parts and passions. The perfect character is consistent with itself;
shame and repentance are confessions of weakness. For my part, I never
do anything without having first deliberately decided that it is the
best or the only thing to do; and having so done it, I do not draw back
like a girl from the necessary consequences of my own act. No fluttering
or running away for me. Still, I must admit that all that blood does
look very ghastly. Poor old gentleman! I believe he really died almost
without knowing it, and that is certainly a great comfort to one under
the circumstances."
He took King Charlie tenderly in his hands, without touching the wounded
leg, and drew his pocket handkerchief softly from his pocket. "Poor
beastie," he said aloud, holding out the cut limb before him, "you are
badly hurt, I'm afraid; but it wasn't my fault. We must see what we can
do for you." Then he wrapped the handkerchief deftly around it, without
letting any blood show through, pressed the dog close against his
breast, and picked up the knife gingerly by the reeking handle. "A fool
of a fellow would throw it into the river," he thought, with a curl of
his graceful lip. "They always dredge the river after these incidents. I
shall just stick it down a hole in the hedge a hundred yards off. The
police have no invention, dull donkeys; they never dredge the hedges."
And he thrust it well down a disused rabbit burrow, filling in the top
neatly with loose mould.
Walter Dene meant to have gone home quietly and said evensong, leaving
the discovery of the body to be made at haphazard by others, but this
unfortunate accident to King Charlie compelled him against his will to
give the first alarm. It was absolutely necessary to take the dog to the
veterinary at once, or the poor little fellow might bleed to death
incontinently. "One's best efforts," he thought, "are always liable to
these unfortunate _contretemps_. I meant merely to remove a superfluous
person from an uncongenial environment; yet I can't manage it without at
the same time seriously injuring a harmless little creature that I
really love." And with one last glance at the lifeless thing behind him,
he took his way regretfully along the ordinary path back towards the
peaceful village of Churnside.
Halfway down the lane, at the entrance to the village, he met one of his
parishioners. "Tom," he said boldly, "have you seen anything of the
vicar? I'm afraid he's got hurt somehow. Here's poor little King Charlie
come limping back with his leg cut."
"He went down the road, zur, 'arf an hour zince, and I arn't zeen him
afterwards."
"Tell the servants at the vicarage to look around the grounds, then; I'm
afraid he has fallen and hurt himself. I must take the dog at once to
Perkins's, or else I shall be late for evensong."
The man went off straight toward the vicarage, and Walter Dene turned
immediately with the dog in his arms into the village veterinary's.