"I did not much like his looks," the curate remarked. "He is not a townsman, or I should know him." The rector felt that his discretion was a.s.sailed, and hastened to defend himself. "He is respectable enough," he said carelessly. "As a fact, he is Lord Dynmore's valet."

"But has Lord Dynmore come back?" the curate exclaimed, his hand arrested in the act of taking down a book from a high shelf, and his head turning quickly. If he expected to learn anything, however, from his superior's demeanor he was disappointed. Lindo was busy locking the cupboard, and had his back to him.

"No, he has not come back," Reginald explained, "but he has sent the man home, and the foolish fellow lost his money on the boat coming over, and wants an advance until his master's return."

"But why on earth does he come to you for it?" cried the curate, with undisguised, astonishment.

The rector shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, I do not know," he said, a trifle of irritation in his manners. "He did, and there is an end of it. Is there any news?"

Mr. Clode seemed to find a difficulty in at once changing the direction of his thoughts. But he did so with an effort, and, after a pause, answered, "No, I think not. There is a good deal of interest felt in the question of the sheep out there, I fancy--whether you will take your course or comply with Mr. Bonamy's whim."

"I do not know myself," said the young rector, turning and facing the curate, with his feet apart and his hands thrust deep into his pockets. "I do not, indeed. It is a serious matter."

"It is. Still you have the responsibility," said the curate with diffidence, "and, without expressing any view of my own on the subject, I confess----"

"Well?"

"I think if I bore the responsibility, I should feel called upon to do what I myself thought right in the matter."

The younger man shook his head doubtfully. "There is something in that," he said; "but, on the other hand, one cannot look on the point as an essential, and, that being so, perhaps one should prefer peace. But, there, enough of that now, Clode. I think you said you were not going to the Hammonds' this evening?"

"No, I am not."

The rector almost wished he were not. However sociable a man may be, a few days of solitude and a little temporary depression will render him averse from society if he be sensitive. Lindo as a man was not very sensitive; he held too good an opinion of himself. But as rector he was, and as he walked across to the Town House he antic.i.p.ated anything but enjoyment.

In a few minutes, however--has it not some time or other happened to all of us?--everything was changed with him. He felt as if he had entered another world. The air of culture and refinement which surrounded him from the hall inward, the hearty kindness of Mrs. Hammond, the pretty rooms, the music and flowers, Laura's light laughter and pleasant badinage, all surprised and delighted him. The party might almost have been a London party, it was so lively. The archdeacon, a red-faced, cherry, white-haired man, whose acquaintance Lindo had already made, and his wife, who was a mild image of himself, were of the number, which was completed by their daughter and four or five county people, all prepared to welcome and be pleased with the new rector. Lindo, sprung from gentlefolk himself, had the ordinary experience of society; but here he found himself treated as a stranger and a dignitary to a degree of notice and a delicate flattery of which he had not before tasted the sweets. Perhaps he was the more struck by the taste displayed in the house, and the wit and liveliness of his new friends, because he had so little looked for them--because he had insensibly judged his parish by his experience of Mr. Bonamy, and had come expecting this house to be as his.

If, under these circ.u.mstances, the young fellow had been unaffected by the incense offered to him he would have been more than mortal. But he was not. He began, before he had been in the house an hour, to change, all unconsciously of course, his standpoint. He began to wonder especially why he had been so depressed during the last few days, and why he had troubled himself so much about the opinions of people whose views no sensible man would regard.

Perhaps the girl beside him--he took in Laura--contributed as much as anything to this. It was not only that she was bright and sparkling, in the luxury of her pearls and evening dress even enchanting, nor only that the femininity which had enslaved Stephen Clode began to have its effects on her new neighbor. But Laura had a way while she talked to him, while her l.u.s.trous brown eyes dwelt momentarily on his, of removing herself and himself to a world apart--a world in which downrightness seemed more downright and rudeness an outrage. And so, while her manner gently soothed and flattered her companion, it led him almost insensibly to--well, to put it in the concrete--to think scorn of Mr. Bonamy.

"You have had a misunderstanding," she said softly, as they stood together by the piano after dinner, a feathering plant or two fencing them off in a tiny solitude of their own, "with Mr. Bonamy, have you not, Mr. Lindo?"

From anyone else, perhaps from her half an hour before, he would have resented mention of the matter. Now he did not seem to mind. "Something of the kind," he said, laughing.

"About the sheep in the churchyard, was it not?" she continued.

"Yes."

"Well, will you pardon me saying something?" Resting both her hands on the raised lid of the piano, she looked up at him, and it must be confessed that he thought he had never seen eyes so soft and brilliant before. "It is only this," she said earnestly. "That I hope you will not give way to him. He is a wretched, cross-grained, fidgety man and full of crotchets. You know all about him, of course?" she added, a slight ring of pride in her voice.

"I know that he is my church warden," said the rector, half in seriousness.

"Yes!" she replied. "That is just what he is fit for!"

"You think so?" Lindo retorted, smiling. "Then you really mean that I should be guided by him? That is it?"

She looked brightly at him for a moment. "I think you will be guided only by yourself," she murmured; and, blushing slightly, she nodded and left him to go to another guest.

They were all in the same tale. "He is a rude overbearing man, Mr. Lindo," Mrs. Hammond said roundly, even her good nature giving place to the odium theologic.u.m. "And I cannot imagine why Mr. Williams put up with him so long."

"No indeed," said the archdeacon's wife, complacently smoothing down her skirt. "But that is the worst of a town parish. You have this sort of people."

Mrs. Hammond looked for the moment as if she would have liked to deny it. But under the circ.u.mstances this was impossible. "I am afraid we have," she admitted gloomily. "I hope Mr. Lindo will know how to deal with him."

"I think the archdeacon would," said the other lady, shaking her head sagely.

But, naturally enough, the archdeacon was more guarded in his expressions. "It is about removing the sheep from the churchyard, is it not?" he said, when he and Lindo happened to be left standing together and the subject came up. "They have been there a long time, you know."

"That is true, I suppose," the rector answered. "But," he continued rather warmly--"you do not approve of their presence there, archdeacon?"

"No, certainly not."

"Nor do I. And, thinking the removal right, and the responsibility resting upon me, ought I not to undertake it?"

"Possibly," replied the older man. "But pardon me making a suggestion. Is not the thing of so little importance that you may, with a good conscience, prefer quiet to the trouble of raising it?"

"If the matter were to end there, I think so," replied the new rector, with perhaps too strong an a.s.sumption of wisdom in his tone. "But what if this be only a test case?--if to give way here means to encourage further trespa.s.s on my right of judgment? The affair would bear a different aspect then, would it not?"

"Oh, no doubt. No doubt it would."

And that was all the archdeacon, who was a cautious man and knew Mr. Bonamy, would say. But it will be observed that the rector had both altered his standpoint and done another thing which most people find easy enough. He had discovered an answer to his own arguments.

CHAPTER VIII.

TWO SURPRISES.

On the evening of the Hammonds' party, Mr. Clode sat alone in his room, trying to compose himself to work. His lamp burned brightly, and his tea kettle--he had already sent down his frugal dinner an hour or more--murmured pleasantly on the hob. But for some reason Mr. Clode could do no work. He was restless, gloomy, ill-satisfied. The suspicions which had been aroused in his breast on the evening of the rector's arrival had received, up to to-day at least, no confirmation; but they had grown, as suspicions will, feeding on themselves, and with them had grown the jealousy which had fostered them into being. The curate saw himself already overshadowed by his superior, socially and in the parish; and this evening felt this the more keenly that, as he sat in his little room, he could picture perfectly the gay scene at the Town House, where, for nearly two years, not a party had taken place without his presence, no festivity had been arranged without his co-operation. The omission to invite him to-night, however natural it might seem to others, had for him a tremendous significance; so that from a jealousy that was general he leapt at once to a jealousy more particular, and conjured up a picture of Laura--with whose disposition he was not unacquainted--smiling on the stranger, and weaving about him the same charming net which had caught his own feet.

At this thought Clode sprang up with a pa.s.sionate gesture and began to walk to and fro, his brow dark. He felt sure that Lindo had no right to his cure, but he knew also that the cure was a freehold, and that to oust the rector from it something more than a mere mistake would have to be shown. If the rector should turn out to be very incompetent, if he should fall on evil times in the parish, then indeed he might find his seat untenable when the mistake should be discovered; and with an eye to this the curate had already dropped a word here and there--as, for instance, that word which had reached Mr. Bonamy. But Clode was not satisfied with that now. Was there no shorter, no simpler course possible? There was one. The rector might be shown to have been aware of the error when he took advantage of it. In that case his appointment would be vitiated, and he might be compelled to forego it.

Naturally enough, the curate had scarcely formulated this to himself before he became convinced--in his present state of envy and suspicion--of the rector's guilt. But how was he to prove it? As he walked up and down the room, chafing and hot-eyed, he thought of a way in which proof might be secured. The letters which had pa.s.sed between Lindo and Lord Dynmore's agents in regard to the presentation, must surely contain some word, some expression sufficient to have apprised the young man of the truth--that the living was intended not for him but for his uncle. A look at those letters, if they were in existence, might give Stephen Clode, mere curate though he was, the whip-hand of his rector!

He had another plan in his mind, of which more presently, and probably he would have pursued the idea which has just been mentioned no farther if his eye had not chanced to light at the moment on a small key hanging upon a nail by the fireplace. Clode looked at the key, and his face flushed. He stood thinking and apparently hesitating, the lamp throwing his features into strong relief, while a man might count twenty. Then he sat down with an angry exclamation and plunged into his work. But in less than a minute he lifted his head. His glance wandered again to the key; and, getting up suddenly, he took it down, put on his hat, and went out.

His lodgings were over the stationer's shop, but he could go in and out through a private pa.s.sage. He saw, as he pa.s.sed, however; that there was a light in the shop, and he opened the side door. "I am going to the rectory to consult a book, Mrs. Wafer," he said, seeing his landlady dusting the counter. "You can leave my lamp alight. I shall want nothing more to-night, thank you."

She bade him good-night, and he closed the door again and rushed into the street. Crossing the top of the town, he had to pa.s.s the Market Hall, where he spoke to the one policeman on night duty; and here he saw that it was five minutes to ten, and hastened his steps, in the fear that the rector's household might have retired. "He will not be home himself until eleven, at the earliest," the curate muttered as he turned rapidly into the churchyard, which was very dark, the night being moonless. "I have a clear hour. It was well that I looked in late the other night."

But, whatever his design, it received a sudden check. The rectory was closed! The front of the house stood up dark and shapeless as the great church which towered in front of it. The servants had gone to bed, and, as they slept at the back, he would have found it difficult to arouse them, had it suited his plans to do so. As it was, he did not dream of such a thing, and with a slight shiver--for the night was cold, and now that his project no longer excited him he felt it so, and felt too the influence of the night wind soughing in sad fashion through the yews--he was turning away, when something arrested his attention, and he paused.

The something he had seen, or fancied he had seen, was a momentary glimmer of light shining through the fanlight over the door. It could not affect him, for, if the servants had really closed the house for the night, even if they had not all gone to bed, he could scarcely go in. And yet some impulse led him to step softly into the porch and grope for the knocker.

His hand lit instead on the iron-studded surface of the old oak door, and, to his surprise, he felt it move slightly under his touch. He pushed, and the door slid slowly and silently open, disclosing the dusky outline of the hall, faintly illuminated by a thin shaft of light which proceeded apparently from the study, the door of which was a trifle ajar.

The sight recalled to the curate's mind the errand on which he had come, and he stole across the hall on tiptoe, listening with all his ears. He heard nothing, however, and presently he stood on the mat at the study door intercepting the light. Then he did hear the dull footsteps of some one moving in the room, and suddenly it occurred to him that the rector had stepped home to fetch something--a song, music, or a book possibly--and was now within searching for it. That would explain all.

The curate was seized with panic at the thought, and, fearful of being discovered in his present position--for though he might have done all he had done in perfect innocence, conscience made a coward of him--he crept across the hall again and pa.s.sed out into the churchyard. There he stood in the darkness, waiting and watching, expecting the rector to bustle out each minute.

But five minutes pa.s.sed, and even ten, as it seemed to the curate in his impatience, and no one came out, nor did the situation alter. Then he made up his mind that the person moving in the study could not be the owner of the house, and he went in again and, crossing the hall, flung the study door wide open and entered.

There was a ringing sound as of coins falling on the floor, and a man who had been kneeling low over something sprang to his feet and gazed with wide, horror-stricken eyes at the intruder. A moment only the man looked, and then he fell again on his knees. "Oh, mercy! mercy!" he cried, almost grovelling before the curate. "Don't give me up! I have never been took! I have never been in jail or in trouble in my life! I did not know what I was doing, sir! I swear I did not! Don't give me up!"

This cry, which was low and yet piercing, ended in hysterical sobbing. On the table by his side stood a single candle, and by its light Clode saw that the little cupboard among the books was open. The curate started at the sight, and the words which he had been about to utter to the shrinking wretch begging for mercy on the floor before him died away in his husky throat. His eyes, however, burned with a gloomy rage, and when he recovered himself his voice was pitiless. "You scoundrel!" he said, in the low rich tone which had been so much admired in the church when he first came to Claversham, "what are you doing here? Get up and speak!" And he made as if he would spurn the creature with his foot.

"I am a respectable man," the rogue whined. "I am--that is I was, I mean, sir--don't be hard on me--Lord Dynmore's own valet. I will tell you all, sir."

"I know you!" rejoined Clode, looking harshly at him. "You were here this morning. And Mr. Lindo gave you money."

"He did, sir. I confess it. I am a----"

"You are an ungrateful scoundrel!" Stephen Clode answered, cutting the man short. "That is what you are! And in a few days you will be a convicted felon, with the broad-arrow on your clothes, my man!"

To hear his worst antic.i.p.ations thus put into words was too much for the poor wretch. He fell on his knees, feebly crying for mercy, mercy! "You are a minister of the gospel. Give me this one more chance, sir!" he prayed.

"Stop that noise!" growled the curate fiercely, his dark face rendered more rugged by the light and shadow cast by the single candle. "Be silent! do you hear? and get up and speak like a man, if you can. Tell me all--how you came here, and what you came for, and perhaps I may let you escape. But the truth, mind, the truth!" he added truculently.

The knave was too thoroughly terrified to think of anything else. "Lord Dynmore dismissed me," he muttered, his breath coming quickly. "He missed some money in Chicago, and he gave me enough to carry me home, and bade me go to the devil! I landed in Liverpool without a shilling--sir, it is G.o.d's truth--and I remembered the gentleman Lord Dynmore had just put in the living here. I had known him, and he had given me half a sovereign more than once. And I thought I would come to him. So I p.a.w.ned my clothes, and came on."

"Yes, yes!" exclaimed the curate, leaning forward, with fierce impatience in his tone. "And then?"

"Sir?"

"Well? When you came here? What happened? Go on, fool!" He could scarcely control himself.

"I found a stranger," whimpered the man--"another Mr. Lindo. He had got in here somehow."

"Well? But there," added the curate with a sudden change of manner, "how do you know that Lord Dynmore meant to put the clergyman you used to know in here?"

"Because I heard him read a letter from his agents about it," the fellow replied at once. "And from what his lordship said I knew it was his old pal--his old friend, sir, I mean, begging your pardon humbly, sir."

"And when did you learn," said the curate more quickly, "that the gentleman here was not your Mr. Lindo?"

"I heard in the town that he was a young man. And, putting one thing and another together, and keeping a still tongue myself, I thought he would serve me as well as the other, and I called----"

"What did you say?"

"Not much, sir," answered the valet, a twinkle of cunning in his eye. "The less said the sooner mended. But he understood, and he promised to give me ten shillings a week."

"To hold your tongue?"

"Well, so I took it, sir."

The curate drew a long breath. This was what he had expected. It was to information which might be drawn from this man that his second scheme had referred. And here was the man at his service, bound by a craven fear to do his bidding--bound to tell all he knew. "But why," Clode asked suspiciously, a thought striking him, "if what you say be true, are you here now--doing this, my man?"

"I was tempted, sir," the servant answered, his tone abject again. "I confess it truly, sir. I saw the money in the box here this morning, sir, and I thought that my ten shillings a week would not last long, and a little capital would set me up comfortably. And then the devil put it into my head that the young gentleman would not persecute me, even if he caught me."

"You did not think of me catching you?" said the curate grimly.

The man uttered a cry of anguish. "That I did not, sir," he sobbed. "Oh, Lord! I have never had a policeman's hand on me. I have been honest always."

"Until you took his lordship's money," replied the curate quietly. "But I understand. You have never been found out before, you mean."

No doubt when people of a certain cla.s.s, for which respectability has long spelled livelihood, do fall into the law's clutch they suffer very sharply. Master Felton continued to pour forth heartrending prayers; but he might have saved his breath. The curate's thoughts were elsewhere. He was thinking that a witness so valuable must be kept within reach at any cost and it did flash across his brain that the best course would be to hand him over now to the police, and trust to the effect which his statements respecting the rector should produce upon the inquiry. But the reflection that the allegations of a man on his trial for burglary would not obtain much credence led Clode to reject this simple course and adopt another. "Look here!" he said curtly. "I am going to deal mercifully with you, my man. But--but," he continued, frowning impatiently, as he saw the other about to speak--"on certain conditions. You are not to leave Claversham. That is the first. If you leave the town before I give you the word, I shall put the police on your track without an instant's delay. Do you hear that?"

"I will stop as long as you like, sir," said the servant submissively, but with wonder apparent both in his voice and face.

"Very well. I wish it for the present, no matter why. Perhaps because I would see that you lead an honest life for awhile."

"And--how shall I live, sir?" said the culprit timidly.

"For the present you may continue to draw your half-sovereign a week," the curate answered hastily, his face reddening, he best knew why. "Possibly I may tell Mr. Lindo at once. Possibly I may give you another chance, and tell him later, if I find you deserving. What is your address?"

"I am at the Bull and Staff," muttered Felton. It was a small public house of no very good repute.

"Well, stay there," Stephen Clode answered after a moment's thought. "But see you get into no harm. And since you are living on the rector's bounty, you may say so."

The man looked puzzled as well as relieved, but, stealing a doubtful glance at the curate's dark fate, he found his eyes still upon him, and cowered afresh. "Yes, take care," said Clode, smiling unpleasantly as he saw the effect his look produced. "Do not try to evade me or it will be the worse for you, Felton. And now go! But see you take nothing from here."

The detected one cast a sly glance at the half-rifled box which still lay on the carpet at his feet, a few gold coins scattered round it; then he looked up again. "It is all there, sir," he said, cringing. "I had but just begun."

"Then go!" said the curate, pointing with emphasis to the door. "Go, I tell you!"

The man's presence annoyed and humiliated him so that he felt a positive relief when the valet's back was turned. Left alone he stood listening, a cloud on his brow, until the faint sound of the outer door being pulled to reached his ear, and then, stooping hastily, he gathered up the sovereigns and half-sovereigns, which lay where they had fallen, and put them into the box. This done, he rose and laid the box itself upon the table by his side. And again he stood still, listening, a dark shade on his face.

Long ago, almost at the moment of his entrance, he had seen the pale shimmer of papers at the back of the little cupboard. Now, still listening stealthily, he thrust in his hand and drew out one of the bundles and opened it. The papers were parish accounts in his own handwriting! With a gesture of fierce impatience he thrust them back and drew out others, and, disappointed again in these, exchanged them hastily for a third set. In vain! The last were as worthless to him as the first.

He was turning away baffled and defeated, when he saw lying at the back of the lower compartment of the cupboard, whence the cash-box had come, two or three smaller packets, consisting apparently of letters. The curate reached hastily for one of these, and the discovery that it contained some of Lindo's private accounts, dated before his appointment, made his face flush and his fingers tremble with eagerness. He glanced nervously round the room and stopped to listen; then, moving the candle a little nearer, he ran his eye over the papers. But here, too, though the scent was hot, he took nothing, and he exchanged the packet for one of the others. Looking at this, he saw that it was indorsed in Lindo's handwriting, "Letters relating to the Claversham Living."

"At last," Clode muttered, his eyes burning, "I have it now." The string which bound the packet was knotted tightly, and his fingers seemed all thumbs as he labored to unfasten it. But he succeeded at last, and opening the uppermost letter (they were all folded across), saw that it was written from Lincoln's Inn Fields. "My dear sir," he read; and then--with a mighty crash sounding awfully in his ears--the door behind him was flung open just as he had flung it open himself an hour before, and, dropping the letter, he sprang round, to find the rector confronting him with a face of stupid astonishment.

CHAPTER IX.