by Ellen Wood
“But we have had the toast too soon!” called out one of the farmers, making the discovery close after the cheers had subsided. “It wants some minutes yet to midnight, Captain.”
Captain Monk snatched out his watch — worn in those days in what was called the fob-pocket — its chain and bunch of seals at the end hanging down.
“By Jupiter!” he exclaimed. “Hang that butler of mine! He knew the hall clock was too fast, and I told him to put it back. If his memory serves him no better than this, he may ship himself off to a fresh berth. — Hark! Listen!”
It was the church clock striking twelve. The sound reached the dining-room room very clearly, the wind setting that way. “Another bumper,” cried the Captain, and his guests drank it.
“This day twelvemonth I was at a feast in Derbyshire; the bells of a neighbouring church rang in the year with pleasant melody; chimes they were,” remarked a guest, who was a partial stranger. “Your church has no bells, I suppose?”
“It has one; an old ting-tang that calls us to service on a Sunday,” said Mr. Winter.
“I like to hear those midnight chimes, for my part. I like to hear them chime in the new year,” went on the stranger.
“Chimes!” cried out Captain Monk, who was getting very considerably elated, “why should we not have chimes? Mr. West, why don’t we have chimes?”
“Our church does not possess any, sir — as this gentleman has just remarked,” was Mr. West’s answer.
“Egad, but that parson of ours is going to set us all ablaze with his wit!” jerked out the Captain ironically. “I asked, sir, why we should not get a set of chimes; I did not say we had got them. Is there any just cause or impediment why we should not, Mr. Vicar?”
“Only the expense,” replied the Vicar, in a conciliatory tone.
“Oh, bother expense! That’s what you are always wanting to groan over. Mr. Churchwarden Threpp, we will call a vestry meeting and make a rate.”
“The parish could not bear it, Captain Monk,” remonstrated the clergyman. “You know what dissatisfaction was caused by the last extra rate put on, and how low an ebb things are at just now.”
“When I will a thing, I do it,” retorted the Captain, with a meaning word or two. “We’ll send out the rate and we’ll get the chimes.”
“It will, I fear, lie in my duty to protest against it,” spoke the uneasy parson.
“It may lie in your duty to be a wet blanket, but you won’t protest me out of my will. Gentlemen, we will all meet here again this time twelvemonth, when the chimes shall ring-in the new year for you. —— Here, Dutton, you can unlock the door now,” concluded the Captain, handing the key to the other churchwarden. “Our parson is upon thorns to be away from us.”
Not the parson only, but several others availed themselves of the opportunity to escape.
II
It perhaps did not surprise the parish to find that its owner and master, Captain Monk, intended to persist in his resolution of embellishing the church-tower with a set of chiming-bells. They knew him too well to hope anything less. Why! two years ago, at the same annual feast, some remarks or other at table put it into his head to declare he would stop up the public path by the Rill; and his obstinate will carried it out, regardless of the inconvenience it caused.
A vestry meeting was called, and the rate (to obtain funds for the bells) was at length passed. Two or three voices were feebly lifted in opposition; Mr. West alone had courage to speak out; but the Captain put him down with his strong hand. It may be asked why Captain Monk did not provide the funds himself for this whim. But he would never touch his own pocket for the benefit of the parish if he could help it: and it was thought that his antagonism to the parson was the deterring motive.
To impose the rate was one thing, to collect it quite another. Some of the poorer ratepayers protested with tears in their eyes that they could not pay. Superfluous rates (really not necessary ones) were perpetually being inflicted upon them, they urged, and were bringing them, together with a succession of recent bad seasons, to the verge of ruin. They carried their remonstrances to their Vicar, and he in turn carried them to Captain Monk.
It only widened the breach. The more persistently, though gently, Mr. West pleaded the cause of his parishioners, asking the Captain to be considerate to them for humanity’s sake, the greater grew the other’s obstinacy in holding to his own will. To be thus opposed roused all the devil within him — it was his own expression; and he grew to hate Mr. West with an exceeding bitter hatred.
The chimes were ordered — to play one tune only. Mr. West asked, when the thing was absolutely inevitable, that at least some sweet and sacred melody, acceptable to church-going ears, might be chosen; but Captain Monk fixed on a sea-song that was a favourite of his own— “The Bay of Biscay.” At the end of every hour, when the clock had struck, the Bay of Biscay was to burst forth to charm the parish.
The work was put in hand at once, Captain Monk finding the necessary funds, to be repaid by the proceeds of the rate. Other expenses were involved, such as the strengthening of the belfry. The rate was not collected quickly. It was, I say, one of those times of scarcity that people used to talk so much of years ago; and when the parish beadle, who was the parish collector, went round with the tax-paper in his hand, the poorer of the cottagers could not respond to it. Some of them had not paid the last levy, and Captain Monk threatened harsh measures. Altogether, what with one thing or another, Church Leet that year was kept in a state of ferment. But the work went on.
One windy day in September, Mr. West sat in his study writing a sermon, when a jarring crash rang out from the church close by. He leaped from his chair. The unusual noise had startled him; and it struck on every chord of vexation he possessed. He knew that workmen were busy in the tower, but this was the first essay of the chimes. The bells had clashed in some way one upon the other; not giving out The Bay of Biscay or any other melody, but a very discordant jangle indeed. It was the first and the last time that poor George West heard their sound.
He put the blotting-paper upon his sermon; he was in no mind to continue it then; took up his hat and went out. His wife spoke to him from the open window.
“Are you going out now, George? Tea is all but ready.”
Turning back on the path, he passed into the sitting-room. A cup of tea might soothe his nerves. The tea-tray stood on the table, and Mrs. West, caddy in hand, was putting the tea into the tea-pot. Little Alice sat gravely by.
“Did you hear dat noise up in the church, papa?” she asked.
“Yes, I heard it, dear,” sighed the Vicar.
“A fine clashing!” cried Mrs. West. “I have heard something else this afternoon, George, worse than that: Bean’s furniture is being taken away.”
“What?” cried the Vicar.
“It’s true. Sarah went out on an errand and passed the cottage. The chairs and tables were being put outside the door by two men, she says: brokers, I conclude.”
Mr. West made short work of his tea and started for the scene. Thomas Bean was a very small farmer indeed, renting about thirty acres. What with the heavy rates, as he said, and other outgoings and bad seasons, and ill-luck altogether, he had been behind in his payments this long while; and now the ill-luck seemed to have come to a climax. Bean and his wife were old; their children were scattered abroad.
“Oh, sir,” cried the old lady when she saw the Vicar, the tears raining from her eyes, “it cannot be right that this oppression should fall upon us! We had just managed — Heaven knows how, for I’m sure I don’t — to pay the Midsummer rent; and now they’ve come upon us for the rates, and have took away things worth ten times the sum.”
“For the rates!” mechanically spoke the Vicar.
She supposed it was a question. “Yes, sir; two of ’em we had in the house. One was for putting up the chimes; and the other — well, I can’t just remember what the other was. The beadle, old Crow, comes in, sir, this afternoon. ‘Where be the master?’ say
s he. ‘Gone over to t’other side of Church Dykely,’ says I. ‘Well,’ says he, upon that, ‘you be going to have some visitors presently, and it’s a pity he’s out.’ ‘Visitors, for what, Crow?’ says I. ‘Oh, you’ll see,’ says he; ‘and then perhaps you’ll wish you’d bestirred yourselves to pay your just dues. Captain Monk’s patience have been running on for a goodish while, and at last it have run clean out.’ Well, sir — —”
She had to make a pause; unable to control her grief.
“Well, sir,” she went on presently, “Crow’s back was hardly turned, when up came two men, wheeling a truck. I saw ’em afar off, by the ricks yonder. One came in; t’other stayed outside with the truck. He asked me whether I was ready with the money for the taxes; and I told him I was not ready, and had but a couple of shillings in the house. ‘Then I must take the value of it in kind,’ says he. And without another word, he beckons in the outside man to help him. Our middle table, a mahogany, they seized; and the handsome oak chest, which had been our pride; and the master’s arm-chair —— But, there! I can’t go on.”
Mr. West felt nearly as sorrowful as she, and far more angry. In his heart he believed that Captain Monk had done this oppressive thing in revenge. A great deal of ill-feeling had existed in the parish touching the rate made for the chimes; and the Captain assumed that the few who had not yet paid it would not pay — not that they could not.
Quitting the cottage in an impulse of anger, he walked swiftly to Leet Hall. It lay in his duty, as he fully deemed, to avow fearlessly to Captain Monk what he thought of this act of oppression, and to protest against it. The beams of the setting sun, sinking below the horizon in the still autumn evening, fell across the stubbled fields from which the corn had not long been reaped; all around seemed to speak of peace.
To accommodate two gentlemen who had come from Worcester that day to Leet Hall on business, and wished to quit it again before dark, the dinner had been served earlier than usual. The guests had left, but Captain Monk was seated still over his wine in the dining-room when Mr. West was shown in. In crossing the hall to it, he met Mrs. Carradyne, who shook hands with him cordially.
Captain Monk looked surprised. “Why, this is an unexpected pleasure — a visit from you, Mr. Vicar,” he cried, in mocking jest. “Hope you have come to your senses! Sit down. Will you take port or sherry?”
“Captain Monk,” returned the Vicar, gravely, as he took the chair the servant had placed, “I am obliged for your courtesy, but I did not intrude upon you this evening to drink wine. I have seen a very sad sight, and I am come hoping to induce you to repair it.”
“Seen what?” cried the Captain, who, it is well to mention, had been taking his wine very freely, even for him. “A flaming sword in the sky?”
“Your tenants, poor Thomas Bean and his wife, are being turned out of house and home, or almost equivalent to it. Some of their furniture has been seized this afternoon to satisfy the demand for these disputed taxes.”
“Who disputes the taxes?”
“The tax imposed for the chimes was always a disputed tax; and — —”
“Tush!” interrupted the Captain; “Bean owes other things as well as taxes.”
“It was the last feather, sir, which broke the camel’s back.”
“The last feather will not be taken off, whether it breaks backs or leaves them whole,” retorted the Captain, draining his glass of port and filling it again. “Take you note of that, Mr. Parson.”
“Others are in the same condition as the Beans — quite unable to pay these rates. I pray you, Captain Monk — I am here to pray you — not to proceed in the same manner against them. I would also pray you, sir, to redeem this act of oppression by causing their goods to be returned to these two poor, honest, hard-working people.”
“Hold your tongue!” retorted the Captain, aroused to anger. “A pretty example you’d set, let you have your way. Every one of the lot shall be made to pay to the last farthing. Who the devil is to pay, do you suppose, if they don’t?”
“Rates are imposed upon the parish needlessly, Captain Monk; it has been so ever since my time here. Pardon me for saying that if you put up chimes to gratify yourself, you should bear the expense, and not throw it upon those who have a struggle to get bread to eat.”
Captain Monk drank off another glass. “Any more treason, Parson?”
“Yes,” said Mr. West, “if you like to call it so. My conscience tells me that the whole procedure in regard to setting up these chimes is so wrong, so manifestly unjust, that I have determined not to allow them to be heard until the rates levied for them are refunded to the poor and oppressed. I believe I have the power to close the belfry-tower, and I shall act upon it.”
“By Jove! do you think you are going to stand between me and my will?” cried the Captain passionately. “Every individual who has not yet paid the rate shall be made to pay it to-morrow.”
“There is another world, Captain Monk,” interposed the mild voice of the minister, “to which, I hope, we are all — —”
“If you attempt to preach to me — —”
At this moment a spoon fell to the ground by the sideboard. The Vicar turned to look; his back was towards it; the Captain peered also at the end of the rapidly-darkening room: when both became aware that one of the servants — Michael, who had shown in Mr. West — stood there; had stood there all the time.
“What are you waiting for, sirrah?” roared his master. “We don’t want you. Here! put this window open an inch or two before you go; the room’s close.”
“Shall I bring lights, sir?” asked Michael, after doing as he was directed.
“No: who wants lights? Stir the fire into a blaze.”
Michael left them. It was from him that thus much of the conversation was subsequently known.
Not five minutes had elapsed when a commotion was heard in the dining-room. Then the bell rang violently, and the Captain opened the door — overturning a chair in his passage to it — and shouted out for a light. More than one servant flew to obey the order: in his hasty moods their master brooked not delay: and three separate candles were carried in.
“Good lack, master!” exclaimed the butler, John Rimmer, who was a native of Church Dykely, “what’s amiss with the Parson?”
“Lift him up, and loosen his neck-cloth,” said Captain Monk, his tone less imperious than usual.
Mr. West lay on the hearthrug near his chair, his head resting close to the fender. Rimmer raised his head, another servant took off his black neck-tie; for it was only on high days that the poor Vicar indulged in a white one. He gasped twice, struggled slightly, and then lay quietly in the butler’s arms.
“Oh, sir!” burst forth the man in a horror-stricken voice to his master, “this is surely death!”
It surely was. George West, who had gone there but just before in the height of health and strength, had breathed his last.
How did it happen? How could it have happened? Ay, how indeed? It was a question which has never been entirely solved in Church Leet to this day.
Captain Monk’s account, both privately and at the inquest, was this: As they talked further together, after Michael left the room, the Vicar went on to browbeat him shamefully about the new chimes, vowing they should never play, never be heard; at last, rising in an access of passion, the Parson struck him (the Captain) in the face. He returned the blow — who wouldn’t return it? — and the Vicar fell. He believed his head must have struck against the iron fender in falling: if not, if the blow had been an unlucky one (it took effect just behind the left ear), it was only given in self-defence. The jury, composed of Captain Monk’s tenants, expressed themselves satisfied, and returned a verdict of Accidental Death.
“A false account,” pronounced poor Mrs. West, in her dire tribulation. “My husband never struck him — never; he was not one to be goaded into unbecoming anger, even by Captain Monk. George struck no blow whatever; I can answer for it. If ever a man was murdered, he has been.”
Curious rumours arose. It was said that Mrs. Carradyne, taking the air on the terrace outside in the calmness of the autumn evening, heard the fatal quarrel through the open window; that she heard Mr. West, after he had received the death blow, wail forth a prophecy (or whatever it might be called) that those chimes would surely be accursed; that whenever their sound should be heard, so long as they were suffered to remain in the tower, it should be the signal of woe to the Monk family.
Mrs. Carradyne utterly denied this; she had not been on the terrace at all, she said. Upon which the onus was shifted to Michael: who, it was suspected, had stolen out to listen to the end of the quarrel, and had heard the ominous words. Michael, in his turn, also denied it; but he was not believed. Anyway, the covert whisper had gone abroad and would not be laid.
III
Captain Monk speedily filled up the vacant living, appointing to it the Reverend Thomas Dancox, an occasional visitor at Leet Hall, who was looking out for one.
The new Vicar turned out to be a man after the Captain’s heart, a rollicking, jovial, fox-hunting young parson, as many a parson was in those days — and took small blame to himself for it. He was only a year or two past thirty, good-looking, of taking manners and hail-fellow-well-met with the parish in general, who liked him and called him to his face Tom Dancox.
All this pleased Captain Monk. But very soon something was to arrive that did not please him — a suspicion that the young parson and his daughter Katherine were on rather too good terms with one another.
One day in November he stalked into the drawing-room, where Katherine was sitting with her aunt. Hubert and Eliza were away at school, also Mrs. Carradyne’s two children.
“Was Dancox here last night?” began Captain Monk.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Carradyne.
“And the evening before — Monday?”
