THE HAMMONDS’ DINNER PARTY.
The new top, the new book, the bride—the first joy in the possession of
each one of these fades, not gradually, but at a leap, as day fades in
the tropics. A chip in the wood, the turning of the last page, the
first selfish word, and the thing is done; ecstasy becomes sober
satisfaction. It was so with the rector. The first glamour of his good
fortune, of his new toy, died abruptly with that evening—with the
quarrel with his church warden, and the discovery of the cause of that
constraint which he had remarked in Kate Bonamy’s manner from the
first.
He was a conscientious man, and the failure of his good resolutions,
his aspirations to be the perfect parish priest, fretted him. Moreover,
he had to think of the future. He soon learned that Mr. Bonamy might
not be a gentleman, and was indeed reputed to be a stubborn,
queer-tempered curmudgeon; but he learned also that he had great
influence in the town, though, except in the way of business, he
associated with few, and that he, Reginald Lindo, would have to reckon
with him on that footing. The certainty of this and of the bad
beginning he had made naturally depressed the young man, his customary
good opinion of himself not coming to his aid at once. And, besides, he
carried about with him—sometimes it came between him and his book,
sometimes he saw it framed by the autumn landscape—the picture of
Kate’s pure proud face. At such moments he felt himself humiliated by
the slights cast upon her. The Hammonds did not think her fit company
for them! The Hammonds!
Not that he knew the Hammonds yet, or many others, the days which
intervened between his induction and the dinner at the Town House being
somewhat lonely days, during which he was much thrown back upon
himself, and only felt by slow degrees the soothing influence of the
routine work of his position. Of his curate, and of him only, he
naturally saw much, and found it small comfort to learn from the
Reverend Stephen that the fracas with Mr. Bonamy had not escaped the
attention of the town, but was being made the subject of comment by
many who were delighted to have so novel a subject as the new rector
and his probable conduct.
He was sitting at breakfast a few days later—on the morning of the
Hammonds’ party—when Mrs. Baker announced an early visitor. “No, he is
not a gentleman, sir,” she said, “though he has on a black coat. A
stranger to the town, I think, but he will not say what he wants,
except to see you.”
“I will come to him in the study,” replied her master.
The housekeeper, however, going out, and taking a second glance at the
caller, did not show him into the study, but instead, gave him a seat
in the hall on the farther side from the coatstand. There the rector,
when he came out, found him—a pale fat-faced man, dressed neatly and
decorously, though his clothes were threadbare. He took him into the
study, and asked him his business. “But first sit down,” the rector
added pleasantly, desiring to set the man at his ease.
The stranger sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair. For a moment
there was a pause of seeming embarrassment, and then, “I am
body-servant, sir,” he said abruptly, passing his tongue across his
lips, and looking up furtively to learn the effect of his announcement,
“to the Earl of Dynmore.”
“Indeed!” the rector replied, with a slight start. “Has Lord Dynmore
returned to England, then?”
Again the man looked up slyly. “No, sir,” he answered with
deliberation, “I cannot say that he has, sir.”
“You have brought some letter or message from him, perhaps?” the
clergyman hazarded. The stranger seemed to have a difficulty in telling
his own story.
“No, sir, if you will pardon me, I have come about myself, sir,” the
man explained, speaking a little more freely. “I am in a little bit of
trouble, and I think you would help me, sir, if you heard the story.”
“I am quite willing to hear the story,” said the rector gravely.
Looking more closely at the man, he saw that his neatness was only on
the surface. His white cravat was creased, and his wrists displayed no
linen. An air of seediness marked him in the full light of the windows,
and, pale as his face was, it wore here and there a delicate flush.
Perhaps the man’s admission that he was in trouble helped the rector to
see this.
“Well, sir, it was this way,” the servant began. “I was not very well
out there, sir, and his lordship—he is an independent kind of
man—thought he would be better by himself. So he gave me my
passage-money and board wages for three months, and told me to come
home and take a holiday until he returned to England. So far it was all
right, sir.”
“Yes?” said the rector.
“But on board the boat—I am not excusing what I did, sir; but there are
others have done worse,” continued the man, with another of his sudden
upward glances—“I was led to play cards with a set of sharpers, and—and
the end of it was that I landed at Liverpool yesterday without a
halfpenny.”
“That was bad.”
“Yes, it was, sir. I do not know that I ever felt so bad in my life,”
replied the servant earnestly. “And now you know my position, sir.
There are several people in the town—but they have no means to help
me—who can tell you I am his lordship’s valet, and my name Charles
Felton.”
“You want help, I suppose?”
“I have not a halfpenny, sir! I want something to live on until his
lordship comes back.”
His tone changed as he said this, growing hard and almost defiant. The
rector noted the alteration, and did not like it. “But why come to me?”
he said, more coldly than he had yet spoken. “Why do you not go to Lord
Dynmore’s steward, or agent, or his solicitor, my man?”
“They would tell of me,” was the curt answer. “And likely enough I
should lose my place.”
“Still, why come to me?” Lindo persisted—chiefly to learn what was in
the man’s mind, for he had already determined what he would do.
“Because you are rector of Claversham, sir,” the applicant retorted at
last. And he rose suddenly and confronted the parson with an unpleasant
smile on his pale face—“which is in my lord’s gift, as you know, sir,”
he continued, in a tone rude and almost savage—a tone which
considerably puzzled his companion, who was not conscious of having
said anything offensive to the man. “I came here, sir, expecting to
meet an older gentleman, a gentleman of your name, a gentleman known to
me, and I find you—and I see you, do you see, where I expected to find
him.”
“You mean my uncle, I suppose?” said Lindo.
“Well, sir, you know best,” was the odd reply, and the man’s look was
as odd as his words. “But that is how the case stands; and, seeing it
stands so, I hope you will help me, sir. I do hope, on every account,
sir, that you will see your way to help me.”
The rector looked at the speaker with a slight frown, liking neither
the man nor his behavior. But he had already made up his mind to help
him, if only in gratitude to his patron, whose retainer he was; and
this, though the earl would never know of the act, nor possibly approve
of it. The man had at least had the frankness to own the folly which
had brought him to these straits, and Lindo was inclined to set down
the oddity of his present manner to the fear and anxiety of a
respectable servant on the verge of disgrace. “Yes,” he said coldly,
after a moment’s thought, “I am willing to help you. Of course I shall
expect you to repay me if and when you are able, Felton.”
“I will do that,” replied the man rather cavalierly.
“You might have added, ‘and thank you, sir,’” the rector said, with a
keen glance of reproof. He turned, as he spoke, to a small cupboard
constructed between the bookshelves near the fireplace, and, opening
it, took out a cash-box.
The man colored under his reproach, and muttered some apology,
resuming, as by habit, the tone of respect which seemed natural to him.
All the same he watched the clergyman’s movements with great closeness,
and appraised, even before it was placed in his hand, the sum which
Lindo took from a compartment set apart apparently for gold. “I will
allow you ten shillings a week—on loan, of course,” Lindo said after a
moment’s thought. “You can keep yourself on that, I suppose? And,
besides, I will advance you a sovereign to supply yourself with
anything of which you have pressing need. That should be ample. There
are three half sovereigns.”
This time the man did thank him with an appearance of heartiness. But
before he had said much the study door opened, and Stephen Clode came
in, his hat in his hand. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” the curate said,
taking in at a glance the open cash-box and the stranger’s outstretched
hand, and preparing to withdraw. “I thought you were alone.”
“Come in, come in!” said the rector, closing the money-box hastily, and
with some embarrassment, for he was not altogether sure that he had not
done a foolish and quixotic thing. “Our friend here is going. You can
send me your address, Felton. Good-day.”
The man thanked him and, taking up his hat, went. “Some one out of
luck?” said Clode.
“Yes.”
“I did not much like his looks,” the curate remarked. “He is not a
townsman, or I should know him.” The rector felt that his discretion
was assailed, and hastened to defend himself. “He is respectable
enough,” he said carelessly. “As a fact, he is Lord Dynmore’s valet.”
“But has Lord Dynmore come back?” the curate exclaimed, his hand
arrested in the act of taking down a book from a high shelf, and his
head turning quickly. If he expected to learn anything, however, from
his superior’s demeanor he was disappointed. Lindo was busy locking the
cupboard, and had his back to him.
“No, he has not come back,” Reginald explained, “but he has sent the
man home, and the foolish fellow lost his money on the boat coming
over, and wants an advance until his master’s return.”
“But why on earth does he come to you for it?” cried the curate, with
undisguised, astonishment.
The rector shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, I do not know,” he said, a
trifle of irritation in his manners. “He did, and there is an end of
it. Is there any news?”
Mr. Clode seemed to find a difficulty in at once changing the direction
of his thoughts. But he did so with an effort, and, after a pause,
answered, “No, I think not. There is a good deal of interest felt in
the question of the sheep out there, I fancy—whether you will take your
course or comply with Mr. Bonamy’s whim.”
“I do not know myself,” said the young rector, turning and facing the
curate, with his feet apart and his hands thrust deep into his pockets.
“I do not, indeed. It is a serious matter.”
“It is. Still you have the responsibility,” said the curate with
diffidence, “and, without expressing any view of my own on the subject,
I confess——”
“Well?”
“I think if I bore the responsibility, I should feel called upon to do
what I myself thought right in the matter.”
The younger man shook his head doubtfully. “There is something in
that,” he said; “but, on the other hand, one cannot look on the point
as an essential, and, that being so, perhaps one should prefer peace.
But, there, enough of that now, Clode. I think you said you were not
going to the Hammonds’ this evening?”
“No, I am not.”
The rector almost wished he were not. However sociable a man may be, a
few days of solitude and a little temporary depression will render him
averse from society if he be sensitive. Lindo as a man was not very
sensitive; he held too good an opinion of himself. But as rector he
was, and as he walked across to the Town House he anticipated anything
but enjoyment.
In a few minutes, however—has it not some time or other happened to all
of us?—everything was changed with him. He felt as if he had entered
another world. The air of culture and refinement which surrounded him
from the hall inward, the hearty kindness of Mrs. Hammond, the pretty
rooms, the music and flowers, Laura’s light laughter and pleasant
badinage, all surprised and delighted him. The party might almost have
been a London party, it was so lively. The archdeacon, a red-faced,
cherry, white-haired man, whose acquaintance Lindo had already made,
and his wife, who was a mild image of himself, were of the number,
which was completed by their daughter and four or five county people,
all prepared to welcome and be pleased with the new rector. Lindo,
sprung from gentlefolk himself, had the ordinary experience of society;
but here he found himself treated as a stranger and a dignitary to a
degree of notice and a delicate flattery of which he had not before
tasted the sweets. Perhaps he was the more struck by the taste
displayed in the house, and the wit and liveliness of his new friends,
because he had so little looked for them—because he had insensibly
judged his parish by his experience of Mr. Bonamy, and had come
expecting this house to be as his.
If, under these circumstances, the young fellow had been unaffected by
the incense offered to him he would have been more than mortal. But he
was not. He began, before he had been in the house an hour, to change,
all unconsciously of course, his standpoint. He began to wonder
especially why he had been so depressed during the last few days, and
why he had troubled himself so much about the opinions of people whose
views no sensible man would regard.
Perhaps the girl beside him—he took in Laura—contributed as much as
anything to this. It was not only that she was bright and sparkling, in
the luxury of her pearls and evening dress even enchanting, nor only
that the femininity which had enslaved Stephen Clode began to have its
effects on her new neighbor. But Laura had a way while she talked to
him, while her lustrous brown eyes dwelt momentarily on his, of
removing herself and himself to a world apart—a world in which
downrightness seemed more downright and rudeness an outrage. And so,
while her manner gently soothed and flattered her companion, it led him
almost insensibly to—well, to put it in the concrete—to think scorn of
Mr. Bonamy.
“You have had a misunderstanding,” she said softly, as they stood
together by the piano after dinner, a feathering plant or two fencing
them off in a tiny solitude of their own, “with Mr. Bonamy, have you
not, Mr. Lindo?”
From anyone else, perhaps from her half an hour before, he would have
resented mention of the matter. Now he did not seem to mind. “Something
of the kind,” he said, laughing.
“About the sheep in the churchyard, was it not?” she continued.
“Yes.”
“Well, will you pardon me saying something?” Resting both her hands on
the raised lid of the piano, she looked up at him, and it must be
confessed that he thought he had never seen eyes so soft and brilliant
before. “It is only this,” she said earnestly. “That I hope you will
not give way to him. He is a wretched, cross-grained, fidgety man and
full of crotchets. You know all about him, of course?” she added, a
slight ring of pride in her voice.
“I know that he is my church warden,” said the rector, half in
seriousness.
“Yes!” she replied. “That is just what he is fit for!”
“You think so?” Lindo retorted, smiling. “Then you really mean that I
should be guided by him? That is it?”
She looked brightly at him for a moment. “I think you will be guided
only by yourself,” she murmured; and, blushing slightly, she nodded and
left him to go to another guest.
They were all in the same tale. “He is a rude overbearing man, Mr.
Lindo,” Mrs. Hammond said roundly, even her good nature giving place to
the _odium theologicum_. “And I cannot imagine why Mr. Williams put up
with him so long.”
“No indeed,” said the archdeacon’s wife, complacently smoothing down
her skirt. “But that is the worst of a town parish. You have this sort
of people.”
Mrs. Hammond looked for the moment as if she would have liked to deny
it. But under the circumstances this was impossible. “I am afraid we
have,” she admitted gloomily. “I hope Mr. Lindo will know how to deal
with him.”
“I think the archdeacon would,” said the other lady, shaking her head
sagely.
But, naturally enough, the archdeacon was more guarded in his
expressions. “It is about removing the sheep from the churchyard, is it
not?” he said, when he and Lindo happened to be left standing together
and the subject came up. “They have been there a long time, you know.”
“That is true, I suppose,” the rector answered. “But,” he continued
rather warmly—“you do not approve of their presence there, archdeacon?”
“No, certainly not.”
“Nor do I. And, thinking the removal right, and the responsibility
resting upon me, ought I not to undertake it?”
“Possibly,” replied the older man. “But pardon me making a suggestion.
Is not the thing of so little importance that you may, with a good
conscience, prefer quiet to the trouble of raising it?”
“If the matter were to end there, I think so,” replied the new rector,
with perhaps too strong an assumption of wisdom in his tone. “But what
if this be only a test case?—if to give way here means to encourage
further trespass on my right of judgment? The affair would bear a
different aspect then, would it not?”
“Oh, no doubt. No doubt it would.”
And that was all the archdeacon, who was a cautious man and knew Mr.
Bonamy, would say. But it will be observed that the rector had both
altered his standpoint and done another thing which most people find
easy enough. He had discovered an answer to his own arguments.