Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “About that very story of the empty rectory and the light in the church,” he began, with Fuller— “about that perfectly true story,” he added, wilfully, “which you told us yesterday. Did you tell it to anybody at the time?”

  “Only Tom Ivey.”

  “Why only to him?”

  “He asked me to keep that to myself.”

  “And did you?”

  “I did my best, sir, but that slipped out one day when I was talking to — —”

  “Never mind his or her name. You did your best to keep the matter to yourself, but it slipped out one day in conversation. Now when did you last tell that true story, not counting yesterday, as fully and particularly as you told it here in court? Think. I want the exact date of the very last occasion.”

  “That was last Friday, sir — to-day’s the 22nd — that would be the 18th of August.”

  “Last Friday, the 18th of August; a fatal day to me!” said Robert Carlton. “Thank you. That is all I want from you.”

  The justices put no question. The clerk did not re-examine. The witness was ordered to stand down. Then followed a short but heavy silence, pregnant with speculation as to the drift of all these questions and the object of so much unexplained insistence upon a date. It meant something. What could it mean? Carlton stood upright in the dock, calm, confident, inscrutable; it seemed a great many moments before the silence was broken by the formal tones of the clerk.

  “Do you call any witness for the defence?” he asked.

  Carlton dropped his eyes into the well of the court, and they fell upon a pair that were fastened upon his face with the glitter of fixed bayonets.

  “Yes,” said he. “I wish you to call Sir Wilton Gleed.”

  Quietly though distinctly spoken, the name clapped like thunder on the court. Amazement fell on all alike, for the issue between these two had been the common theme for days. Popular sympathy had rightly sided with morality, and its champion had lost nothing by his tactful magnanimity in refraining from sitting upon the bench; that he should be put in the box instead, and by his shameless adversary, was an audacity as hard to credit as to understand. There was a moment’s hush, then a minute’s buzz, to which the justices themselves contributed. Wilders muttered that the man was mad; his colleague on the right confessed himself nonplussed; his colleague on the left dropped his shaven chin upon his gold horseshoe, and his shoulders shook with joy. Meanwhile Sir Wilton had forced a grin and found his voice.

  “You want me in the box, do you?”

  “I do.”

  “Very well; you shall have me.”

  And he was sworn, still grinning, with an odd mixture of malevolence and deprecation for those who ran to read. “I meant to keep out of this,” the florid face said; “but now I’m in it — well, you’ll see! It’s the fellow’s own fault; his blood” etc., etc. But this was not what Sir Wilton was saying in his heart.

  Carlton began at the beginning.

  “You are the patron of the living of Long Stow, are you not?”

  “You know I am.”

  “I want the bench to have it from you; kindly answer my question.”

  “I am the patron of the living of Long Stow,” said Sir Wilton, with mock resignation.

  “In the year 1880 did you, of your own free will and accord, present that living to me?”

  “Yes, and I’ve repented it ever since!”

  There was a sympathetic murmur at the back of the court. It was immediately checked. Every face was thrust forward, every ear strained, every eye absorbed between the prisoner in the dock and the witness in the box. It was no longer the uphill fight of one against many; it was single combat between man and man, and the electricity of single combat charged the air.

  “You have repented it more than ever of late?” asked Carlton in steady tones. The skin upon his forehead seemed stretched with pain; the veins showed blue and swollen; but the many judged him from his voice alone.

  “Naturally,” sneered Sir Wilton.

  “So much so that you were resolved I should resign?”

  “I hoped you would have the decency to do so.”

  “Did you come to the rectory on the fifth of this month, and tell me it was my first duty to resign the living?”

  “I don’t remember the date.”

  “Was it the Saturday before Bank Holiday?”

  “I daresay. Yes, it must have been. I didn’t expect to find you there. I went to see the wreck and ruin of your home and church, not you.”

  “But you did come, and you did see me, and you did tell me it was my first duty to resign my living?”

  “Certainly I did.”

  “Do you remember your words?”

  “Some of them.”

  Carlton looked at his pocket-book — at a note made overnight.

  “Do you remember making use of the following expressions: ‘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 may have said something of the kind,” said the witness, with assumed indifference.

  “Did you, or did you not?” cried Carlton, slapping his hand on the rail of the dock; the voice, the look, the gesture were familiar to many present who had heard him preach; and thrilled them for all their new knowledge of the preacher.

  “Really I can’t recall my exact words. I rather fancied they were stronger.”

  Some one laughed at this, and the witness managed to recapture his grin; but his demeanour was unconvincing.

  “I am not talking about their strength,” said Carlton. “Will you swear that you did not say, ‘I’ll have you out of this! I’ll hound you out of it’?”

  “No, I will not.”

  “I thank you,” said Carlton; and his ringing voice fell at a word to the pitch of perfect courtesy. He ticked off the note in his pocket-book, and the court breathed again; but its worthy president did more: he had forgotten his position for several minutes, and he hastened to reassert it with the first observation that entered his head.

  “I don’t see the point of this examination,” said Canon Wilders.

  “You will presently.”

  “If I don’t I shall put a stop to it!”

  Carlton raised his eyes from his notes, but not to the bench; they were only for the witness now.

  “Do you remember when and where we met again?”

  “You had the insolence to call at my house.”

  “Was it on a Monday morning, the first after the Bank Holiday?”

  “I suppose it was.”

  “I do not ask you to recall your exact words on that occasion. I simply ask you to inform the bench whether I did, or did not, offer to resign the living then and there — on a certain condition.”

  “Yes; you did,” said Sir Wilton, doggedly. He was very red in the face.

  Carlton could not resist a moment’s enjoyment of his discomfiture: it heightened the pleasure of letting him off.

  “And did you decline?” he said at length.

  “Stop a moment,” said the chairman. “What was this condition, Sir Wilton?”

  “Am I obliged to give it?”

  “Oh, if you think it inexpedient — —”

  “I think it unnecessary,” said the witness, emphatically. “I think it has nothing whatever to do with the case.”

  “In that case, Sir Wilton, we shall be only too happy not to press the point.”

  Carlton had a great mind to press it himself. He had invited his enemy to build the church out of his own pocket. The invitation had been declined. Would it also be denied? Carlton was curious to see; but he overcame his curiosity. It would not strengthen his defence, and to mere revenge he must not stoop. So one temptation was resisted, and one advantage thrown away, even in the final phase of the long duel between these good fighters. But the other saw the struggle, and felt as he had done when Carlton had returned him his stick in the ruins of the church.

  “And did you decline?” repeated Carl
ton, in identically the same voice as before.

  “I did.”

  “Did I then point out to you that I was not only entitled, but might be compelled, to keep my chancel, at any rate, ‘in good and substantial repair, restoring and rebuilding when necessary’? I quote the Act, your worships, as I quoted it then. Do you remember, Sir Wilton?”

  “I do.”

  “I made the point as plain as I have made it now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you say to that?”

  The sudden change in the style of the question was glossed over by the single artifice which Robert Carlton permitted himself during the conduct of his case: instead of ringing triumphant, his voice dropped as though he feared the answer. Sir Wilton fell into the trap.

  “I said, ‘If that’s the law I’ll see you keep it. Go and build your church! Where there’s a law there will be a penalty; go build your church or I’ll enforce it.’”

  “Which did you expect to enforce — the penalty or the law?”

  “I didn’t mind which,” declared the witness, after hesitation; and his indifference was less successfully assumed than before.

  “Oh!” said Carlton; “so you didn’t mind my building the church after all?”

  Sir Wilton appealed wildly to the Bench.

  “Am I to be browbeaten and insulted, by a convicted libertine and evil liver, without one word of protest or reproof?”

  The chairman coloured with confusion and indecision.

  “I am afraid that you must answer his question, Sir Wilton,” said Mr. Preston, mildly.

  “I share your opinion,” said Rhadamanthus, in a tone that went further than the words.

  The chairman threw up his chin with an air, and fixed the accused with his sternest glance.

  “Pray what are you endeavouring to establish by this round-about and impertinent examination?”

  “In plain language?” asked Robert Carlton.

  “The plainer the better.”

  “Then I am endeavouring to establish — and I will establish, either here or at the assizes — the fact that that man there” — pointing to Sir Wilton Gleed— “has tried by fair means and by foul to rob me of a benefice which is still mine in more than name. And I will further establish, either here or at the higher court, if you like to send me there, the patent and the blatant fact that this very charge is the last and the foulest means by which that man has attempted to get rid of me!”

  His clear voice thundered through the little court; his fine eye flashed with as fine a scorn. But it was neither look nor tone that made the silence when he ceased. It was the first unrestrained expression of a personality incomparably stronger than any other there present; it was the first just and unanimous — if unconscious — appreciation of that personality in that place. There was a round clock that ticked many times and noisily before the presiding magistrate broke the spell.

  “A-bom-in-able language!” cried he in the separate syllables of his most important moments. “You deserve to answer for your words alone in the other court of which you speak!”

  “I intend to prove them in this one,” retorted Carlton, “if you give me fair play.”

  “Oh, by all means let him have fair play!” exclaimed the witness, in high tones that trembled. “I can take care of myself; don’t study me. Let him say what he likes, and let those who know his character and mine judge between him and me.”

  Carlton looked at the quivering lip between the cropped whiskers, and his jaws snapped on a smile as he returned to his pocket-book. But the whole of his examination of Sir Wilton Gleed does not call for elaborate report: its weakness and its strength will be recognised with equal readiness. With a stronger spirit on the bench, or a weaker spirit in the dock, or even a capable solicitor to prosecute for the police, much of it had never been; as the play was cast it was the accused clergyman who presided over that country court for the longest hour in his enemy’s life; nor, when he had won his ascendancy, did he use his power as unsparingly as in the winning of it. The witness was allowed to come out of the corner into which he had been driven before his appeal to the bench; he had contradicted himself, and the contradiction was left to tell its own tale without being pressed home. On the other hand, some startling admissions were obtained in regard to the responsibility with which the witness had finally sought to saddle the accused; he had bade him build the church because he believed Carlton would find it an impossible task; he recklessly admitted it, with a pale bravado that imposed upon few people in court, and on but one upon the bench.

  “You were still determined to get rid of me,” said Carlton, “one way or another?”

  “I was.”

  “And this struck you as another way?”

  “It did — at the moment.”

  “Ah,” murmured the chairman, “we are all subject to the impulse of the moment!”

  Carlton put this point aside.

  “And why did you think that I should find it an impossible task to rebuild the church?”

  “I thought you would find a difficulty in getting local men to work for you.”

  “Your grounds for thinking that?”

  “I considered your reputation in the district.”

  “Any other reason?”

  “One or two builders and masons had spoken to me on the subject.”

  Carlton found a new place in his pocket-book, and read out a list of nine names.

  “Were any of these local men among the number?”

  “Yes.”

  “All of them?”

  “Ye — es.”

  “What! You admit having discussed me, during the present month, and since I first spoke to you about rebuilding the church, with these nine local builders or stonemasons?”

  “I don’t deny it,” said Sir Wilton, stoutly.

  “And do you know of any builder or stonemason in the neighbourhood with whom you have not discussed me?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “That’s quite enough,” said Carlton. “I shall not ask you what you said. I do not purpose calling these men, at this court; time enough for that at the assizes.” And without further comment he took the witness through one or two details of their last interview in the ruins; by no means all; indeed, the date was the point most insisted upon.

  “And so the very next day was last Friday, the 18th of August?” concluded Carlton with apparent levity.

  The witness refused to answer, appealed to the bench, and secured another reprimand for the accused.

  “I harp upon that date,” said Carlton, “because, as I have already remarked, it seems to have been a fatal date for me. It has arisen so many times in the course of this case! This, however, is not the precise moment for enumerating those occasions; let us first finish with each other. Did you, Sir Wilton Gleed, on the eighteenth day of this present month, have separate or collective conversation with the witnesses Busby, Fuller, and Ivey?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Gleed, hot, white, and glaring.

  “Separate or collective? Did you speak to them one at a time or all together?”

  “Both, if you like!” cried the witness, wildly. “I can’t remember. Better say both!”

  “You interviewed these witnesses, separately and collectively, on the very day that the other witness, Frost, laid an information against me before yourself as Justice of the Peace?”

  “I said it was that day. You ask the same question again and again!”

  The man was fuming, trembling, near to tears or curses of mortification and blind rage.

  “I have but two more questions to ask you, and I am done,” rejoined Carlton. “Did the witness Fuller tell you of the light in the church, and the witness Ivey of what he saw later on, during these conversations of the fatal eighteenth?”

  “They did.”

  “And was this the first you had heard of those experiences?”

  “It was.”

  “That is my last question, Sir Wilton Gleed.”r />
  The justices put none. Gleed glared at them as he left the box.

  “I think,” said he, “that this is the most scandalous incident — most disgraceful thing I ever heard of in my life!”

  “I quite agree with you,” whispered Wilders.

  “And I also,” said Mr. Preston, in a different tone.

  But no word fell from Rhadamanthus. His small eyes did not leave Carlton’s face for above one second in the sixty. But their expression was inscrutable.

  “May I now claim the indulgence of the court for a very few minutes?” asked the clergyman in the dock.

  The clergymen on the bench looked at the clock and at each other. It was already past the hour for luncheon.

  “Better go on,” urged Preston, “and get it over.”

  “If you mean what you say,” said Wilders to the accused, “we will hear you now; if you proceed to treat us to a mere display of words, I shall adjourn the court. Meanwhile it is my duty to remind you that whatever you say will be taken down in writing, and may be given in evidence against you upon your trial.”

  “In the event of my committal,” returned Robert Carlton, “I am prepared to stand or fall by every word that I have uttered or may utter now; and I shall not detain you long. I am well aware how I have trespassed already upon the time of this court, but I will waste none upon vain or insincere apology. I came here to answer to a very terrible charge; it was and it is my duty to do so as fully and as emphatically as I possibly can. Yet I have little to add to the evidence before you; a comment or two, and I am done.

  “It seems to me that the witnesses called by the police have between them produced but three points of any weight against me, or worthy of the serious consideration of this or any other court of law. I will take these three points in their proper order, and will give my answer to each in the fewest possible words in which I can express my meaning to your worships.

  “Arthur Busby has sworn that on the morning before the fire I ordered him to fill the lamps with paraffin, though it was extremely unlikely that any artificial light would be required in church next evening. But on the man’s own showing he was wearying and distressing me beyond measure at the time — a more terrible time than this!” cried Carlton from his heart; and was brought to pause, not for effect (though the effect was marked) but by the very suddenness of his emotion. “And on the man’s own showing,” he continued in a lower key, “he had once omitted this important duty of filling the lamps, and I was ‘for ever at him’ on the subject. What more natural than to tell him to go away and fill his lamps, as one had told him a dozen times before, but this time without thinking and simply to get rid of the man? On the other hand, if the paraffin had been wanted for the felonious purpose suggested, could anything be more incriminating and incredible than the suggested method of obtaining it? I submit these two questions, with the highly important point involved, to the consideration of the bench; and I do so with some confidence.