“REGINALD LINDO, 1850.”
Long before the later train by which the rector came on arrived at the
Claversham station, the Rev. Stephen Clode was waiting on the platform.
The curate was a tall, dark man, somewhat over thirty, with a strong
rugged face and a bush of stiff black hair standing up from his
forehead. He had been at Claversham three years, enjoying all the
importance which old Mr. Williams’s long illness naturally gave to his
curate and _locum tenens_; and, though the town was agreed that his
chagrin at having a new rector set over his head was great, it must be
admitted that he concealed it with admirable skill. More than one
letter had passed between him and the new incumbent, and, in securing
for the latter Mr. Williams’s good old-fashioned furniture, and in
other ways, he had made himself very useful to Lindo. But the two had
not met, and consequently the curate viewed the approaching train with
lively, though secret, curiosity.
It came, the bell rang, the porter cried, “Claversham! Claversham!” and
the curate walked down it, past the carriage-windows, looking for the
man he had come to meet. Half-a-dozen people stepped out, and for a
moment there was a mimic tumult on the little platform; but nowhere
amid it all could Clode see any one like the new rector. “He has missed
another train!” he muttered to himself in contemptuous wonder; and he
was already casting a last look round him before turning on his heel,
when a tall, fair young man, in a clerical overcoat, who had been one
of the first to alight, stepped up to him. “Am I speaking to Mr.
Clode?” said the stranger pleasantly. And he lifted his hat.
“Certainly,” the curate answered. “I am Mr. Clode. But I fear I have
not the——”
“No, I know,” replied the other, smiling, and at the same time holding
out his hand. “Though, indeed, I hoped that you might have been here on
purpose to meet me. My name is Lindo.”
The curate uttered an exclamation of surprise; and, hastily returning
the proffered grip, fixed his black eyes curiously on his new friend.
“Mr. Lindo did not mention that you were with him,” he answered in a
tone of some embarrassment. “But, there, let me see to your luggage. Is
it all here?”
“Yes, I think so,” Lindo answered, tapping one article after another
with his umbrella, and giving the stationmaster a pleasant “Good-day!”
“Is there an omnibus or anything?”
“Yes,” Clode said; “it will be all right. They know where to take it.
You will walk up with me, perhaps. It is about a quarter of a mile to
the rectory.”
The new comer assented gladly, and the two passed out of the station
together. Lindo let his eye travel up the wide steep street before him,
until it rested on the noble tower which crowned the little hill and
looked down now, as it had looked down for five centuries, on the red
roofs clustering about it. His tower! His church! Even his companion
did not remark, so slight was the action, that, as he passed out of the
station and looked up, he lifted his hat for a second.
“And where is your father?” Clode asked. “Was he delayed by business?
Or perhaps,” he added, dubiously scanning him, “you are Mr. Lindo’s
brother?”
“I _am_ Mr. Lindo!” said our friend, turning in astonishment and
looking at his companion.
“The rector?”
“Yes.”
It was the curate’s turn to stare now, and he did so—his face flushing
darkly and his eyes wide opened for once. He even seemed for a moment
to be stricken dumb with surprise and emotion. “Indeed!” he said at
last, in a half stifled voice which he vainly strove to control.
“Indeed! I beg your pardon. I had thought—I don’t know why—I mean that
I had expected to see an older man.”
“I am sorry you are disappointed,” the rector replied, smiling
ruefully. “I am beginning to think I am rather young, for you are not
the first to-day who has made that mistake.”
The curate did not answer, and the two walked on in silence, feeling
somewhat awkward. Clode, indeed, was raging inwardly. By one thing and
another he had been led to expect a man past middle life, and the only
Clergy List in the parish, being three years old and containing the
name of Lindo’s uncle only, had confirmed him in the error. He had
never conceived the idea that the man set over his head would be a
fledgling, scarcely a year in priest’s orders, or he would have gone
elsewhere. He would never have stayed to be at the beck and call of
such a puppy as this! He felt now that he had been entrapped, and he
chafed inwardly to such an extent that he did not dare to speak. To
have this young fellow, six or seven years his junior, set over him
would humiliate him in the eyes of all those before whom he had long
played a different part!
In a minor degree Lindo was also vexed—not only because he was
sufficiently sensitive to enter into the other’s feelings, but also
because he foresaw trouble ahead. It was annoying, too, to be received
at each new _rencontre_ as a surprise—as the reverse of all that had
been expected and all that had been, as he feared, hoped.
“You will find the rectory a very comfortable house,” said the curate
at last, his mind fully made up now that he would leave at the earliest
possible date. “Warm and old-fashioned. Rough-cast outside. Many of the
rooms are panelled.”
“It looks out on the churchyard, I believe,” replied the rector, with
the same labored politeness.
“Yes, it stands high. The view from the windows at the back is
pleasant. The front is perhaps a little gloomy—in winter at least.”
Near the top of the street a quaint, narrow flight of steps conducted
them to the churchyard—an airy, elevated place, surrounded on three
sides by the church and houses, but open on the fourth, where a
terraced walk, running along the summit of the old town wall, admitted
the southern sun and afforded a wide view of plain and hill. The two
men crossed the churchyard, the new rector looking about him with
curiosity and a little awe, his companion marching straight onward, his
strongly-marked face set ominously. He would go! He would go at the
earliest possible minute! he was thinking.
It did not affect him nor alter his resolution that in the wooden porch
of the old rectory the new rector turned to him and shyly, yet with
real feeling, besought his help and advice in the work before him. The
young clergyman, commonly so self-confident, was moved, and moved
deeply, by the evening light and his strange and solemn surroundings.
Stephen Clode’s answer was in the affirmative—it could hardly have been
other; and it was spoken becomingly, if a little coldly, in view of the
rector’s advances; but, even while the curate spoke it, he was
considering how he might best escape from Claversham. Still his Yea,
yea, comforted his companion and lightened his momentary apprehensions.
Nor was the curate, when he had recovered from the first shock of
surprise and disgust, so foolish as to betray his feelings by wanton
churlishness. He parted from his companion at the door, leaving him to
the welcome of Mrs. Baker, the rector’s London housekeeper, who had
come down two days before; but at the same time he consented readily to
return at half-past six and share his dinner, and gave him in the
course of the meal all the information in his power. Left to himself,
the rector went over the house under Mrs. Baker’s guidance, and, as he
trod the polished floors, could not but feel some access of
self-importance. The panelled hall, with its wide oak staircase, fed
this, and the spacious sombrely-furnished library, with its books and
busts, its antique clock and one good engraving, and its lofty windows
opening upon the garden. So, in a less degree, did the long
oak-panelled dining-room and a smaller sitting-room which looked to the
front and the churchyard; and the drawing-room, which was situated over
the library, and seemed the larger because Mr. Williams had furnished
it but scantily and lived in it less. Then there were six or seven
bedrooms, and in the garden a stone basin and fountain. Altogether,
when the rector descended after washing his hands, and stood on the
library hearth-rug looking about him, he would have been more than
human if he had not, with a feeling of thankfulness, entertained also
some faint sense of self-congratulation and personal desert. Nor,
probably, would Mr. Clode have been human if, coming in and finding the
younger man standing on that hearth-rug, and betraying in his face and
attitude something of his thoughts, he on his part had not felt a
degree of envy and antagonism. The man was so prosperous, so
self-contented, so conscious of his own merit and success.
But the curate was too wise to betray this feeling; and, laying himself
out to be pleasant, he had, before the little meal was over, so far
ingratiated himself with his entertainer that the rector was greatly
surprised when he presently learned that Clode had not been to a
university. “You astonish me,” he said, “for you have so completely the
manner of a ’varsity-man!”
The observation was a little too gracious, a little wanting in tact,
but it would not have hurt the curate had he not been at the moment in
a state of irritation. As it was, Clode treasured it up, and never got
rid of the feeling that the Oxford man looked down upon him because he
had been only at Wells; whereas Lindo, with some prejudices and
sufficiently prone to judge his fellows, had far too high an opinion of
himself to be bound by such distinctions, but was just as likely to
make a friend of a ploughboy, if he liked him, as of a Christchurch
man. After that speech, however, the curate was more than ever resolved
to go, and go quickly.
But, when dinner was over and he was about to take his leave, he
happened to pick up, as he moved about the room, a small prayer-book
which Lindo had just unpacked, and which was lying on the
writing-table. Clode idly looked into it as he talked, and, seeing on
the flyleaf “Reginald Lindo, 1850,” took occasion, when he had done
with the subject in hand, to discuss it. “Surely,” he said, holding it
up, “you did not possess this in 1850, Mr. Lindo!”
“Hardly,” Lindo answered, laughing. “I was not born until ’54.”
“Then who?”
“It was my uncle’s,” the rector explained. “I was his god-son, and his
name was mine also.”
“Is he alive, may I ask?” the curate pursued, looking at the title-page
as if he saw something curious there—though, indeed, what he saw was
not new to him; only from it he had suddenly deduced a thought.
“No, he died about a year ago—nearly a year ago, I think,” Lindo
answered carelessly, and without the least suspicion. “He was always
particularly kind to me, and I use that book a good deal. I must have
it rebound.”
“Yes,” Clode said mechanically; “it wants rebinding if you value it.”
“I shall have it done. And a lot of these books,” the rector continued,
looking at old Mr. Williams’s shelves, “want their clothes renewing. I
shall have them all looked to, I think.” He had a pleasant sense that
this was in his power. The cost of the furniture and library had made a
hole in his not very large private means; but that mattered little now.
Eight hundred a year, paid quarterly, will bind a book or two.
Had the curate been attending, he would have read Lindo’s thoughts with
ease. But Clode was pursuing a train of reflections of his own, and so
was spared this pang. “Your uncle was an old man, I suppose,” he said.
“I think I observed in the Clergy List that he had been in orders about
forty years.”
“Not quite so long as that,” Lindo replied. “He was sixty-four when he
died. He had been Lord Dynmore’s private tutor you know, though they
were almost of an age.”
“Indeed,” the curate rejoined, still with that thoughtful look on his
face. “You knew Lord Dynmore through him, I suppose, then, Mr. Lindo?”
“Well, I got the living through him, if that what you mean,” Lindo said
frankly. “But I do not think that I ever met Lord Dynmore. Certainly I
should not know him from Adam.”
“Ah!” said the curate, “ah! indeed!” He smiled as he gazed into the
fire, and stroked his chin. In the other’s place, he thought, he would
have been more reticent. He would not have disclaimed, though he might
not have claimed, acquaintance with Lord Dynmore. He would have left
the thing shadowy, to be defined by others as they pleased. Thinking
thus, he got up somewhat abruptly, and wished Lindo good-night. A cool
observer, indeed, might have noticed—but the rector did not—a change in
his manner as he did so—a little accession of familiarity, which did
seem not far removed from a delicate kind of contempt. The change was
subtle, but one thing was certain. Stephen Clode had no longer any
intention of leaving Claversham in a hurry. That resolve was gone.
Once out of the house, he passed quickly from the churchyard by a
narrow lane leading to an irregular open space quaintly called “The Top
of the Town.” Here were his own lodgings, on the first-floor over a
stationer’s; but he did not enter them. Instead, he strode on toward
the farther and darker side of the square, where were no buildings, but
a belt of tall trees stood up, gaunt and rustling in the night wind
above a line of wall. Through the trees the lights of a large house
were visible. He walked up the avenue which led to the door and,
ringing loudly, was at once admitted.
The sound of the bell came to the ears of two ladies who had been for
some time placidly expecting it. They were seated in a small but
charming room filled with soft, shaded light and warmth and color, an
open piano and dainty pictures and china, and a well-littered
writing-table all contributing to the air of accustomed luxury which
pervaded it. The elder lady—that Mrs. Hammond whom we saw talking to
the curate on the day of the old rector’s funeral—looked up expectantly
as Mr. Clode entered, and, extending to him a podgy white hand covered
with rings, began to chide him in a rich full voice for being so late.
“I have been dying,” she said cheerfully, “to hear what is the fate
before us, Mr. Clode. What is he like?”
“Well,” he answered, taking with a word of thanks the cup of tea which
Laura offered him, “I have one surprise in store for you. He is
comparatively young.”
“Sixty?” said Mrs. Hammond interrogatively.
“Forty?” said Laura, raising her eyebrows.
“No,” Clode replied, smiling and stirring his tea, “you must guess
again. He is twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six! You are joking,” exclaimed the elder lady. While Laura
opened her eyes very wide, but said nothing yet.
“No,” said the curate. “He told me himself that he was not born until
1854.”
The two ladies were loud in their surprise then, while for a moment the
curate sipped his tea in silence. The brass kettle hissed and bubbled
on the hob. The tea-set twinkled cheerfully on the wicker table, and
faint scents of flowers and fabrics filled the room with an atmosphere
which he had long come to associate with Laura. It was Laura Hammond,
indeed, who had introduced him to this new world. The son of an
accountant living in a small Lincolnshire town, he owed his clerical
profession to his mother’s ardent wish that he should rise in the
world. His father was not wealthy, and, before he came as curate to
Claversham, Mr. Clode had had no experience of society. Then,
alighting: on a sudden in the midst of much such a small town as his
native place, he found himself astonishingly transmogrified into a
person of social importance. He found every door open to him, and among
them the Hammonds’, who were admitted to be the first people in the
town. He fell in easily enough with the “new learning,” but the central
figure in the novel pleasant world of refinement continued throughout
to be Laura Hammond.
Much petting had somewhat spoiled him, and it annoyed him now, as he
sat sipping his tea, to observe that the ladies were far from
displeased with his tidings. “If he is a young man, he is sure not to
be evangelical,” said Mrs. Hammond decisively. “That is well. That is a
comfort, at any rate.”
“He will play tennis, I dare say,” said Laura.
“And Mr. Bonamy will be kept in some order now,” Mrs. Hammond
continued. “Not that I am blaming you, Mr. Clode,” she added
graciously—indeed, the curate was a great favorite with her, “but in
your position you could do nothing with a man so impracticable.”
“He really will be an acquisition,” cried Laura gleefully, her brown
eyes shining in the firelight. And she made her tiny lace handkerchief
into a ball and flung it up—and did not catch it, for, with all her
talk of lawn-tennis, she was no great player. Her _rôle_ lay rather in
the drawing-room. She was as fond of comfort as a cat, and loved the
fire with the love of a dog, and was, in a word, pre-eminently
feminine, delighting to surround herself with all such things as tended
to set off this side of her nature. “But now,” she continued briskly,
when the curate had recovered her handkerchief for her, “tell me what
you think of him. Is he nice?”
“Certainly; I should say so,” the curate answered, smiling.
But, though he smiled, he became silent again. He was reflecting, with
well-hidden bitterness, that Lindo would not only override him in the
parish, but would be his rival in the particular inner clique which he
affected—perhaps his rival with Laura. The thought awoke the worst
nature of the man. Up to this time, though he had not been true, though
he had kept back at Claversham details of his past history which a
frank man would have avowed, though in the process of assimilating
himself to his new surroundings he had been over-pliant, he had not
been guilty of any baseness which had seemed to him a baseness, which
had outraged his own conscience. But, as he reflected on the wrong
which this young stranger was threatening to do him, he felt himself
capable of much.
“Mrs. Hammond,” he said suddenly, “may I ask if you have destroyed Lord
Dynmore’s letter which you showed me last week?”
“Destroyed Lord Dynmore’s letter!” Laura answered, speaking for her
mother in a tone of comic surprise. “Do you think, sir, that we get
peers’ autographs every day of the week?”
“No,” Mrs. Hammond said, waving aside her daughter’s flippancy and
speaking with some stateliness. “It is not destroyed, though such
things are not so rare with us as Laura pretends. But why do you ask?”
“Because the rector was not sure when Lord Dynmore meant to return to
England,” Clode explained readily. “And I thought he mentioned the date
in his letter to you, Mrs. Hammond.”
“I do not think so,” said Mrs. Hammond.
“Might I look?”
“Of course,” was the answer. “Will you find it, Laura? I think it is
under the malachite weight in the other room.”
It was, sitting there in solitary majesty. Laura opened it, and took
the liberty of glancing through it first. Then she gave it to him.
“There, you unbelieving man,” she said, “you can look. But he does not
say a word about his return.”
The curate read rapidly until he came to one sentence, and on this his
eye dwelt a moment. “I hear with regret,” it ran, “that poor Williams
is not long for this world. When he goes I shall send you an old friend
of mine. I trust he will become an old friend of yours also.” Clode
barely glanced at the rest of the letter, but, as he handed it back, he
informed himself that it was dated in America two days before Mr.
Williams’s death.
“No,” he admitted, “I was wrong. I thought he had said when he would
return.”
“And you are satisfied?” said Laura.
“Perfectly,” he answered. “Perfectly!” with a little unnecessary
emphasis.
He lingered long enough to give them a personal description of the
new-comer—speaking always of him in words of praise—and then he took
his leave. As his hand met Laura’s, his face flushed ever so slightly
and his dark eyes glowed; and the girl, as she turned away, smiled
furtively, knowing well, though he had never spoken, that she was the
cause of this. So she was, but in part only. At that moment the curate
saw something besides Laura—he saw across a narrow strait of trouble
the fairer land of preferment, his footing on which once gained he
might pretend to her and to many other pleasant things at present
beyond his reach.