CHAPTER XIV.
A TURN OF FORTUNE’S WHEEL.
Cyril Culverhouselived his useful life, full of thought and care for others, honoured, beloved, but with a deep and settled sadness at his heart. He could not forget the woman he loved, he could not forgive himself for having doubted her. Both their lives were blighted by that mistake; and yet, looking back, he knew that he had tried to do his duty. Love seemed a snare of Satan, and he had cut himself free from its meshes. But after that meeting in the churchyard all his doubts vanished, his judgment wavered no longer. There is a power in simple truth, when we meet it face to face, that is stronger than all reasoning upon a chain of possibilities.
He was convinced for ever of her guiltlessness, in the hour when he believed her irrevocably lost to him. Could he ever forget that meeting—thatone despairing kiss—the sight of her lying at his feet among the rank grass that grows on graves? And she had confessed her love for him, by flying from a loveless marriage.
Could he follow her?—search this wide world for her? How small a penance would it be to wander over all the earth for her sake! But he felt he had no right to pursue her. He had wronged her too deeply to persecute her by a pursuit which no sign from her invited. It was for her to make that sign—it was for her to pity and pardon him.
‘Let me go on doing my duty,’ he said to himself, ‘and if it is God’s will that I am to be happy in that way, happiness will come to me. Yes, it will come some day, when I least look for it, as the angels came to Abraham.’
So he went on with his simple unpretending life, working with a quiet earnestness which achieved wonders. It was one of his chief gifts to do all things quietly. He worked almost as silently as the bounteous fertilizing sun.
The school was thriving under Emmanuel Joyce’scare. The widow’s heart did verily sing for joy, so sweet was her new life amidst rural sights and sounds, after the squalid misery of the Bridford courts and alleys.
The Vicar was delighted to have his old pupil back again. All the cares of the parish were lifted off his shoulders when he had Cyril for his curate. He knew that, if he was luxuriating in scholarly idleness, there was nothing being neglected. When he was wanted Cyril called upon him, and he obeyed the call. He gave of his substance freely at Cyril’s bidding. There could not have been a better alliance. Clement Dulcimer, all sweetness and light, shedding smiles and kindliness upon his parishioners, Cyril Culverhouse, the earnest worker, not withholding reproof when it was needful. Between them they made Little Yafford a model parish, an ideal republic, in a small way.
The Vicar had taken a great fancy to the new schoolmaster. Joyce’s love of books was in itself a passport to Mr. Dulcimer’s favour. He invited the young man to spend an evening with him occasionally, and Emmanuel revelled in long hours oftalk upon far-reaching questions—conversations from which Mr. Dulcimer let himself slip insensibly into a monologue, and poured forth his stores of curious uncatalogued knowledge. In one thing only he was rather hard upon the aspiring student. He set his face strongly against Emmanuel’s poetic efforts.
‘They are as good as most of the prize poems it has been my lot to read,’ he said, after he had conscientiously gone through Emmanuel’s little collection of manuscript verses, ‘but then you see a prize poem is generally the flattest thing in life. As intellectual efforts they do you credit, and as mental training I’ve no doubt the composition of them has been serviceable to you. But I will not be so weak as to say go on writing verses. There are about twenty poets born in a century, and about twenty thousand rhymesters. Shall a wise man waste his life—his brief precious sum of days and hours—in labouring to develop the rhymester into the poet? Why, the poet knows himself for a poet before he is twenty. The man upon whom that mantle has fallen, the man who is born to wear that crown, cannot be mistaken about himself. Look at Pope, Chatterton, Shelley,Byron, Keats—boy poets all. And is a man who has not put forth that supreme flower of genius in his youth to go on cudgelling his brain for rhymes, in the hope that labour will make him a poet? It is the stuff behind the rhymes that is wanting in him. He has nothing to say. But he thinks if he can say nothing melodiously—to somebody else’s tune—that he may make himself a poet. Wasted labour, idle delusion. Go into philosophy, natural science, criticism, history—anything you like, my dear young friend—the field is wide, and in these studies a man can make himself. God makes poets.’
Emmanuel took the lesson to heart, humiliating as it was. For a long time he had hugged the idea that he was a poet. That electro-plated verse of his, modelled upon the verse of other singers, had for his deluded ear the ring of genuine silver. Granted that there were only twenty poets born in a century. It seemed to him no less hard that he could not be one of the twenty. He had no pity for the nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine versifiers, self-deluded like himself, and doomed to disappointment as bitter.
It took him some time to recover from the shock which his self-esteem had received from Mr. Dulcimer’s candour. At first it seemed to him that if he could not be a poet he could be nothing else. Those other fields of intellectual labour in which the Vicar invited him to work, offered no attraction. They were all dry and barren; he saw no flowers to be gathered there. Ambition seemed dead within him, now that a judge in whom he believed had told him that he was not an incipient Byron.
‘You never write of an evening now, Emmanuel,’ his mother said to him, when the shortening days of September brought them together by their cheerful fireside. ‘I hope you haven’t grown tired of your pen?’
‘I have,’ he answered. ‘What’s the use of writing trash?’
‘Oh, Emmanuel, how can you talk so? I’m sure I never read sweeter verses than yours.’
‘Yes, mother, you think them sweet because I am your son. You wouldn’t care a straw for them if they were written by a stranger. Come, I’ll read you a bit of real poetry, and you’ll see the difference.’
He opened his well-used Milton, and read the hymn on the Nativity. He knew those noble verses by heart, and declaimed them well.
‘What do you think of that mother?’ he asked, when he had finished.
‘I don’t understand it all, dear,’ she answered meekly, ‘there are so many heathen idols in it. But it’s poetry that rings like a great brazen bell, and there’s more words in it than in yours.’
‘Yes, mother, that’s it. The man who wrote that was a born poet. He could do what he liked with the language, and make it ring like sound metal. My verse is like a poor little cracked sheep-bell, and sounds no better than tin. And I haven’t above a quarter of the English language in my vocabulary. I’ve read a great deal, but the words don’t come to my finger ends in all their wealth and variety, as they did to Shelley and Keats. No, mother, I’m no poet. Mr. Dulcimer is a good judge. If I write anything it must be prose.’
‘I hope Mr. Dulcimer hasn’t been putting you out of conceit with yourself, Emmanuel.’
‘He has only told me the truth, mother. That’salways good for a man to know, though it takes him aback sometimes to hear it.’
‘I should be very sorry to see you give up your pen, dear,’ said the mother, persistently. ‘I should be so proud if I could live to see you an author.’
‘Well, mother, I will try to write a book, if it is only to please you. I will write something for my pupils—a book that may be useful and popular in schools all over England. The English history my boys read seems to me very dull and dry. I think I’ll try my hand at a boy’s history of England. I fancy I could make it interesting.’
‘I’m sure you could,’ said the mother, fondly.
Here at least in this quiet schoolhouse parlour was happiness almost perfect. It was a delight to Cyril Culverhouse, when he dropped in for half an hour on his homeward way, to see how well this one good work of his had prospered.
A great change in Cyril’s fortune was at hand—a change that came upon him as an almost overwhelming blow, for it gave a new colour to his life, and made the problem of existence doubly difficult.
Walking home to his lodgings one Septemberafternoon with Mr. Dulcimer, Cyril met the village postman.
‘Any letters for me, Sparkes?’ asked the Vicar.
Cyril was not curious enough to inquire about his letters. He expected no pleasant tidings. Who should write to him? He stood alone in the world, for he did not hope that his cousin would ever regard him with friendliness again.
‘No, sir, there ain’t none for you,’ replied Sparkes; ‘but there’s a letter for you, Mr. Culverhouse, from Indy.’
Kenrick had written then, after all, thought Cyril, moved at the idea. Distance and lapse of time had softened the natural bitterness of his feelings.
And then and there, in deliberate defiance of the postal rules and regulations, Sparkes handed the curate a thin miserable-looking letter, in a black-edged envelope, addressed by a strange hand.
The Vicar and Cyril both looked at it, horror-struck.
‘Your cousin has been killed,’ cried Mr. Dulcimer.
Cyril felt the same apprehension. He knew no one in India except his cousin. This letter in a strange hand must bring evil tidings.
He opened the envelope hurriedly, with a shaking hand, as he and Mr. Dulcimer stood side by side in the quiet country road. The Vicar read the letter over Cyril’s shoulder.
Yes, it brought the news both feared.
‘Sir,—It is with deep regret that I write to inform you of the death of your cousin, Sir Kenrick Culverhouse. He was shot in a skirmish with the Burmese, which took place on the night of July 27th. They came down upon our camp unexpectedly during the night, and were repulsed with considerable loss, but unhappily your cousin, who was always reckless in exposing himself to the enemy’s fire, received a fatal shot while leading his company in close pursuit of the retreating Burmese.‘There will, I hope, be some consolation to you, as his nearest relative, in knowing how nobly he did his duty throughout the last eighteenmonths, and how thoroughly he won the respect of his regiment, from the highest to the lowest. For my own part, I feel his death as a personal loss, and it will be long before I shall cease to deplore it.‘I have the honour to be‘Your obedient servant‘Malcolm Donaldson.’
‘Sir,—It is with deep regret that I write to inform you of the death of your cousin, Sir Kenrick Culverhouse. He was shot in a skirmish with the Burmese, which took place on the night of July 27th. They came down upon our camp unexpectedly during the night, and were repulsed with considerable loss, but unhappily your cousin, who was always reckless in exposing himself to the enemy’s fire, received a fatal shot while leading his company in close pursuit of the retreating Burmese.
‘There will, I hope, be some consolation to you, as his nearest relative, in knowing how nobly he did his duty throughout the last eighteenmonths, and how thoroughly he won the respect of his regiment, from the highest to the lowest. For my own part, I feel his death as a personal loss, and it will be long before I shall cease to deplore it.
‘I have the honour to be‘Your obedient servant‘Malcolm Donaldson.’
‘That is the colonel of his regiment,’ said the Vicar. ‘Poor Kenrick! Do you know, I had a presentiment that he would never come back to us. Hard to remember that he left us under such miserable circumstances.’
Cyril was silent for some moments, and then he said, suddenly, with intense earnestness,—
‘Would to God that I rather than he had drawn the lot of death!’
‘The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord,’ said the Vicar, solemnly. ‘We cannot choose our path in life, Cyril. Fate has not been kind to Kenrick. This is a heavy blow for both of us. For my own part,I feel as if I had lost a son. You and Kenrick have been as sons to me.’
‘And to me he was like a brother,’ said Cyril. ‘We parted in unkindness.Thatis a bitter thing to remember.’
‘I do not think you can blame yourself, Cyril, because your cousin’s engagement ended unhappily.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Cyril. ‘It is just possible I may have influenced Beatrix at the last.’
And then he told Mr. Dulcimer, as a good Catholic might tell his spiritual director, about that meeting in the churchyard.
‘I hardly know what I said,’ he confessed, remorsefully; ‘I was beside myself. I knew in that moment she still loved me, that I had never ceased to love her—that I had been mad—foolish—besotted when I doubted her. I knew all this, and that to-morrow was to make her my cousin’s wife. I know not what mad words I may have said to her—words wild and strong enough to constrain her to break with Kenrick.’
‘I am not sure of that,’ said Mr. Dulcimer,thoughtfully. ‘I have a shrewd suspicion that Beatrix was meditating breaking off her engagement when she was so eager to redeem the Culverhouse mortgages. If she had meant to be his wife she might just as well have waited till they were married. But she was so impetuous, so determined. She bore down all opposition from Scratchell. Yes, I believe that she had made up her mind to jilt poor Kenrick, and that she meant the liberation of his estate as an atonement.’
This was some kind of consolation to Cyril, who thought of his cousin with a remorseful grief that was very real. And now, when those first days of mourning for the dead were over, he began to think of his own position, which was full of perplexity.
Kenrick’s death had made him master of Culverhouse Castle. He had new ties, new duties. His first thought was to repay Miss Harefield the fifty thousand pounds. The lawyers had dawdled about the matter, Mr. Dulcimer had been careless, and Kenrick’s parting injunction had not been obeyed.
Cyril went to Mr. Scratchell and told him that he should mortgage the estate directly it passed into his possession, and restore Miss Harefield’s money.
‘She meant it for my cousin Kenrick, and not for me,’ he said. ‘I should feel myself a thief if I retained the use of her money a day longer than I am obliged.’
It was agreed therefore that the money should be refunded as soon as Cyril found himself in a position to raise money upon his newly acquired estate. He was now Sir Cyril, an empty honour which he had no intention of parading among the simple people who only knew him as ‘the parson,’ and who might possibly think a baronet less approachable and sympathetic in their difficulties and griefs than plain ‘mister.’