The man beside him, a little startled by the doctor's violence, turned round to make sure that they were not overheard, and found himself face to face with the rector, who, seeking to go out--as was not his custom, for he generally used the vestry door--by the porch, had walked into the midst of the group, even as Gregg opened his mouth. A glance at the young man's reddening cheek and compressed lips apprised the startled group that he had overheard something at least.

In one way it was the crisis of Lindo's fate at Claversham. But he did not know it. If he had been wise--if he had been such a man as his curate, for instance; or if, without being wise, he had learned a little of the prudence which comes of necessity with years--he would have pa.s.sed through them in silence, satisfied with such revenge as mute contempt could give him. But he was not old, nor very wise; and perhaps certain things had lately jarred on his nerves, so that he was not quite himself. He did not pa.s.s by in silence, but, instead, stood for a moment. Then, singling Gregg out with a withering glance, "I am much obliged to you for your good opinion," he said to him; "but I should be still more obliged if you would swear elsewhere, sir, and not in the porch of my church. Leave the building! Go at once!" And he pointed toward the churchyard with the air of an angry schoolmaster.

But Gregg did not move. He was astounded by this direct attack, but he had the courage of numbers on his side, and, though he did not dare to answer, he did not budge. Neither did the others, though they felt ashamed of themselves, and looked all ways at once. Only one of them all met the rector's glance fairly, and that was Mr. Bonamy. "I think the least said the soonest mended, Mr. Lindo," he replied, with an acrid smile.

"I am sorry that you did not think of that before," retorted the young man, standing before them with his fair head thrown back, his clerical coat hanging loose, and his brow dark with indignation--for he had heard enough to be able to guess the cause of Gregg's remark. "Do you come to church only to cavil and backbite?--to put the worst construction on what you cannot understand?"

"Speaking for myself," replied the church warden coolly, "the sole thing with which I can charge myself is the remark that you were somewhat late for service this morning, Mr. Lindo."

"And if I was?" said the clergyman in his haughtiest tone.

"Well, of course there may have been a good cause for it," the lawyer replied drily. "But it is a thing I have not known happen here for twenty years."

An altercation with these men, none of whom were well disposed toward him, and half of whom were tradespeople, was the last thing which the young rector should have allowed himself to enter upon, and the last thing indeed to which he would have condescended in his normal frame of mind. But on this unlucky morning he was nervous and irritable; and, finding himself thus bearded and defied, he spoke foolishly. "You trouble yourself too much, Mr. Bonamy," he said impulsively, "with things which do not concern you! The parish, among other things. You have set yourself, as I know, to thwart and embarra.s.s me; but I warn you that you are not strong enough! I shall find means to----"

"To put me down, in fact?" said Mr. Bonamy.

The young man hesitated, his face crimson. His opponent's sallow features, seamed with a hundred astute wrinkles, warned him, if the covert smiles of the others did not, that, in his present mood at any rate, he was not a match for the lawyer. He had gone too far already, as he was now aware. "No," he replied, swallowing his rage, "but to keep you to your proper province, as I hope to keep to mine. I wish you good morning."

He pa.s.sed through them, and hurried away, more angry with them, and with himself for allowing them to provoke him, than he had ever felt in his life. He knew well that he had been foolish. He knew that he had lowered himself in their eyes by his display of temper. But, though he was bitterly annoyed with himself, the consciousness that the fault had originally lain with them, and that they had grievously misjudged him, kept his anger hot; for there is no wrath so fierce as the indignation of the man falsely accused. He called them under his breath an uncharitable, spiteful, tattling crew; and was so far unnerved in thought of them that he had entered his dining-room before he remembered that he was engaged to take the mid-day meal at the Town House, as he had done once or twice before, and then walked up with Laura to the schools.

He washed and changed hurriedly, keeping his anger hot the while, and then went across, with the tale on the tip of his tongue. Again, if he had been wise, he would have kept what had happened to himself. But the soothing luxury of unfolding his wrong to some one who would sympathize was one he could not in his soreness forego.

It was a particularly mild day for the fourth Sunday in Advent, and he found Miss Hammond still lingering before the door, She was looking for violets under the north wall, and he joined her, and naturally broke out at once with the story of what had happened. She was wearing a little close bonnet, which set off her piquant features and bright coloring to peculiar advantage, and, as far as looks went, no young man in trouble ever had a better listener. Only to stand beside her on the lawn, where the old trees shut out all view of the town and the troubles he connected with it, was a relief. Of course the search for violets was soon abandoned. "It is abominable!" she said. But her voice was like the cooing of a dove. She did everything softly. Even her indignation was gentle.

"But you have not heard yet," he protested, "why I really was late."

"I know what is being said," she murmured, looking up at him, a gleam of humor in her brown eyes--"that you stayed at the Homfrays' all night, playing cards. My maid told me as we came in--after church."

"Ha! I knew that they were saying something of the kind," he replied savagely. He was so stern that she felt her little attempt at badinage reproved. "The true reason was of a very different description. What spiteful busybodies they are! I started to return last evening about half-past nine, but as I pa.s.sed Baer Hill Colliery I learned that there had been an accident. A man going down the shaft with the night shift had been crushed--hurt beyond help," the rector continued in a lower voice. "He wanted to see a clergyman, and the other pitmen, some of whom had seen me pa.s.s earlier in the day, stopped me and took me to him."

"How sad! How very sad!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. Somehow she felt ill at ease with him in this mood. With his last words a kind of veil had fallen between them.

"I stayed with him the night," the rector continued. "He died at half-past nine this morning. I came straight from that to this. And they say these things of me!"

His voice, though low, was hard, and yet there was a suspicious break in it as he uttered his last words. Injustice touches a man, young and not yet hardened, very sorely; and he was overwrought. Laura, fingering her little bunch of violets, heard the catch in his voice, and knew that he was not very far from tears.

She was almost terrified. She longed to respond, to say the proper thing, but here her powers deserted her. She was not capable of much emotion, unless the call especially concerned herself; and she could not rise to this occasion. She could only murmur again that it was abominable and too bad, or, taking her cue from the young man's face, that it was very sad. She said enough, it is true, to satisfy him, though not herself; for he only wanted a listener. And when he went in to lunch Mrs. Hammond more than bore him out in all his denunciations; so that when he left to go to the schools he had fully made up his mind to carry things through.

This unfortunate quarrel indeed did him great injury by throwing him into the arms of the party which his own pleasure and taste led him to prefer. He did not demur when Mrs. Hammond--meaning little evil, but expressing prejudices which at one time she had sedulously cultivated (for when one lives near the town one must take especial care not to be confounded with it)--talked of a set of butchers and bakers, and said, much more strongly than he had, that Mr. Bonamy must be kept in his place. A little quarrel with the lawyer, a little social relaxation in which the young fellow had lost sight of the excellent intentions with which he had set out, then this final quarrel--such had been the course of events; sufficient, taken with his own fastidiousness and inexperience, to bring him to this.

Mrs. Hammond, standing at the drawing-room window, watched him as he walked down the short drive. "I like that young man," she said decisively. "He is thrown away upon those people."

Laura, who had not gone to the schools, yawned. "He has not one-half the brains of some one else we know, mother," she answered.

"Who is that?"

Laura did not reply; and probably her mother understood, for she did not press the question. "Well," Mrs. Hammond said, after a moment's silence, "perhaps he has not. I do not know. But at any rate he is a gentleman from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes."

"I dare say he is," said Laura languidly.

Mrs. Hammond, depositing her own portly form in a suitable chair, watched her daughter curiously. She would have given a good deal to be able to read the girl's mind and learn her intentions; but she was too wise to ask questions, and had always given Laura the fullest liberty. She had watched the growth of the intimacy between her and Mr. Clode without demur, feeling a strong liking for the man herself, though she scarcely thought him a suitable match for her daughter. On the old rector's death there had seemed for a few days a chance of Mr. Clode being appointed his successor; and at that time Mrs. Hammond had fancied she detected a shade of anxiety and excitement in her daughter's manner. But Mr. Clode had not been appointed, and the new rector had come; and Laura had apparently transferred her favor from the curate to him.

At this Mrs. Hammond had felt somewhat troubled--at first; but in a short time she had naturally reconciled herself to the change, the rector's superiority as a parti being indisputable. Yet still Mrs. Hammond felt no certainty as to Laura's real feelings, and, gazing at her this afternoon, was as much in the dark as ever. That the girl was fond of her she knew; indeed, it was quite a pretty sight to see the daughter purring about the mother. But Mrs. Hammond was more than half inclined to doubt now whether Laura was fond, or capable of being fond, of any other human being except herself.

She sighed gently as she thought of this, and rang the bell for tea. "I think we will have it early this afternoon," she said, "I feel I want a cup."

CHAPTER XI.

THE DOCTOR SPEAKS.

The feelings with which the curate hastened on the conclusion of his own service, to learn what had happened at the great church may be imagined. His excitement and curiosity were not the less because he had to hide them. If there really had been no service--if the rector had not appeared--what a scandal, what a subject for talk was here! Even if the rector had appeared a little late there would still be whispering; for new brooms are expected to sweep clean. The curate composed his dark face, and purposely made one or two sick calls at houses which lay in his road, lest he might seem to ask the question he had to put too pointedly. By the time he reached the rectory he had made up his mind, judging from the absence of stir in the streets, that nothing very unusual had happened.

"Is the rector in?" he asked the servant.

"No, sir; he has gone to the Town House to dinner," the girl answered.

Involuntarily Mr. Clode frowned. "He was in time for service, I suppose?" he asked, more abruptly than he had intended.

"Oh, yes, sir," said the unconscious maid, who had not been to church.

"Thank you; that is all," he answered, turning away. So nothing had come of it after all! His heart was sick with disappointed hope as he turned into his own dull lodgings; and he felt that the rector in being in time had wronged him afresh, and by dining at the Town House had added insult to injury.

But in the course of the day he learned how late the rector had been; and early next morning some rumor of the triangular altercation in the church porch also reached him--of course in an exaggerated form. As a fact, all Claversham was by this time talking of it, Mr. Bonamy's companions, with one exception, having taken good care to make the most of his success, and to paint the rebuff he had administered to the clergyman in the deepest colors. The curate heard the news with a face of grave concern, but with secret delight; and, turning over in his mind what use he might make of it, came opportunely upon Gregg as the latter was going his rounds. "Hallo!" he said, calling so loudly that the doctor, who had turned away and would fain have retreated, could not decently escape, "you are the very man I wanted to see! What is this absurd story about the rector and you? There is not a word of truth in it, I suppose?"

"I am sure I cannot say until you tell me what it is," replied the doctor snappishly. He was a little afraid of the curate, who had a knack of being unpleasant without giving an opening in return.

"Why, you seem rather sore about it," Clode remarked, with apparent surprise.

"I do not know why I should!" sneered the doctor, his face a dark red with anger.

"Certainly not, if there is no truth in the story," the curate replied, looking down with his eyes half shut at the chafing little man. "But I suppose it is all an invention, Gregg?"

"It is not an invention that the rector was abominably rude to me," blurted out the doctor, who scarcely knew with whom to be most angry--his present tormentor or the first cause of his trouble.

"Pooh!" said Clode, "it is only his way."

"Then it is a d----, it is a most unpleasant way!" retorted the doctor savagely.

"He means no harm," said the curate gaily. "Why did you not answer him back?"

Dr. Gregg's face turned a shade redder. That was where the shoe pinched. Why had he not answered him back as Bonamy had, and not stood mute, acknowledging himself the smaller man? That was what was troubling him now, and making him fancy himself the laughing-stock of the town. "I will answer him back in a way he will not like!" he cried viciously, striving to hide his embarra.s.sment under a show of bl.u.s.ter.

"Tut-t-tut!" said the curate provokingly, "do not go and make a fool of yourself by saying things like that, when you know you don't mean them, man. What can you say to the rector?"

"I will ask him----"

But what he would ask the rector was lost to the world, for at this moment Mr. Bonamy, coming down the pavement behind him, touched his sleeve. "I have just been to your house, doctor," he said. "My youngest girl is a little out of sorts. Would you mind stepping in and seeing her?"

Gregg swallowed his wrath, and was perhaps thankful for the interruption. He said he would; and the lawyer turned to Mr. Clode. "Well," he said, "so you have made up your minds to fight?"

"I am not quite sure," said the curate, with caution--for he knew better than to treat Mr. Bonamy as he treated Gregg--"that I take you."

"You have not seen your princ.i.p.al this morning?" replied the lawyer, with a smile which for him was almost benevolent. The prospect of a fight was as the Mountains of Beulah to him.

"Do you mean Mr. Lindo?" said the curate, with some curtness.

The lawyer nodded. "I see you have not," he continued. "Perhaps you do not know that he turned the sheep out of the churchyard after breakfast this morning, and half of them were found nearly a mile down the Red Lane!"

"I did not know it," said the curate gravely. But it was as much as he could do to restrain his exultation and show no sign save of concern.

"Well, it is the fact," the lawyer replied, rubbing his hands. "It is quite true he gave the church wardens notice to remove them a fortnight ago; but we did not comply, because we say it is our affair and not his. Now you may tell him from me that the only question in my mind is the form of action."

"I will tell him,' said the curate with dignity.

"Just so! What do you say, Gregg?"

But the doctor, grinning from ear to ear with satisfaction, was gone; and the curate, not a whit less pleased in his heart, hastened to follow his example. "Bonamy one, and Gregg two," he said softly to himself, "and last, but not least, one who shall be nameless, three! He has made three enemies already, and, if those be not enough, with right on their side, to oust him from his seat when the time comes, why, I know nothing of odds!"

"With right on their side," said the curate, even to himself. He had made no second attempt to pry into the rector's secrets or to bring home to him a knowledge of the wrongfulness of his possession. But he did still believe, or persuaded himself he believed, that Lindo was a guilty man; or why should the young rector pension the old earl's servant? And on this ground Clode justified to himself the secret ill-turns he was doing him. A month's intimacy with the rector would probably have convinced an impartial mind of his good faith. But the curate had not, it must be remembered, an impartial mind; and we are all very apt to believe what suits us.

To return to the little doctor, whom we left going on his way in a mood almost hilarious. He hoped that this fresh escapade of the rector's would wipe out the memory of the fray in which he had himself borne so inglorious a part. And the more he thought of it, the greater was his admiration of the lawyer, whom he had long patronized in a timid fashion, much as a snub-nosed King Charlie treats the butcher's mongrel. Now he felt a positive reverence for him. He began to think it possible that, with all his drawbacks of birth, Mr. Bonamy might become a personage in the town, and pretty Kate not so bad a match. The result of these musings was that, by the time he reached the lawyer's door, an idea which he had first entertained on seeing the young clergyman's admiration for Kate Bonamy, and which he had since turned over more than once in his mind, had become on a sudden a settled purpose. So much so that, as the doctor rang the bell, he looked at his hands, which were not so clean as they might have been, pished and pshawed, settled his light-blue scarf--which the next minute rose again to the level of his collar--and at length went in with a briskly juvenile air and an engaging smile.

He found Daintry lying on the sofa in the dining-room down-stairs, her head on a white bed-pillow. Kate was leaning over her. The room was in some disorder--littered with this and that, a bottle of eau de Cologne, Mr. Bonamy's papers, books, and sewing; but it looked comfortable, for it was very evidently inhabited. A fastidious eye might have thought it was too much inhabited; and yet proofs of refinement were not wanting, though the sofa was covered with horsehair, and the mirror was heavy and ugly, and the grate, knee-high, was as old as the Georges. There were flowers on the table and on the little cottage piano; and by the side of the last was a violin-case. Not many people in Claversham knew that Mr. Bonamy played the violin. Still fewer had heard him play, for he never did so out of his own house.

Possibly a very particular suitor might have preferred to find Kate attending on her sister in a boudoir, free from a lawyer's papers, furnished in a less solid and durable style, and with some livelier look-out than through wire blinds upon a dull street. But another might have thought that the office in which she was engaged, and the gentleness of her touch and eye as she went about it, made up for all deficiencies.

Dr. Gregg was not of a nature to appreciate either the deficiencies or the set-off; but he had eyes for the girl's grace and beauty, for the neatness of the well-fitting blue gown and the white collar and cuffs; and he shook hands with her and devoted himself to Daintry--who disliked him extremely and was very fractious--with the most anxious solicitude. "It is only a sick headache!" he said finally, with bluntness which was meant for encouragement. "It is nothing, you know."

"I wish you had it, then!" Daintry wailed, burying her face in the pillow.

"It will be gone in the morning!" he retorted, rising and keeping his temper by an unnatural effort. "She will be the better for it afterward, Miss Bonamy."

To this Daintry vouchsafed no answer, unless a muttered "Rubbish!" was intended for one. He affected not to hear it, at any rate. He was all good-temper this morning; the unfortunate point about this being that his good nature was a shade more unpleasant than his usual snappish manner.

At any rate Kate thought it so. She felt the instinctive repulsion which the wrong man's wooing awakens in an unspoiled girl. She was conscious of an added dislike for the man as she held out her hand to him at the dining-room door. But she did not divine the cause of this; no, nor conjecture his purpose when he said in a low voice that he wished to speak to her outside.

"May we go in here a moment?" he muttered, when the door was closed behind them. He pointed to the room on the other side of the hall, which Mr. Bonamy used in summer as a kind of office.

"There is no fire there," Kate answered. "I think it has been lighted up-stairs, however, if you will not mind coming up, Dr. Gregg. Is there anything"--this was when he had silently followed her into the stiff drawing-room, where the newly lit fire was rather smoking than burning--"serious the matter with her, then?"

Her voice was steady, but her eyes betrayed the sudden anxiety his manner had aroused in her.

"With your sister?" he answered slowly. He was really pondering how he should say what he had come to say. But, naturally, she set down his thoughtfulness to a professional cause.

"Yes," she said anxiously.

"Oh, no--nothing, nothing. The truth is," continued the doctor, following up a happy thought and smiling approval of it, "the matter is with me, Miss Bonamy."

"With you!" Kate exclaimed, opening her eyes in astonishment. Her momentary anxiety had put all else out of her head. She thought the doctor had gone mad.

"Yes," he said jerkily, but with a grin of tender meaning. "With me. And you are the cause of it. Now do not be frightened, Miss Kate," he continued hastily, seeing her start of apprehension. "You must have known for a long time what I was thinking of."

"Indeed I have not," Kate murmured in a low voice. She did not affect to misunderstand him.

"Well, you easily might have known it then," he retorted, forgetting his role for an instant. "But the long and the short of it is that I want you to marry me. I do!" he repeated, overcoming something in his throat, and going on from this point swimmingly. "And you will please to hear me out, and not answer in a hurry, Miss Kate. If you like--but I should not think that you would want it--you can have until to-morrow to think it over."

"No," she replied impulsively, her face crimson. And then she shut her mouth so suddenly, it seemed she was afraid to let anything escape it except that unmistakable monosyllable.

"Very well," he replied, comfortably settling his elbow upon the mantel-shelf, "that is as you like. I hope it does not want much thinking over myself. I will not boast that I am a rich man, but I am decently off. I flatter myself that I can keep my head above water--and yours, too, for the matter of that."

"Oh, it is not that," she began hurriedly.

He interrupted her. "No, no," he said jocularly---his last remarks had put him into a state of considerable self-satisfaction, and he no more thought it possible that she could or would refuse him than that the sky could fall--"do not buy a pig in a poke! Hear me out first, Miss Kate, and we shall start fair. You have been in my house, and, if it is not quite so large a house as this, I will answer for it you will find it a great deal more lively. You will see people you have never seen here, nor will see while your name is Bonamy. You will have--well, altogether a better time. Not that I mind myself," the doctor added rather vaguely, forgetting the French proverb about those who excuse themselves, "what your name is, not I! So don't you think you could say Yes at once, my dear?"

He took a step nearer, thinking he had put it rather neatly and without any nonsense. Possibly, from his point of view of things, he had. But Kate fell back, nevertheless, as he advanced.

"Oh, no," she said, flushing painfully. "I could not! I could not indeed, Dr. Gregg! I am very sorry."

"Come, come," he said, holding out his hand, his tone one of pleasant raillery. He had looked for some hanging back, some show of coyness and bashfulness, and was prepared to laugh in his sleeve at it--"I think you can, Kate. I think it is possible." That it was in woman's nature to say No to his comfortable home and the little lift in society he had to offer--it is only little lifts we appreciate, just up the next floor above us--he did not believe.

But Kate soon undeceived him. "I am afraid it is not possible," she said firmly. "Indeed, I may say at once, Dr. Gregg, that it is out of the question what you ask; though I thank you, I am sure."

His face fell ludicrously, and his thick black brows drew together in a very ominous fashion. But he still could not believe that she meant it. "I do not think you understand," he said, "that the house is ready, and the furniture and servants, and there is nothing to prevent you stepping into it all whenever you please. I will take you away from this," he continued, darting a scornful glance round the stiff chilly room--"I do not suppose that ten people enter this room in the twelvemonth--and I will show you something like life. It is an offer not many would make you. Come, Kate, do not be a little fool! You are not going to say No, so say Yes at once. And don't let us shilly-shally!"

He had put out his hand as he spoke and captured hers. But she s.n.a.t.c.hed it from him again almost roughly, and stepped back. The right man might have used the words the doctor used, and might have scolded her with impunity, but not the wrong one. Her face, perplexed and troubled a moment before, grew decided enough now. "I am going to say No, nevertheless, Dr. Gregg," she replied firmly. "I thought I had already said it. I will be as plain as you have been. I do not like you as a wife should like her husband, nor otherwise than as a friend."

"A friend!" he exclaimed. He gasped as a man does who has been plunged suddenly into cold water. His face was red with anger, and his little black eyes glared at her banefully. "Oh, bother your friendship!" he added violently. "I did not ask you for that!"

"I have nothing else to give you," she replied coldly.

He gasped again. Refused by the Bonamy girl! He had never thought of this. He was beside himself with astonishment and anger, with disappointment and wounded pride. "You would not have said this a month ago!" he cried at last. "It was a pity I did not ask you then!"

"I should have given you the same answer."

"Oh, no," he replied ironically, swinging his hat to and fro. "Oh, no, you would not--not at all, Miss Bonamy. You would have sung to a very different tune if I had whistled to you before this niminy-piminy parson showed his face here! Do not think that I am such a fool as not to see which way the wind is blowing."

She stood looking at him in silence. But her face was scarlet, and her hand shook with rage.

He saw it. "Pooh! do not think to frighten me!" he said coa.r.s.ely. "When a man has offered to marry you he has a right to speak his mind! It will be a long time, I warrant you, before your parson will have the same right to speak. He was very great with you once, but he has quite another set of friends now, and I have not heard of him offering to introduce you to them."