OUT WITH THE SHEEP.
Stephen Clode, while listening with a certain pleasure to the
archdeacon’s hints, did not dream of the good turn which fortune was
about to do him. If he had foreseen it, he would probably have taken a
bolder part in the conversation, and parted from the elder clergyman
with a more jubilant step. As it was, he heard no rumor that evening,
nor was it until ten o’clock on the Sunday morning that he learned
anything was amiss. Calling at the house in the churchyard at that
hour, he was received by Mrs. Baker herself; and he remarked at once
that the housekeeper’s face fell in a manner far from flattering when
she recognized him.
“Oh, it is you, is it, Mr. Clode?” she said, her tone one of
disappointment. “You have not seen him, sir, have you?”
“Seen whom?” the curate replied in surprise.
“Mr. Lindo, sir?”
“Why? Is he not here?”
“He is not, indeed, sir,” the housekeeper said, putting her head out to
look up and down. “He never came back last night, and we have not heard
of him. I sent across to the Town House to inquire, and the only thing
Mrs. Hammond could say was that Mr. Lindo was to follow them, and they
supposed he had come.”
“Well, but—who is to do the duty at the church?” Clode ejaculated. His
dismay at the moment was genuine, for he did not at once see how much
this was to his advantage.
“There is only you, sir, unless he comes in time,” the housekeeper
added despondently.
“But I am going to the Hamlet church,” said Clode, rapidly turning
things over in his mind. If there was no one at the parish church to
conduct the chief service of the week, what a talk there would be! Why
it would almost be matter for the bishop’s interference! “You see I
cannot possibly neglect that,” he continued, in answer as much to the
remonstrance of his own conscience as to the housekeeper. “It was the
rector’s own arrangement, Mrs. Baker. You may be sure he will be here
in time for the eleven o’clock service. Mr. Homfray has kept him over
night. That is all.”
“You do not think he has met with an accident, sir? They say the
coal-pits on Baer Hill——”
“Pooh, pooh! He will be here in a few minutes, you will see,” the
curate answered. And he affected to be so cheerfully certain of this
that he would not wait even for a little while, but started at once for
the Hamlet church—a small chapel-of-ease in the outskirts of the town.
There he put on his surplice early, and was ready in excellent time.
Punctuality is a virtue.
At half-past ten the bells of the great church began to ring, and
presently door after door in the quiet streets about it opened
silently, and little parties issued forth in their Sunday clothes and
walked stiffly and slowly toward the building. At the moment when the
High Street was dotted most thickly with these groups, and the small
bell was tinkling its impatient summons, the rattle of an old
taxed-cart was heard as the vehicle flashed quickly over the bridge at
the foot of the street. One and another of the church-goers turned in
curiosity to gaze, for such a sound was rare on a Sunday morning. Judge
of their astonishment, then, when they recognized, perched up beside
the boy who urged on the pony, no less a person than the rector
himself! As he jogged up the street in his sorry conveyance and with
his sorry companion, he had to pass under the fire of a battery of eyes
which did not fail to notice all the peculiarities of his appearance.
His tie was awry and his chin unshaven. He had a haggard, dissipated
air, as of one who had been up all night, and there was a great smudge
on his cheek. He looked dissipated—-nothing less than disreputable,
some said; and he seemed aware of it, for he sat erect, gazing straight
before him, and declining to see any one. At the top of the street he
descended hastily, and, as the bell jerked out its final note, hurried
toward the vestry with a depressed and gloomy face.
“Well!” said Mr. Bonamy to Kate, who was walking up by his side, and
whose face for some mysterious reason was flushed and troubled, “I
think that is the coolest young man I have ever met!”
“Eh?” said a voice behind them as they entered the porch—the speaker
was Gregg. “What do you think of that, Bonamy? A gay young spark, is he
not?”
There was time for no more then. But as the congregation waited in
their seats through a long voluntary, many were the nods and winks, and
incessant the low mutterings, as one communicated to another the
details of the scene outside, and his or her view of them. When the
rector appeared—nine minutes late by Mr. Bonamy’s watch—he looked pale
and fagged, and the sermon he preached was of the shortest. Nine-tenths
of the congregation noted only the brevity of the discourse and drew
their conclusions. But Kate Bonamy, who sat by her father with downcast
eyes and a tinge of color still in her cheeks, and who scarcely once
looked up at the weary face and tumbled hair, fancied, heaven knows
why, that she detected a new pathos and a deeper tone of appeal in the
few simple sentences; and though she had scarcely spoken to the rector
for a month, and was nursing a tiny contempt for him, the girl felt on
a sudden more kindly disposed toward the young man.
Not so Mr. Bonamy, He came out of church chuckling; full of a grim
delight in the fulfilment of his predictions. It was not his custom to
linger in the porch, for he was not a sociable man; but he did so
to-day, and, letting Kate and Daintry go on, formed one of a coterie of
men, who had no difficulty in coming to a conclusion about the rector.
“He has been studying hard, poor fellow!” said Gregg, with a wink—there
is no dislike so mean and cruel as that which the ill-bred man feels
for the gentleman—“reading the devil’s books all night!”
“Nine minutes late!” said the lawyer. “That is what comes of having a
young fellow who is always gadding about the country!”
“He could not gad to a more congenial place than Holberton, I should
think,” sneered a third.
And then all the sins which the Homfrays had ever committed, and all
those which had ever been laid to their charge, were cited to render
the rector’s case more black. To do him justice, Mr. Bonamy took but a
listener’s part in this. He was a shrewd man, and he did not believe
that the rector could have had anything to do with an elopement from
Holberton which had taken place before his name was heard in the
county; but he was honestly assured that the young fellow had been
sitting over the cards half the night. And as for the other crimes,
perhaps he would commit them if he were left to follow his own foolish
devices.
“What is ill-gotten soon goes,” said one charitable person with a
sneer. “You may depend upon it that what we hear is true.”
“It is all of a piece,” said another. “A man does not have a follower
of that kind for nothing?”
“It comes over the devil’s back, and goes—you know how?” said a third.
“But perhaps he is wise to make the most of it while it lasts. He is
consequential enough now, but the Homfrays will not have much to say to
him presently, you will see. A few weeks, and he will go.”
“Well, let him go for the d—d dissipated gambling parson he is!” said
Gregg coarsely, carried away by the unusual agreement with him. “And
the sooner the better, say I!”
The man beside him, a little startled by the doctor’s violence, turned
round to make sure that they were not overheard, and found himself face
to face with the rector, who, seeking to go out—as was not his custom,
for he generally used the vestry door—by the porch, had walked into the
midst of the group, even as Gregg opened his mouth. A glance at the
young man’s reddening cheek and compressed lips apprised the startled
group that he had overheard something at least.
In one way it was the crisis of Lindo’s fate at Claversham. But he did
not know it. If he had been wise—if he had been such a man as his
curate, for instance; or if, without being wise, he had learned a
little of the prudence which comes of necessity with years—he would
have passed through them in silence, satisfied with such revenge as
mute contempt could give him. But he was not old, nor very wise; and
perhaps certain things had lately jarred on his nerves, so that he was
not quite himself. He did not pass by in silence, but, instead, stood
for a moment. Then, singling Gregg out with a withering glance, “I am
much obliged to you for your good opinion,” he said to him; “but I
should be still more obliged if you would swear elsewhere, sir, and not
in the porch of my church. Leave the building! Go at once!” And he
pointed toward the churchyard with the air of an angry schoolmaster.
But Gregg did not move. He was astounded by this direct attack, but he
had the courage of numbers on his side, and, though he did not dare to
answer, he did not budge. Neither did the others, though they felt
ashamed of themselves, and looked all ways at once. Only one of them
all met the rector’s glance fairly, and that was Mr. Bonamy. “I think
the least said the soonest mended, Mr. Lindo,” he replied, with an
acrid smile.
“I am sorry that you did not think of that before,” retorted the young
man, standing before them with his fair head thrown back, his clerical
coat hanging loose, and his brow dark with indignation—for he had heard
enough to be able to guess the cause of Gregg’s remark. “Do you come to
church only to cavil and backbite?—to put the worst construction on
what you cannot understand?”
“Speaking for myself,” replied the church warden coolly, “the sole
thing with which I can charge myself is the remark that you were
somewhat late for service this morning, Mr. Lindo.”
“And if I was?” said the clergyman in his haughtiest tone.
“Well, of course there may have been a good cause for it,” the lawyer
replied drily. “But it is a thing I have not known happen here for
twenty years.”
An altercation with these men, none of whom were well disposed toward
him, and half of whom were tradespeople, was the last thing which the
young rector should have allowed himself to enter upon, and the last
thing indeed to which he would have condescended in his normal frame of
mind. But on this unlucky morning he was nervous and irritable; and,
finding himself thus bearded and defied, he spoke foolishly. “You
trouble yourself too much, Mr. Bonamy,” he said impulsively, “with
things which do not concern you! The parish, among other things. You
have set yourself, as I know, to thwart and embarrass me; but I warn
you that you are not strong enough! I shall find means to——”
“To put me down, in fact?” said Mr. Bonamy.
The young man hesitated, his face crimson. His opponent’s sallow
features, seamed with a hundred astute wrinkles, warned him, if the
covert smiles of the others did not, that, in his present mood at any
rate, he was not a match for the lawyer. He had gone too far already,
as he was now aware. “No,” he replied, swallowing his rage, “but to
keep you to your proper province, as I hope to keep to mine. I wish you
good morning.”
He passed through them, and hurried away, more angry with them, and
with himself for allowing them to provoke him, than he had ever felt in
his life. He knew well that he had been foolish. He knew that he had
lowered himself in their eyes by his display of temper. But, though he
was bitterly annoyed with himself, the consciousness that the fault had
originally lain with them, and that they had grievously misjudged him,
kept his anger hot; for there is no wrath so fierce as the indignation
of the man falsely accused. He called them under his breath an
uncharitable, spiteful, tattling crew; and was so far unnerved in
thought of them that he had entered his dining-room before he
remembered that he was engaged to take the mid-day meal at the Town
House, as he had done once or twice before, and then walked up with
Laura to the schools.
He washed and changed hurriedly, keeping his anger hot the while, and
then went across, with the tale on the tip of his tongue. Again, if he
had been wise, he would have kept what had happened to himself. But the
soothing luxury of unfolding his wrong to some one who would sympathize
was one he could not in his soreness forego.
It was a particularly mild day for the fourth Sunday in Advent, and he
found Miss Hammond still lingering before the door, She was looking for
violets under the north wall, and he joined her, and naturally broke
out at once with the story of what had happened. She was wearing a
little close bonnet, which set off her piquant features and bright
coloring to peculiar advantage, and, as far as looks went, no young man
in trouble ever had a better listener. Only to stand beside her on the
lawn, where the old trees shut out all view of the town and the
troubles he connected with it, was a relief. Of course the search for
violets was soon abandoned. “It is abominable!” she said. But her voice
was like the cooing of a dove. She did everything softly. Even her
indignation was gentle.
“But you have not heard yet,” he protested, “why I really was late.”
“I know what is being said,” she murmured, looking up at him, a gleam
of humor in her brown eyes—“that you stayed at the Homfrays’ all night,
playing cards. My maid told me as we came in—after church.”
“Ha! I knew that they were saying something of the kind,” he replied
savagely. He was so stern that she felt her little attempt at badinage
reproved. “The true reason was of a very different description. What
spiteful busybodies they are! I started to return last evening about
half-past nine, but as I passed Baer Hill Colliery I learned that there
had been an accident. A man going down the shaft with the night shift
had been crushed—hurt beyond help,” the rector continued in a lower
voice. “He wanted to see a clergyman, and the other pitmen, some of
whom had seen me pass earlier in the day, stopped me and took me to
him.”
“How sad! How very sad!” she ejaculated. Somehow she felt ill at ease
with him in this mood. With his last words a kind of veil had fallen
between them.
“I stayed with him the night,” the rector continued. “He died at
half-past nine this morning. I came straight from that to this. And
they say these things of me!”
His voice, though low, was hard, and yet there was a suspicious break
in it as he uttered his last words. Injustice touches a man, young and
not yet hardened, very sorely; and he was overwrought. Laura, fingering
her little bunch of violets, heard the catch in his voice, and knew
that he was not very far from tears.
She was almost terrified. She longed to respond, to say the proper
thing, but here her powers deserted her. She was not capable of much
emotion, unless the call especially concerned herself; and she could
not rise to this occasion. She could only murmur again that it was
abominable and too bad, or, taking her cue from the young man’s face,
that it was very sad. She said enough, it is true, to satisfy him,
though not herself; for he only wanted a listener. And when he went in
to lunch Mrs. Hammond more than bore him out in all his denunciations;
so that when he left to go to the schools he had fully made up his mind
to carry things through.
This unfortunate quarrel indeed did him great injury by throwing him
into the arms of the party which his own pleasure and taste led him to
prefer. He did not demur when Mrs. Hammond—meaning little evil, but
expressing prejudices which at one time she had sedulously cultivated
(for when one lives near the town one must take especial care not to be
confounded with it)—talked of a set of butchers and bakers, and said,
much more strongly than he had, that Mr. Bonamy must be kept in his
place. A little quarrel with the lawyer, a little social relaxation in
which the young fellow had lost sight of the excellent intentions with
which he had set out, then this final quarrel—such had been the course
of events; sufficient, taken with his own fastidiousness and
inexperience, to bring him to this.
Mrs. Hammond, standing at the drawing-room window, watched him as he
walked down the short drive. “I like that young man,” she said
decisively. “He is thrown away upon those people.”
Laura, who had not gone to the schools, yawned. “He has not one-half
the brains of some one else we know, mother,” she answered.
“Who is that?”
Laura did not reply; and probably her mother understood, for she did
not press the question. “Well,” Mrs. Hammond said, after a moment’s
silence, “perhaps he has not. I do not know. But at any rate he is a
gentleman from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes.”
“I dare say he is,” said Laura languidly.
Mrs. Hammond, depositing her own portly form in a suitable chair,
watched her daughter curiously. She would have given a good deal to be
able to read the girl’s mind and learn her intentions; but she was too
wise to ask questions, and had always given Laura the fullest liberty.
She had watched the growth of the intimacy between her and Mr. Clode
without demur, feeling a strong liking for the man herself, though she
scarcely thought him a suitable match for her daughter. On the old
rector’s death there had seemed for a few days a chance of Mr. Clode
being appointed his successor; and at that time Mrs. Hammond had
fancied she detected a shade of anxiety and excitement in her
daughter’s manner. But Mr. Clode had not been appointed, and the new
rector had come; and Laura had apparently transferred her favor from
the curate to him.
At this Mrs. Hammond had felt somewhat troubled—at first; but in a
short time she had naturally reconciled herself to the change, the
rector’s superiority as a _parti_ being indisputable. Yet still Mrs.
Hammond felt no certainty as to Laura’s real feelings, and, gazing at
her this afternoon, was as much in the dark as ever. That the girl was
fond of her she knew; indeed, it was quite a pretty sight to see the
daughter purring about the mother. But Mrs. Hammond was more than half
inclined to doubt now whether Laura was fond, or capable of being fond,
of any other human being except herself.
She sighed gently as she thought of this, and rang the bell for tea. “I
think we will have it early this afternoon,” she said, “I feel I want a
cup.”