"You don't mean it! That's another thing at that blackguard's door; it's a nice list! But it's enough to send the whole parish to the dogs. By the way, you would get Lady Gleed's letter?"
"Yes, Sir Wilton. I wrote last night to tell her ladyship that she might make her mind easy about her niece. She is very innocent, and when I told her the windows had been broken because Mr. Carlton had done something dishonourable, she was amazed of course, but she asked no more questions. I spoke at once to the servants, and I made Gwynneth promise not to go among the people at present; they have already typhoid fever in one of the cottages, and that was my excuse."
"Excellent!" said Sir Wilton. "I won't have her in and out of the cottages in any case, and I shall tell her so before I go. She's much too young for that kind of nonsense. And she mustn't read just exactly what she likes. She had a book in her hand just now—I couldn't see what—but she seems inclined to fill her head with any folly. We must find a school for her, and meanwhile bring her up as we've brought up our own child."
Fraulein Hentig smiled judiciously.
"They are already rather different characters," she said. "But I will do my best, Sir Wilton."
When the pair quitted the Italian garden, the gentleman hurrying to make other inquiries before dinner, while the German gentlewoman dropped behind, two brown eyes saw them from an upper window, whither the girl had carried her book in vain. Her attention had been intermittent before, but now shecould not even try to read. The air was full of mystery, and the mystery was more absorbing than that in any book. It was also absolute and unfathomable in the girl's mind. Yet her brain teemed with questions and surmises. She had come upstairs because she felt that they wanted her out of the way, her uncle and the good, slow, serious Fraulein. Yet that was not enough for them: they also must retire as far as possible for their talk. Of course Gwynneth knew what they had to talk about; but what was the dishonourable action that a clergyman could commit and that could not be so much as mentioned in her hearing? She was not thinking of "a clergyman" in the abstract. She was thinking of the man with the beautiful, sad face; of the passionate preacher with the voice that thrilled the senses and the words that filled the mind. She had heard him preach of sin and suffering with equal sympathy. Phrases came back to her. Now she understood. But what could he have done, that he should suffer so, and that a perfectly kind person like Fraulein Hentig should exult in his suffering?
Gwynneth was splendidly and terribly innocent, but all the more inquisitive on that account. She was unacquainted with the facts, yet not with the tragedy of life. In a tragic atmosphere she had been born and bred. Quentin Gleed had been fatally lacking in the politic virtues cultivated by his brother. He had deserted his wife and drunk himself to death within the memory of Gwynneth. The young girl recalled dim years of bitter scenes in a luxurious home, and vivid years of peace and poverty in a tiny cottage. And now her mother was gone also; the dear, independent,wilful little mother, who had taught her child all but the wickedness that was in the world! And that child sat at her bedroom window in the new home that never could be home to her; and the drooping sun could find no bottom to her dark and limpid eyes, no flaw upon her pure warm skin; and neither the cuckoo in the poplar, nor the thrush in the elm, nor the sparrows in the eaves just overhead, could tell her anything of the wickedness that was in even her small world.
Late in the afternoon of July 13, a Lakenhall fly rattled through Long Stow, and waited in the rain outside the rectory gate while one of the occupants ran up to the house. He was such a short time gone, and so few people were about in the wet, that the fly was on its way back to Lakenhall before the Long Stow folk realised that it was the rector who had upset prophecy by showing his nose among them in broad daylight. He had done no more, however, nor was anything further seen or heard of him during the month of July. It appeared that he had returned for some private papers only. The rectory was locked up by the squire's orders, but the rector had forced his own study door, and his muddy footmarks were confined to that room. The same evening he went up to town—and disappeared. But his address was known in an official quarter. And all day and every day he might have been discovered in the reading room of the British Museum: a memorable figure, stooping amid mountains of architectural tomes, and drawing or copying plans in the few inches of table-land they left him, all with a nervous eagerness of face and hand not daily to be seen beneath that dispiriting dome.
Then the call came, and he was tried in the consistorial court of his own diocese, before the chancellor thereof, at the beginning of August. No need to record more than the fact. The proceedings were brief because the accused pleaded guilty and his own word was the only evidence against him. The sentence was that of suspension foreshadowed by the bishop. The Reverend Robert Carlton was formally suspendedab officio et beneficiofor the period of five years.
The result was reported in the London papers; there was only matter for a few lines. "Mr. Carlton was suspended for five years" was the concluding sentence inThe Timesreport; and that was good enough for Sir Wilton Gleed. It was a happy omen for the holidays, which began for him that very day. The family were already in the country. Sir Wilton took the last train to Lakenhall and drove himself home for good in the highest spirits. Four miles of the five were over his own acres, and every one of them was crumbling with rabbits in the rosy dusk. Later, the larkspur and peonies on the dinner-table were as the very breath and blush of the gorgeous English country; and a thrush sang its welcome through the open window, and a nightingale trilled the tired Londoner to sleep; but he dreamt of a pheasant that he had heard calling between Lakenhall and Long Stow.
In the country Sir Wilton was an early riser, and he was abroad next morning while the shadows of the elms still stretched to the house and quivered up its bare brick walls. The great lawn was dusted with a milky dew in which Sir Wilton positivelywallowed in his water-tight boots; it was not his least delight to be in shooting-boots and knickerbockers and soft raiment once more. The first few minutes of the more excellent life produced an unseasonable geniality in the breast of Wilton Gleed. The man was a human being, and he longed for companionship in his joy. But Sidney never rose before he must, nor the gardeners either, it appeared. In the stable-yard a groom was encountered, but Sir Wilton had seen his face every day in town. He went out into the village, and naturally turned to the left. The cottage doors were open, and they were filled with homely figures that touched a cap or courtesied as he passed with a pleasant word for all. It was good to be back, to be a little king again. Sir Wilton pulled the cap over his eyes because the sun was in them, and admired the ripe wheat in the field beyond the post-office, the barley in the field beyond that. So he passed the Flint House on the other side with unruffled mind, and was passing the Flint House meadow before his thoughts took the inevitable turn which led to profane mutterings through shut teeth. But this morning it did not lead quite so far; this morning, with the scented air of England in his nostrils, and a twitter in the ears from every thatch, even Sir Wilton Gleed could find it in his heart to pity the sinner fallen from his high estate in what was paradise enough for the squire.
"Poor devil!" he said as he came to the rectory gate and saw the long grass within. It was sufficiently in key with the old quaint rectory, in its rags of ivy and its shawl of disreputable tiles. Thewindows were still broken and the shutters shut. Otherwise the picture was as alluring as its fellows to the lord of the manor. The trees that hid the church at midsummer would screen its ruins for many a day.
Sir Wilton entered to refresh his memory as to the minor damages, and they changed his mood. Who was to pay for twenty-nine panes of glass—no, he had missed a window—for thirty-three? He was a man who did not care to spend a penny without obtaining his pennyworth; but he was not clear as to his legal obligations; and he bristled at the idea of paying for the immorality of the parson and the excesses of his flock. He had paid enough in other ways. And there was the church. Who was to rebuild the church? They might expect him to do that once he began doing things; and the man fell into premature fuming between his love of the lavish and his detestation of expense. Meanwhile he had found a whole window, that of the study, and the door beside it stood ajar. This he pushed open as though the place belonged to him (his view in so many words), and stood still upon the threshold.
"Well, I'm damned!" he cried at last.
Robert Carlton sat asleep in his chair, his hands in his overcoat pockets, the collar turned up about his ears. His boots and trousers were brown and yellow with the dust of the district. In an instant he was on his feet, scared, startled, and abashed.
"So you've come back, have you?"
"An hour or two ago. I walked from Cambridge. I don't know how you heard!"
"Heard? You must think me in a hurry for your society! No, this is an unexpected pleasure, and I use the words advisedly. It's something to find you don't come twice in broad daylight."
"I have come on business, as before, but this time the business will occupy more than a few minutes. I wished to get it in train with as little fuss as possible. Then I was coming to see you, Sir Wilton."
It was quietly spoken, without bitterness or defiance, but also without the abject humility which had trembled in the clergyman's first words. The other made some attempt to modify his manner: nothing could put him in the wrong, but he realised that it might be as well to abstain from mere brutality. And what he had just heard implied a certain reassurance.
"I see," said Gleed. "You have come to make arrangements about your furniture and effects. I am glad to hear it."
"My furniture and effects?" queried Carlton. "What arrangements do you mean?"
"Well, you can't leave them here, can you?"
"Why not, Sir Wilton?"
"Why not!" echoed the squire, turning from pink to purple with the two words. "Because you've been disgraced and degraded as you deserve; because you're the hound you are; because you've been suspended for five years, and I won't have you or your belongings cumber my ground for a single day of them! So now you know," continued Gleed in lower tones, his venom spent. "I didn't think itwould be necessary to tell you my opinion of you; but you've brought it on yourself."
Carlton bowed to that, but respectfully pointed out the difference between suspension and deprivation, his tone one of apology rather than of triumph.
"I don't say which I deserved," he added, "but I do thank God for the mercy He has shown me. This gives me another chance—in five years' time. Meanwhile I am not only entitled to keep my furniture in the rectory. I believe I may live in it if I like."
Gleed stood convulsed with wrath redoubled. He had been too busy in town to prime himself upon a point which could not arise before he went down to the country; and here it was, awaiting him. His disadvantage alone was enough to put him in a passion; but the last statement was monstrous in itself.
"I don't believe it! I don't believe a word you say! A man who can live a lie will tell nothing else!"
Carlton drew himself up, his nostrils curling.
"Better go and ask your solicitor," he said. "I have forfeited the right—as you so well know—to the only possible reply."
"Rights apart," rejoined Gleed, his colour heightening by a shade, "do you mean to tell me you would seriously think of remaining on the very scene of your shame?"
"I didn't say I would do anything. I said I believed I could."
"You have done enough harm in the place; surely you wouldn't come back to do more?"
"No; if I came at all, it would be to undo a little of the harm—to live it down, Sir Wilton, by God's help!" said Carlton, and his voice shook. "But I do not mean to live here. I have spoken to the bishop, and his advice is against it, though he leaves me free to follow my own judgment. This afternoon I hoped to speak to you. There is another matter which is really a duty, so that I can be in no doubt as to what to do there. It will not involve my remaining on the spot, or obtruding myself in any way. But the church has been burnt down on my account, and I intend to rebuild it before the winter."
"The church is mine!" said Gleed, savagely.
"I don't want to contradict you, Sir Wilton; but you should really see your lawyer on all these points."
"The land is mine!"
"Not the church land, Sir Wilton; and the rector is not only entitled, but he may be compelled, to restore and rebuild within certain limits. Your solicitor will turn up the Act and show it you in black and white. And after that I think you will hardly stand between me and my bounden duty."
"I don't recognise it as your duty. Your first duty is to resign the living lock-stock-and-barrel—if you've any sense of decency left; but you haven't—not you, you infernal blackguard, you!"
Gleed was standing on the drive, his arms akimbo and his fists clenched, his flushed face thrust forward and his stockinged legs planted firmly apart. It wasCarlton's lithe figure which had been filling the doorway for some minutes; but at this he strode upon his adversary, and towered over him with a hand that itched.
"Why must you insult me?" he cried. "Do you think that's the way to get me to do anything? Or are you bent upon having me up for assault? For heaven's sake remember your own manhood, Sir Wilton, and respect mine; don't trade too far upon my readiness to admit that I am all men choose to call me. Have a little pride! I am ready to take my punishment, and more. I will keep away from the place as much as possible. If I can let the rectory, that will be so much more money for the church. Don't oppose me; if you can't help me by your countenance (and I grant you it's more than I have a right to expect), at least be neutral, and let me work out my own salvation in my own way. It will make no difference to the past. It may make all the difference in the future. God knows I can't reinstate myself in His sight and in the hearts of men by building a church! But I can leave behind me a sign of my sorrow and my true penitence. I can leave behind me a name and an example, bad enough in all conscience, but yet not wholly vile to the very last. And think what even that would be to me! And think what it would be if I could but pave the way, not to forgiveness, but to some reconciliation with those whom I have loved but led amiss . . . Well, that may be too much to hope . . . no, I have no right to dream of that . . . but at least let me make the one material reparationin my power; let me do my duty! When it is done, if you and they will have no more of me, then you shall all be rid of me for good."
Gleed wavered, partly because in mere personality he was no match for the other, partly because the prospect of a new church for nothing made its own appeal to the man who had counted the cost of the broken windows. His mind ran over the pecuniary scheme and detected a flaw.
"And what's to become of the parish for the next five years?" he asked. "Who's to pay a man to do your work?"
"There's the stipend I cannot touch and would not if I could; a part of that will doubtless be set aside. Until the church is habitable, however, the case will probably be met by one of the curates coming over from Lakenhall and taking a service in the schoolroom."
"And how doyouknow?" cried Sir Wilton, not unjustifiably.
"The bishop sent for me," said Carlton—and his eyes fell. "I ventured to speak to him on the subject before I left. Do you think I don't care what happens here in my absence? I hope the services will begin next Sunday—the building next week. I have worked the whole thing out. I could show you the figures and the plans. The new ones are ready, if you can call them new. I shall be my own architect as before for the transepts, but the rest shall be exactly as it was."
"We'll see about that," said Sir Wilton grimly. He knew those melting eyes, that enthusiastic voice.They had brought their hundreds to this man's feet before. They might do so again. Even the squire felt their power in his own despite.
"It is my one chance!" the voice went on in softer accents. "Do not ask me to forego it altogether; but I will keep in the background as much as you like; all I want to know is that the work is going on. Suppose I did resign, and you appointed another man. Why should he give towards the church? Why should he come where there is none? Let me build the new one first!"
"Has it come to letting? I understood I couldn't prevent you?"
"No more you can; although——"
"We'll see!" cried Gleed. "That's quite enough for me. We'll see!"
"But, Sir Wilton——"
"Damn your 'buts,' sir!" shouted the other, shaking with rage. "You disgrace the parish, and you won't leave it. You come back, and set yourself against me, and think you can do what you like after doing what you've done. By God, it's monstrous! There's not a man in the country who won't agree with me; you'll find that out to your cost. Build the church, would you? I'll see you further! Law or no law, I'll have you out of this! I'll hound you out of it! I'll have you torn in pieces if you stay!"
"I have already told you I don't intend to stay," said Carlton quietly. "I only intend to rebuild the church."
"All right! You try! You try!"
And with his fixed eyes flashing, and his fresh face aged with anger, but scored with implacable resolve, Sir Wilton Gleed swung on his heel, and so down the drive with every step a stamp.
In the village he met Tom Ivey, but passed him with a savage nod, and was some yards further on when a thought smote him so that he spun round in his stride.
"That you, Ivey?" he called. "I wasn't thinking; you're the very man I wanted to see. How are you, eh?"
"Nicely, thank you, Sir Wilton," said Tom, coming up.
"Plenty of work, I hope?"
"Well, not just lately, Sir Wilton."
"Good! I may have some for you. I'll see you about it this evening or to-morrow; meanwhile keep yourself free. By the way, how's your mother?"
"Very sadly, Sir Wilton. I sometimes fare to think she's not long for this world."
"Nonsense, man! What's the matter with her?"
Tom hardly knew. That was old age,hethought. Then the house was that old and small; sometimes she fared to stifle for want of air. And this Tom said doggedly, for a reason.
"Ah!" cried Sir Wilton, his fixed eye brightening. "Wasn't there a question of repairs some time since?"
"There was, Sir Wilton."
"Well, I'll reconsider it. We must do what we can to make the old lady comfortable for the winter. I'll come and see her, and I'll see you again about the other matter. Keep yourself free meanwhile. Don't you let any of those Lakenhall fellows snap you up!"
And Sir Wilton went on chuckling, but again turned quickly and called the other back.
"By the way, Tom, whowerethose fellows you used to work for in Lakenhall?"
"Tait & Taplin, Sir Wilton."
A note was taken of the names.
"The only builders in the town, eh?"
"Well, Sir Wilton, there's old Isaac Hoole, the stonemason."
"A stonemason, by Jove!" and down went his name. "What other builders and stonemasons have we in the district—near enough to undertake some work here? I'm not thinking of the job I've got for you, Tom."
Ivey thought of three within fifteen miles, and several at greater distances, but doubted whether any of the latter would accept a contract so far afield. Their names were taken, nevertheless, and Sir Wilton stared his hardest as he put his pocket-book away.
"I shall want you all the same," he said, "and I shall expect to get you when I want you. Understand? If anybody else offers you a job, remember you've got one. And I'll see your mother this morning."
Tom went his way with his honest wits in a knot. He could not conceive what was coming. Ten minutes ago he had found a note slipped under the door in the night, and he was going straight to the rectory without his breakfast. Had Sir Wilton been there before him, and was he going to rebuild the church? Then what had the reverend to say to it, now that he was suspended for five years? And what in the world could he have to say to Tom Ivey?
He said nothing at all until they had shaken hands, and nothing then about the fire; it is with the hand alone that men pay their big debts to men, and Robert Carlton did not weaken his thanks with words.
"Have you got a job, Tom?" were his first.
"I have and I haven't, sir," said Ivey.
"You're not free to take one from me?"
"I wish I was, sir!" cried Tom, impulsively (he was not so sure about it on reflection); and in his simplicity he explained why he was not free. "But perhaps that's the same job, sir?" he added, hopefully.
Carlton shook his head, and looked wistfully on the friendly face; a few words (he knew his power) and the very man he wanted would be on his side against all odds. But he must not begin by dividing the village into factions; he must fight his own battle, with mercenaries from neutral ground, or none at all.
"Where was it you served your time, Tom?" he asked at length.
"Tait & Taplin's, sir, in Lakenhall."
"Thanks. I won't keep you, Tom. It will do you no good to be seen up here."
He held out his hand with a dismal smile. It was the other's turn to wring hard. "I care nothingabout that, sir! We've been shoulder to shoulder once already; my mind don't go no further back than that; and we'll be shoulder to shoulder again!"
Carlton found flour and tea in the store-room, and in the fowl-house two new-laid eggs. He cooked his first breakfast with the sun pouring through the open kitchen window upon six weeks' dirt and dust. He was not a man of very hearty habit, but he had learnt of old the evil of exercise upon too light a diet. His pony was fattening in the glebe; but a fastidious sense of fitness forbade him to drive, and between nine and ten he set out for Lakenhall on foot.
It was an ordeal for the first half-mile: the sunlight flooding the village felt like limelight turned on him alone. Some children courtesied as though nothing was changed; their elders stared at him without further sign; only one shouted after him, he knew not who or what. He reached the open country with a raging pulse, thinking only upon circuitous ways back; but three solitary miles restored his nerve. And in Lakenhall it was only every other passer who stopped and turned and stared. Entering the town he was nearly run over by a dogcart. It was Sir Wilton driving, and Carlton caught the gleam of his eye even as he leapt to one side for his life, but mistook its significance until he was within sight of Tait & Taplin's. Then it occurred to him, and he entered fully prepared.
"No, thank you, sir—not for us! We've heard of you, and we don't deal with your sort. Do you hear, or do you want to hear more?"
Carlton searched in vain for another builder, andonly got the name of a stonemason by going into the cemetery and looking at the newer gravestones. He had then to discover where the man lived, and he was ashamed to ask questions in shops. He was still scouring the town, and it was afternoon, when a gig was pulled up in the middle of the road.
"So you're back? Well, you look better than you did."
"I am," said Carlton, "thanks to you."
"Who are you looking for?"
"Hoole, the stonemason."
"Jump up and I'll drive you there."
The tone was too humane for Carlton.
"Thank you, doctor, but I like walking."
"Then find him for yourself, and be damned to you!"
And Marigold drove on, red to the hoar of his eighty years; but, as Carlton stood watching him out of sight with vain compunction, the old doctor turned in his seat and pointed up an alley with his whip in passing.
Hoole, the stonemason, was not rude, but he was as firm as Tait & Taplin in his refusal. He was an elderly man, of few words, but he admitted that Sir Wilton Gleed had been there that morning. That was enough for Carlton, who was turning away when something in his visible fatigue and dejection moved the mason to give him a hint.
"You won't get anybody in the district to work for you against Sir Wilton," he said. "That stands to reason."
"Then I must go out of the district," said Carlton.And he bought a county directory at a shop where he had been a regular customer; but they insisted on the settlement of his current bill first; and even then he had to help himself to the new book, and leave the money on the counter, because they scorned to serve him. The directory contained the names and addresses of the very few builders and master-masons within a day's journey of Long Stow. And it was all there was to show for the long day's round of retribution and rebuff when, late in the afternoon, Carlton returned as he had come, too tired and too dispirited to walk an inch out of his way; and the school-children who had courtesied in the morning knew better now, and cried after the bent figure slinking home at dusk.
The next day was Sunday, and the school-bell tinkled towards eleven o'clock, and stopped precisely at the hour. Then Carlton knew that his own idea had been adopted, and that somebody was saying matins in the parish school-room: he read the service to himself in his study, and evensong when evening came, with a sermon of Charles Kingsley's after each: for doctrine could not help him now, but brave humanity could and did.
The Monday was Bank Holiday; but Carlton only knew it when he had trudged ten miles to have speech with a builder whose premises were closed; and so another day was lost. On the Tuesday he tried again, but with as little avail. Sir Wilton Gleed had been there before him (as long ago as the Saturday afternoon), and it was the same elsewhere. The week went in fruitless visits to small contractors and working masons in this large village or in that little town; theenemy had been first in every field, with a cunning formula which Carlton reconstructed from the various answers he received.
"Of course, the church will have to be rebuilt," Sir Wilton had been saying; "but not by him. He hasn't the money, for one thing; it had better be an iron church, if he is to pay you for it. Help me to get rid of him, and you shall hear from me again. We will have a decent church when we are about it, and a local man shall get the job."
Meanwhile the boycott was nowhere more operative than in Long Stow itself, and no human being came near the rectory, where the rector subsisted on a providential store of bacon and the daily deposit of eggs, and on strange bread of his own baking, for he would risk no more insults in the shops. But one night a forgotten friend came back into his life: his collie, Glen, came bounding down the drive to meet him, and the mad uproar of that welcome was heard through half the village, and duly became the talk. The dog had been a vagabond and a rogue for six wild weeks, and it came back gaunt and hard, its brush clotted and raw underneath with the spray from a farmer's gun. Carlton washed the wound with warm water, and the two pariahs supped together, and lay that night upon the same bed, and went abroad together next morning, to try the last man left.
The day after that they stayed at home, and word reached the hall that the rector had been seen among the ruins of his church; he was, indeed, exploring them for the first time, and that both with method and deliberation. When seen, however (from the lane that runsunder the fine east window of to-day, past the lawn-tennis court which was then a fowl run, and the glebe that is still the glebe), he was seated on a sandstone block in front of the little lean-to shed; and, as a matter of fact, his back was to the ruins. He was contemplating similar blocks and slabs of the undressed stone that lay where they had been lying on Midsummer Day: some were still smutty from the fire, all were slightly stained by the weather, otherwise there was no change that Carlton could see as he sat thus. At one end of the shed rose a great yellow cairn of material raw from the quarry—a stack of stones about as much of one size and shape as so many lumps of sugar; enough to finish the transepts, as matters had stood; a mere fraction of the amount required now. Carlton looked on what he had got, and his eyes closed in a calculation beyond his powers in mental arithmetic; he had to take a pencil to it, and then a foot-rule to the blackened courses, and presently a pair of compasses to the plans in the study.
In the afternoon he tidied the shed. Every tool was intact; a little rust had been the worst intruder; and the feel of the cool sleek handles quickened Carlton's pulse. Nay, the hammer rang a few strokes on the cold-chisel, for he could not help it, and the music reminded him of his poor bells, now cumbering the porch; it was almost as good to hear; and the way the soft stone peeled, in creamy flakes, thrilled the hand as it charmed the eye. But a very few minutes served to make the enthusiast ashamed of his enthusiasm; and though he spent more time in the ruins, now testing a standing wall, now scraping a charred stone, ardourand determination had died down in an eye that was looking within; a wistful irresolution flickered in their place. And that night the lonely man walked his room once more, from twilight to twilight, with long intervals spent upon his knees, in agonies of doubt and self-distrust, in passionate entreaty for a right judgment, and for the strength to abide by it. Yet his duty had not dawned upon him with the day.
Towards eleven the school-bell tinkled. It was Sunday once more; and once more he read the prayers upon his knees and the psalms and lessons standing; but no sermon to-day. No man could help him in his struggle with himself; he must trust to the strength of his own soul, to the singleness of his own heart, and to the guidance of the God who was drawing nearer and nearer to him in these days—with each prayer that rose from his heart—with each bead that stood upon his brow. And so at last, when the burden of doubt and darkness became more than the man could bear, it was as though the heavens had opened, and a beam of celestial light flooded the narrow room with the low ceiling and the cross-beams; for the peace of a mind made up had descended upon the solitary therein. And that night his sleep was sound, so that in the morning he had to ask himself why; the answer made him catch his breath; it did not shake his resolve.
"He shall have his chance," said Carlton; "he shall have it fairly to his face. And he will take it—and that will be the end!"
He hung about the ruins till it was ten o'clock by his watch, and then went straight to the hall. Sir Wilton was at home; but the footman hesitated to admit thisvisitor. Carlton's own hesitation was, however, at an end, and his eye forbade rebuff. He was shown into the drawing-room, where a very young girl was at the piano, evidently practising, and yet playing in a way that made Carlton sorry when she stopped. The cool room smelling of flowers; the glimpse of garden through an open window, with the court marked out and chairs under the trees; the momentary sound of a fine instrument finely touched: it was all the very breath and essence of the pleasant every-day world from which he had rightly and richly earned dismissal, and it all was branded in his brain. Then the young girl rose, and stood in doubt with the sun upon her plaited hair, and eyes great with innocent distress; but Carlton barely bowed, and the child hardly knew how she got across the room.
Sir Wilton entered with jaunty step. His whiskered jaw was set like a vice, but the light of conscious triumph danced in his fixed eyeballs. Carlton had come prepared to have his intrusion treated as his latest crime; a glance convinced him that the other was too sure of victory to object to an interview with the virtually vanquished.
"So you are quite determined that I shall not rebuild the church?"
It was a point-blank beginning. Sir Wilton shrugged and smiled. "I have told you to build it if you can," said he.
"But you mean to make that an impossibility?"
"Naturally I don't intend to make it easy."
"Admit that by foul means, since none are fair, you are deliberately preventing me from doing my duty!"Carlton pressed his point with a heat he regretted, but could not help.
"I admit nothing," said the other, doggedly—"least of all what you are pleased to consider your 'duty.' Your real duty I've already told you. Resign the living. Let us see the last of you."
Carlton met the rigid stare with one as unwavering and more acute. It was as though he would have seen to the back of the other's brain.
"Very well," he said at length. "You shall!"
"Ah!" cried Sir Wilton, when he had recovered from his surprise. But it was not the cry of victory; there was an uncharacteristic lack of finality in the clergyman's tone.
"You shall see the last of me this very morning," he continued swiftly, nervously, "if you like! But it will rest with you. I am not going unconditionally. Will you listen to what I have to say?"
Gleed shrugged again, but this time there was no accompanying smile. The other threw up his head with a sudden decisiveness—a pulpit trick of his when about to make a primary point—and his right fist fell into his left palm without his knowing it.
"Very well," said Carlton; "now I'll tell you exactly on what conditions you shall have your heart's desire, and I will renounce mine. In spite of what I hear you've been saying, I have a little money of my own—not much, indeed—but enough for me to have subsisted upon for these next years. I am not going to touch a penny of it—I shall pick up a living for myself elsewhere. Meanwhile I have turned my income into capital which is now lying in the bank at Lakenhall. It is a trifle under two thousand pounds, and I want the whole of it to go into the new church. Wherever I am I ought to be able to earn a little more, either as a coach or with my pen; so let the offer stand at a church to cost two thousand pounds. I long to have the building of it. I make no secret of that. But I have been trying to read my own heart, and I see the selfishness of such longings; and I have been trying to read your heart, Sir Wilton, and I see the naturalness of your opposition. So I come to you and I say, build the church yourself, and I withdraw. Build a better church out of your abundance, and I will resign as you wish. Give me your written undertaking, here and now, and you shall have my written resignation in exchange."
The words clung to his lips; he alone knew what it cost him to utter them; he alone, in his absolute freedom from the mercenary instinct, would have felt certain of the result. But the rich man was touched upon his tender spot. What return was he offered for his money? Who would thank him for building a church in the heart of the country? The church could be built by subscription; bad enough to have to head the list. Besides, he was flushed with triumph; he saw but a beaten man in the nervous wretch before him. Fancy bribing a beaten man to fly!
"I like your impudence," said Wilton Gleed. "Upon my word!Mywritten undertaking—toyou!"
"Do you refuse to give it?" asked Carlton quickly.
"Certainly—to you."
"Undertakings apart, do you entertain my suggestion, or do you not?"
"That's my business."
Carlton felt his patience slipping.
"Do you mean to say that you don't even yet recognise that it's mine too, as rector of the parish? Are you still so ignorant of the legal bearings of the situation? God knows, Sir Wilton, it is not for me to speak of right and wrong; but I do assure you that you're putting yourself wilfully in the wrong in this matter. You hinder me from doing my legal duty, and you refuse to assume any responsibility! Suspended or not, I am bound to keep my chancel, at all events, 'in good and substantial repair, restoringand rebuilding when necessary.'"
Sir Wilton's eyes, fixed as usual, caught fire suddenly.
"Oh, you're bound, are you?"
"Legally bound."
"You're sure that's the law?"
"The very letter of the law, Sir Wilton."
"Then see that you keep it! You come here blustering about your legal rights; but you forget that I've got mine. Where there's a law there's a penalty, and by God I'll enforce it! 'The very letter of the law,' eh? I'll take you at your word; you shall keep it to the letter. Build away! Build away! The sooner you begin the better—for you!"
This was probably the boldest move that Sir Wilton Gleed ever made in his life; it was certainly the least considered. But what satisfaction sweeter than hoisting the enemy with his own petard? It is the quintessence of poetic justice, the acme of personal triumph; and the sudden opportunity of achieving his end bymeans so neat was more than even Wilton Gleed could resist. Every builder and mason within reach was already on his side; not a man of them who would work for dissolute hypocrisy in defiance of might and right. No need to say another word to the masons and the builders. They could be trusted on the whole, and the untrustworthy could be bribed. Gleed had not the smallest scruple in the matter, and he was characteristically forearmed with a public defence of his private conduct. He believed that every right-thinking man would applaud his sharp practice in the cause of religion and of morality; and his confidence was not to be shaken by the way in which his challenge was received.
"Are you in earnest?" asked Carlton. "Do you seriously propose to hinder me with one hand and to compel me with the other?"
"I mean to take you at your word," Gleed repeated. "You are fond of talking about your duty. Let's see you do it."
"You set the builders against me, and then you tell me to build. May I ask if you are prepared to defend such clumsy trickery?"
"Any day you like, and glad of the opportunity!" cried Sir Wilton, cheerfully. "All I have done is to give you your proper character where it deserves to be known; you have it to thank if you can't get men to work for you; and it's your look-out. I've heard about enough of you and your church. Go and build it. Go and build it."
"I will," said Carlton. "You have had your chance." And he bowed and withdrew with strange serenity.
A parting shot followed him through the hall.
"You will have to do it with your own two hands!"
Carlton made no reply. But in the village he committed a fresh enormity.
He was seen to smile.
All the church had not been burnt to the ground. West of the porch (itself not hopelessly destroyed) stood thirteen feet of sound south wall, blackened on the inside, calcined in the upper courses, but plumb and firm as far as it went. A corresponding portion of the north wall, the sixteen-foot strip west of the window almost opposite the porch, stood equally rigid and erect. And, thus supported on either hand, the entire west end rose practically intact, without a missing or a ruined stone; the window was still truly bisected by its single mullion; neither head nor tracery had given the fraction of an inch; only the mangled leads, with here and there a fragment of smoked glass adhering, would have told of a fire to one led blindfold under the west window, and there given his first view of the church.
But that was the one good wall and real exception to a rule of utter ruin. The rest of the original building was either razed already or else unfit to stand. The embryonic transepts were not quite demolished, but they had never been many feet above ground. Sections of wall still stood where there were no windows to weaken them, but east of the porch nothing stood firm. Worst of all was the east end, from which the chancel walls had been burnt away on either side. Itstood as though balanced, with an alarming outward list. One mullion of the great window had gone by the sill; the other was cracked and crooked, as if supporting the entire weight of the gable overhead; and it looked as though a push would send the tottering fabric flat.
Black ruin lay thick and deep within. To peep in was to see an ashpit through a microscope. The remnants of the slate and timber roof lay uppermost. Tie-beams, corbels, king-posts, ridge, struts, wall-plates, pole-plates, rafters principal and common, joists, battens, laths and fillets, half-burnt and black as the pit, save where some spilled sheet-lead shone in the sun, spread a common pall over nave and chancel, aisle and pews. It was as a midnight sea frozen in mid-storm, the twisted lectern alone rising salient like a mast. Slates lay in shallow heaps as though dealt from a pack; and certain pages, brown and brittle at the edges, which the wind had torn from the burnt Bible before Carlton rescued the remains, still fluttered in the crannies when the wind went its rounds. And the hum of bees was in the air; but there had been great distress among the sparrows, and one heard more of the rectory cocks and hens.
Upon this desolate and dead spot, in the heart of the warm, live country, Robert Carlton stood looking within a few minutes of his exit from the hall. But he did not stand looking long. He had changed into flannels at top speed, and there was still more change in the man. His eye glowed with a grim decision which lightened without dispelling the settled sadness of the face. Passionate aspiration had cooled and hardenedinto dogged and defiant resolve; and there was an end to all compunction and self-questioning suspense. Carlton knew exactly what he was going to do; he had known where to begin since the day before yesterday. He wore neither coat nor waistcoat, his sleeves were rolled up, he had a crowbar in one hand, and a heavy hammer in the other. He began immediately on the thirteen feet of good wall to the left of the porch.
He had tested this wall on Saturday. The upper courses were loose and crumbling; the sooner they went the better. Carlton climbed upon the wall, and, sitting astride where it was firmest, began working off the loose stones one by one with the crowbar. Iron would ring on iron twice or thrice, and then a twist of the bar send the charred stone tumbling. It was easy work, but the position was awkward, and Carlton soon went for a ladder; on the way he was surprised to find that he was already drenched with perspiration, and rather hungry.
But the next hour tired him more, or rather the time that seemed an hour to him, for it afterwards turned out to be three hours by the watch that he had left indoors. Only the topmost course, or the stones on which the red-hot eaves had rested, lent themselves to off-hand treatment; they had been burnt to cinders—the mortar binding them, to powder; it needed but a wrench to dislodge each one. But the next few courses were a different matter. Half the stones were too loose to leave, too good to chip in the removal. Carlton worked upon them with the cold-chisel first, the crowbar next, and finally with his naked fingers, removing the stones with immense care, and very deliberately dropping each into its own bed in the long grass outside. At last the little strip of wall was left without an unsound member from serrated crest to plinth: not a stone that shook or shifted at a conscientious push; and the workman took his eyes from his work. But he did not peer through the trees in search of other eyes, for he was not thinking of himself or of his work from a spectacular point of view. He merely saw that the sun had travelled the church from end to end while he had been busy. And suddenly he found himself sinking for want of food, and unable to stand upright without intolerable pain. But he was back within half-an-hour, and remained at work upon the sixteen-foot strip opposite till after sunset.
"But it hasn't been anything like a full day, old dog," said Carlton, as they crept up to bed between eight and nine. And he set his seven-and-six-penny alarum at four o'clock.
Next forenoon the sixteen-foot strip was done with in its turn; no infirm stone left standing upon another. Scraped and repointed, with the uninjured pieces replaced in fresh mortar, and an entirely new top course, these two short walls would be worthy of the gallant west end to which they acted as buttresses. Its wounds were not skin-deep, thanks to the west wind which had driven the flames the other way. It looked as though a sponge would cleanse it, and Carlton sighed as he turned his back upon the one good wall.
Elsewhere, as has been said, there were fragments fit to use again, but not to remain as they were. It cost Carlton a couple of days to take these to pieces, laying the good stones carefully in the grass, as hispractice had been hitherto. The fourth day, however, he tried a change of labour to ease his aching limbs, and went round and round with a barrow, picking the sound stones from the grass, and stacking them near the shed. Next morning he fought his way into the chancel, and stood chin-deep in the wreckage, contemplating the leaning east end. And all this time no soul had come near him; through the trees he had indeed heard whispers that were not of the trees, but he had never thrown more than a glance in their direction, and the green screen was still charitably thick.
The east end must come down sooner or later—therefore sooner. Carlton was no engineer, but he was a man with a distinct turn for mechanics; had used a lathe as a lad, and taught his Boys' Friendly how to use it in their turn; had picked up much from Tom Ivey, and was himself blessed with sound instincts concerning application and control of power. Here was a tottering wall to come down altogether. It was too insecure to pull to pieces. The problem was to get it down with as little damage and as little danger as possible. One man could do it, Carlton thought, but not without considerable risk of a broken head at least. If he could but make sure of the whole wall falling in the one outward direction! He revolved about it, mentally and on his feet, till he became angry with himself for the loss of time, ceased to speculate, and went to work in desperation. He would trust to luck; he despised himself for having studied a risk so small. He had done so out of no absurd consideration for his own skin, but entirely from the depth and strength of his artistic impulse to do a thing properly or not at all. Even nowhe had to prepare the ground: he had to clear the chancel enough to give himself free play.
Then he found a scaffolding-pole which had not been used, and tilted at a tree for practice. The pole was unmanageable from its length. He sawed it shorter. It was still too unwieldy to use amid thedébris. He shortened it until he had a battering-ram some eighteen feet long. But all these preliminaries had taken unimagined hours, and again Carlton felt sick with hunger before he thought of food, and unequal to further effort until he had some. So he turned a breaking but reluctant back upon the church, and went indoors; remembering everything on the way, and loathing himself afresh: at his work he was beginning to forget!
Thus far this outcast had subsisted chiefly on eggs; he beat up a couple now, and tossed the stuff off with a little wine and water. Then he fell upon a box of biscuits, but threw the dog as many as he munched himself, striding up and down the while, and for all his fatigue. The room was the one in which he had studied his own physiognomy. It might have been any other. He had no eyes for himself to-day, and not many thoughts, for, in the midst of his contrition for forgetting, he had forgotten again. His mind had escaped to the chancel; the flesh followed in a few minutes, having eaten and rested on its legs.
The dog bounded ahead, and presently announced an intruder at the top of its voice. Carlton quickened his pace, frowning at the thought of interruption; he was on the spot before curiosity had tempered his annoyance; and there among the ruins stood Sir Wilton Gleed, not frowning at all, but forcing a smile behind his cigar.
"How long is this tomfoolery to go on?" said he.
Carlton stood looking at him for some seconds; then he picked up his pole without replying. "You'd better stand to one side," was all he said. "Kennel up, Glen!"
"Going to do something desperate?"
"The further you get away from me the safer you'll be."
But he did not look round as he spoke, and Sir Wilton gripped his stick without occasion. Carlton's blood was boiling none the less. The enemy had surprised him at his worst. He was, for the first time, attempting single-handed the work of several men; and he might be going about it in a very ridiculous way. He could not tell till he tried; and it was one thing to experiment in private, but quite another thing to court open discomfiture of the very nature which would most delight the looker-on. And the man was worn out with hard and unaccustomed labour, dyspeptic from evil feeding, nervous and irritable from both causes combined. Sir Wilton Gleed could hardly have chosen a worse moment for renewing the duel.
In Carlton the longing to do something violent suddenly outweighed his desire to raze the east end of the church. He poised his pole and fixed both eyes on the one remaining mullion of the east window. If the mullion went, he still thought that the whole fabric should collapse, forgetting the inherentindependence of arches; and his mind dwelt wistfully on the effect of the crash upon Sir Wilton Gleed. But his aim was not the less accurate, nor did his anxiety hinder him from utilising every muscle in his body at the ideal moment. The end of the ram smote the mullion fairly and powerfully, where it was already cracked. The mullion flew asunder; a quatrefoil shifted a little, robbed of its support. The whole wall seemed to shudder; but that was all.
"You remind me of Don Quixote," said Sir Wilton's voice.
Carlton spun round. The pole trailed behind him from his right hand. He took fresh hold of it, lower down, and there was no mistaking his look.
"You go about your business," said he, fiercely.
"I've come about it," was the bland reply. "I'm not trespassing either; don't put yourself in the wrong. Remember your own advice; and let's have a civil answer to a civil question. My good friend, what do you think you're trying to do?"
The artificial geniality of address, the settled malice underneath, the tone that people take with a wilful child, all galled and goaded the tired man beyond endurance.
"You had better go," he said.
"Do you really propose to rebuild the church with your own ten fingers?" inquired Sir Wilton, not to be daunted by a threat.
"You proposed it. I mean to do it."
Sir Wilton shook his head with a venomous smile. "Oh, no, you don't! You mean to pretend to try. You mean to pose."
Carlton flung the pole from him, and strode forward, swinging open hands.
"I'm not going to talk to you," he said, "and you sha'n't make me strike you; but if you don't go out you'll be put out, Sir Wilton."
Gleed smiled again. His collar was seized. He smiled no more, but lashed out with his stick. The stick was wrenched away from him. It whistled in the air. And Robert Carlton had his enemy at his mercy, still held by the collar, in the place where he had preached goodwill to men. For he was much the taller of the two and an old athlete, whereas the other was only an elderly sportsman. Carlton could have whipped him like a little dog. He did almost worse: released him without a cut, and handed him his stick without a word.
And at that moment there came the crash that would have saved this collision a few seconds before. Both men turned, rubbing their eyes; a cloud of yellow dust had filled them as it filled the chancel. The cloud dispersed, and wall and window were gone from sill to gable; what remained was nowhere higher than a man could reach.
"Now leave me in peace," said Carlton, "for I shall have my hands full; and don't trouble to come again, because I sha'n't listen to you. You've had two chances. I promised to live away and only find the money and the men; you wouldn't have it. I invited you to build the church yourself; you wouldn't hear of that. No; you would force me to do my duty, having tied my hands! You would take me at my word. I am taking you at yours. Ishould try fresh ground, if I were you; meanwhile you could sue me for assault."
Gleed had fully intended doing so, but the scornful suggestion killed the thought, and for once he had no last word. But his last look made amends.
His son was waiting for him at the gate.
"The man's mad!" cried Sir Wilton with a harsh laugh.
"What's he been doing? What was that row?"
Sidney's manner with his father was subtly disrespectful; he seldom addressed him by that name, enjoyed arguing with him (having the clearer head), and argued in slang. Yet his tongue was as dexterous and plausible as it was always smooth, and he was a difficult boy to convict of a specific rudeness.
"There's some method in his madness," was his comment on the father's account of the work accomplished under his eyes.
"But he says he's going to build it up again!"
"I wonder if he will," speculated Sidney.
"What—by himself?"
"Yes."
"Of course he won't. No man could. He's a lunatic."
They were walking home. Sidney said nothing for some paces. Then he asked an innocent question. It was a little way of his.
"I suppose one man could finish one stone, though, father?"
Sir Wilton conceded this.
"And fix it in its place, shouldn't you say?"
A gruffer concession.
"Then I'm not sure that he couldn't do more than you think," said Sidney. "The windows might stump him, and the roof would; but he could do the rest."
"Nonsense!" cried Sir Wilton. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Of course I don't," admitted Sidney readily. "That was why I asked about the one man and the one stone."
Sir Wilton had not half his boy's brain. The cold-blooded little wretch would boast that he could "score off the governor without his knowing it." Sir Wilton's merit was his tenacity of purpose.
"I tell you the man's mad," he reiterated; "and if he doesn't take care I'll have him shut up."
"A great idea!" cried Sidney. "But, I say, if that's so we oughtn't to be too rough on him!"
"In any case I'll have him out of this," quoth Sir Wilton through his teeth; but his mind dwelt on the shutting-up notion: it really was "a great idea." And Carlton himself had given him another: he just would "take fresh ground."
He sought it that evening by a painful path. Jasper Musk and Sir Wilton Gleed were not friends; they had not spoken for years. Sir Wilton had not been long in the parish before he discovered that Musk had "cheated" him over the Flint House. The word was much too strong; but some little advantage had no doubt been taken. The quarrel hadlasted to the present time; but Sir Wilton had often felt that Musk must hate the common scourge even more bitterly than he did himself, and that he would be a very valuable ally. He was a strong man and solid, the one powerful peasant in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, sciatica had bound him to his chair from the very day of his daughter's funeral. It would have been comparatively easy to accost the old fellow in the open, and to disarm him with instantaneous expressions of sympathy and of indignation. It was more difficult for the lord of the manor to knock at the door of an enemy who was not a tenant—a door opening on the very street, and a door that might be slammed in his face for all Long Stow to see or hear. So Sir Wilton went after dinner, on a dark night; was admitted without demur; and stayed till after eleven.
Next day he went again; he was also seen at the village constable's; and the village constable was seen at the Flint House; and Sir Wilton happened to call once more while he was there. The afternoon was rich in developments, and duly murmurous with theory, prophecy, speculation. The schoolmaster was summoned from the school, the saddler from his bench: it was the latter who fetched Tom Ivey from the room that he was adding to his mother's cottage at Sir Wilton's expense. Meanwhile the village whisper became loud talk; but its arrows, shot at a venture, flew wide of any mark. For through all his dark disgrace, as now when the odium attaching to him was gathering like snow on a rolling snowball; from the night of the fire to thiseighteenth day of August; there was one thing of which Robert Carlton had never been suspected by those who had loved or feared him for a year and a half.
Naturally the excitement penetrated to the hall, where Sir Wilton kept dinner waiting, but, very properly, did not refer to the unsavoury subject at that meal. He was, however, in singularly high spirits, and drank a vast amount of excellent champagne; yet his own wife left the table in ignorance of what had happened. Now Lady Gleed was a very particular person, a great stickler for restraint, her own being something strenuous and exotic. She seldom spoke of ordinary things above a whisper, and would have dealt with the village scandal in dumb show if she could. To her daughter she had genuinely preferred never to mention it at all.
But Lydia Gleed—it should have been Languish—was a more modern type. She was frankly interested in the affair. It had given quite a zest to what would otherwise have been an insufferably dull month for Lydia. The girl had the makings of a perfect woman of society, and yet the end of her second season found her still an unknown distance from the first step to the realisation of that ideal. Proposals she had received, but none such as an heiress of her calibre was entitled to expect. She had actually been engaged to an adventurer; but that had only retarded matters.
There may have been purer causes. Feeble and inanimate in her every-day life, and constitutionally bored by the familiar, Miss Gleed kept her best sidefor those whom she knew least; could chatter to acquaintances, the newer the better; was in her element at parties, and out of it at home. Even in her element, however, Lydia never forgot to conceal as much of her appreciation as possible, and would dance angelically with the corners of her mouth turned down, and take like medicine the wine which really did make glad her heart. This August she was feeling particularlyblaséeand dissatisfied; and the romantic downfall of the rector—whose sermons had kept her awake—was a French novel without the trouble of reading it or the risk of confiscation. To-night, therefore, it was Lydia who invited Gwynneth to play, and pressed the invitation with a compliment; it was her commoner practice to snub the much younger girl. And it was Lydia who drew her chair close to that of Lady Gleed, and began the whispering, to which Gwynneth was made to shut her ears with all ten fingers. Yet for once Lady Gleed was frankly interested herself.
"But whathashe done?"
The music had stopped. They had not noticed it. The ungrown girl was standing in the middle of the room. She was dressed in white, and her face looked as white in the candle-light, but her eyes and hair the darker and more brilliant by contrast. And the eyes were great with a pity and a pain which were at least not less than the natural curiosity of a healthy child.
"Mind your own business," said Lydia, bluntly.
But even as she spoke the door opened.
"What's this? What's this?" cried Sir Wilton,who was beaming, and good-naturedly concerned to see the tears starting to his brother's child's eyes. "Whose business have you been minding, little woman?"
"It was about Mr. Carlton," the child said with a sob. "I hear everybody saying nothing's bad enough for him—nothing—and I thought he was so good! I only asked what he had done. I won't again. Please—please let me go!"
"In an instant," said Sir Wilton, detaining her with familiarity. "You mustn't be a little goose."
"Let her go, Wilton," whispered his wife.
"Not till I've told her what Mr. Carlton has done!"
And Sir Wilton Gleed beamed more than ever upon the consternation of his ladies.
"But, Wilton——"
Lady Gleed had risen, and was even forgetting to whisper. Lydia merely looked unusually wide-awake, and prettier for once than the child under the chandelier, who was terribly disfigured by her embarrassment and distress.
"If you want to know what Mr. Carlton has done," said Sir Wilton to his niece, "it was he who set fire to the church!"