CHAPTER II. “VIVE LE ROI!”
CHAPTER III. AN AWKWARD MEETING.
CHAPTER IV. BIRDS IN THE WILDERNESS.
CHAPTER V. “REGINALD LINDO, 1850.”
CHAPTER VI. THE BONAMYS AT HOME.
CHAPTER VII. THE HAMMONDS’ DINNER PARTY.
CHAPTER VIII. TWO SURPRISES.
CHAPTER IX. TOWN TALK.
CHAPTER X. OUT WITH THE SHEEP.
CHAPTER XI. THE DOCTOR SPEAKS.
CHAPTER XII. THE RECTOR IS UNGRATEFUL.
CHAPTER XIII. LAURA’S PROVISO.
CHAPTER XIV. THE LETTERS IN THE CUPBOARD.
CHAPTER XV. THE BAZAAR.
CHAPTER XVI. “LORD DYNMORE IS HERE.”
CHAPTER XVII. THE LAWYER AT HOME.
CHAPTER XVIII. A FRIEND IN NEED.
CHAPTER XIX. THE DAY AFTER.
CHAPTER XX. A SUDDEN CALL.
CHAPTER XXI. IN PROFUNDIS.
CHAPTER XXII. THE RECTOR’S DECISION.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE CURATE HEARS THE NEWS.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE CUP AT THE LIP.
CHAPTER XXV. HUMBLE PIE.
CHAPTER XXVI. LOOSE ENDS.
THE NEW RECTOR.
CHAPTER I.
“LE ROI EST MORT!”
The king was dead. But not at once, not until after some short
breathing-space, such as was pleasant enough to those whose only
concern with the succession lay in the shouting, could the cry of “Long
live the king!” be raised. For a few days there was no rector of
Claversham. The living was during this time in abeyance, or in the
clouds, or in the lap of the law, or in any strange and inscrutable
place you choose to name. It may have been in the prescience of the
patron, and, if so, no locality could be more vague, the whereabouts of
Lord Dynmore himself, to say nothing of his prescience, being as
uncertain as possible. Messrs. Gearns & Baker, his solicitors and
agents, should have known as much upon this point as any one; yet it
was their habit to tell one inquirer that his lordship was in the
Cordilleras, and another that he was on the slopes of the Andes, and
another that he was at the forty-ninth parallel—quite
indifferently—these places being all one to Messrs. Gearns & Baker,
whose walk in life had lain for so many years about Lincoln’s Inn
Fields that Clare Market had come to be their ideal of an uncivilized
country.
And more, if the whereabouts of Lord Dynmore could only be told in
words rather far-sounding than definite, there was room for a doubt
whether his prescience existed at all. For, according to his friends,
there never was a man whose memory was so notably eccentric—not weak,
but eccentric. And if his memory was impeccable, his prescience— But we
grow wide of the mark. The question being merely where the living of
Claversham was during the days which immediately followed Mr.
Williams’s death, let it be said at once that we do not know.
Mr. Williams was the late incumbent. He had been rector of the little
Warwickshire town for nearly forty years; and although his people were
ready enough to busy themselves with the question of his successor, he
did not lack honor in his death. His had been a placid life, such as
suited an indolent and easy-going man. “Let me sit upon one chair and
put up my feet on another, and there I am,” he was once heard to say;
and the town repeated the remark and chuckled over it. There were some
who would have had the parish move more quickly, and who talked with a
sneer of the old port-wine kind of parson. But if he had done little
good, he had done less evil. He was kindly and open-handed, and he had
not an enemy in the parish. He was regretted as much as such a man
should be. Besides, people did not die commonly in Claversham. It was
but once a year, or twice at the most, that any one who was any one
passed away. And so, when the event did occur the most was made of it
in an old-fashioned way. When Mr. Williams passed for the last time
into his churchyard, there was no window which did not, by shutter or
blind, mark its respect for him, not a tongue which wagged foul of his
memory. And then the shutters were taken down and the blinds pulled up,
and every one, from Mr. Clode, the curate, to the old people at
Bourne’s Almhouses, who, having no affairs of their own, had the more
time to discuss their neighbors’, asked, “Who is to be the new rector?”
On the day of the funeral two of these old pensioners watched the
curate’s tall form as he came gravely along the opposite side of the
street, to fall in at the door of his lodgings with two ladies, one
elderly, one young, who were passing so opportunely that it really
seemed as if they might have been waiting for him. He and the elder
lady—she was so plump of figure, so healthy of eye and cheek, and was
dressed besides with such a comfortable richness that it did one good
to look at her—began to talk in a subdued, decorous fashion, while the
girl listened. He was telling them of the funeral, how well the
archdeacon had read the service, and what a crowd of Dissenters had
been present, and so on: and at last he came to the important question.
“I hear, Mrs. Hammond,” he said, “that the living will be given to Mr.
Herbert of Easthope, whom you know, I think? To me? Oh, no, I have not,
and never had, any expectation of it. Please do not,” he added, with a
slight smile and a shake of the head, “mention such a thing again.
Leave me in my content.”
“But why should you not have it?” said the young lady, with a pleasant
persistence. “Every one in the parish would be glad if you were
appointed. Could we not do something or say something—get up a petition
or anything? Lord Dynmore ought, of course, to give it to you. I think
some one should tell him what are the wishes of the parish. I do
indeed!”
She was a very pretty young lady, with bright brown eyes and hair and
rather arch features, and the gentleman she was addressing had long
found her face pleasant to look upon; but at this moment it really
seemed to him as the face of an angel. Yet he only answered with a kind
of depressed gratitude. “Thank you, Miss Hammond,” he said. “If good
wishes could procure me the living, I should have an excellent reason
for hoping. But as things are, it is not for me.”
“Pooh! pooh!” said Mrs. Hammond cheerily, “who knows?” And then, after
a few more words, they went on their way, and he turned into his rooms.
The old women were still watching. “I don’t well know who’ll get it,
Peggy,” said one, “but I be pretty sure of this, as he won’t! It isn’t
his sort as gets ’em. It’s the lord’s friends, bless you!”
So it appeared that she and Mr. Clode were of one mind on the matter.
But was that really Mr. Clode’s opinion? It was when the crow opened
its beak that it dropped the piece of cheese; and so to this day the
wise man has no chance or expectation of this or that until he gets it.
And if a patron or a patron’s solicitor has for some days had under his
paperweight a letter written in a hand that bears a strange likeness to
the wise man’s—a letter setting forth the latter’s claims and
wisdom—what of that? That is a private matter, of course.
Be that as it may, there was scarcely a person in Claversham who did
not give some time that evening, and on subsequent evenings too, to the
interesting question who was to be the new rector. The rector was a big
factor in the town-life. Girls wondered whether he would be young, and
hoped he would dance. Their mothers were sanguine that he would be
unmarried, and their fathers that he would play whist. And one
questioned whether he would buy Mr. Williams’s stock of port, and
another whether he would dine late. And some trusted that he would let
things be, and some hoped that he would cleanse the stables. And only
one thing was certain and sure and immutably fixed—that, whoever he
was, he would not be able to please everybody.
Nay, the ripple of excitement spread far beyond Claversham. Not only at
the archdeacon’s at Kingsford Carbonel, five miles away among the
orchards and hopyards, was there much speculation upon the matter, but
even at the Homfrays’, of Holberton, ten miles out beyond the Baer
Hills, there was talk about it, and bets were made across the
billiard-table. And in more distant vicarages and curacies, where the
patron was in some degree known, there were flutterings of heart and
anxious searchings of the “Guardian” and Crockford. Those who seemed to
have some chance of the living grew despondent, and those who had none
talked the thing over with their wives after the children had gone to
bed, until they persuaded themselves that they would die at Claversham
Rectory. Middle-aged men who had been at college with Lord Dynmore
remembered that they had on one occasion rowed in the same boat with
him; and young men who had danced with his niece thought secretly that,
dear little woman as Emily or Annie was, they might have done better.
And a hundred and eleven letters, written by people who knew less than
Messrs. Gearns & Baker of the Andes, seeing that they did not know that
Lord Dynmore was there or thereabouts, were received at Dynmore Park
and forwarded to London, and duly made up into a large parcel with
other correspondence by Messrs. Gearns & Baker, and so were despatched
to the forty-ninth parallel—or thereabouts.