TOWN TALK.
He was a man, as the reader will perhaps have gathered, of many shifts,
and cool-headed; but for a moment he felt something of the anguish of
discovery which had so tortured the surprised servant. The table shook
beneath his hand, and it was with difficulty he repressed a wild
impulse to overturn the candle, and escape in the darkness. He did
repress it, however; nay, he forced his eyes to meet the rector’s, and
twisted his lips into the likeness of a smile. But when he thought of
the scene afterward he found his chief comfort in the reflection that
the light had been too faint to betray his full embarrassment.
Naturally the rector was the first to speak. “Clode!” he ejaculated
softly, his surprise above words. “Is it you? Why, man,” he continued,
still standing with his hand on the door and his eyes devouring the
scene, “what is up?”
The money-box stood open at the curate’s side, and the letters lay
about his feet where they had fallen. The little cupboard yawned among
the books. No wonder Lindo’s amazement, as he gradually took it all in,
rather increased than diminished, or that the curate’s tongue was dry
and his throat husky when he at last found his voice. “It is all right.
I will explain it,” he stammered, almost upsetting the table in his
agitation. “I expected you before,” he added fussily, moving the light.
“The dickens you did!” slipped from the rector. It was difficult for
him not to believe that his arrival had been the last thing expected.
“Yes,” returned the curate, with a little snap of defiance. He was
recovering himself, and could look the other in the face now. “But I am
glad you did not come before, all the same.”
“Why?”
“I will explain.”
The light which the one candle gave was not so meagre that Clode’s
embarrassment had altogether escaped Lindo; and had the latter been a
suspicious man he might have had queer thoughts, and possibly expressed
them. As it was, he was only puzzled, and when the curate said he would
explain, answered simply, “Do.”
“The truth is,” said Stephen Clode, beginning with an effort, “I have
taken a good deal on myself, and I am afraid you will blame me, Mr.
Lindo. If so, I cannot help it.” His face flushed, and he beat a tattoo
on the table with his fingers. “I came across,” he continued, “to
borrow a book a little before ten. The lights here were out; but, to my
surprise, your house-door was open.”
“As I found it myself!” the rector exclaimed.
“Precisely. Naturally I had misgivings, and I looked into the hall. I
saw a streak of light proceeding from the doorway of this room, and I
came in softly to see what it meant. I heard a man moving about in
here, and I threw open the door much as you did.”
“Did you?” said Lindo eagerly. “And who was it—the man, I mean?”
“That is just what I cannot tell you,” replied the curate. His face was
pale, but there was a smile upon it, and he met the other’s gaze
without flinching. He had settled his plan now.
“He got away, then?” said the rector, disappointed.
“No. He did not try either to escape or to resist,” was the answer.
“But was he really a burglar?”
“Yes.”
“Then where is he?” The rector looked round as if he expected to see
the man lying bound on the floor. “What did you do with him?”
“I let him go.”
Lindo whistled; and when he had done whistling still stood with his
mouth open and a face of the most complete mystification. “You let him
go?” he repeated mechanically, but not until after a pause of half a
minute or so. “Why, may I ask?”
“You have every right to ask,” the curate answered with firmness, and
yet despondently. “I will tell you why—why I let him go, and why I
cannot tell you his name. He is a parishioner of yours. It was his
first offence, and I believe him to be sincerely penitent. I believe,
too, that he will never repeat the attempt, and that the accident of my
entrance saved him from a life of crime. I may have been wrong—I dare
say I was wrong,” continued the curate, growing excited—excitement came
very easily to him at the moment—“but I cannot go back from my word.
The man’s misery moved me. I thought what I should have felt in his
place, and I promised him, in return for his pledge that he would live
honestly in the future, that he should go free, and that I would not
betray his name to any one—to any one!”
“Well!” exclaimed the rector, his tone one of unbounded admiration in
every sense of the word. “When you do a thing nobly, my dear fellow,
you do do it nobly, and no mistake! I wonder who it was! But I must not
ask you.”
“No.” said Clode. “And now,” he continued, still beating the tattoo on
the table, “you do not blame me greatly?”
“I do not, indeed. No. Only I think perhaps that you should have
retained the right to tell me.”
“I should have done so,” said the curate regretfully.
“He has taken nothing, I suppose?” the rector continued, turning to the
cupboard, and, not only satisfied with the explanation, but liking
Clode better than he had liked him before.
“No,” the other answered. “I was putting things straight when you
entered and startled me. He had dropped the money about the floor, but
you will find it right, I think. He has made a mess among the papers, I
fear, and damaged the cupboard door in forcing it, but that is the
extent of the mischief. By the way,” the curate added, “I have a key to
this cupboard at my lodgings. Williams gave it to me. He only kept
parish matters here. I must let you have it.”
“Right,” said the rector carelessly; and, a few more words having
passed between them as to the attempted robbery, and the manner in
which the outer door had been opened, the curate took his hat and
prepared to go. “You had a pleasant party, I suppose?” he said, pausing
and turning when halfway across the hall.
“A _very_ pleasant one,” Lindo answered with enthusiasm.
“They are nice people,” said Clode smoothly.
“They are—very nice. You told me I should find them so, and you were
right. Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
Such harmless words! And yet they roused the curate’s jealousy anew. As
he walked home, the church clock tolling midnight above his head, he
drank in no peaceful influence from the dark stillness or the solemn
sound. He was gnawed by fresh hatred of the man who had surprised and
confounded him, and forced him to lie and quibble in order to escape
from a dishonorable position. If you would make a man your enemy come
upon him when he is doing something of which he is ashamed. He will
fear you afterward, but he will hate you more. In the curate’s case it
was only he who knew himself discovered, so that he had no ground for
fear. But he hated none the less vigorously.
And, somehow, in a few days an ugly rumor of which the new rector was
the subject began to gain currency in the town. It was an ill-defined
rumor, coming to one thing in one person’s mouth and to a different
thing in another’s—a kind of cloud on the rector’s fair fame, shifting
from moment to moment, and taking ever a fresh shape, yet always a
cloud.
One whispered that he had obtained the presentation as the reward of
questionable services rendered to the patron. Another that he had
forged his own deed of presentation, if such a thing existed. A third
that he had been presented by mistake; and a fourth that he had
deceived the authorities as to his age. It was noticeable that these
rumors began low down in the social scale of the town and worked their
way upward, which was odd; and that, whatever form the rumor took,
there was not one who heard it who did not within a fortnight or three
weeks come to associate it with the presence of a seedy, down-looking,
unwholesome man, who was much about the rector’s doorway, and, when he
was not there, was generally to be found at the Bull and Staff. Whether
he was the disseminator of the reports, or, alike with the rector, was
the unconscious subject of them, was not known; but at sight of
him—particularly if he were seen, as frequently happened, in the
rector’s neighborhood—people shrugged their shoulders and lifted their
eyebrows, and expressed a great many severe things without using their
tongues.
To the circle of the rector’s personal friends the rumors did not
reach. That was natural enough. To tell a person that his or her
intimate friend is a forger or a swindler is a piquant but somewhat
perilous task. And no one mentioned the matter to the Hammonds, or to
the archdeacon, or to the Homfrays of Holberton, or the other county
people living round, with whom it must be confessed that, after that
dinner-party at the Town House, he consorted perhaps too exclusively.
It might have been thought that even the townsfolk, seeing the young
fellow’s frank face passing daily about their streets, and catching the
glint of his fair curly hair when, the wintry sunlight pierced the
lanthorn windows and fell in gules and azure on the reading-desk, would
have been slow to believe such tales of him.
They might have been; but circumstances and Mr. Bonamy were against
him. The lawyer did not circulate the stories; he had not even
mentioned them out-of-doors, nor, for aught the greater part of
Claversham knew, had heard of them at all. But all his weight—and with
the Low-Church middle-class in the town it was great—was thrown into
the scale against the rector. It was known that he did not trust the
rector. It was known that day by day his frown on meeting the rector
grew darker and darker. And the why and the wherefore not being
understood—for no one thought of questioning the lawyer, or observed
how frequently of late the curate happened upon him in the street or
the reading-room—many concluded that he knew more of the clergyman’s
antecedents than appeared.
There was one person, and perhaps only one, who openly circulated and
rejoiced in these rumors. That was a man whom Lindo met daily in the
street and passed with a careless nod and a word, not dreaming for an
instant that the spiteful little busybody was concerning himself with
him. The man was Dr. Gregg, the snappish, ill-bred man who had chanced
upon Lindo and the Bonamy girls breakfasting together at Oxford. The
sight, it will be remembered, had not pleased him, for he had long had
a sneaking liking for Miss Kate himself, and had only refrained from
trying to win her because he still more desired to be of the “best set”
in Claversham. He had been ashamed, indeed, up to this time of his
passion; but, reading on that occasion unmistakable admiration of the
girl in the young clergyman’s face, and being himself rather cavalierly
treated by Lindo, he had somewhat changed his views. The girl had
acquired increased value in his eyes. Another’s appreciation had
increased his own, and, merely as an incident, the man who had effected
this has earned his hearty jealousy and ill-will. And this, while Lindo
thought him a vulgar but harmless little man.
But if the rector, immersed in new social engagements, did not see
whither he was tending, others, though they knew nothing of the
unpleasant tales we have mentioned, saw more clearly. The archdeacon,
coming into town one Saturday five or six weeks after Lindo’s arrival,
did his business early and turned his steps toward the rectory. He felt
pretty sure of finding the young fellow at home, because he knew it was
his sermon day. A few yards from the door he fell in, as it chanced,
with Stephen Clode. The two stood together talking, while the
archdeacon waited to be admitted, and presently the curate said, “If
you wish to see the rector, archdeacon, I am afraid you will be
disappointed. He is not at home.”
“But I thought that he was always at home on Saturdays?”
“Generally he is,” Clode replied, looking down and tracing a pattern
with the point of his umbrella. “But he is away to-day.”
“Where?” said the archdeacon rather abruptly.
“He has gone to the Homfrays’ at Holberton. They have some sort of
party to-day, and the Hammonds drove him over.” Despite himself, the
curate’s tone was sullen, his manner constrained.
“Oh!” said the archdeacon thoughtfully. The Homfrays were his very good
friends, but of the county families round Claversham they were reckoned
the fastest and most frivolous. And he sagely suspected that a man in
Lindo’s delicate position might be wiser if he chose other companions.
“Lindo seems to see a good deal of the Hammonds,” he remarked after a
pause.
“Yes,” said Clode. “It is very natural.”
“Oh, very natural,” the archdeacon hastened to say; but his tone
clearly expressed the opinion that “toujours Hammonds” was not a good
bill of fare for the rector of Claversham. “Very natural, of course.
Only,” he continued, taking courage, for he really liked the rector,
“you have had some experience here, and I think it would be well if you
were to give him a hint not to be too exclusive. A town rector must not
be too exclusive. It does not do.”
“No,” said Clode.
“It is different in the country, of course. And then there is Mr.
Bonamy. He is unpleasant, I know, and yet he is honest after a fashion.
Lindo must beware of getting across with him. He has done nothing about
the sheep yet, has he?”
“No.”
“Well, do not let him, if you can help it. You are not urging him on in
that, are you?”
“On the contrary,” the curate answered rather warmly, “I have all
through told him that I would not express an opinion on it. If
anything, I have discouraged him in the matter.”
“Well, I hope he will let it drop now. I hope he will let it drop.”
They parted then, and the archdeacon, sagely revolving in his mind the
evils of exclusiveness, strolled back to the hotel where he put up his
horses. On his way, casting his eye down the wide, quiet street, with
its old-fashioned houses on this side and that, he espied Mr. Bonamy’s
tall spare figure approaching, and he purposely passed the inn and went
to meet him. As a county magnate the archdeacon could afford to know
Mr. Bonamy, and even to be friendly with him. I am not sure, indeed,
that he had not a sneaking liking and respect for the rugged, snappish,
self-made man.
“How do you do, Mr. Bonamy?” he began. And then, after saying a few
words about closing a road in which he was interested, he slid into a
mention of Lindo, with a view to seeing how the land lay. “I have just
been to call on your rector,” he said.
“You did not find him at home,” replied Bonamy, with a queer grin, and
a little jerk of his head which sent his hat still farther back.
“No, I was unlucky.”
“Not more than most people,” said the churchwarden, with much
enjoyment. “I will tell you what it is, Mr. Archdeacon. Mr. Lindo is
better suited for your place. He would make a very good archdeacon.
With a pair of horses and a park phaeton and a small parish, and a
little general superintendence of the district—with that and the life
of a country gentleman he would get on capitally.”
There was just so much of a jest in the words that the clergyman had no
choice but to laugh. “Come, Bonamy,” he said good-humoredly, “he is
young yet.”
“Oh, yes, he is quite out of place here in that respect, too!” replied
the lawyer naïvely.
“But he will improve,” pleaded the archdeacon.
“I am not sure that he will have the chance,” Mr. Bonamy answered in
his gentlest tone.
The archdeacon was so far from understanding him that he did not answer
save by raising his eyebrows. Could Bonamy really be so foolish, he
wondered, as to think he could get rid of a beneficed clergyman. The
archdeacon was surprised, and yet that was all he could make of it.
“He is away at Mr. Homfray’s of Holberton now,” the lawyer continued,
condemnation in his thin voice.
“Well, there is no harm in that, Mr. Bonamy,” replied the archdeacon,
somewhat offended, “as long as he is back to do the duty to-morrow.”
Mr. Bonamy grunted. “A one-day-a-week duty is a very fine thing,” he
said. “You clergymen are to be envied, Mr. Archdeacon!”
“You would be a great deal more to be envied yourself, Mr. Bonamy,” the
magnate returned with heat, “if you did not carp at everything and look
at other people through distorted glasses. Fie! here is a young
clergyman new to the parish, and, instead of helping him, you find
fault with everything he does. For shame! For shame, Mr. Bonamy!”
“Ah!” said the lawyer, quite unabashed, “you did not mean to say that
when you came across the street to me. But—well, least said soonest
mended, and I will wish you good evening. You will have a wet drive
home, I am afraid, Mr. Archdeacon.”
And he put up his umbrella and went his way sturdily, while the
archdeacon, crossing to his carriage, which was in front of the inn,
entertained an uncomfortable suspicion that he had done more harm than
good by his intercession. “I am afraid,” he said to himself, as he
handled the reins and sent his horses down the street in a fashion of
which he was not a little proud—“I am afraid that there is trouble in
front of that young man. I am afraid there is.”
If he had known all, he might have shaken his head still more gravely,