A FRIEND IN NEED.
I have heard that the bitterest pang a boy feels on returning to school
after his first holidays is reserved for the moment when he opens his
desk and recalls the happy hour, full of joyous anticipation, when he
had closed that desk with a bang. Oh, the pity of it! The change from
that boy to this, from that morning to this evening! How meanly, how
inadequately—so it seems to the urchin standing with smudged cheeks
before the well-remembered grammar—did the lad who turned the key
estimate his real happiness! How little did he enter into it or deserve
it!
Just such a pang shot through the young rector’s heart as he passed
into the rectory porch after that momentous scene at Mrs. Hammond’s.
His rage had had time to die down. With reflection had come a full
sense of his position. As he entered the house he remembered—remembered
only too well, grinding his teeth over the recollection—how secure, how
free from embarrassments, how happy had been his situation when he last
issued from that door a few, a very few, hours before. Such troubles as
had then annoyed him seemed trifles light as air now. Mr. Bonamy’s
writ, the dislike of one section in the parish—how could he have let
such things as these make him miserable for a moment?
How, indeed? Or, if there were anything grave in his situation then,
what was it now? He had held his head high; henceforward he would be a
by-word in the parish, a man under a cloud. The position in which he
had placed himself would still be his, perhaps, but only because he
would cling to it to the last. Under no circumstances could it any
longer be a source of pride to him. He had posed, will he, nill he, as
the earl’s friend; he must submit in the future to be laughed at by the
Greggs and avoided by the Homfrays. It seemed to him indeed that his
future in Claversham could be only one long series of humiliations. He
was a proud man, and as he thought of this he sprang from his chair and
strode up and down the room, his cheeks flaming. Had there ever been
such a fall before!
Mrs. Baker, as yet ignorant of it all, though the news was by this time
spreading through the town, brought him his dinner, and he ate
something in the dining-room. Then he went back to the study and sat
idle and listless before his writing-table. There was a number of
“Punch” lying on it, and he took this up and read it through drearily,
extracting a faint pleasure from its witticisms, but never for an
instant forgetting the cloud of trouble brooding over him. Years
afterward he could recall some of the jokes in that “Punch”—with a
shudder. Presently he laid it down and began to think. And then, before
his thoughts became quite insufferable, they were interrupted by the
sound of a voice in the hall.
He rose and stood with his back to the fire, and as he waited, his eyes
on the door, his face grew hot, his brow defiant. He had little doubt
that the visitor was Clode. He had expected the curate before, and even
anticipated the relief of pouring his thoughts into a friendly ear.
None the less, now the thing had come, he dreaded the first moment of
meeting, scarcely knowing how to bear himself in these changed
circumstances.
It was not Clode, however, who entered, but Jack Smith. The rector
started, and, uncertain whether the barrister had heard of the blow
which had fallen on him or no, stepped forward awkwardly, and held out
his hand in a constrained fashion. Jack, on his side, had his own
reasons for being ill at ease with his friend. But the moment the men’s
hands met they somehow closed on one another in the old hearty fashion,
and the grip told the rector that the other knew all. “You have heard?”
he muttered.
“Mr. Bonamy told me,” the barrister answered. “I came across almost at
once.”
“You do not believe that I was aware of the earl’s mistake, then?”
Lindo said, with a faint smile.
“I should as soon believe that I knew of it myself!” Jack replied
warmly. He was glad beyond measure now that he had come. As he and
Lindo stood half facing one another, each with an elbow on the
mantel-shelf, he felt that he could defy the chill at his own
heart—that, notwithstanding all, his old friend was still dear to him.
Perhaps if the rector had been prospering as before, if no cloud had
arisen in his sky, it might have been different. But as it was, Jack’s
generous heart went out to him. “Tell me what happened, old fellow,” he
said cheerily—“that is, if you have no objection to taking me into your
confidence.”
“I shall be only too glad of your help,” Lindo answered thankfully,
feeling indeed—so potent is a single word of sympathy—happier already.
“I would ask you to sit down, Jack,” he continued, in a tone of rather
sheepish raillery, “and have a cup of coffee or some whiskey, but I do
not know whether I ought to do so, now that Lord Dynmore says the
things are not mine.”
“I will take the responsibility,” Jack answered, briskly ringing the
bell. “Was my lord very rude?”
“Confoundedly!” the rector answered, and proceeded to tell his story.
Jack was surprised to find him at first more placable than he had
expected, but presently he learned that this moderation was only
assumed. The rector rose as he went on, and began to pace the room,
and, the motion freeing his tongue, he gradually betrayed the
indignation and resentment which he really felt. Jack asked him, with a
view to clearing the ground, whether he had quite made up his mind not
to resign, and was astonished by the force and anger with which he
repudiated the thought of doing so. “Resign? No never!” he cried,
standing still, and almost glaring at his companion. “Why should I?
What have I done? Was it my mistake, that I am to suffer for it? Was it
my fault, that for penalty I am to have the tenor of my life broken? Do
you think I can go back to the Docks the same man I left them? I
cannot. Nor is that all, or nearly all,” he added still more warmly—“I
have been called a swindler and an impostor. Am I by resigning to plead
guilty to the charge?”
“No!” said Jack, himself catching fire, “certainly not! I did not
intend for a moment to advise that course. I think you would be acting
very foolishly if you resigned under these circumstances.”
“I am glad of that,” the rector said, sitting down with a sigh of
relief. “I feared you did not quite enter into my feelings.”
“I do thoroughly,” the barrister answered, with feeling, “but I want to
do more—I want to help you. You must not go into this business blindly,
old man. And, first, I think you ought to take the archdeacon or some
other clergyman into your confidence. Show him the whole of your case,
I mean, and——”
“And act upon his advice?” said the young rector, rebellion already
flashing in his eye.
“No, not necessarily,” the barrister answered, skilfully adapting his
tone to the irritability of his patient. “Of course your _bona fides_
at the time you accepted the living is the point of importance to you,
Lindo. You did not see their solicitors—the earl’s people, I mean—did
you?”
“No,” the rector answered somewhat sullenly.
“Then their letter conveyed to you all you knew of the living and the
offer?”
“Precisely.”
“Let us see them, then,” replied Jack, rising briskly from his chair.
He had already determined to say nothing of the witness whom Mr. Bonamy
had mentioned to him as asserting that the rector had bribed him. He
knew enough of his friend to utterly disbelieve the story, and he
considered it as told to him in confidence. “There is no time like the
present,” he continued. “You have kept the letters, of course?”
“They are here,” Lindo answered, rising also, and unlocking as he spoke
the little cupboard among the books; “I made them into a packet and
indorsed them soon after I came. They have been here ever since.”
He found them after a moment’s search and without himself examining
them, pitched them to Jack, who had returned to his seat. The barrister
untied the string and glancing quickly at the dates of the letters,
arranged them in order and flattened them out on his knee. “Now,” he
said, “number one! That I think I have seen before.” He mumbled over
the opening sentences, and turned the page. “Hallo!” he exclaimed,
holding the letter from him, and speaking in a tone of surprise—almost
of consternation—“how is this?”
“What?” said the rector.
“You have destroyed the latter part of this letter! Why on earth did
you do that?”
“I never did,” Lindo answered incredulously. Obeying Jack’s gesture he
came, and, standing by his chair, looked over his shoulder. Then he saw
that part of the latter half of the sheet had been torn off. The
signature and the last few words of the letter, were gone. He looked
and wondered. “I never did it,” he said positively, “whoever did. You
may be sure of that.”
“You are certain?”
“Absolutely certain,” the rector answered with considerable warmth. “I
remember arranging and indorsing the packet. I am quite sure that this
letter was intact then, for I read over every one. That was a few
evenings after I came here.”
“Have you ever shown the letters to any one?” Jack asked suspiciously.
“Never,” said the rector; “they have never been removed from this
cupboard, to my knowledge, since I put them there.”
“Think! I want you to be quite sure,” Jack rejoined, pressing his point
steadily; “you see this letter is rendered utterly worthless by the
mutilation. Indeed, to produce it would be to raise a natural suspicion
that the last sentence of the letter was not in our favor, and we had
got rid of it. Of course the chances are that the earl’s solicitors
have copies, but for the present that is not our business.”
“Well,” said the rector somewhat absently—he had been rather thinking
than listening—“I do remember now a circumstance which may account for
this. A short time after I came a man broke into the house and
ransacked this cupboard. Possibly he did it.”
“A burglar, do you mean? Was he caught?” the barrister asked,
figuratively pricking up his ears.
“No—or, rather, I should say yes,” the rector answered. And then he
explained that his curate, taking the man red-handed, had let him go,
in the hope that, as it was his first offence, he would take warning
and live honestly.
“But who was the burglar?” Jack inquired. “You know, I suppose? Is he
in the town now?”
“Clode never told me his name,” Lindo answered. “The man made a point
of that, and I did not press for it. I remember that Clode was somewhat
ashamed of his clemency.”
“He had need to be,” Jack snorted. “It sounds an extraordinary story.
All the same, Lindo, I am not sure it has any connection with this.” He
held the letter up before him as though drawing inspiration from it.
“This letter, you see,” he went on presently, “being the first in date
would be inside the packet. Why should a man who wanted perhaps a bit
of paper for a spill or a pipe-light unfasten this packet and take the
innermost letter? I do not believe it.”
“But no one else save myself,” Lindo urged, “has had access to the
letter. And there it is torn.”
“Yes, here it is torn,” Jack admitted, gazing thoughtfully at it; “that
is true.”
For a few moments the two sat silent, Jack fingering the letter, Lindo
with his eyes fixed gloomily on the fire. Suddenly the rector broke out
without warning or preface. “What a fool I have been!” he exclaimed,
his tone one of abrupt overwhelming conviction. “Good heavens, what a
fool I have been!”
His friend looked at him in surprise, and saw that his face was
crimson. “Is it about the letter?” he asked, leaning forward, his tone
sharp with professional impatience. “You do not mean to say, Lindo,
that you really——”
“No, no!” replied the young clergyman, ruthlessly interrupting him. “It
has nothing to do with the letter.”
He said no more, and Jack waited for further light, but none came, and
the barrister reapplied his thoughts to the problem before him. He had
only just hit upon a new idea, however, when he was again diverted by
an interruption from Lindo. “Jack,” said the latter impressively, “I
want you to give a message for me.”
“Not a cartel to Lord Dynmore, I hope?” the barrister muttered.
“No,” Lindo answered, getting up and poking the fire unnecessarily—what
a quantity of embarrassment has been liberated before now by means of
pokers—“no, I want you to give a message to your cousin—Miss Bonamy, I
mean.” The rector paused, the poker still in his hand, and stole a
sharp glance at his companion; but, reassured by the discovery that he
was to all appearance buried in the letter, he continued: “Would you
mind telling her that I am sorry I misjudged her a short time back—she
will understand—and behaved, I feel, very ungratefully to her? She
warned me that there was a rumor afloat that something was amiss with
my title, and I am afraid I was very rude to her. I should like you to
tell her, if you will, that I—that I am particularly ashamed of
myself,” he added, with a gulp.
He did not find the words easy of utterance—far from it; but the effort
they cost him was slight and trivial compared with that which poor Jack
found himself called upon to make. For a moment, indeed, he was silent,
his heart rebelling against the task assigned to him. To carry his
message to her! Then his nobler self answered to the call, and he
spoke. His words, “Yes, I’ll tell her,” came, it is true, a little
late, in a voice a trifle thick, and were uttered with a coldness which
Lindo would have remarked had he not been agitated himself. But they
came—at a price. The Victoria Cross for moral courage can seldom be
gained by a single act of valor. Many a one has failed to gain it who
had strength enough for the first blow. “Yes, I will tell her,” Jack
repeated a few seconds later, folding up the letter and laying it on
the table, but so contriving that his face was hidden from his friend.
“To-morrow will do, I suppose?” he added, the faintest tinge of irony
in his tone. He may be pardoned if he thought the apology he was asked
to carry came a little late.
“Oh, yes, to-morrow will do,” Lindo answered with a start; he had
fallen into a reverie, but now roused himself. “I am afraid you are
very tired, old fellow,” he continued, looking gratefully at his
friend. “A friend in need is a friend indeed, you know. I cannot tell
you”—with a sigh—“how very good I think it was of you to come to me.”
“Nonsense!” Jack said briskly. “It was all in the day’s work. As it is,
I have done nothing. And that reminds me,” he continued, facing his
companion with a smile—“what of the trouble between my uncle and you?
About the sheep, I mean. You have put it in some lawyer’s hands, have
you not?”
“Yes,” Lindo answered reluctantly.
“Quite right, too,” said the barrister. “Who are they?”
“Turner & Grey, of Birmingham.”
“Well, I will write,” Jack answered, “if you will let me, and tell them
to let the matter stand for the present. I think that will be the best
course. Bonamy won’t object.”
“But he has issued a writ,” the rector explained. A writ seemed to him
a formidable engine. As well dally before the mouth of a cannon.
But Jack knew better. The law’s delays were familiar to him. He was
aware of many a pleasant little halting-place between writ and
judgment. “Never mind about that,” he answered, with a confident laugh.
“Shall I settle it for you? I shall know better, perhaps, what to say
to them.”
The rector assented gladly; adding: “Here is their address.” It was
stuck in the corner of a picture hanging over the fireplace. He took it
down as he spoke and gave it to Jack, who put it carelessly into his
pocket, and, seizing his hat, said he must go at once—that it was close
on twelve. The rector would have repeated his thanks; but Jack would
not stop to hear them, and in a moment was gone.
Reginald Lindo returned to the study after letting him out, and,
dropping into the nearest chair, looked round with a sigh. Yet, the
sigh notwithstanding, he was a hundredfold less unhappy now than he had
been at dinner or while looking over that number of “Punch.” His
friend’s visit had both cheered and softened him. His thoughts no
longer dwelt on the earl’s injustice, the desertion of his friends, or
the humiliations in store for him; but went back again to the warning
Kate Bonamy had given him. Thence it was not unnatural that they should
revert to the beginning of his acquaintance with her. He pictured her
at Oxford, he saw her scolding Daintry in the stiff drawing-room, or
coming to meet him in the Red Lane; and, the veil of local prejudice
torn from his eyes by the events of the day, he began to discern that
this girl, with all the drawbacks of her surroundings, was the fairest,
bravest, and noblest girl he had met at Claversham, or, for aught he
could remember, elsewhere. His eyes glistened. He was sure—so sure that
he would have staked his life on the result—that for all the earls in
England Kate Bonamy would not have deserted him!
He had reached this point, and Jack had been gone some five minutes or
more, when he was startled by a loud rap at the house door. He stood up
and, wondering who it could be at this hour, took a candle and went
into the hall. Setting the candlestick on a table, he opened the door,
and there, to his astonishment, was Jack come back again!
“Capital!” said the barrister, slipping in and shutting the door behind
him, as though his return were not in the least degree extraordinary,
“I thought it was you. Look here; there is one thing I forget to ask
you, Lindo. Where did you get the address of those lawyers?”
He asked the question so earnestly, and his face, now it could be seen
by the strong light of the candle at his elbow, wore so curious an
expression, that the rector was for a moment quite taken aback. “They
are good people, are they not?” he said, wondering much.
“Oh, yes, the firm is good enough,” Jack answered impatiently. “But who
gave you their address?”
“Clode,” the rector answered. “I went round to his lodgings and he
wrote it down for me.”
“At his lodgings?” cried the barrister.
“To be sure.”
“Ah! then look here,” Jack replied, laying his hand on Lindo’s sleeve
and looking up at him with an air of peculiar seriousness—“just tell me
once more, so that I may have no doubt about it: Are you sure that from
the time you docketed those letters until now you have never removed
them—from this house, I mean?”
“Never!”
“Never let them go out of the house?”
“Never!” answered the rector firmly. “I am as certain of it as a man
can be certain of anything.”
“Thanks!” Jack cried. “All right. Good night.” And that was all; for,
turning abruptly, in a twinkling he had the door open and was gone,
leaving the rector to go to bed in such a state of mystification as
made him almost forget his fallen fortunes.