"Who? Mrs. Hammond," said the curate, quite taken by surprise.

"Who?" she replied warmly, reproach in her tone. She was a kind-hearted woman, and the scene in her drawing-room had really cost her a few minutes' sleep. "Why, Mr. Lindo, to be sure. Whom else should I mean? I suppose you went in last night at once and told him how much we all sympathized with him? Indeed, I hope you did not leave him until you saw him well to bed, for I am sure he was hardly fit to be left alone, poor fellow!"

Mr. Clode stood silent, and looked troubled. Really, if it had occurred to him, he would have called to see Lindo. But it had not occurred to him, after what had happened--perhaps because he had been busied about things which "seemed worth while." He regretted now, since Mrs. Hammond seemed to think it so much a matter of course, that he had not done so; the more as the omission compelled him to choose his side earlier than he need have done. However, it was too late now. So he shook his head. "I have not seen him, Mrs. Hammond," he said gravely. "I have not been to the rectory."

"What! you have not seen him?" she cried in amazement.

"No, I have not," he answered, a slight tinge of hauteur in his manner. After all, he reflected that he would have found it painful to play another part before Laura after disclosing so much of his mind to her. "What is more, Mrs. Hammond," he continued, "I am not anxious to see him; for, to tell you the truth, I fear that the meeting could only be a painful one."

"Why, you do not mean to say," the lady answered in a low, awe-stricken voice, "that you think he knew anything about it, Mr. Clode?"

"At any rate," the curate replied firmly, "I cannot acquit him."

"Not acquit him!--Mr. Lindo!" she stammered.

"No, I cannot," Clode replied, striving to express in his voice and manner his extreme conscientiousness and the gloomy sense of responsibility under which he had arrived at his decision. "I cannot get out of my head," he continued, "Lord Dynmore's remark that, if the circ.u.mstances aroused suspicion in my mind, they could scarcely fail to apprise Mr. Lindo, who was more nearly concerned, of the truth, or something like the truth. Mind!" the curate added with a great show of candor, "I do not say, Mrs. Hammond, that Mr. Lindo knew. I only say I think he suspected."

"Well, that is very good of you!" Mrs. Hammond exclaimed, displaying a spirit and a power of sarcasm he had not expected. "I dare say Mr. Lindo will be much obliged to you for that! But, for my part, I think it is a distinction without a difference!"

"Oh, no!" the curate protested hastily.

"Well, I think it is, at any rate!" retorted the lady, very red in the face, and with all the bugles in her bonnet shaking. "However, everyone to his opinion. But that is not mine, and I am sorry it is yours. Why, you are his curate!" she added in a tone of indignant wonder, which brought the blood to Clode's cheeks, and made him bite his lip in impotent anger. "You ought to be the last person to doubt him!"

"Can I help it if I do?" he answered sullenly.

"Mother," said Laura quickly, intercepting the angry reply which was on Mrs. Hammond's lips, "if Mr. Clode thinks in that way, can he be blamed for telling us? We are not the town. What he has told us he has told us in confidence."

"A confidence Mrs. Hammond has made me bitterly regret," he rejoined, taking skilful advantage of her intervention.

Mrs. Hammond grunted. She was still angry, but she felt herself baffled. "Well, I do not understand these things, perhaps," she said. "But I do not agree with Mr. Clode, and I am not going to pretend to."

"I am sure he does not wish you to," said Laura sweetly. "Only you did not quite understand, I think, that he was only giving us his private opinion. Of course he would not tell it to the town."

"Well, that makes a difference, of course," Mrs. Hammond allowed. "But now, however, I will say good-morning! I shall go straight to the rectory now and inquire. Are you coming, Laura?"

Laura thought it better to go and with a bright little nod, tripped off after her mother. Mr. Clode, thus deserted, walked slowly down the drive, wondering whether he had been premature in his revolt. He did not think so; and yet he wished he had not been so hasty--that he had not shown his hand quite so early. The truth was, he had been a little carried away by the events of the previous afternoon. But, even now, the more he thought of it, the more hopeless seemed the rector's position. Openly denounced by his patron as an impostor, at war with his church-warden, disliked by a powerful section of the parish, one action already commenced against him and another threatened--what else could he do but resign? "He may say he will not to-day and to-morrow," the curate thought, smiling darkly to himself, "but they will be too much for him the day after."

And whether Mr. Clode told this opinion of his in the own or not, it was certainly a very common one. Never had Claversham been treated to such a dish of gossip as this. On the evening of the bazaar, before the unsold goods had been cleared from the tables, the wildest rumors were already afloat in the town. The rector had been arrested; he had decamped; he was to be tried for fraud; he was not in holy orders at all; Mrs. Bedford would have to be married over again! With the morning these reports died away, and something like the truth came to be known--to the inexpressible satisfaction of Dr. Gregg and his like. The doctor was in and out of half the houses in the town that day. "Resign!" he would say with a shriek--"of course he will resign! And glad to escape so easily!" Dr. Gregg, indeed, was in his glory now. The parts were reversed. It was for him now to meet the rector with a patronizing nod; only, for some reason best known to himself, and perhaps connected with an essential distinction between the two men, he preferred to celebrate his triumph figuratively, and behind Lindo's back.

What was said, and how it was said, can well be imagined. When a man who for some cause has held his head a little above his neighbors stumbles and falls, we know what is likely to be said of him. And the young rector knew, and in his heart and in his study suffered horribly. All the afternoon of the day after the bazaar he walked the town with a smile on his face, ostensibly visiting in his district, really vindicating his pride and courage. He carried his head as high as ever, and the skirts of his long black coat fluttered as bravely as before. Dr. Gregg, who saw him from the reading-room window, gave it as his opinion that he did not know what shame meant. But at heart the young man was unutterably miserable. He knew that inquisitive eyes were upon his every gesture; that he was watched, jeered at, worst of all--pitied. He guessed, as the day wore on, drawing the inference from the curate's avoidance of him, that even Clode had deserted him; and this, perhaps, almost as much as the resentment he harbored against Lord Dynmore, hardened him in his resolve not to resign or abate one t.i.ttle of his rights.

He fancied he stood alone. But, of course, there were some who sympathized with him, and some who held their tongues and declined to commit themselves to any opinion. Among the latter Mr. Bonamy was conspicuous--to the intense disgust of Dr. Gregg, whose first expression, indeed, on hearing the news had been, "What nuts for Bonamy!" As a fact, however, the snappish little doctor had never found his friend so morose and unpleasant as when he tried to sound him on this subject. He espied him on the other side of the street, and rushed across, stuttering almost before he reached him, "Well? He will have to resign, won't he?"

"Who?" said Mr. Bonamy, standing still, and fixing his cold gray eyes on the excited little man. "Who will have to resign?"

"Why, the rector, to be sure!" rejoined Gregg, feeling the check unpleasantly.

"Will he?"

"Well, I should say so," urged the doctor, now quite taken aback, and gazing at the other with eyes of surprise. "But I suppose you know best, Bonamy."

"Then I am going to keep my knowledge to myself!" snarled the lawyer; and, rattling a handful of silver in his pocket, he stalked away, his hat on the back of his head, and his lank figure more ungainly than usual. He was in the worst of tempers; angry with Lord Dynmore and dissatisfied with himself--given to calling himself, half a dozen times in an hour, a quixotic fool for having thrown away the earl's business for the sake of a scruple that was little more than a whim. It is all very well to have a queer rugged code of honor of one's own, and to observe it; but when the observance sends away business--such business as brings with it the social considerations which men prize most highly when they most affect to despise it--why then a man is apt to take out his self-denial in ill-temper. Mr. Bonamy did so.

Dr. Gregg went away calling the lawyer a bear and an ill-bred fellow who did not know his own friends. Alas! the same thing might have been said, and with greater justice, of the rector. The archdeacon sat an hour in his study, waiting patiently for him to return from his district, and after all got but a sorry reception. The elder man expressed, and expressed very warmly--he had come to do so--his full belief in Lindo's honesty and good faith, and was greatly touched by the effect his words produced upon the young fellow, who had come into the room, after learning his visitor's presence, with set lips and eyes of challenge, but had by-and-by to turn his back on his friend and look out of the window, while in a very low tone he murmured his thanks. But, alas! the archdeacon went farther, and let drop something about concession, and then the boat was over!

"Concession!" said the young man, turning as on a pivot, with every hair of his whiskers bristling, and his voice clear enough now. "What kind of concession do you mean?"

"Well," said the archdeacon persuasively, "the earl is a choleric man--a most pa.s.sionate man, I know; and, when excited, utterly foolish and wrong-headed. But in his cooler moments I do not know any one more just or, indeed, more generous. And I feel sure that if you could prevail on yourself to meet him half-way----"

"By resigning?" snapped the rector, interrupting him point-blank with the question.

"Oh, no, no," said the archdeacon, "I do not mean that."

"Then in what way? How?"

But as the archdeacon really meant by resigning, he could not answer the question, and the interview ended in Lindo roundly declaring, as he walked up and down the room, "I will not resign! Understand that, archdeacon! I will not resign! If Lord Dynmore can put me out, well and good--let him. If not, I stay. He may be just or generous," continued the young man scornfully--"all I know is that he insulted me grossly, and as no gentleman would have insulted another."

"He is pa.s.sionate, and was taken by surprise," the archdeacon ventured to say. But Lindo would not listen; and his visitor had presently to go, fearing that he had done more harm than good by his mediation. As for the rector, he was severely scolded later in the evening by Jack Smith for having omitted to lay the letters offering him the living before the archdeacon, or to explain to him the precise circ.u.mstances under which he had accepted it.

"But he said he did not doubt me," the rector urged rather fractiously.

"Pooh! that is not the point," the barrister retorted. "Of course he does not. He knows you. But I want to put him in possession of such a case as he may lay before others who do not know you. Look here, you are acquainted with a man called Felton, are you not?"

"Yes," Lindo answered, with a slight start.

"Well, perhaps you are not aware that he has been to Lord Dynmore--so the tale runs in the town, and I know it is true--and stated that you have been for weeks bribing him to keep the secret."

The rector sat motionless, staring at his friend. "I did not know it," he said at last, quite quietly. He was becoming accustomed to surprises of this kind. "It is a wicked lie, of course."

"Of course," Jack a.s.sented tossing one leg easily over the other, and thrusting his hands deep into his trousers' pockets. "But what do you say to it?"

"The man came to me," Lindo answered steadily, "and told me that he was Lord Dynmore's servant, and that, crossing from America, he had foolishly lost his money at play. He begged me to a.s.sist him until Lord Dynmore's return, and I did so. Some ten days ago I discovered that he was leading a disreputable life, and I stopped the allowance."

"Thanks," said Jack, nodding his head. "That is precisely what I thought. But the mischief of it is, you see, that the man's tale may be true in his eyes. He may have believed that he was blackmailing you. And therefore, since we cannot absolutely refute his story, it is the more important that we should show as good a case as possible aliunde. Nor does it make any difference," Jack continued drily, "that the man, after seeing Lord Dynmore last night, has taken himself quietly off this morning."

"What! Felton?" the rector exclaimed, coming suddenly upright.

"Yes. There is no doubt he has absconded. Bonamy's clerk has been after him all day, and has discovered that he begged half-a-crown from your curate, to whom he was seen speaking at the Top of the Town about ten this morning. Since that time he has not been seen."

"He may turn up yet," said the rector.

"I do not think he will," the barrister replied, with a shrewd gleam in his eyes. "But you must not flatter yourself that his disappearance will do you any good. Of course some people will say that he was afraid to remain and support a false statement. But more, I fear, will lean to the opinion that he was got out of the way by some one--you, for instance."

"I see," said Lindo slowly, after a long pause. "Then it is the more imperative that I should not dream of resigning."

"I think so," said Jack.

CHAPTER XX.

A SUDDEN CALL.

"Kate," said Daintry, looking up from a lesson book as her sister entered the dining-room a few mornings after the bazaar, "are you never going to see old Peggy Jones again? I am sure that you have not been near her for a fortnight?"

"I ought to go, I know," Kate answered, pausing by the sideboard, with a big bunch of keys dangling from her fingers and an absent expression in her gray eyes. "I have not been for some time."

"I should think you had not!" quoth Daintry severely. "You have hardly been out of the house the last four days."

A faint color stole into the elder girl's face, and, seeming suddenly to recollect what she wanted, she turned and began to search in the drawer behind her. She knew quite well that what Daintry said was true--that she had not been out for four days. Jack had delivered the rector's message to her, and she had listened with downcast eyes and a grave composure--a composure so perfect that even the messenger who held the clue in his hand was almost deceived by it. All the same, it had made her very happy. The young rector appreciated at last the motive which had led her to give him that strange warning. He was grateful to her, and anxious to make her understand his grat.i.tude. And while she dwelt on this with pleasure, she foresaw with a strange mingling of joy and fear, of antic.i.p.ation and shrinking, that the first time she met him abroad he would strive to make it still more clear to her.

So for four days, lest she should seem even to herself to be precipitating the meeting, she had refrained from going out. Now, when Daintry remarked upon the change in her habits, she blushed at the thought that she might all the time have been exaggerating a trifle; and, though she did not go out at once, in the course of the afternoon she did issue forth, and called upon old Peggy. Coming back she had to pa.s.s through the churchyard, and there, on the very spot where she had once forced herself to address him, she met the rector.

She saw him while he was still some way off, and before he saw her, and she looked eagerly for any trace of the trouble of the last few days. It had not changed him, at any rate. It had rather accentuated him, she thought. He looked more boyish, more impetuous, more independent than ever, as he came swinging along, his blond head thrown back, his eyes roving this way and that, his long skirts flapping behind him. Of defeat or humiliation he betrayed not a trace; and the girl wondered, seeing him so calm and strong, if he had really sent her that message--which seemed to have come from a man hard pressed.

A glance told her all this; and then he saw her, and, a flash of recognition sweeping across his face, quickened his steps to meet her. He seemed to be shaking hands with her before he had well considered what he would say, for when he had gone through that ceremony, and said "Good morning." he stood awkwardly silent. Then he said hurriedly, "I have been waiting for some time to speak to you, Miss Bonamy."

"Indeed?" she said calmly. She wondered at her own self-control.

"Yes," he answered, his color rising. "And I could not have met you in a better place."

"Why?" she asked. As if she did not know! The simplest woman is an actress by nature.

"Because," he answered, "it is well that I should do penance where I sinned, Miss Bonamy," he continued impetuously, yet in a low voice, and with his eyes on the ground. "I owe you a deep apology for my rude thanklessness when I met you here last. You were right and I was wrong; but if it had been the other way, still I ought not to have behaved to you as I did. I thought--that is--I----"

He faltered and stopped. He meant that he had thought that she was playing into her father's hands, but he could hardly tell her that. She understood, however, or guessed, and for the first time she blushed. "Pray, do not say any more about it," she said hurriedly.

"I did send you a message," he answered.

"Oh, yes, yes," she replied, anxious only to put an end to his apologies.

"Well," he rejoined with a smile which did not completely veil his earnestness, "I do find it a little more pleasant to look farther back to our Oxford visit. But you are going this way. May I turn with you?"

"I am only going home," Kate answered coldly. He had been humble enough to her. He had said and looked all she had expected. But he was not at all the crushed, beaten man whom she had looked to meet. He was, outwardly at least, the same man who had once sought her society for a few weeks and had then slighted her and shunned her to consort with the Homfreys and their cla.s.s. He had not said he was sorry for that.

He read her tone aright, and he colored furiously, growing in a second a thousand times more confused than before. It was on the cards that he would accept the rebuff, and leave her in resentment. Indeed, that was his first impulse. But the consciousness, which the next moment filled his mind, that he had deserved this, and perhaps the charm of her gray eyes and proud downturned face, overcame him. "I will come a little way with you, if you will let me," he said, turning and walking by her side.

Kate's heart gave a great leap. She understood both the first thought and the second, the weaker impulse and the stronger one which mastered it, and she would not have been a woman had she not felt her triumph. She hastened to find something to say, and could think only of the bazaar. She asked him if it had been a success.

"The bazaar?" he said. "To tell you the truth, I am afraid I hardly know. I should say so, now you ask me, but I have not given much thought to it since. I have been too fully occupied with other things," he added, a note of bitterness in his voice. "Ah! Miss Bonamy," with a fresh change of tone, "what a good fellow your cousin is!"

"Yes, he is indeed!" she answered heartily.

"I cannot tell you," he continued, "what generous help and support he has given me during the last few days. He has been the greatest possible comfort to me."

She looked up at him impulsively. "He is Daintry's hero," she said.

"Yes," he answered laughing, "I remember that her praise made me almost jealous of him. That was when I first knew you--when I was coming to Claversham, you remember, Miss Bonamy, full of pleasant antic.i.p.ations and hopes. The reality has been different. Jack has told you, of course, of Lord Dynmore's strange attack upon me? But perhaps," he added, checking himself, and glancing at her, "I ought not to speak to you about it, as your father is acting for him."

"I do not think he is," she murmured, looking straight before her.

"But--it is true the only communication I have had since has been from London--still I thought--I mean I was under the impression that Lord Dynmore had at once gone to your father."

"I think he saw him at the office," Kate answered, "but I believe my father is not acting for him."

"Do you know why?" said the rector bluntly. "Why he is not, I mean?"

"No," she said--that and nothing more. She was too proud to defend her father, though he had let drop enough in the family circle to enable her to come to a conclusion, and she might with truth have made out a story which would have set the lawyer in a light differing much from that in which the rector was accustomed to view him.

Reginald Lindo walked on considering the matter. Suddenly he said, "The archdeacon thinks I ought to resign. What do you think, Miss Bonamy?"

Her heart began to beat quickly. He was seeking her advice!--asking her opinion in this matter so utterly important to him, so absolutely vital! For a moment she could not speak, she was so filled with surprise. Then she said gently, her eyes on the pavement, "I do not think I can judge."

"But you must have heard--more I dare say than I have!" he rejoined with a forced laugh. "Will you tell me what you think?"

She looked before her, her face troubled. Then she spoke bravely.

"I think you should judge for yourself," she said in a low tone, full of serious feeling. "The responsibility is yours. I do not think that you should depend entirely on any one's advice, but should try to do right according to your conscience--not acting hastily, but coolly, and on reflection."

They were almost at Mr. Bonamy's door when she said this, and he traversed the remainder of the distance without speaking. At the steps he halted and held out his hand. "Thank you," he said simply. "I hope I shall use this advice to better purpose than the last you gave me. Please remember me to your sister. Good-by."

She bowed silently and went in, and he turned back and walked up the street. The dusk was falling. A few yards in front of him the lame lamplighter was going his rounds, ladder on shoulder. In every other shop the gas was beginning to gleam. The night was coming, was almost come, yet still above the houses the sky, a pale greenish-blue, was bright with daylight, against which the great tower of the church stood up bulky and black. The young man was in a curious mood. Though he walked the common pavement, he felt himself, as he gazed upward, alone with his thoughts which went back, will he nill he, to his first evening in Claversham. He remembered how free from reproach or stumbling-blocks his path had seemed then, to what blameless ends he had in fancy devoted himself. What works of thanksgiving, small but beneficent as the tiny rills which steal downward through the ferns to the pasture, he had planned. And in the centre of that past dream of the future he pictured now--Kate Bonamy. Well, the reality had been different.

He was just beginning to wonder when he would be likely to meet her again, and to dwell with curious pleasure on some of the details of her dress and appearance, when the sudden clatter of hoofs behind him caused him to turn his head. Far down the street a rider had just turned the corner, and was now galloping up the middle of the roadway, the manner in which he urged on his pony speaking loudly of disaster and ill news. Opposite the rector he pulled up and cried out, "Where is the doctor's, sir?"

Lindo turned sharply round and rang the bell of the house behind him, which happened to be Gregg's.

"Here," he said briefly. "What is it, my man?"

"An explosion in the Big Pit at Baerton," the man replied, almost blubbering with excitement and the speed at which he had come. "There is like to be fifty killed and as many hurt, I was told. But I came straight off."

"When did it happen?" Lindo asked, a wave of wild excitement following his first impulse of horror.

"About an hour and a quarter ago, as near as I can say," the messenger, a farm laborer called from the plough, answered.

Dr. Gregg was out, and the clergyman walked by the side of the horse, a crowd gathering behind him as the news spread, to the house of Mr. Keogh the other doctor, who fortunately lived close by. He was at home, and, the messenger going in to tell him the particulars, in five minutes his gig was at the door, The rector, who had gone in too, came out with him, and, without asking leave, climbed to the seat beside him.

"Hallo!" said the surgeon, an elderly man, stout and white-haired, "are you coming, too, Mr. Lindo?"

"I think," the rector answered, "that there may be cases in which you can do little and I much. Mr. Walker, the vicar of Baerton, is ill in bed, I know; and as the news has come to me first, I think I ought to go."

"Right you are!" said Mr. Keogh gruffly. "Let go!"