THE DOCTOR SPEAKS.
The feelings with which the curate hastened on the conclusion of his
own service, to learn what had happened at the great church may be
imagined. His excitement and curiosity were not the less because he had
to hide them. If there really had been no service—if the rector had not
appeared—what a scandal, what a subject for talk was here! Even if the
rector had appeared a little late there would still be whispering; for
new brooms are expected to sweep clean. The curate composed his dark
face, and purposely made one or two sick calls at houses which lay in
his road, lest he might seem to ask the question he had to put too
pointedly. By the time he reached the rectory he had made up his mind,
judging from the absence of stir in the streets, that nothing very
unusual had happened.
“Is the rector in?” he asked the servant.
“No, sir; he has gone to the Town House to dinner,” the girl answered.
Involuntarily Mr. Clode frowned. “He was in time for service, I
suppose?” he asked, more abruptly than he had intended.
“Oh, yes, sir,” said the unconscious maid, who had not been to church.
“Thank you; that is all,” he answered, turning away. So nothing had
come of it after all! His heart was sick with disappointed hope as he
turned into his own dull lodgings; and he felt that the rector in being
in time had wronged him afresh, and by dining at the Town House had
added insult to injury.
But in the course of the day he learned how late the rector had been;
and early next morning some rumor of the triangular altercation in the
church porch also reached him—of course in an exaggerated form. As a
fact, all Claversham was by this time talking of it, Mr. Bonamy’s
companions, with one exception, having taken good care to make the most
of his success, and to paint the rebuff he had administered to the
clergyman in the deepest colors. The curate heard the news with a face
of grave concern, but with secret delight; and, turning over in his
mind what use he might make of it, came opportunely upon Gregg as the
latter was going his rounds. “Hallo!” he said, calling so loudly that
the doctor, who had turned away and would fain have retreated, could
not decently escape, “you are the very man I wanted to see! What is
this absurd story about the rector and you? There is not a word of
truth in it, I suppose?”
“I am sure I cannot say until you tell me what it is,” replied the
doctor snappishly. He was a little afraid of the curate, who had a
knack of being unpleasant without giving an opening in return.
“Why, you seem rather sore about it,” Clode remarked, with apparent
surprise.
“I do not know why I should!” sneered the doctor, his face a dark red
with anger.
“Certainly not, if there is no truth in the story,” the curate replied,
looking down with his eyes half shut at the chafing little man. “But I
suppose it is all an invention, Gregg?”
“It is not an invention that the rector was abominably rude to me,”
blurted out the doctor, who scarcely knew with whom to be most
angry—his present tormentor or the first cause of his trouble.
“Pooh!” said Clode, “it is only his way.”
“Then it is a d——, it is a most unpleasant way!” retorted the doctor
savagely.
“He means no harm,” said the curate gaily. “Why did you not answer him
back?”
Dr. Gregg’s face turned a shade redder. That was where the shoe
pinched. Why had he not answered him back as Bonamy had, and not stood
mute, acknowledging himself the smaller man? That was what was
troubling him now, and making him fancy himself the laughing-stock of
the town. “I will answer him back in a way he will not like!” he cried
viciously, striving to hide his embarrassment under a show of bluster.
“Tut-t-tut!” said the curate provokingly, “do not go and make a fool of
yourself by saying things like that, when you know you don’t mean them,
man. What can you say to the rector?”
“I will ask him——”
But what he would ask the rector was lost to the world, for at this
moment Mr. Bonamy, coming down the pavement behind him, touched his
sleeve. “I have just been to your house, doctor,” he said. “My youngest
girl is a little out of sorts. Would you mind stepping in and seeing
her?”
Gregg swallowed his wrath, and was perhaps thankful for the
interruption. He said he would; and the lawyer turned to Mr. Clode.
“Well,” he said, “so you have made up your minds to fight?”
“I am not quite sure,” said the curate, with caution—for he knew better
than to treat Mr. Bonamy as he treated Gregg—“that I take you.”
“You have not seen your principal this morning?” replied the lawyer,
with a smile which for him was almost benevolent. The prospect of a
fight was as the Mountains of Beulah to him.
“Do you mean Mr. Lindo?” said the curate, with some curtness.
The lawyer nodded. “I see you have not,” he continued. “Perhaps you do
not know that he turned the sheep out of the churchyard after breakfast
this morning, and half of them were found nearly a mile down the Red
Lane!”
“I did not know it,” said the curate gravely. But it was as much as he
could do to restrain his exultation and show no sign save of concern.
“Well, it is the fact,” the lawyer replied, rubbing his hands. “It is
quite true he gave the church wardens notice to remove them a fortnight
ago; but we did not comply, because we say it is our affair and not
his. Now you may tell him from me that the only question in my mind is
the form of action.”
“I will tell him,’ said the curate with dignity.
“Just so! What do you say, Gregg?”
But the doctor, grinning from ear to ear with satisfaction, was gone;
and the curate, not a whit less pleased in his heart, hastened to
follow his example. “Bonamy one, and Gregg two,” he said softly to
himself, “and last, but not least, one who shall be nameless, three! He
has made three enemies already, and, if those be not enough, with right
on their side, to oust him from his seat when the time comes, why, I
know nothing of odds!”
“With right on their side,” said the curate, even to himself. He had
made no second attempt to pry into the rector’s secrets or to bring
home to him a knowledge of the wrongfulness of his possession. But he
did still believe, or persuaded himself he believed, that Lindo was a
guilty man; or why should the young rector pension the old earl’s
servant? And on this ground Clode justified to himself the secret
ill-turns he was doing him. A month’s intimacy with the rector would
probably have convinced an impartial mind of his good faith. But the
curate had not, it must be remembered, an impartial mind; and we are
all very apt to believe what suits us.
To return to the little doctor, whom we left going on his way in a mood
almost hilarious. He hoped that this fresh escapade of the rector’s
would wipe out the memory of the fray in which he had himself borne so
inglorious a part. And the more he thought of it, the greater was his
admiration of the lawyer, whom he had long patronized in a timid
fashion, much as a snub-nosed King Charlie treats the butcher’s
mongrel. Now he felt a positive reverence for him. He began to think it
possible that, with all his drawbacks of birth, Mr. Bonamy might become
a personage in the town, and pretty Kate not so bad a match. The result
of these musings was that, by the time he reached the lawyer’s door, an
idea which he had first entertained on seeing the young clergyman’s
admiration for Kate Bonamy, and which he had since turned over more
than once in his mind, had become on a sudden a settled purpose. So
much so that, as the doctor rang the bell, he looked at his hands,
which were not so clean as they might have been, pished and pshawed,
settled his light-blue scarf—which the next minute rose again to the
level of his collar—and at length went in with a briskly juvenile air
and an engaging smile.
He found Daintry lying on the sofa in the dining-room down-stairs, her
head on a white bed-pillow. Kate was leaning over her. The room was in
some disorder—littered with this and that, a bottle of eau de Cologne,
Mr. Bonamy’s papers, books, and sewing; but it looked comfortable, for
it was very evidently inhabited. A fastidious eye might have thought it
was too much inhabited; and yet proofs of refinement were not wanting,
though the sofa was covered with horsehair, and the mirror was heavy
and ugly, and the grate, knee-high, was as old as the Georges. There
were flowers on the table and on the little cottage piano; and by the
side of the last was a violin-case. Not many people in Claversham knew
that Mr. Bonamy played the violin. Still fewer had heard him play, for
he never did so out of his own house.
Possibly a very particular suitor might have preferred to find Kate
attending on her sister in a boudoir, free from a lawyer’s papers,
furnished in a less solid and durable style, and with some livelier
look-out than through wire blinds upon a dull street. But another might
have thought that the office in which she was engaged, and the
gentleness of her touch and eye as she went about it, made up for all
deficiencies.
Dr. Gregg was not of a nature to appreciate either the deficiencies or
the set-off; but he had eyes for the girl’s grace and beauty, for the
neatness of the well-fitting blue gown and the white collar and cuffs;
and he shook hands with her and devoted himself to Daintry—who disliked
him extremely and was very fractious—with the most anxious solicitude.
“It is only a sick headache!” he said finally, with bluntness which was
meant for encouragement. “It is nothing, you know.”
“I wish you had it, then!” Daintry wailed, burying her face in the
pillow.
“It will be gone in the morning!” he retorted, rising and keeping his
temper by an unnatural effort. “She will be the better for it
afterward, Miss Bonamy.”
To this Daintry vouchsafed no answer, unless a muttered “Rubbish!” was
intended for one. He affected not to hear it, at any rate. He was all
good-temper this morning; the unfortunate point about this being that
his good nature was a shade more unpleasant than his usual snappish
manner.
At any rate Kate thought it so. She felt the instinctive repulsion
which the wrong man’s wooing awakens in an unspoiled girl. She was
conscious of an added dislike for the man as she held out her hand to
him at the dining-room door. But she did not divine the cause of this;
no, nor conjecture his purpose when he said in a low voice that he
wished to speak to her outside.
“May we go in here a moment?” he muttered, when the door was closed
behind them. He pointed to the room on the other side of the hall,
which Mr. Bonamy used in summer as a kind of office.
“There is no fire there,” Kate answered. “I think it has been lighted
up-stairs, however, if you will not mind coming up, Dr. Gregg. Is there
anything”—this was when he had silently followed her into the stiff
drawing-room, where the newly lit fire was rather smoking than
burning—“serious the matter with her, then?”
Her voice was steady, but her eyes betrayed the sudden anxiety his
manner had aroused in her.
“With your sister?” he answered slowly. He was really pondering how he
should say what he had come to say. But, naturally, she set down his
thoughtfulness to a professional cause.
“Yes,” she said anxiously.
“Oh, no—nothing, nothing. The truth is,” continued the doctor,
following up a happy thought and smiling approval of it, “the matter is
with me, Miss Bonamy.”
“With you!” Kate exclaimed, opening her eyes in astonishment. Her
momentary anxiety had put all else out of her head. She thought the
doctor had gone mad.
“Yes,” he said jerkily, but with a grin of tender meaning. “With me.
And you are the cause of it. Now do not be frightened, Miss Kate,” he
continued hastily, seeing her start of apprehension. “You must have
known for a long time what I was thinking of.”
“Indeed I have not,” Kate murmured in a low voice. She did not affect
to misunderstand him.
“Well, you easily might have known it then,” he retorted, forgetting
his _rôle_ for an instant. “But the long and the short of it is that I
want you to marry me. I do!” he repeated, overcoming something in his
throat, and going on from this point swimmingly. “And you will please
to hear me out, and not answer in a hurry, Miss Kate. If you like—but I
should not think that you would want it—you can have until to-morrow to
think it over.”
“No,” she replied impulsively, her face crimson. And then she shut her
mouth so suddenly, it seemed she was afraid to let anything escape it
except that unmistakable monosyllable.
“Very well,” he replied, comfortably settling his elbow upon the
mantel-shelf, “that is as you like. I hope it does not want much
thinking over myself. I will not boast that I am a rich man, but I am
decently off. I flatter myself that I can keep my head above water—and
yours, too, for the matter of that.”
“Oh, it is not that,” she began hurriedly.
He interrupted her. “No, no,” he said jocularly—-his last remarks had
put him into a state of considerable self-satisfaction, and he no more
thought it possible that she could or would refuse him than that the
sky could fall—“do not buy a pig in a poke! Hear me out first, Miss
Kate, and we shall start fair. You have been in my house, and, if it is
not quite so large a house as this, I will answer for it you will find
it a great deal more lively. You will see people you have never seen
here, nor will see while your name is Bonamy. You will have—well,
altogether a better time. Not that I mind myself,” the doctor added
rather vaguely, forgetting the French proverb about those who excuse
themselves, “what your name is, not I! So don’t you think you could say
Yes at once, my dear?”
He took a step nearer, thinking he had put it rather neatly and without
any nonsense. Possibly, from his point of view of things, he had. But
Kate fell back, nevertheless, as he advanced.
“Oh, no,” she said, flushing painfully. “I could not! I could not
indeed, Dr. Gregg! I am very sorry.”
“Come, come,” he said, holding out his hand, his tone one of pleasant
raillery. He had looked for some hanging back, some show of coyness and
bashfulness, and was prepared to laugh in his sleeve at it—“I think you
can, Kate. I think it is possible.” That it was in woman’s nature to
say No to his comfortable home and the little lift in society he had to
offer—it is only little lifts we appreciate, just up the next floor
above us—he did not believe.
But Kate soon undeceived him. “I am afraid it is not possible,” she
said firmly. “Indeed, I may say at once, Dr. Gregg, that it is out of
the question what you ask; though I thank you, I am sure.”
His face fell ludicrously, and his thick black brows drew together in a
very ominous fashion. But he still could not believe that she meant it.
“I do not think you understand,” he said, “that the house is ready, and
the furniture and servants, and there is nothing to prevent you
stepping into it all whenever you please. I will take you away from
this,” he continued, darting a scornful glance round the stiff chilly
room—“I do not suppose that ten people enter this room in the
twelvemonth—and I will show you something like life. It is an offer not
many would make you. Come, Kate, do not be a little fool! You are not
going to say No, so say Yes at once. And don’t let us shilly-shally!”
He had put out his hand as he spoke and captured hers. But she snatched
it from him again almost roughly, and stepped back. The right man might
have used the words the doctor used, and might have scolded her with
impunity, but not the wrong one. Her face, perplexed and troubled a
moment before, grew decided enough now. “I am going to say No,
nevertheless, Dr. Gregg,” she replied firmly. “I thought I had already
said it. I will be as plain as you have been. I do not like you as a
wife should like her husband, nor otherwise than as a friend.”
“A friend!” he exclaimed. He gasped as a man does who has been plunged
suddenly into cold water. His face was red with anger, and his little
black eyes glared at her banefully. “Oh, bother your friendship!” he
added violently. “I did not ask you for that!”
“I have nothing else to give you,” she replied coldly.
He gasped again. Refused by the Bonamy girl! He had never thought of
this. He was beside himself with astonishment and anger, with
disappointment and wounded pride. “You would not have said this a month
ago!” he cried at last. “It was a pity I did not ask you then!”
“I should have given you the same answer.”
“Oh, no,” he replied ironically, swinging his hat to and fro. “Oh, no,
you would not—not at all, Miss Bonamy. You would have sung to a very
different tune if I had whistled to you before this niminy-piminy
parson showed his face here! Do not think that I am such a fool as not
to see which way the wind is blowing.”
She stood looking at him in silence. But her face was scarlet, and her
hand shook with rage.
He saw it. “Pooh! do not think to frighten me!” he said coarsely. “When
a man has offered to marry you he has a right to speak his mind! It
will be a long time, I warrant you, before your parson will have the
same right to speak. He was very great with you once, but he has quite
another set of friends now, and I have not heard of him offering to
introduce you to them.”
“Will you go, Dr. Gregg?” she cried passionately, pointing to the door.
His taunts were torture to her. “Will you go, or do you wish to stay
and insult me further?”
“I wish to say one thing, and I am going to say it,” he replied,
nodding triumphantly. “You are pretty proud of your capture, but you
need not be. He will not be much of a match when we have stripped him
of the living he has no right to, and shown him the detected swindler
he is! Wait! Wait a little, Miss Bonamy, and when your parson is
ruined, as he will be before three months are out, high as he holds his
head now, perhaps you will be sorry that you did not take my offer.
Why,” he added scornfully, “I should say you are the only person in the
parish who does not know he has no more right where he is than I have.”
“Go!” she said, pointing to the door. Her face was white now.
“So I will when I have said one more word——”
“You won’t say it!” cried a sharp voice behind him. “You will go now!”
He shot round, and there was Daintry with her hand on the door. Her
hair was in disorder, her cheeks were flushed, her greenish-gray eyes
were aglow with anger. He saw that she had overheard something of what
had passed, and he began to tremble. He had said more than he intended.
“You will go now, as Kate tells you,” she cried, “I will not have——”
“Leave the room, child!” he snarled, stamping his foot.
“I shan’t!” she retorted fiercely. “And if you do not go before I count
three I will fetch the dogs.”
Dr. Gregg made a movement as if he would have put her out of the room.
But her presence had a little sobered him, and he stopped. “Look here,”
he said.
“One!” cried Daintry, who knew well that the doctor had a particular
dislike for Snorum, and that the dog’s presence was at any time enough
to drive him from the house.
He turned and looked at Kate. She had gone to the window and was gazing
out, her back to him, her figure proud and scornful. “Miss Bonamy,” he
said.
“Two!” cried Daintry. “Are you going, or shall I fetch Snorum?”
With a muttered oath he took up his hat and went down the stairs and
out into the street. There at the door he stood a moment, grinding his
teeth, as the full sense of the calamity which had befallen him came
home to him. He had stooped and been rejected—had been rejected by
Bonamy’s daughter. He walked away, and still his anger did not
decrease, but all the same he began to be a little thankful that the
child had interrupted him. Had he gone on he might have said too much.
As it was, he had an idea that perhaps he had said more than was quite
prudent. And this had presently a wonderful effect in the way of
sobering him.