Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “I believe so,” said Lindo quietly. “You want some more water, do you not, Miss Bonamy?” he continued. “Let me ring the bell.” He rose and crossed the room to do so. The truth was, he hated the newcomer already. His first sentence had been enough. His manner was not the manner of the men with whom Lindo had mixed, and the rector felt almost angry with Kate for introducing Gregg — albeit his parishioner — to him, and quite angry with her for suffering the doctor to address her with the familiarity he seemed to affect.

  And Kate, her eyes downcast, knew by instinct how it was with him, and what he was thinking. “I have been telling Dr. Gregg,” she said hurriedly, when he returned, “how we missed our train yesterday.”

  “Rather how I missed it for you,” Lindo answered gravely, much engaged apparently with his breakfast.

  “Ah, yes, it was very funny!” fired off the doctor, watching each mouthful they ate. Daintry had finished, and was sitting back in her chair kicking the leg of the table monotonously; not in the best of tempers apparently. “Very funny indeed!” the doctor continued. “An accident, I hope?” with a little sniggling laugh.

  “Yes!” said the rector, looking up at him with a black brow and steadfast eyes— “it was an accident.”

  Gregg was a little cowed by the look, and in a moment, with a muttered word or two, fidgeted himself away, cursing the general superciliousness of parsons and the quiet airs of this one in particular. He was a little dog-in-the-mangerish man, ill-bred, and, like most ill-bred men, resentful of breeding in others. The fact that he had a sneaking liking for Kate did not tend to lessen his disgustful wonder how the Bonamy girls and the new rector came to be travelling together — which, indeed, to any Claversham person would have seemed a portent. But, then, Lindo did not know that.

  The objectionable item removed, and the temptation to remark upon him overcome, Lindo soon recovered his good temper, and rattled away so pleasantly that the train time seemed to all of them to come very quickly. “There,” he said, as he handed the last of Kate’s books into the railway-carriage, “now I have done something to make amends for my fault, I trust. One thing more I can do. When you get home you need not spare me. You can put it all on my shoulders, Miss Bonamy.”

  “Thank you,” Kate answered demurely.

  “You are going to do so, I see,” he said, laughing. “I fear my character will reach Claversham before me.”

  “I do not think we shall spread it very widely,” she answered in a peculiar tone, which he naturally misunderstood.

  The train was already in motion then, and he shook hands with her as he walked beside it. “Goodbye,” he said. And then he added in a lower tone — he was such a very young rector— “I hope to see very much of you in the future, Miss Bonamy.”

  Kate sank back in her seat, her cheek a shade warmer. And in a moment he was alone upon the platform.

  CHAPTER V.

  “REGINALD LINDO, 1850.”

  Long before the later train by which the rector came on arrived at the Claversham station, the Rev. Stephen Clode was waiting on the platform. The curate was a tall, dark man, somewhat over thirty, with a strong rugged face and a bush of stiff black hair standing up from his forehead. He had been at Claversham three years, enjoying all the importance which old Mr. Williams’s long illness naturally gave to his curate and locum tenens; and, though the town was agreed that his chagrin at having a new rector set over his head was great, it must be admitted that he concealed it with admirable skill. More than one letter had passed between him and the new incumbent, and, in securing for the latter Mr. Williams’s good old-fashioned furniture, and in other ways, he had made himself very useful to Lindo. But the two had not met, and consequently the curate viewed the approaching train with lively, though secret, curiosity.

  It came, the bell rang, the porter cried, “Claversham! Claversham!” and the curate walked down it, past the carriage-windows, looking for the man he had come to meet. Half-a-dozen people stepped out, and for a moment there was a mimic tumult on the little platform; but nowhere amid it all could Clode see any one like the new rector. “He has missed another train!” he muttered to himself in contemptuous wonder; and he was already casting a last look round him before turning on his heel, when a tall, fair young man, in a clerical overcoat, who had been one of the first to alight, stepped up to him. “Am I speaking to Mr. Clode?” said the stranger pleasantly. And he lifted his hat.

  “Certainly,” the curate answered. “I am Mr. Clode. But I fear I have not the — —”

  “No, I know,” replied the other, smiling, and at the same time holding out his hand. “Though, indeed, I hoped that you might have been here on purpose to meet me. My name is Lindo.”

  The curate uttered an exclamation of surprise; and, hastily returning the proffered grip, fixed his black eyes curiously on his new friend. “Mr. Lindo did not mention that you were with him,” he answered in a tone of some embarrassment. “But, there, let me see to your luggage. Is it all here?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Lindo answered, tapping one article after another with his umbrella, and giving the stationmaster a pleasant “Good-day!” “Is there an omnibus or anything?”

  “Yes,” Clode said; “it will be all right. They know where to take it. You will walk up with me, perhaps. It is about a quarter of a mile to the rectory.”

  The new comer assented gladly, and the two passed out of the station together. Lindo let his eye travel up the wide steep street before him, until it rested on the noble tower which crowned the little hill and looked down now, as it had looked down for five centuries, on the red roofs clustering about it. His tower! His church! Even his companion did not remark, so slight was the action, that, as he passed out of the station and looked up, he lifted his hat for a second.

  “And where is your father?” Clode asked. “Was he delayed by business? Or perhaps,” he added, dubiously scanning him, “you are Mr. Lindo’s brother?”

  “I am Mr. Lindo!” said our friend, turning in astonishment and looking at his companion.

  “The rector?”

  “Yes.”

  It was the curate’s turn to stare now, and he did so — his face flushing darkly and his eyes wide opened for once. He even seemed for a moment to be stricken dumb with surprise and emotion. “Indeed!” he said at last, in a half stifled voice which he vainly strove to control. “Indeed! I beg your pardon. I had thought — I don’t know why — I mean that I had expected to see an older man.”

  “I am sorry you are disappointed,” the rector replied, smiling ruefully. “I am beginning to think I am rather young, for you are not the first to-day who has made that mistake.”

  The curate did not answer, and the two walked on in silence, feeling somewhat awkward. Clode, indeed, was raging inwardly. By one thing and another he had been led to expect a man past middle life, and the only Clergy List in the parish, being three years old and containing the name of Lindo’s uncle only, had confirmed him in the error. He had never conceived the idea that the man set over his head would be a fledgling, scarcely a year in priest’s orders, or he would have gone elsewhere. He would never have stayed to be at the beck and call of such a puppy as this! He felt now that he had been entrapped, and he chafed inwardly to such an extent that he did not dare to speak. To have this young fellow, six or seven years his junior, set over him would humiliate him in the eyes of all those before whom he had long played a different part!

  In a minor degree Lindo was also vexed — not only because he was sufficiently sensitive to enter into the other’s feelings, but also because he foresaw trouble ahead. It was annoying, too, to be received at each new rencontre as a surprise — as the reverse of all that had been expected and all that had been, as he feared, hoped.

  “You will find the rectory a very comfortable house,” said the curate at last, his mind fully made up now that he would leave at the earliest possible date. “Warm and old-fashioned. Rough-cast outside. Many of the rooms are panelled.”

 
; “It looks out on the churchyard, I believe,” replied the rector, with the same labored politeness.

  “Yes, it stands high. The view from the windows at the back is pleasant. The front is perhaps a little gloomy — in winter at least.”

  Near the top of the street a quaint, narrow flight of steps conducted them to the churchyard — an airy, elevated place, surrounded on three sides by the church and houses, but open on the fourth, where a terraced walk, running along the summit of the old town wall, admitted the southern sun and afforded a wide view of plain and hill. The two men crossed the churchyard, the new rector looking about him with curiosity and a little awe, his companion marching straight onward, his strongly-marked face set ominously. He would go! He would go at the earliest possible minute! he was thinking.

  It did not affect him nor alter his resolution that in the wooden porch of the old rectory the new rector turned to him and shyly, yet with real feeling, besought his help and advice in the work before him. The young clergyman, commonly so self-confident, was moved, and moved deeply, by the evening light and his strange and solemn surroundings. Stephen Clode’s answer was in the affirmative — it could hardly have been other; and it was spoken becomingly, if a little coldly, in view of the rector’s advances; but, even while the curate spoke it, he was considering how he might best escape from Claversham. Still his Yea, yea, comforted his companion and lightened his momentary apprehensions.

  Nor was the curate, when he had recovered from the first shock of surprise and disgust, so foolish as to betray his feelings by wanton churlishness. He parted from his companion at the door, leaving him to the welcome of Mrs. Baker, the rector’s London housekeeper, who had come down two days before; but at the same time he consented readily to return at half-past six and share his dinner, and gave him in the course of the meal all the information in his power. Left to himself, the rector went over the house under Mrs. Baker’s guidance, and, as he trod the polished floors, could not but feel some access of self-importance. The panelled hall, with its wide oak staircase, fed this, and the spacious sombrely-furnished library, with its books and busts, its antique clock and one good engraving, and its lofty windows opening upon the garden. So, in a less degree, did the long oak-panelled dining-room and a smaller sitting-room which looked to the front and the churchyard; and the drawing-room, which was situated over the library, and seemed the larger because Mr. Williams had furnished it but scantily and lived in it less. Then there were six or seven bedrooms, and in the garden a stone basin and fountain. Altogether, when the rector descended after washing his hands, and stood on the library hearth-rug looking about him, he would have been more than human if he had not, with a feeling of thankfulness, entertained also some faint sense of self-congratulation and personal desert. Nor, probably, would Mr. Clode have been human if, coming in and finding the younger man standing on that hearth-rug, and betraying in his face and attitude something of his thoughts, he on his part had not felt a degree of envy and antagonism. The man was so prosperous, so self-contented, so conscious of his own merit and success.

  But the curate was too wise to betray this feeling; and, laying himself out to be pleasant, he had, before the little meal was over, so far ingratiated himself with his entertainer that the rector was greatly surprised when he presently learned that Clode had not been to a university. “You astonish me,” he said, “for you have so completely the manner of a ‘varsity-man!”

  The observation was a little too gracious, a little wanting in tact, but it would not have hurt the curate had he not been at the moment in a state of irritation. As it was, Clode treasured it up, and never got rid of the feeling that the Oxford man looked down upon him because he had been only at Wells; whereas Lindo, with some prejudices and sufficiently prone to judge his fellows, had far too high an opinion of himself to be bound by such distinctions, but was just as likely to make a friend of a ploughboy, if he liked him, as of a Christchurch man. After that speech, however, the curate was more than ever resolved to go, and go quickly.

  But, when dinner was over and he was about to take his leave, he happened to pick up, as he moved about the room, a small prayer-book which Lindo had just unpacked, and which was lying on the writing-table. Clode idly looked into it as he talked, and, seeing on the flyleaf “Reginald Lindo, 1850,” took occasion, when he had done with the subject in hand, to discuss it. “Surely,” he said, holding it up, “you did not possess this in 1850, Mr. Lindo!”

  “Hardly,” Lindo answered, laughing. “I was not born until ‘54.”

  “Then who?”

  “It was my uncle’s,” the rector explained. “I was his god-son, and his name was mine also.”

  “Is he alive, may I ask?” the curate pursued, looking at the title-page as if he saw something curious there — though, indeed, what he saw was not new to him; only from it he had suddenly deduced a thought.

  “No, he died about a year ago — nearly a year ago, I think,” Lindo answered carelessly, and without the least suspicion. “He was always particularly kind to me, and I use that book a good deal. I must have it rebound.”

  “Yes,” Clode said mechanically; “it wants rebinding If you value it.”

  “I shall have it done. And a lot of these books,” the rector continued, looking at old Mr. Williams’s shelves, “want their clothes renewing. I shall have them all looked to, I think.” He had a pleasant sense that this was in his power. The cost of the furniture and library had made a hole in his not very large private means; but that mattered little now. Eight hundred a year, paid quarterly, will bind a book or two.

  Had the curate been attending, he would have read Lindo’s thoughts with ease. But Clode was pursuing a train of reflections of his own, and so was spared this pang. “Your uncle was an old man, I suppose,” he said. “I think I observed in the Clergy List that he had been in orders about forty years.”

  “Not quite so long as that,” Lindo replied. “He was sixty-four when he died. He had been Lord Dynmore’s private tutor you know, though they were almost of an age.”

  “Indeed,” the curate rejoined, still with that thoughtful look on his face. “You knew Lord Dynmore through him, I suppose, then, Mr. Lindo?”

  “Well, I got the living through him, if that what you mean,” Lindo said frankly. “But I do not think that I ever met Lord Dynmore. Certainly I should not know him from Adam.”

  “Ah!” said the curate, “ah! indeed!” He smiled as he gazed into the fire, and stroked his chin. In the other’s place, he thought, he would have been more reticent. He would not have disclaimed, though he might not have claimed, acquaintance with Lord Dynmore. He would have left the thing shadowy, to be defined by others as they pleased. Thinking thus, he got up somewhat abruptly, and wished Lindo good-night. A cool observer, indeed, might have noticed — but the rector did not — a change in his manner as he did so — a little accession of familiarity, which did seem not far removed from a delicate kind of contempt. The change was subtle, but one thing was certain. Stephen Clode had no longer any intention of leaving Claversham in a hurry. That resolve was gone.

  Once out of the house, he passed quickly from the churchyard by a narrow lane leading to an irregular open space quaintly called “The Top of the Town.” Here were his own lodgings, on the first-floor over a stationer’s; but he did not enter them. Instead, he strode on toward the farther and darker side of the square, where were no buildings, but a belt of tall trees stood up, gaunt and rustling in the night wind above a line of wall. Through the trees the lights of a large house were visible. He walked up the avenue which led to the door and, ringing loudly, was at once admitted.

  The sound of the bell came to the ears of two ladies who had been for some time placidly expecting it. They were seated in a small but charming room filled with soft, shaded light and warmth and color, an open piano and dainty pictures and china, and a well-littered writing-table all contributing to the air of accustomed luxury which pervaded it. The elder lady — that Mrs. Hammond whom
we saw talking to the curate on the day of the old rector’s funeral — looked up expectantly as Mr. Clode entered, and, extending to him a podgy white hand covered with rings, began to chide him in a rich full voice for being so late. “I have been dying,” she said cheerfully, “to hear what is the fate before us, Mr. Clode. What is he like?”

  “Well,” he answered, taking with a word of thanks the cup of tea which Laura offered him, “I have one surprise in store for you. He is comparatively young.”

  “Sixty?” said Mrs. Hammond interrogatively.

  “Forty?” said Laura, raising her eyebrows.

  “No,” Clode replied, smiling and stirring his tea, “you must guess again. He is twenty-six.”

  “Twenty-six! You are joking,” exclaimed the elder lady. While Laura opened her eyes very wide, but said nothing yet.

  “No,” said the curate. “He told me himself that he was not born until 1854.”

  The two ladies were loud in their surprise then, while for a moment the curate sipped his tea in silence. The brass kettle hissed and bubbled on the hob. The tea-set twinkled cheerfully on the wicker table, and faint scents of flowers and fabrics filled the room with an atmosphere which he had long come to associate with Laura. It was Laura Hammond, indeed, who had introduced him to this new world. The son of an accountant living in a small Lincolnshire town, he owed his clerical profession to his mother’s ardent wish that he should rise in the world. His father was not wealthy, and, before he came as curate to Claversham, Mr. Clode had had no experience of society. Then, alighting: on a sudden in the midst of much such a small town as his native place, he found himself astonishingly transmogrified into a person of social importance. He found every door open to him, and among them the Hammonds’, who were admitted to be the first people in the town. He fell in easily enough with the “new learning,” but the central figure in the novel pleasant world of refinement continued throughout to be Laura Hammond.