“LORD DYNMORE IS HERE.”
When Lord Dynmore, a few minutes before the rector found his carriage
at the door, trotted at the heels of the servant into Mrs. Hammond’s
drawing-room, his entrance, unexpected as it was, caused a flutter
among those assembled there. Lords are still lords in the country, and
in the case of his hostess the sensation was wholly one of pleasure.
She was pleased to see him. She was still more pleased that he had
chosen to call at so opportune a moment, when his light would not be
hidden, and James had on his best waistcoat. Consequently she rose to
meet him with a beaming smile, and a cordiality only chastened by the
knowledge that Mrs. Homfray and the archdeacon’s wife were observing
her with critical jealousy. “Why, Lord Dynmore,” she exclaimed, “this
is most kind of you!”
“How d’ye do? how d’ye do?” said the peer as he advanced. He was a
slight, short man with bushy gray whiskers and grizzled hair which,
being rather long, strayed over the fur collar of his overcoat. A noble
aquiline nose and keen eyes helped to give him, despite his shortness,
an air of being somebody. “How d’ye do? Why,” he continued, locking
round, “you are quite _en fête_ here.”
“We have been at a bazaar, Lord Dynmore,” Laura answered. She was
rather a favorite with him and could “say things.” “I think you ought
to have been there too, to patronize it. We did not know that you were
in the country, but we sent you a card.”
“Never heard a word of it!” replied his lordship positively.
“But you must have had the card,” Laura persisted.
“Never heard a word of it!” repeated his lordship, who had by this time
shaken hands with everyone in the room. When the company was not too
large he made a rule of doing this, thereby obviating the ill results
of a bad memory, and earning considerable popularity. “Archdeacon, you
are looking very well,” he continued.
“I think I may say the same of you,” answered the clerical dignitary.
“You have had good sport?”
“Capital! capital!” replied the peer in his jerky way. “But it won’t
last my time! In two years there will not be a head of buffalo in the
States! By the way, I saw your nephew.”
“My nephew!” echoed the archdeacon.
“Yes. Had him up to dinner in Kansas city. A good fellow—a very good
fellow. He put me up to one or two things worth knowing.”
“But, Lord Dynmore, you must be thinking of some one else!” replied the
archdeacon in a fretful tone. “It could not be my nephew: I have not a
nephew out there.”
“No?” replied the earl. “Then it must have been the dean’s. Or perhaps
it was old Canon Frampton’s—I am not sure now. But he was a good
fellow, an excellent fellow!” And my lord looked round and wagged his
head knowingly.
The archdeacon’s niece, a young lady who had not seen the peer before,
nor indeed any peers, and who consequently was busy making a study of
him, looked astonished. Not so the others who knew him and his ways. It
was popularly believed that Lord Dynmore could keep two things, and two
only, in his mind—the head of game he had killed in each and every year
since he first carried a gun, and the amount of his annual income from
the time of the property coming to him.
“There have been changes in the parish since you were here last,” said
Mrs. Hammond, deftly intervening. She saw that the archdeacon looked a
little put out. “Poor Mr. Williams is gone.”
“Ah! to be sure! to be sure!” replied the earl. “Poor old chap. He was
a friend of my fathers’, and now you have a friend of mine in his
place. From generation to generation, you know. I remember now,” he
continued, tugging at his whiskers peevishly, “that I meant to see
Lindo before I called here. I must look him up by-and-by.”
“I hope he will save you the trouble,” Mrs. Hammond answered. “I am
expecting him every minute.”
“Capital! capital! He is a good fellow now, isn’t he? A really good
fellow! I am sure you ought to be much obliged to me for sending you
such a cheery soul, Mrs. Hammond. And he is not so very old,” the earl
added waggishly. “Not too old, you know, Miss Hammond. Young for his
years, at any rate.”
Laura laughed and colored a little—what would offend in a commoner is
in a peer pure drollery; and, as it happened, at this moment the rector
came in. The news of the earl’s presence had kindled a spark of elation
in his eye. He had not waited for the servant to announce him; and as
he stood a second at the door, closing it, he confronted the company
with an air of modest dignity which more than one remarked. His glance
rested momentarily upon the figure of the earl, who was the only
stranger in the room, so that he had no difficulty in identifying him;
and he seemed in two minds whether he should address him. On second
thoughts he laid aside the intention, and advanced to Mrs. Hammond. “I
am afraid I scarcely deserve any tea,” he said pleasantly, “I am so
late.”
Laura, who had risen, touched his arm. “Lord Dynmore is here,” she said
in a low voice, which was nevertheless distinctly heard by all. “I do
not think you have seen him.”
He took it as an informal introduction, and turned to Lord Dynmore, who
was leaning against the fireplace, toying with his teacup and talking
to Mrs. Homfray. The young rector advanced a step and held out his
hand, a slight flush on his cheek. “There is no one whom I ought to be
better pleased to see than yourself, Lord Dynmore,” he said with some
feeling. “I have been looking forward for some time to this meeting.”
“Ah, to be sure,” replied the peer, holding out his hand readily,
though he was somewhat mystified by the other’s earnestness. “I am
pleased to meet you, I am sure. Greatly pleased.”
The listeners, who had heard what he had just said about his great
friend, the rector, stared. Only the person to whom the words were
addressed saw nothing odd in them. “You have not long returned to
England, I think?” he answered.
“No; came back last Saturday night. And how is the rector? Where is he?
Why does he not show up? I understood Mrs. Hammond to say he was
coming.”
The archdeacon, Mrs. Hammond, and the others were dumb with
astonishment. Even Lindo was surprised, thinking it very dull in the
earl not to guess at once that he was the new incumbent. So no one
answered, and the peer, glancing sharply round, discerned that every
one was at a loss. “Eh! Oh, I see,” he resumed in a different tone.
“You are not one of his curates? I made a mistake, I suppose. Took you
for one of his curates, do you see? That was all. Beg your pardon. Beg
your pardon, I am sure. But where is he?”
“This _is_ the rector, Lord Dynmore,” said the archdeacon in an
uncertain, puzzled way.
“No, no, no, no,” replied the great man fretfully. “I mean the old
rector—my old friend.”
“He has forgotten that poor Mr. Williams is dead,” Laura murmured to
her mother, amid the general pause of astonishment.
He overheard her. “Nothing of the kind, young lady!” he answered
irritably. “Nothing of the kind. Bless my soul, do you think I do not
know whom I present to my own livings? My memory is not so bad as that!
I thought this gentleman was Lindo’s curate, that was all. That was
all.”
They stared at one another in awkward silence. The rector was the first
to speak. “I am afraid we are somehow at cross purposes still, Lord
Dynmore,” he stammered, his manner constrained. “I am not my own
curate—well, because I am myself Reginald Lindo, whom you were kind
enough to present to this living.”
“To Claversham, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“And do you say you are Reginald Lindo?” The peer grew very red in the
face as he put this question.
“Yes, certainly I am.”
“Then, sir, I say that certainly you are not!” was the rapid and
startling answer. “Certainly you are not! You are no more Reginald
Lindo than I am!” the peer repeated, striking his hand upon the table
by his side. “What do you mean by saying that you are, eh? What do you
mean by it?”
“Lord Dynmore——”
But the peer would not listen. “Who are you, sir? Answer me that
question first!” he cried. He was a choleric man, and he saw already
that there was something seriously amiss; so that the shocked,
astonished faces round him tended rather to increase than lessen his
wrath. “Answer me that!”
“I think, Lord Dynmore, that you must be mad,” replied the rector, his
lips quivering. “I am as certainly Reginald Lindo as you are Lord
Dynmore!”
“But what are you doing here?” retorted the other, storming down the
interruption which the archdeacon would have effected. “That is what I
want to know. Who made you rector of Claversham?”
“The bishop, my lord,” answered the young man sternly.
“Ay, but on whose presentation?”
“On yours.”
“On mine?”
“Most assuredly,” replied the clergyman doggedly—“as the archdeacon
here, who indicted me, can bear witness.”
“It is false!” Lord Dynmore almost screamed. He turned to the
panic-stricken listeners, who had instinctively grouped themselves
round the two, and appealed to them. “I presented a man nearly thrice
his age, do you hear!—a man of sixty. As for this—this Reginald Lindo,
I never heard of him in my life! Never! If he had letters of
presentation, I did not give them to him.”
The young clergyman’s eyes flashed, and his face grew hard as a stone.
He guessed already the misfortune which had happened to him, and his
heart was sore, as well as full of wrath. But in his pride he betrayed
only the anger. “Lord Dynmore,” he said fiercely, “you will have to
answer for these insinuations. If there has been any error, the fault
has not lain with me!”
“An error, you call it, do you? Let me——”
“Oh, Lord Dynmore!” Mrs. Hammond gasped.
“One moment, Lord Dynmore, if you please.” This from the archdeacon;
and he pressed his interruption, placing himself between the two men,
and almost laying his hands on the excited peer. “If there has been a
mistake,” he urged, “a few words will make it clear. I fully
believe—nay, I feel sure, that my friend here is not in fault, whoever
is.”
“Ask your questions,” grunted my lord, breathing hard, and eyeing the
young clergyman as a terrier eyes the taller dog it means to attack.
“He will not answer them, trust me!”
“I think he will,” replied the archdeacon with decision. His _esprit de
corps_ was rising. The earl’s rude insistance disgusted him. He
remarked, his eyes wandering for a moment while he considered how he
should frame his question, that another person, Mr. Clode, had silently
entered the room, and was listening with a darkly thoughtful face. It
occurred to the archdeacon to suggest that the ladies should withdraw,
but then again it seemed fair that, as they had heard the charges, they
should hear what answer the rector had to make; and he proceeded.
“First, Lord Dynmore,” he said, “I must ask you whom you intended to
present.”
“My old friend, Reginald Lindo, of course.”
“His address, please,” continued the archdeacon rather curtly.
“Somewhere in the East End of London,” the earl answered. “Oh, I
remember now, St. Gabriel’s, Aldgate.”
The archdeacon turned silently to the clergyman. “He was my uncle,”
Lindo explained gravely. “He died a year ago last October.”
“Died!” The exclamation was Lord Dynmore’s.
“Yes, died,” the young man retorted bitterly. “Your lordship keeps a
watchful eye upon your friends!”
The shaft went home. The earl caught a quick breath, and his face
changed. The words awoke a slumbering chord in his memory and
recalled—not as might have been expected, old days of frolic and sport
spent with the friend whose death was thus coldly flung in his face—but
a scene in another world. He saw upon the instant a rock-bound valley,
inclosed by hills that rose in giant steps to the snowy line of the
Andes; and in its depths a tiny hunter’s camp. He saw an Indian fishing
in the brook, and near him a white man wandering away—a letter in his
hand. Then had come a shot, an alarm, a hasty striking of the tent, and
for many hours—even days—a rapid, dangerous march. In the excitement
the letter had been forgotten, to be recalled with its tidings here—and
now.
He winced, and muttered, “Good heavens, and I had heard it.” The
clergyman caught the words, and his resentment waxed hot. “My uncle’s
death,” he continued grimly, in the tone of one rather making than
answering an accusation, “occurred a year before the presentation was
offered to me by your solicitors!”
“Lord help us!” said the peer in a helpless, bewildered tone. “But are
you a clergyman, sir?”
“That is a fresh insult, Lord Dynmore!” he replied warmly.
“Hoity-toity!” retorted my lord, recovering himself, “you are a fine
man to talk of insults! And you in my living, without a shadow of title
to it! You must have had some suspicion, sir, that all was not right.”
“I think I can answer for Mr. Lindo, there!” interposed the curate,
stepping forward for the first time. His face was deeply flushed, and
he spoke hurriedly, not looking up; perhaps, because all eyes were on
him. “When Mr. Lindo came here, I had reason to expect an older man. I
heard by chance from him—I think it was on the evening of his
arrival—that he had not long lost an uncle of the same name, and it
occurred to me then as just possible that there might have been a
mistake. But I particularly observed that he was perfectly free from
any suspicion of that kind himself.”
“Pooh! There is nothing in that!” replied the archdeacon snappishly.
“I think there is!” cried the earl in triumph. “A great deal in it. If
the idea occurred to a stranger, is it possible that the incumbent’s
own mind could be free from it?”
“Is it possible,” the rector answered viciously, a ring as of steel in
his voice, “that a man who had had his dear friend’s death announced to
him could forget the news in a year, and think of him as still alive?”
The earl gasped with passion. By a tremendous effort he refrained from
using bad words, and even forbore, in view of the alarmed looks of the
ladies and the archdeacon’s hasty expostulation, to call his opponent,
a villain or a scoundrel. He stammered only, “You—you—are you going to
give up my living?”
“No,” was the answer.
“You are not?”
“Certainly I am not!” the rector answered. “If you had treated me
differently, Lord Dynmore,” he continued, speaking with his arms
crossed and his lip curling with scorn and defiance, “my answer might
have been different! Now, though the mistake has been with yourself or
your people, you have accused me of fraud! You have treated me as an
impostor! You have dared to ask me, though I have been ministering to
the people in this parish for months, whether I am a clergyman! You
have insulted me grossly, and, so doing, have put it out of my power to
resign had I been so minded! And you may be sure I shall not resign.”
He looked handsome enough as he flung down his defiance. But the earl
cared nothing for his looks. “You will not?” he stuttered.
“No! I acknowledge no authority whatever in you,” was the answer. “You
are _functus officio_. I am subject to the bishop, and to him only.”
“Give me my hat,” mumbled the peer, turning abruptly away; and, tugging
up the collar of his fur coat, he began to grope about in a manner
which at another time would have been laughable. “Give me my hat, some
one,” he repeated. “Let me get out before I swear. I am _functus
officio_, am I? I have never been so insulted in my life! Never, so
help me heaven! Never! Let me get out!”
His murmurs died away in the hall, Mr. Clode with much presence of mind
opening the door for him and letting him out. When they ceased, in the
room he had left there was absolute silence. The men avoided one
another’s eyes. The women, their lips parted, looked each at her
neighbor. Mrs. Homfray, the young wife of an old husband, was the first
to speak. “Well, I never!” she sighed.
That broke the spell. The rector, who had hitherto gazed darkly, with
flushed brow and compressed lips, at the hearth-rug, roused himself. “I
think I had better go,” he said, his tone hard and ungracious, “You
will excuse me, I am sure, Mrs. Hammond. Good-night. Good-night.”
The archdeacon took a step forward, with the intention of intercepting
him, but thought better of it, and stopped, seeing that the time was
not propitious. So, save to murmur an answer to his general farewell,
no one spoke, and he left the room under the impression, though he
himself had set the tone, that he stood alone among them; that he had
not their sympathies. Afterward he remembered this, and it added to his
unhappiness, and to the pride with which he endured it. But at the
moment he was scarcely aware of the impression. The blow had fallen so
swiftly, it was so unexpected and so crushing, that he went out into
the darkness stunned and bewildered, conscious only, as are men whom
some sudden accident has befallen, that in a moment all was changed
with him.
An hour later Mrs. Hammond and her daughter alone remained. The last of
the visitors had departed, the dinner hour was long past, but they
still sat on, fascinated by the topic, reproducing for one another’s
benefit the extraordinary scene they had witnessed, and discussing its
probable consequences. “I am sure, quite sure, poor fellow, that he
knew nothing about it,” Mrs. Hammond declared for the twentieth time.
“So the archdeacon seemed to think, mamma,” Laura answered. “And yet he
said that probably Mr. Lindo would have to go.”
“Because of the miserable attacks these people have made upon him!” her
mother rejoined with indignation. “But think of the pity of it! Think
of the income! And such a house as it is!”
“It _is_ a nice house,” Laura assented, thoughtfully gazing into the
fire, a slight access of color in her cheeks.
“I think it is abominable!”
“And then,” Laura said, continuing her chain of reflection, “there is
the view from the drawing-room windows.”
“Oh, it is too bad! It is really too bad! I declare I am quite upset, I
am so sorry for him. Lord Dymnore ought to be ashamed of himself!”
“Yes,” Laura assented rather absently, “I quite agree with you. And as
for the hall, with a Persian rug or two it would be quite as good as
another room.”
“What hall? Oh, at the rectory?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Hammond rose with a quick, pettish air of annoyance. “Upon my
word, Laura,” she exclaimed, drawing a little shawl about her
comfortable shoulders, “you seem to think more of the house than of the
poor fellow himself! Let us go to dinner. It is half-past eight, and
more.”