THE LETTERS IN THE CUPBOARD.
When Stephen Clode left the Town House after his interview with Laura,
he was in a state of exaltation—lifted completely out of his ordinary
cool and calculating self by what had happened. It was raining, but he
had gone some distance before he remarked it, and even then he did not
at once put up his umbrella, but strode along through the darkness, his
thoughts in a whirl of triumph and excitement. The crisis had come
suddenly, but he had not been found unequal to it. He had gone in
through the gates despondent, and come out in joy. He had pitted
himself against his rival, and had had the best of it. He had wooed,
and, almost in spite of his mistress, had won!
He did not for the first few moments consider whether his altercation
with the rector was likely to have unpleasant consequences, nor did he
trouble himself about the manner in which he was to do Laura’s bidding.
Such considerations would come later—with the reaction. For the present
they did not occur to him. It was enough that Laura might be his—that
she never could be the rector’s.
He felt the need, in his present excited mood, of some one to speak to,
and instead of turning into his own lodgings he passed on to the
reading-room, a large, barely furnished room, looking upon the top of
the town, and used as a club by the leading townsfolk and a few of the
local magnates who lived near. He entered it, and, to his surprise,
found the archdeacon seated under the naked gas-burners, interested in
the “Times.” The sight filled him with astonishment, for it was seldom
the county members used the room after sunset.
“Why, Mr. Archdeacon,” he said—his tongue naturally hung loose at the
moment, and a _bonhomie_, difficult to assume at another time, came
easily to him now—“what in the world brings you here at this hour?”
The archdeacon laid down his paper. “Upon my word I think I was half
asleep,” he said. “I am in for the ‘Free Foresters’’ supper. I thought
the hour was half-past six, and came into town accordingly, whereas I
find it is half-past seven. I have been here the best part of
three-quarters of an hour killing time.”
“But I thought that the rector always said grace for the ‘Free
Foresters,’ the curate answered in some surprise.
“It has been the custom for them to ask him,” the archdeacon replied
cautiously. “By the way you did it last year, did you not?”
“Yes, for Mr. Williams. He was confined to his room.”
“I thought so. Well, this year these foolish people seem to have taken
a fancy not to have the rector, and they came to me. I tried to
persuade them to have him, but it was no good. And so,” the archdeacon
added, in a lower tone, “I thought it would look less like a slight if
I came than if any other clergyman—you, for instance—were the clerical
guest.”
“To be sure,” said the curate warmly. “It was most thoughtful of you.”
The archdeacon hitched his chair a little nearer the fire. He felt the
influence of the curate’s sympathy. The latter had said little, but his
manner warmed the old gentleman’s heart, and his tongue also grew more
loose. “I wonder whether you know,” he said genially, rubbing his hands
up and down his knees, which he was gently toasting, and looking
benevolently at his companion, “how near you were to having the living,
Clode?”
“Do you mean Claversham?” replied the curate, experiencing a kind of
shock at this reference to the subject so near his heart.
“Yes, of course.”
“I never thought I had a chance of it!”
“You had so good a chance,” responded the archdeacon, nodding his head
wisely, “that only one thing stood between you and it.”
“May I ask what that was?” the curate rejoined, his heart beating fast.
“A promise. The earl had promised his old friend that he should have
this living. Lord Dynmore told me so himself, the last time I saw him.
That would be nearly a year ago, when poor Williams was already
ailing.”
“Well, that I supposed to be the case,” Clode answered, his tone one of
disappointment. “But I do not quite see how I was affected by it—more,
I mean, than others, archdeacon.”
“That is what I am going to tell you, only it must not go farther,” the
archdeacon answered. “Lord Dynmore told me of this promise _à propos_
of a resolution he had just come to—namely, that, subject to it, he
intended in future to give his livings (he has seven in all, you know)
to the curate, wherever the latter had been two years at least in the
parish, and stood well with it. I am not sure that I agree with him;
but he is a conscientious man, though an odd one, and he had formed the
opinion that that was the right course. So, come now, if anything
should happen to Lindo you would certainly drop into it. I am not quite
sure,” added the archdeacon confidentially, “though no one likes Lindo
better than I do, that yours would not have been the better
appointment.”
The curate disclaimed this so warmly and loyally that the archdeacon
was more than ever pleased with him; and, half-past seven striking,
they parted at the door of the reading-room on the best of terms with
one another. The archdeacon crossed to his supper and speech, and the
curate turned into his rooms, and, throwing himself into the big
leather chair before the fire, fixed his eyes on the glowing coals, and
began to think—to apply what he had just heard to what he had known
before.
A living? He had got to get a living. And without capital to invest in
one, or the favor of a patron, how was it to be done? The bishop? He
had no claim there. He had not been long enough in the diocese, and he
knew nothing of the bishop’s wife. There was only one living he could
get, only one living upon which he had a claim, and that was
Claversham. It all came back to that—with this added, that he had now a
stronger motive than ever for ejecting Lindo from it, and the absolute
knowledge to boot that, Lindo ejected, he would be his successor.
Stephen Clode’s face grew dark and gloomy as he reached this stage in
his reflections. He believed that the rector was enjoying what he had
no right to enjoy, but still he would fain have had no distinct part in
depriving him of it. He would have much preferred to stand by and, save
by a word here and there, by little acts scarcely palpable, and quite
incapable of proof—do nothing himself to injure him. He knew what
loyalty was, and would fain have been loyal in big things at least. But
he did not see how it could be done. He fancied that the stir against
the rector was dying away. Bonamy had not moved. Gregg was a coward,
and of this matter of the “Free Foresters” he thought nothing. Probably
they would return to their allegiance another year, and among the poor
the rector’s liberality would soon make friends for him. Altogether,
the curate, getting up and walking the room restlessly and with a
knitted brow, was forced to the conviction that, if he would be helped,
he must help himself, and that now was the time. The iron must be
struck before it cooled. Something must be done.
But what? Clode’s mind reverted first to the discharged servant, and
discussed more than one way in which he might be used. There was an
amount of danger, however, in tampering with him which the thinker’s
astuteness did not fail to note, and which led him presently to
determine to leave Felton alone. Perhaps he had made as much capital
out of him as could be made with safety.
From him the curate’s thoughts passed naturally to the packet of
letters in the cupboard at the rectory, the letters which he had once
held in his hand, and which he could not but believe would prove the
rector’s knowledge of the fraud he was committing. Those letters!
Clode, walking up and down the room, pishing and pshawing from time to
time, could not disentangle his thoughts from them. The narrow chance
which had prevented him reading them before somehow made him feel the
more certain of their value now—the more anxious to hold them again in
his hands.
Were they still in the cupboard, he wondered. He had retained, not with
any purpose, but in pure inadvertence, the key which he had mentioned
to the rector; and he had it now. He took it from the mantel-shelf,
toyed with it, dropped it into his pocket. Then he took up his hat, and
was going abruptly from the room when the little servant who waited on
him met him. She was bringing up his simple dinner. The curate’s first
impulse was to order it to be taken down and kept warm for him. His
second, to resume his seat and eat it hastily. When he had finished—he
could not have said an hour later what he had had—he took his hat again
and went out.
Two minutes saw him at the rectory door, where he was just in time to
meet the rector going out. Lindo’s face flushed as he saw who his
visitor was, and there was more than a suspicion of haughtiness in his
tone as he greeted him. “Good-evening,” he said. “Do you want to see
me, Mr. Clode?”
“If you please,” the curate answered simply. “May I come in?”
For answer, Lindo silently held the door open, and Clode passed through
the hall into the library. He was in the habit of entering this room a
dozen times a week, but he never did so after leaving his own small
lodgings without being struck by its handsome proportions, by the grave
harmonious color of its calf-lined walls, and the air of studious quiet
which always reigned within them. Of all the rector’s possessions he
envied him this room the most. The very sight of the shaded lamp
standing on the revolving bookcase at the corner of the hearth, and of
the little table beside it, which still bore the rector’s coffee-cup
and a tiny silver ewer and basin, aroused his spleen afresh. But he
gave no outward sign of this. He stood with his hat in one hand, his
other leaning on the table, and his head slightly bent. “Rector,” he
said, “I am afraid I behaved very badly this afternoon.”
“I certainly thought your manner rather odd,” replied the rector
shortly. But he was half disarmed already.
“I was annoyed, much annoyed, about a private matter,” the curate
proceeded in an even, rather despondent tone. “It is a matter about
which I expect I shall presently have to take your opinion. But for the
present I am not at liberty to name it. However, I was in trouble, and
I foolishly wreaked my annoyance upon the first person I came across.”
“That was, unfortunately, myself,” said Lindo, smiling.
“It would have been very unfortunate indeed for me, if you were as some
rectors I could name,” the curate replied gravely, still with his eyes
cast down. “As it is—well, I think you will accept my apology.”
“Say no more about it,” answered the rector hastily. There was nothing
he hated so much as a scene. “Have a cup of coffee, my dear fellow. I
will ring for a cup and saucer.” And, before the curate could protest,
Lindo was at the bell and had rung it, his manner almost the manner of
a boy.
“Sit down, sit down!” he continued. “Sarah, a cup and saucer, please.”
“But you were going out,” protested the curate, as he complied.
“Only to the post with some letters,” the rector explained. “I will
send Sarah instead.”
Clode sprang up again, a peculiar flush on his dark cheek, and a glint
as of excitement in his eye.
“No, no,” he said, “I am putting you out. If you were going to the
post, pray go. You can leave me here and come back to me, if that be
all.”
The rector hesitated, his letters in his hand. He might send Sarah. But
it wanted a few minutes only of nine o’clock, and, besides, he did not
approve of the maids going out so late. “Well, I think I will do as you
say,” he answered, feeling that compliance was perhaps the truest
politeness; “if you are sure that you do not mind.”
“I beg you will,” the curate said warmly.
The cup and saucer being at that moment brought in, the rector nodded
assent. “Very well; I shall not be two minutes,” he said. “Take care of
yourself while I am away.”
The curate, left alone, muttered, “No, you will be at least four
minutes, my friend!” and waited, with his cup poised, until he heard
the outer door closed. Then he set it down. Assuring himself by a
steady look that the windows were shuttered, he rose and, quietly
crossing the room, as a man might who wished to examine a book, he
stood before the little cupboard among the shelves. Perhaps, because he
had done the thing before, he did not hesitate. His hand was as steady
as it had ever been. If it shook at all it was with eagerness. His task
was so easy and so devoid of danger, under the circumstances, that he
even smiled darkly, as he set the key in the lock, at the thought of
the more clumsy burglar whom he had detected there. He turned the key
and opened the door. Nothing could be more simple. The packet he wanted
lay just where he had looked to find it. He took it out and dropped it
into his breast-pocket, and, long before the time which he had given
himself was up, was back in his chair by the fire, with his coffee-cup
on his knee.
He might have been expected to feel some surprise at his own coolness.
But, as a fact, his thoughts were otherwise employed. He was longing,
with intense eagerness, for the moment when he might take the next
step—when he might open the packet and secure the weapon he needed. He
fingered the letters as they lay in their hiding place, and could
scarcely refrain from taking them out and examining them there and
then. When Lindo returned, and broke into the room with a hearty word
about the haste he had made, the curate’s answer betrayed no
self-consciousness. On the contrary, he rather underplayed his part,
his eye and voice being for, a moment so absent as to surprise his
host. The next instant he was aware of this, and conducted himself so
warily during the half-hour he remained that he entirely erased from
the rector’s mind the unlucky impression of the afternoon.
By half-past nine he was back in his own room, at his table, his hat
thrown this way, his umbrella that. It took him but a feverish moment
to turn up the lamp and settle himself in his chair. Then he took out
the packet of letters, and, untying the string which bound them
together, he opened the first—there were only six of them in all. This
was the one which he had partially read on the former occasion—Messrs.
Gearns & Baker’s first letter. He read it through now at his leisure,
without interruption, once, twice, thrice, and with a long breath laid
it down again, and sat gazing, with knitted brows, into the shadow
beyond the lamp’s influence. There was not a word in it, not an
expression, which helped him; nothing to show the recipient that he was
not the Reginald Lindo for whom the living was intended.
The curate sat awhile before he opened the second, and that one he read
more quickly. He dealt in the same way with the next, and the next.
When, in a short minute or two, he had read them all and they lay in a
disordered pile before him—some folded and some unfolded, just as they
had dropped from his hands—he leaned back in his chair, and, folding
his arms, sat frowning darkly into vacancy. There was not a word to
help him in any one of them, not a sentence which even tended to
convict the rector. He had been at all his pains for nothing. He had——
The sound of a raised voice asking for him below, and the hasty tread
of a foot mounting the stairs two at a time, roused him with a start
from the dream of disappointment. In a second he was erect, motionless,
and listening, his hand upon and half covering the letters. A hasty
knock on the outside of his door, and the touch of fingers on the
handle, seemed at the last moment to nerve him to action. It was all
but too late. As the rector came hurriedly into the room, the curate,
his face pallid, and the drops of perspiration standing on his brow,
swept the letters aside and drew a newspaper partly over them.
“What—what is it?” he muttered, stooping forward, his hands on the
table.
The rector was too full of the news he had brought to observe the
other’s agitation, the more as the lamp was between them, and his eyes
were dazzled by the light. “Why, what do you think Bonamy has done?” he
answered excitedly, as he closed the door behind him. He was breathing
quickly with the haste he had made, and, uninvited, he dropped into a
chair.
“What?” said the curate hoarsely. He dared not look down at the table
lest he should direct the other’s eyes to what lay there, but he was
racked as he stood there with the fear that some damning corner of the
paper, some scrap of the writing, should still be visible. The shame of
possible discovery poured like a flood over his soul. “What is it?” he
repeated mechanically. He had not yet recovered enough presence of mind
to wonder why the rector should have paid this untimely call.
“He has served me with a writ!” Lindo replied, his face hot with haste
and indignation, his lips curling. “At this hour of the night, too! A
writ for trespass in driving out the sheep from the churchyard.”
“A writ!” the curate echoed. “It is very late for serving writs.”
“Yes. His clerk, who handed it to me—he came five minutes after you
left—apologized, and took the blame for that on himself, saying he had
forgotten to deliver it on leaving the office.”
“For trespass!” said the curate stupidly. What a fool he had been to
meddle with those letters! Why had he not had a little patience? Here,
after all, was the catastrophe for which he had been longing.
“Yes, in the Queen’s Bench Division, and all the rest of it!” replied
the rector; and then he waited to hear what the curate had to say.
But Clode had nothing to say, except “What shall you do?”
“Fight!” replied Lindo briskly, getting up and approaching the table.
“That of course. And it was about that I came to you. I do not think
there is any lawyer here I should like to employ. Did not you tell me
the other day who the archdeacon’s were? Some people in Birmingham, I
think?”
“I think I did,” the curate answered. He had overcome his first fear,
and, as he spoke, looked down at the table, on which he was still
leaning. His hasty movement had disordered his own papers, but none of
the tell-tale letters were visible so far as he could see. But what if
the rector took up the newspaper? Or casually put it aside? The curate
grew hot again, despite his great self-control. He felt himself on the
edge of a precipice down which he dared not cast his eye.
“Well, can you give me their address?” the rector continued.
“Certainly!” the curate answered. Indeed he leapt at the suggestion,
for it seemed to offer some chance of escape—at least a way by which he
might rid himself of his visitor.
“Just write it down, that is a good fellow, then,” said the rector,
unconscious of what was passing in his mind.
The curate said he would, and tore off at random—-the rector was
leaning his hand on the newspaper, and might at any moment be taken
with a fancy to raise it—the back sheet of the first stray note that
came to his fingers, and wrote the address upon it. “There, that is
it,” he said; and as he gave it to Lindo—he had written it standing up
and stooping—he almost pushed him away from the table. “That will serve
you, I think. They may be trusted, I am told. The best you can do, I am
sure, will be to place the matter in their hands at once.”
“I will write before I sleep!” the younger clergyman answered heartily.
“You cannot think how the narrowness of these people provokes me! But I
will not keep you now. I see you are busy. Come round early in the
morning, will you, and talk it over?”
“I will come the moment I have had breakfast,” the curate answered,
making no attempt to detain his visitor.
The rector thereupon going, he stood eyeing the newspaper askance until
the other’s footsteps died away on the pavement outside. Then he swept
it off and stood contemplating the half-dozen letters with abhorrence.
He loathed and detested them. They had suddenly become to him such an
incubus as his victim’s body becomes to the murderer. The desire which
had tempted him to the crime was gone, and he felt them only as a
burden. They were the visible proof of his shame. To keep them was to
become a thief, and yet he shrank with a nervous terror quite new and
strange to him from the task of returning them—of going to the study at
the rectory and putting them back in the cupboard. It had been easy to
get possession of them; but to return them seemed a task so thankless,
and withal so perilous, that he quailed before it. With shaking hands
he bundled them together and locked them in the lowest drawer of his
writing table. He would return them to-morrow.