TWO SURPRISES.
On the evening of the Hammonds’ party, Mr. Clode sat alone in his room,
trying to compose himself to work. His lamp burned brightly, and his
tea kettle—he had already sent down his frugal dinner an hour or
more—murmured pleasantly on the hob. But for some reason Mr. Clode
could do no work. He was restless, gloomy, ill-satisfied. The
suspicions which had been aroused in his breast on the evening of the
rector’s arrival had received, up to to-day at least, no confirmation;
but they had grown, as suspicions will, feeding on themselves, and with
them had grown the jealousy which had fostered them into being. The
curate saw himself already overshadowed by his superior, socially and
in the parish; and this evening felt this the more keenly that, as he
sat in his little room, he could picture perfectly the gay scene at the
Town House, where, for nearly two years, not a party had taken place
without his presence, no festivity had been arranged without his
co-operation. The omission to invite him to-night, however natural it
might seem to others, had for him a tremendous significance; so that
from a jealousy that was general he leapt at once to a jealousy more
particular, and conjured up a picture of Laura—with whose disposition
he was not unacquainted—smiling on the stranger, and weaving about him
the same charming net which had caught his own feet.
At this thought Clode sprang up with a passionate gesture and began to
walk to and fro, his brow dark. He felt sure that Lindo had no right to
his cure, but he knew also that the cure was a freehold, and that to
oust the rector from it something more than a mere mistake would have
to be shown. If the rector should turn out to be very incompetent, if
he should fall on evil times in the parish, then indeed he might find
his seat untenable when the mistake should be discovered; and with an
eye to this the curate had already dropped a word here and there—as,
for instance, that word which had reached Mr. Bonamy. But Clode was not
satisfied with that now. Was there no shorter, no simpler course
possible? There was one. The rector might be shown to have been aware
of the error when he took advantage of it. In that case his appointment
would be vitiated, and he might be compelled to forego it.
Naturally enough, the curate had scarcely formulated this to himself
before he became convinced—in his present state of envy and
suspicion—of the rector’s guilt. But how was he to prove it? As he
walked up and down the room, chafing and hot-eyed, he thought of a way
in which proof might be secured. The letters which had passed between
Lindo and Lord Dynmore’s agents in regard to the presentation, must
surely contain some word, some expression sufficient to have apprised
the young man of the truth—that the living was intended not for him but
for his uncle. A look at those letters, if they were in existence,
might give Stephen Clode, mere curate though he was, the whip-hand of
his rector!
He had another plan in his mind, of which more presently, and probably
he would have pursued the idea which has just been mentioned no farther
if his eye had not chanced to light at the moment on a small key
hanging upon a nail by the fireplace. Clode looked at the key, and his
face flushed. He stood thinking and apparently hesitating, the lamp
throwing his features into strong relief, while a man might count
twenty. Then he sat down with an angry exclamation and plunged into his
work. But in less than a minute he lifted his head. His glance wandered
again to the key; and, getting up suddenly, he took it down, put on his
hat, and went out.
His lodgings were over the stationer’s shop, but he could go in and out
through a private passage. He saw, as he passed, however; that there
was a light in the shop, and he opened the side door. “I am going to
the rectory to consult a book, Mrs. Wafer,” he said, seeing his
landlady dusting the counter. “You can leave my lamp alight. I shall
want nothing more to-night, thank you.”
She bade him good-night, and he closed the door again and rushed into
the street. Crossing the top of the town, he had to pass the Market
Hall, where he spoke to the one policeman on night duty; and here he
saw that it was five minutes to ten, and hastened his steps, in the
fear that the rector’s household might have retired. “He will not be
home himself until eleven, at the earliest,” the curate muttered as he
turned rapidly into the churchyard, which was very dark, the night
being moonless. “I have a clear hour. It was well that I looked in late
the other night.”
But, whatever his design, it received a sudden check. The rectory was
closed! The front of the house stood up dark and shapeless as the great
church which towered in front of it. The servants had gone to bed, and,
as they slept at the back, he would have found it difficult to arouse
them, had it suited his plans to do so. As it was, he did not dream of
such a thing, and with a slight shiver—for the night was cold, and now
that his project no longer excited him he felt it so, and felt too the
influence of the night wind soughing in sad fashion through the yews—he
was turning away, when something arrested his attention, and he paused.
The something he had seen, or fancied he had seen, was a momentary
glimmer of light shining through the fanlight over the door. It could
not affect him, for, if the servants had really closed the house for
the night, even if they had not all gone to bed, he could scarcely go
in. And yet some impulse led him to step softly into the porch and
grope for the knocker.
His hand lit instead on the iron-studded surface of the old oak door,
and, to his surprise, he felt it move slightly under his touch. He
pushed, and the door slid slowly and silently open, disclosing the
dusky outline of the hall, faintly illuminated by a thin shaft of light
which proceeded apparently from the study, the door of which was a
trifle ajar.
The sight recalled to the curate’s mind the errand on which he had
come, and he stole across the hall on tiptoe, listening with all his
ears. He heard nothing, however, and presently he stood on the mat at
the study door intercepting the light. Then he did hear the dull
footsteps of some one moving in the room, and suddenly it occurred to
him that the rector had stepped home to fetch something—a song, music,
or a book possibly—and was now within searching for it. That would
explain all.
The curate was seized with panic at the thought, and, fearful of being
discovered in his present position—for though he might have done all he
had done in perfect innocence, conscience made a coward of him—he crept
across the hall again and passed out into the churchyard. There he
stood in the darkness, waiting and watching, expecting the rector to
bustle out each minute.
But five minutes passed, and even ten, as it seemed to the curate in
his impatience, and no one came out, nor did the situation alter. Then
he made up his mind that the person moving in the study could not be
the owner of the house, and he went in again and, crossing the hall,
flung the study door wide open and entered.
There was a ringing sound as of coins falling on the floor, and a man
who had been kneeling low over something sprang to his feet and gazed
with wide, horror-stricken eyes at the intruder. A moment only the man
looked, and then he fell again on his knees. “Oh, mercy! mercy!” he
cried, almost grovelling before the curate. “Don’t give me up! I have
never been took! I have never been in jail or in trouble in my life! I
did not know what I was doing, sir! I swear I did not! Don’t give me
up!”
This cry, which was low and yet piercing, ended in hysterical sobbing.
On the table by his side stood a single candle, and by its light Clode
saw that the little cupboard among the books was open. The curate
started at the sight, and the words which he had been about to utter to
the shrinking wretch begging for mercy on the floor before him died
away in his husky throat. His eyes, however, burned with a gloomy rage,
and when he recovered himself his voice was pitiless. “You scoundrel!”
he said, in the low rich tone which had been so much admired in the
church when he first came to Claversham, “what are you doing here? Get
up and speak!” And he made as if he would spurn the creature with his
foot.
“I am a respectable man,” the rogue whined. “I am—that is I was, I
mean, sir—don’t be hard on me—Lord Dynmore’s own valet. I will tell you
all, sir.”
“I know you!” rejoined Clode, looking harshly at him. “You were here
this morning. And Mr. Lindo gave you money.”
“He did, sir. I confess it. I am a——”
“You are an ungrateful scoundrel!” Stephen Clode answered, cutting the
man short. “That is what you are! And in a few days you will be a
convicted felon, with the broad-arrow on your clothes, my man!”
To hear his worst anticipations thus put into words was too much for
the poor wretch. He fell on his knees, feebly crying for mercy, mercy!
“You are a minister of the gospel. Give me this one more chance, sir!”
he prayed.
“Stop that noise!” growled the curate fiercely, his dark face rendered
more rugged by the light and shadow cast by the single candle. “Be
silent! do you hear? and get up and speak like a man, if you can. Tell
me all—how you came here, and what you came for, and perhaps I may let
you escape. But the truth, mind, the truth!” he added truculently.
The knave was too thoroughly terrified to think of anything else. “Lord
Dynmore dismissed me,” he muttered, his breath coming quickly. “He
missed some money in Chicago, and he gave me enough to carry me home,
and bade me go to the devil! I landed in Liverpool without a
shilling—sir, it is God’s truth—and I remembered the gentleman Lord
Dynmore had just put in the living here. I had known him, and he had
given me half a sovereign more than once. And I thought I would come to
him. So I pawned my clothes, and came on.”
“Yes, yes!” exclaimed the curate, leaning forward, with fierce
impatience in his tone. “And then?”
“Sir?”
“Well? When you came here? What happened? Go on, fool!” He could
scarcely control himself.
“I found a stranger,” whimpered the man—“another Mr. Lindo. He had got
in here somehow.”
“Well? But there,” added the curate with a sudden change of manner,
“how do you know that Lord Dynmore meant to put the clergyman you used
to know in here?”
“Because I heard him read a letter from his agents about it,” the
fellow replied at once. “And from what his lordship said I knew it was
his old pal—his old friend, sir, I mean, begging your pardon humbly,
sir.”
“And when did you learn,” said the curate more quickly, “that the
gentleman here was not your Mr. Lindo?”
“I heard in the town that he was a young man. And, putting one thing
and another together, and keeping a still tongue myself, I thought he
would serve me as well as the other, and I called——”
“What did you say?”
“Not much, sir,” answered the valet, a twinkle of cunning in his eye.
“The less said the sooner mended. But he understood, and he promised to
give me ten shillings a week.”
“To hold your tongue?”
“Well, so I took it, sir.”
The curate drew a long breath. This was what he had expected. It was to
information which might be drawn from this man that his second scheme
had referred. And here was the man at his service, bound by a craven
fear to do his bidding—bound to tell all he knew. “But why,” Clode
asked suspiciously, a thought striking him, “if what you say be true,
are you here now—doing this, my man?”
“I was tempted, sir,” the servant answered, his tone abject again. “I
confess it truly, sir. I saw the money in the box here this morning,
sir, and I thought that my ten shillings a week would not last long,
and a little capital would set me up comfortably. And then the devil
put it into my head that the young gentleman would not persecute me,
even if he caught me.”
“You did not think of me catching you?” said the curate grimly.
The man uttered a cry of anguish. “That I did not, sir,” he sobbed.
“Oh, Lord! I have never had a policeman’s hand on me. I have been
honest always.”
“Until you took his lordship’s money,” replied the curate quietly. “But
I understand. You have never been found out before, you mean.”
No doubt when people of a certain class, for which respectability has
long spelled livelihood, do fall into the law’s clutch they suffer very
sharply. Master Felton continued to pour forth heartrending prayers;
but he might have saved his breath. The curate’s thoughts were
elsewhere. He was thinking that a witness so valuable must be kept
within reach at any cost and it did flash across his brain that the
best course would be to hand him over now to the police, and trust to
the effect which his statements respecting the rector should produce
upon the inquiry. But the reflection that the allegations of a man on
his trial for burglary would not obtain much credence led Clode to
reject this simple course and adopt another. “Look here!” he said
curtly. “I am going to deal mercifully with you, my man. But—but,” he
continued, frowning impatiently, as he saw the other about to speak—“on
certain conditions. You are not to leave Claversham. That is the first.
If you leave the town before I give you the word, I shall put the
police on your track without an instant’s delay. Do you hear that?”
“I will stop as long as you like, sir,” said the servant submissively,
but with wonder apparent both in his voice and face.
“Very well. I wish it for the present, no matter why. Perhaps because I
would see that you lead an honest life for awhile.”
“And—how shall I live, sir?” said the culprit timidly.
“For the present you may continue to draw your half-sovereign a week,”
the curate answered hastily, his face reddening, he best knew why.
“Possibly I may tell Mr. Lindo at once. Possibly I may give you another
chance, and tell him later, if I find you deserving. What is your
address?”
“I am at the Bull and Staff,” muttered Felton. It was a small public
house of no very good repute.
“Well, stay there,” Stephen Clode answered after a moment’s thought.
“But see you get into no harm. And since you are living on the rector’s
bounty, you may say so.”
The man looked puzzled as well as relieved, but, stealing a doubtful
glance at the curate’s dark fate, he found his eyes still upon him, and
cowered afresh. “Yes, take care,” said Clode, smiling unpleasantly as
he saw the effect his look produced. “Do not try to evade me or it will
be the worse for you, Felton. And now go! But see you take nothing from
here.”
The detected one cast a sly glance at the half-rifled box which still
lay on the carpet at his feet, a few gold coins scattered round it;
then he looked up again. “It is all there, sir,” he said, cringing. “I
had but just begun.”
“Then go!” said the curate, pointing with emphasis to the door. “Go, I
tell you!”
The man’s presence annoyed and humiliated him so that he felt a
positive relief when the valet’s back was turned. Left alone he stood
listening, a cloud on his brow, until the faint sound of the outer door
being pulled to reached his ear, and then, stooping hastily, he
gathered up the sovereigns and half-sovereigns, which lay where they
had fallen, and put them into the box. This done, he rose and laid the
box itself upon the table by his side. And again he stood still,
listening, a dark shade on his face.
Long ago, almost at the moment of his entrance, he had seen the pale
shimmer of papers at the back of the little cupboard. Now, still
listening stealthily, he thrust in his hand and drew out one of the
bundles and opened it. The papers were parish accounts in his own
handwriting! With a gesture of fierce impatience he thrust them back
and drew out others, and, disappointed again in these, exchanged them
hastily for a third set. In vain! The last were as worthless to him as
the first.
He was turning away baffled and defeated, when he saw lying at the back
of the lower compartment of the cupboard, whence the cash-box had come,
two or three smaller packets, consisting apparently of letters. The
curate reached hastily for one of these, and the discovery that it
contained some of Lindo’s private accounts, dated before his
appointment, made his face flush and his fingers tremble with
eagerness. He glanced nervously round the room and stopped to listen;
then, moving the candle a little nearer, he ran his eye over the
papers. But here, too, though the scent was hot, he took nothing, and
he exchanged the packet for one of the others. Looking at this, he saw
that it was indorsed in Lindo’s handwriting, “Letters relating to the
Claversham Living.”
“At last,” Clode muttered, his eyes burning, “I have it now.” The
string which bound the packet was knotted tightly, and his fingers
seemed all thumbs as he labored to unfasten it. But he succeeded at
last, and opening the uppermost letter (they were all folded across),
saw that it was written from Lincoln’s Inn Fields. “My dear sir,” he
read; and then—with a mighty crash sounding awfully in his ears—the
door behind him was flung open just as he had flung it open himself an
hour before, and, dropping the letter, he sprang round, to find the
rector confronting him with a face of stupid astonishment.