“Start you, Tom?”
“Yes, sir, I mean to work for you now. I’d like to see the man who’ll stop me! You’ve shown ‘em all the man you are; now that’s my turn.”
And the broad face beamed and darkened with alternate enthusiasm and defiance. Carlton beheld it with parted lips and startled eye; and so they stood through a long silence, till Carlton sat down with a smile. It was a singularly gentle smile, as he leant back in his worn old chair, and the lamplight fell upon his face.
“After all these months,” he murmured; “after all these months!”
“I fare to hide my face when I count ‘em up,” admitted Ivey, bitterly. “But what was the good of comun when I couldn’t come for good? And how could I in poor mother’s time? It’d have meant — there’s no sayun what that wouldn’t have meant.”
“You mean as regards Sir Wilton?”
“I do, Mr. Carlton.”
“He will have been a good friend to you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Did those repairs, did he?”
“Yes,” sighed Ivey, “he was better than his word about them; you would hardly know the place now. It made a lot of difference to mother. And I had the job.”
“Oh!”
“He’s kept me busy, I must say. I’ve never wanted work.”
“Until now, I suppose?”
“To tell you the truth, sir, I’m at work for him still.”
“For Sir Wilton Gleed?”
“Yes — odd jobs about the estate.”
“Then my good fellow, what do you mean by offering yourself to me?”
“Mean?” exclaimed Ivey, his black determination leaping into flame. “I mean as I’ve made up my mind to give him the go-by for you. I’d have done that long ago if it hadn’t been for mother; but better late than never. You’ve shown ‘em the man you are, and now that’s my turn. Look at what you’ve done with your own two hands — there’ll be other two from to-morrow! You shan’t work yourself right to death before my eyes. Why, your hair’s white with it already!”
Carlton wheeled further from the lamp.
“Not white,” he murmured.
“But that is, sir. When did you look in a glass?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then do you look to-morrow. That’s white as snow. And your beard’s grey.”
“It’s certainly too long,” said Carlton, covering half with his hand.
“And your hand — your hand!”
It was scarred and horny as the mason’s own. Carlton removed it from the light, but said nothing.
“That’s done its last day’s work alone,” cried Tom. “I start with you to-morrow, whether you want me or not. I’ll show ‘em! I’ll show ‘em!”
And he stood nodding savagely to himself.
“My dear fellow, you can’t behave like that.”
The words fell softly after a long silence.
“Why can’t I?”
Carlton gave innumerable reasons.
“It would put us both in the wrong,” was the last. “Go on working for Sir Wilton — at any rate for another year. You owe it to him, Tom. And don’t you fret about me; I am a happier man than I ever deserved to be again. Last winter it was different; but God has shown me infinite mercy and compassion. And now He has sent you to me, as a sign that even man may forgive me in the end! That is enough for me, Tom. You cannot do more for me than you have done to-night. But your duty you must do, by God’s help, as long as it is as clear as it is now. Don’t bother your head about me! I am getting into the knack. Perhaps by the time I come to the roof — if I ever do — the want of a church may induce others to help me finish mine. Then, if you like, you shall come back; but I won’t have you made an outcast on my account; one is enough.”
There were no more visits from Tom Ivey. This one came to the ears of Sir Wilton; and that diplomatist instead of playing into the enemy’s hands by discharging his man, capped all his kindness to the mason by getting him the offer of an irresistible berth in that London district for which he himself sat. Thus Sir Wilton removed a wavering ally, and at the same time renewed the lease of his allegiance.
Carlton heard of it some months later, when there was another funeral, and the Lakenhall curate came in again to make the entry. This curate was a gentleman. He had a good heart and better tact. He not only conversed with Carlton as with the perfectly normal clergyman, in perfectly normal circumstances, but he would prolong these conversations as far as he deemed possible without exciting a suspicion of the profound pity which inspired him. He would bring bits of local gossip, or the latest national event; once he let fall that Sidney Gleed was up at Cambridge, and said to stand a chance of “coxing the eight,” while Lydia was now a Mrs. Goldstein, the mistress of a splendid mansion in Holland Park, and another up the Thames. It was from the same source that Carlton obtained belated news of George Mellis, who had come through two campaigns without a scratch, yet never been back to play the hero on his native heath. In a word this curate, who was a very young and rather commonplace fellow, came soon to stand for the outside world, the world of newspapers and talk, to Robert Carlton, who liked him none the less because his older eye saw through the artless arts with which the lad sought to mask his charity.
The visitations of this curate, who also conducted the one weekly service in the village school, was a little arrangement between those fast friends, Sir Wilton Gleed and Canon Wilders, who would have been interested to learn the way in which their delegate improved the rare occasion of a funeral. For marriages and baptisms the Long Stow folk had taken to walking across the heath to Linkworth.
Early in the second year there came a visitor whom Robert Carlton knew at a glance, though he had never before seen him in the flesh. This was a person with the appearance of a rather dissipated sporting man, who tooled tandem through the village, and pulled up at the ruins in broad daylight. The thing was thus a scandal from the first moment of its occurrence, and the cockaded groom was beset by horrified rustics before his master’s red neck had disappeared among the low and ragged walls.
Carlton had withdrawn into the invisible seclusion of the west end, where he was nervously scraping at the nearest stone when the visitor appeared, only to stop short with a whistle.
“I thought this was the church the parson was building with his own hands?”
“So it is, my lord.”
“And you are what he calls his own hands!”
“No, I am he.”
The visitor stared.
“You the parson?”
“I know I don’t look like one,” admitted Carlton, glancing from his ruined hands to the shabby clothes in which he worked; “nor can I fairly consider myself one at present. Yet I am still the only rector of this parish, and it was I who wrote to your lordship about the stone. Yours are the only quarries in this part of the country. The stone I am now using came from them. But it is just finished, and unless you will let me have some more I may have to stop; otherwise I believe that I could build up to the roof, in time, without assistance.”
“And why should you?”
“My church was burnt down through my own — fault.”
“I know all about that,” said his lordship. “What I ask is, why should you insist upon building it up single-handed?”
“I didn’t insist originally,” sighed Carlton. “It is a very long story.”
The earl regarded him with a pair of very penetrating little eyes; he was an ugly man with an ugly reputation, but one of those who take as little trouble to conceal their worst characteristics as to display their best.
“To be quite frank with you,” said he, “I happen to know something of your story; and I consider it a jolly sight more discreditable to others than to you. That’s my opinion, and I don’t care who knows it. So you are really and literally doing this thing with your own two hands?”
“Literally — as yet.”
“And who looks after you?”
“Oh,
no one comes near me; but I am bound to say that I have learnt to look pretty well after myself. I have found it absolutely necessary for my work.”
“Cookin’ for yourself, and all that sort of thing?”
“Cooking and even killing when necessary.”
“Is the boycott as wide and as bad as all that?”
“It is no worse than I deserve.”
The visitor, looking sharply to see whether this was cant, was convinced of its sincerity at a glance, though he loudly disagreed with the opinion.
“I call it a jolly shame,” said he; “but I’m not going to hurt your feelings by expressing mine. I’m the last man to rake up the past. But it would be a different thing if you had really fired the church; that was the last iniquity, charging you with that! How do I know you didn’t? There was a young friend of mine on the bench, and I had it from him as a fact, with a jolly lot more besides. Now show me what you’ve done before I go.”
This did not take a minute; there was so little to show for the first long year and more of scraping, re-pointing, or rebuilding from the ground. Save at the end where they had stood talking, there was scarcely a wall that reached to their shoulders, and their tour of inspection was closely followed from the road. It was conducted with few words on either side, though the noble Earl muttered several which would not have been muttered in other company. In the end he made a startling undertaking. He would not only send as much more stone as was required, but neither the stuff nor its delivery should cost Mr. Carlton a penny.
Carlton turned a deeper bronze, but begged as a favour to be allowed to pay. The new church was his debt to the parish. It was the one debt that he would pay. The uttermost farthing and the least last stone were to have come out of his own pocket. That had been his undertaking; it was still his heart’s ambition; but as such he saw its unworthy side; and would place himself in his lordship’s hands, sooner than be swayed by false pride in such a matter.
“Then you shall pay through the nose!” the other promised him; “and I’m damned if I don’t think all the more of you. I beg your pardon. I was trying not to swear. But I never could stand parsons, and I suppose it’ll shock you when I tell you straight that you’re the best I’ve struck! You’re a man, you are, and I take off my hat to you.”
He did so openly before the wide eyes and wider mouths of those watching from the road; and so ended an incident which Sir Wilton Gleed described as one of the most scandalous in all his experience. “Birds of a feather,” was, however, his ready and untiring comment; and the saying went from door to door, as “not guilty but don’t do it again,” had gone before it; for there is nothing like a timeworn saying to crystallise a widespread sentiment.
This one did not come to Robert Carlton’s ears, but he was perhaps the first to whom the obvious comment had occurred, and its easy justification did a little damp the glow in which his latest champion had left him. It were better to have won the allegiance of a better man. Yet who was he to judge his fellows? He had forfeited the right to criticise another. Let him then be truly and duly thankful; for with each waning year he had more and more occasion. Surely the heart of man was beginning at last to soften towards an erring brother, who repented very bitterly of his sin, and who was doing faithfully the little that he could to undo the least of his sin’s results. Ah, that he could have done more! Ah, that by dying he could bring the dead to life!
He was only a man; he could only suffer in his turn. That he had done, was doing, and was still to do. And he thanked God for it again; so much of the old spirit still endured. Yet was he none the less thankful for every token of pardon or of pity from mere men. He knew that many would justly execrate his name until the end. He knew of one at least who would never forgive him in this life.
This one came on a moonlight night in the spring of this fourth year; came limping into the churchyard, leaning on his great stick, and growling savagely to himself; little suspecting that he had Carlton caught in the ruins, listening, watching, fascinated, from one of those ragged interstices with which even his perseverance and even his ingenuity could scarcely cope. To be exact, it was, or was to be, the mullioned window in the south transept; and as Musk advanced past this angle of the building, the clergyman first leant, then crept, over the sill to watch him.
He stole into the open. Musk had his back turned; his shoulders were very round. Carlton knew well at what grave the other stood staring, and his heart stirred heavily within him. Oh, his wickedness! Oh, his sin! How could there be any forgiveness, in heaven or on earth, for him a clergyman? The poor old man, so old, so bent! He must speak to him; he must throw himself at his feet; so bent, so lame! Oh, that that stick might strike the life out of him then and there!
He was creeping forward; suddenly he stopped. Musk was stooping, moving his stick to and fro across the grave, with a sweeping movement, as of a scythe. What was he doing? Carlton remembered — divined — and his blood ran cold. The snowdrops were out; he had put some on the grave. It had no stone, no name. It was only the tidiest and the greenest mound in all the churchyard. He saw to that. And yet his flowers desecrated it; must be swept to the winds . . .
Musk had come away. He was looking at the south wall where it had obviously been rebuilt. Carlton was skulking in the porch. The high moon fell heavily on the upturned face, covering it with white patches and black wrinkles; and these were working like a seething mass; but for a long time the great frame stood motionless. Then, in a flash, a huge fist flew from the huge shoulder, struck the sandstone a sickening blow, swung round and was shaken at the rectory through the trees until the blood dripped from the mangled knuckles. Carlton was so near that he could both see and hear the heavy drops. He drew further within the porch: he had also seen his enemy’s face.
Carlton had the fair mind and the true eye of the exceptional man. He saw most things immediately as they really were, not as he wished to see them, still less as they affected himself. He saw the moonlit face of Jasper Musk for many a day. It did not haunt him. He could have dismissed the vision from his mind at will; he preferred to consider it calmly in a white light. There was hate undying and invincible. There was something to respect. Carlton compared the petty though persistent enmity of Sir Wilton Gleed with the great dumb hatred of Jasper Musk; the last was inexorable as it was just; the first not wholly one or the other, or Carlton was mistaken in the smaller man. Sir Wilton might be the last man on earth to forgive him, yet in the very end he would follow the world, supposing for a moment that the world ever led. But Jasper Musk would hate the harder as the hate of others dwindled and died.
This conviction cast no new shadow across Carlton’s life, but it brought a new name into his prayers, and put the fine edge on an old anxiety. He had always been anxious about his child, though in the beginning that sense had been overborne by others. Now, however, it was acute enough. What was becoming of the boy? Did he live? Was Musk bringing him up? Was he kindly treated? Yes, yes, they would be kind enough! Carlton trusted his enemy there; but his own position was none the less grieving as he came to realise what it was. He had no position at all towards the child — no rights, no control, no voice, no locus standi whatsoever. Was it better so, or worse? What were they teaching the child? Would he also grow up to deny God, and to execrate the name of his unworthy minister?
Yes, it was a shadow; but no new one; it only fell heavier and stretched further than before. And gradually Carlton became obsessed with the idea that he must do something, take some step, give some earnest of voluntary responsibility, no matter what new humiliation awaited him. But what to do, what step to take, for the best! As life grew a very little easier in other ways that have been shown, this problem came upon Carlton as a fresh complication, and as a poignant reminder of his original wickedness. It was not, however, a problem to be solved out of hand. It required infinite thought, and ceaseless prayer for that right judgment for which Robert Carlton now again looked upward as well as within. But while he thought, and ev
en while he prayed, the walls were still growing under his hands.
And in his work he was strangely and serenely happy; there were no more spasmodic joys and qualms. Enormous difficulties lay between him and the impossible roof. He was at once artist and man enough to be stimulated by these. He drew in chalk, upon the bare floors of his disused rooms, full-size diagrams of all his arches, divided into as many parts as there were to be stones, according to the easy rule set forth in his precious book. Then he collected all the boxes, tin, wood, and cardboard, that he could find upon the premises, and cut these up into numbered patterns coinciding exactly with the diagrams on the floor, thus providing himself with evening occupation for a whole winter, and having all in readiness by the spring. Summer, however, found him still in travail with the mullioned window in the north transept; and the mullion and the tracery he was omitting altogether; the bare arch beat him long enough.
Prolonged solitude may debase a man to the savage or exalt him to the saint; it never leaves him the mere man he was. Robert Carlton was still too human to merit for a moment the hyperbole of saint; nevertheless he developed in his loneliness several of those traits which are less of this world than of a better. His mind dwelt continuously upon holy things; it had ceased altogether to feed upon itself. He had suffered no more sickness, either of body or of soul, such as that which had threatened to destroy both in the first awful winter. The whole man was chastened, purified, simplified and refined, by the consuming fires through which he had passed. His faith had never been stronger than it was now; it had never, never been so near in sheer simplicity to the faith of a little child. In a word, and little as he knew it, this great sinner, proven libertine, suspected incendiary, was now living in the very sight and smile of God; and even His humblest creatures loved and trusted him as never in the days of prosperity and good report; for now he loved them first. Nature, indeed, had not endowed him with that sympathetic insight into inferior life — that genius for herself — which is born in most people who are to have it at all. To Robert Carlton the talent only came in his lonely and dishonoured prime, as the solace of his exile, as a new interest and occupation for his mind, and surely also as a sign of grace returning. There grew upon him in these years the knowledge and love of very little things, trodden under foot or brushed aside until now; a larger passion for nature in all her moods, and all their manifestations; and, above all, the equal peace and independence of him to whom the grasses whisper and the elements sing.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 198
