Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  To call in the world after all! To open his leafy solitude to the British workmen in gangs, to hear their chaff, to smell their tobacco, where he had laboured in quiet and alone through so many, many seasons!

  But it had to come. A tinge of autumn was on the trees. Any Sunday now the open-air service might prove a discomfort and a peril to all; in a few weeks at most it would become impossible. But the people must have their church. They had waited long enough. Therefore any further reluctance in him was little and unworthy, as Carlton saw at once for himself. Yet there was now so much else to do, so many poor folks to see, so many old threads to take up, that for once he temporised. And even as he temporised, his mind made up, and a competition pending between the masons of the neighbourhood, Sir Wilton Gleed arrived in Long Stow for the shooting.

  Sir Wilton arrived with a frown. It deepened but little at what he heard. He was prepared for everything; and about Gwynneth he knew. She had left his house, she had gone her own way, he washed his hands of her, and only congratulated Sidney on his escape. That chapter was closed. It was the older matter that harassed Sir Wilton Gleed.

  So that devil had reinstated himself after all! The fact might not be finally accomplished; it was none the less inevitable, imminent. And Sir Wilton had long been prepared for it; for the last two years he had been unable to move without hearing the name he abhorred; it dogged him in town, it followed him to Scotland, it awaited him in every hole and corner of the Continent. Once he had been fond of speaking of his property; but in two senses it was hard to do this without giving the place a name. Sir Wilton was learning to deny himself the boast altogether.

  Long Stow? Could there be two Long Stows? Then that must be the place where the parson was building up his church. What a romance! And what a man! Oh, no doubt he was a very dreadful person also; but there, in any case, was a Man.

  Sir Wilton could not deny it; and by degrees he wearied of insisting upon the deplorable side of the man’s character. The task was ungrateful; it put himself in an ungenerous light, which was the harder upon one who was by no means ill-natured in grain. Gradually he took to admitting his adversary’s good points; even admitted them to himself; but that did not remove the chronic irritation of infallible defeat. And defeated Sir Wilton already was, with the people flocking to that man again, and doubtless willing to help him finish his church. His own parishioners had forgiven him — and well they might, said Sir Wilton’s friends in every country-house. Besides, the suspended parson was a figure of the past; the law was done with him; he was absolutely free to begin afresh. Henceforth the vindictiveness of the individual must recoil deservedly upon the individual’s head.

  Sir Wilton saw all this before his actual return; and he realised the madness of either urging or attempting to coerce his tenantry to harden their hearts, a second time, against one who had committed no second sin. If he failed it would destroy his influence in the neighbourhood; even if he succeeded it would damage his popularity elsewhere. And a chat with the schoolmaster, a call upon one or two of the neighbouring clergy, a word with old Marigold in his gig, all served but to convince him finally of these facts.

  Sir Wilton’s mind was made up. He had come back primed with a desperate measure for the last of all. Once it was resolved upon, his spirits rose.

  He told his wife and took her breath away; but a very little reasoning brought the lady round the compass to his view. This was after breakfast on the second day. The same forenoon Sir Wilton went up the village, brisk and rosy, a flower in his coat, and a word for all. Past the Flint House he began to walk slowly, took no notice of a courtesy, swung round suddenly himself, and was knocking at Jasper Musk’s door that minute, still a thought less confident than he had been.

  Musk was in his garden, fast as usual to his chair. Mrs. Musk brought out another chair for Sir Wilton, and drove Georgie indoors on her way back. Sir Wilton watched the child out of sight, and then favoured Jasper with his peculiarly fixed stare. There was unusual meaning in it this morning.

  “So the world has forgiven him,” said Sir Wilton Gleed.

  Musk stared in his turn, his great face glowing with contempt. “Have you?” said he at last.

  “Not yet,” replied Sir Wilton, a shade more pink in the face. He had meant to lead up to his intention. He was taken aback.

  “But you mean to, do you?” pursued Musk, pressing his point in no respectful tone: in all their relations this one had never pandered to the other.

  “I don’t say that, either,” replied Sir Wilton, in studied tones.

  “Then what do you say?”

  “Less than anybody else, a good deal less,” declared the squire. “I — I don’t quite understand your tone, Musk, I must say; but I can well understand your position in this matter. It is unique, of course. So is mine, in a sense. But I must beg of you not to jump to conclusions. I am the last person to make a hero of the man I did my best to kick out of the parish five years ago; next to yourself, no one has reason to love the fellow less. I thought it a public scandal that he should be empowered to stay here against all our wills. My opinion of that whole black matter is absolutely and totally unchanged. But I do confess to you, Musk, that this last year or two have somewhat modified my opinion of the man himself.”

  Musk’s eyes had never dropped or lifted from his visitor’s face. Their expression was inscrutable. The iron cast of that massive countenance was the only key to the workings of the mind within: the lines seemed subtly emphasised, as in the faces of the dead. And his gigantic body was the same; only the eyes seemed alive; and they were as still as the rest of him.

  “What if I’ve modified mine?”

  Sir Wilton looked up quickly; for the habitual starer had been for once outstared. “Do you mean that you have?” cried he.

  “I don’t say as I have or I haven’t. But that’s a man, Sir Wilton, and I won’t deny it.”

  “Exactly what everybody is saying. I say no more myself.”

  “And I won’t say no less . . . Suppose you was to patch it up with him, Sir Wilton?”

  “I should help him finish his church.”

  Musk sat silent for some time. His eyes seemed smaller. But they had not moved.

  “That would be a wonderful good action on your part, Sir Wilton,” he said at last.

  “Not at all, Musk. I should be doing it for the people, not for Mr. Carlton.”

  Another pause.

  “And yet, Sir Wilton, in a manner o’ speaking, you might say as he deserved it, too?”

  Sir Wilton was quite himself again — a gentleman in keeping with the flower in his coat.

  “I certainly never expected to hear you say so, Musk,” said he frankly; “though it’s what I’ve sometimes thought myself.”

  “I haven’t said as I forgave him, have I?”

  “No, no, Musk, you haven’t; it is not in human nature that you could.”

  It was a strange tongue that had spoken in the massive head; there was no forgiveness in that voice. Yet in the next breath the note of hate was hushed as suddenly as it had been struck.

  “That may be in human natur’,” said Musk, “but that ain’t in mine. I’m not a religious man, Sir Wilton. That may be the reason. But I do have enough respect for religion to wish to see that church up again before I die.”

  “I consider it very generous of you to say so, Musk,” declared the other, with enthusiasm.

  “But I do say it, Sir Wilton, and I never said a truer word.”

  “So I hear; and that decides me!” cried Sir Wilton, jumping up. “I really had decided — for the sake of the parish — and was actually on my way to the church to take the whole job over. A gang of competent workmen could polish it off in a couple of months; and it ought to be polished off. But it’s really wonderful what he has done!”

  “I don’t deny it,” said Musk; and waited for the squire to recover his point, his own set face unchanged.

  “Yes,” resumed Sir Wilton, suddenly, “I was on my
way up to make him that proposal just now; but as I passed your door I could not resist coming in. I thought I would like to tell you what I intended to do, and to give you my reasons for doing it.”

  “There was no need to do that,” said Musk, with an upward movement of the lips, hardly to be called a smile; for once also his great head moved slowly from side to side.

  “And now I shall be going on,” announced Sir Wilton, who did not like this look, and was now less inclined to suffer disrespect.

  “Hold on a bit, Sir Wilton. I’m glued tight to this here chair by my old enemy; that seem to get worse and worse, and I’m jealous I shall soon set foot to the ground for the last time. That take me ten minutes to mount upstairs to bed. I haven’t been further’n this here lawn these twelve months. So I can’t come and see you, Sir Wilton; and I should like another word or two now we’re on the subject. You see, he was here a good bit when the boy was bad, and even I don’t feel all I did about him, though forgive him I never shall on earth. At the same time I’d like to see him have his church. That’d want consecrating again, sir, I suppose?”

  “I suppose it would.”

  “Would the bishop do it, think you?”

  “Like a shot,” said Sir Wilton, a touch of pique in his tone. “I had some correspondence with him years ago about this matter, and I was surprised at the view the bishop took. He will come, if he is alive.”

  Jasper had taken his eyes from Sir Wilton’s face at last; they were resting on the level sunlit land beyond the river. “That’ll be a great day for Long Stow,” he murmured almost to himself; and suddenly his lips came tight together at the corners.

  “It should be a very interesting ceremony,” said Sir Wilton, foreseeing his part in it. He had forgiven his enemy, the scandalous clergyman who had lived down a scandal and a tragedy; it was Sir Wilton who had helped him to live them down. Not at first; then he had been adamant; but his justice in the beginning was only equalled by his generosity in the end, when the man had proved his manhood, and the sinner had atoned for his sin, so far as atonement was possible in this world. That poor pertinacious devil had been five years running up the walls. Sir Wilton Gleed had thrown his money and his influence into the scale, and finished the whole thing in less than five months. They were saying all this at the opening ceremony; everybody was there. His magnanimity was being talked of in the same breath with the parson’s pluck. The bishop was his guest.

  “A very interesting ceremony,” repeated Sir Wilton. “We could have it at Christmas, if not before.”

  “That won’t see me,” said Jasper Musk. “I couldn’t get, even if I wanted to. But sciatica that don’t kill, and I hope to live to see the day.” And again the corners of his mouth were much compressed.

  “Yet you think you can never forgive him?”

  Sir Wilton felt that he could not be the bearer of too much good-will, now that he was about it; but Musk turned his eyes full upon him, and there was a queer hard light in them.

  “I don’t think,” said he. “I know.”

  And so it fell out that in an hour of unusual depression, and of natural hesitation which was yet not natural in Robert Carlton, he looked up suddenly and once more saw his enemy in the sanctuary which would soon be his very own leafy sanctuary no longer. Carlton had come there to meditate and to pray, but not to work. That sort of work was not for him any more. Others must take it up; the time was ripe; only the beginning was hard. And here was Sir Wilton Gleed advancing towards him.

  And Sir Wilton was holding out his hand.

  XXIX

  A HAVEN OF HEARTS

  Slower to decide than most young persons of her independent character, Gwynneth was one of those who are none the less capable of decisive conduct in a definite emergency. She behaved with spirit in the predicament in which her weakness and her strength had combined to place her. She had jilted Sidney; outsiders might not know it; but she had treated him in a way which he and his were never likely to forgive. After that, and that alone, his home could not have been her home any more; but Gwynneth had other and even stronger reasons for determining to leave Long Stow; and there were none why she should not. She had her money. She was of age. She would be a good riddance now. It was her first thought in the garden. The thought hardened to resolve while Sidney, full of bitterness and champagne, was still galling his hired horse back to Cambridge. Gwynneth also was gone within the week.

  It was a chance acquaintance to whom the girl had written in her need. She had met in Leipzig a strangely interesting woman: commanding, mysterious, self-contained. This lady, a Mrs. Molyneux by name, had taken notice of Gwynneth, and, at the close of their short acquaintance, had given her a card inscribed in pencil with the name of St. Hilda’s Hospital, Campden Hill.

  “You have never heard of it,” Mrs. Molyneux had said with a smile; “but I shall be very glad if you will come and see me and my hospital some day when you are in town.”

  Gwynneth had felt honoured, she could scarcely have said why, for she knew no more of this lady than she had seen for herself, which was really very little. But there is a kind of distinction which appeals to the instinct rather than to the conscious perceptions, and Gwynneth had felt both awed and flattered by an invitation which was obviously sincere. She had said that she should love to see the hospital — and had never been near it yet.

  “I don’t know whether you have ever thought of being a nurse,” Mrs. Molyneux had added with Gwynneth’s hand in hers; “but if you ever should — or if ever you want to do something, and don’t know what else to do — I wish you would write to me, and let me be your friend.”

  The second invitation had been given with a wonderfully understanding look — a look which seemed to sift the secrets of Gwynneth’s heart — a look she would not have cared to meet during the late season. She had promised again, however, very gratefully indeed; and it was her second promise that Gwynneth eventually kept.

  “I had such a strong feeling about you,” Mrs. Molyneux wrote by return. “I knew that I should hear from you sooner or later . . . I like your frankness in saying that it is no fine impulse, or love of nursing for its own sake, that makes you wish to come. I do not seek to know what it is. Even if you are no nurse you can play the organ in our little chapel as it has not been played yet; and that would be very much to me. So come any day and make your home with us at least for a time.” The writer contrived to refer to herself as “Reverend Mother,” in emphatic capitals, and her letter was signed “Constance Molyneux, Mother in God.”

  It happened that Gwynneth had spoken of Mrs. Molyneux to her aunt, who knew a good name when she heard it, and had often asked Gwynneth if she was not going to pay that call on Campden Hill; thus her recklessness in casting herself among strangers was more apparent than real, and little likely to aggravate her prime offence against kith and kin. Nor did it; nevertheless it was a plunge into all but unknown waters. The hospital was a private one, and Mrs. Molyneux both spoke and wrote of it as her own. It was a cancer hospital for women, evidently run upon religious lines, and those not easy to define, since Gwynneth happened to know that the Reverend Mother was not a Roman Catholic. And these things were all she did know when her hansom drew up before a red-brick building with ecclesiastical windows, and a cross over the door, in a leafy road not five minutes’ climb from Kensington High Street.

  Gwynneth pulled the wrought-iron bell-handle, and next moment caught her breath. The door had been opened by a portress in austere but becoming garb, a young girl like herself, and the pretty face between the quaint cap and collar was smiling a sweet greeting to the newcomer. A few worn steps of snowy stone, and a Gothic doorway, with the oak door standing open, showed more girls within against the wainscot; all were pretty; and all wore blue serge, with white aprons and long cambric cuffs, square bib-collars trimmed with lace, and Normandy caps with streamers of fine lawn. Gwynneth blushed for her own conventional attire, as she was ushered through this hall, past a dispensary where another of t
he uniformed girls was busy among the bottles, and so into the presence of the Reverend Mother.

  Mrs. Molyneux, the well-dressed woman of the world whom Gwynneth had known in Leipzig, was a lost identity in a habit which marked her sway only by its supreme severity; an order of St. John of Jerusalem hung upon her bosom, and a crucifix dangled at her side. Her hands were hidden beneath some short and shapeless garment reaching to the waist, but one emerged for a moment to greet Gwynneth warmly. “Do you feel as if you had come into a convent?” the Reverend Mother asked, a gentle humour in her lowered voice. It was exactly what Gwynneth did feel, and the sensation was by no means displeasing to her. The Mother herself then showed Gwynneth over the establishment, which was indeed a singular amalgam of the hospital and the nunnery. The dining-room was termed the “refectory”; a cross hung over every bed in the wards upstairs, and in the nurses’ cubicles below the wards. Cap and apron, bib-collar and cuffs, were laid out on Gwynneth’s bed, and these she found herself expected to don then and there. The Mother returned when she was ready, and showed her the chapel last of all. It was a tiny chapel, but as beautiful as antique carving, rich embroidery, much stained glass, and hanging lights could make it. In her innocence Gwynneth wondered why these lights were burning while the summer sun, shining through the stained glass, filled the chapel with vivid beams of purple and red. She was even puzzled by the unmistakable odour of recent incense; but she said, with truth, that the chapel delighted her.

  “I knew it would,” the Mother whispered with her penetrating smile.

  “How could you know?” Gwynneth asked, smiling also, because she had never touched on religion with Mrs. Molyneux.

  “I saw you once in the English church,” the Mother said. “It was before I knew you; and yet, you see, I did know you, even then!”