"No, the gentleman at the Bull and Staff!" replied the curate bluntly.

"At the Bull and Staff? Who is that?"

"Felton."

For a moment the rector looked puzzled. He had almost forgotten the name of Lord Dynmore's servant. Then he colored slightly. "Yes, I know whom you mean," he said, taken aback as much by the other's unlooked-for tone as by the mention of the man. "But I did not know he lived at the Bull and Staff. It is not much of a place, is it?"

"I should say that it was very nearly the worst house in the town!" said the curate.

"Indeed! I will speak to him about it."

"I would speak to him about getting drunk, if I were you!" Clode replied with a short laugh. "He is drunk six days in the week; every day except Sat.u.r.day, when he comes to you and pulls a long face above a clean neck-cloth. He is the talk of the town!"

The rector stared; naturally wondering what on earth had come to the curate to induce him to take that line. He was rather surprised than offended, however, and merely answered, "I am sorry to hear it. I will speak to him about it."

"Who is this person?" Miss Hammond asked hurriedly. "I do not think that I know any one in the town of that name." The subject seemed to be a dangerous one, but anything was better than to leave the curate free to conduct the discussion.

He it was, however, who answered her. "He is a protege of the rector's!" he said, with a laugh that was undisguisedly offensive. "You had better ask him."

"He is a servant of Lord Dynmore's," Lindo said, speaking to her with studious politeness, and otherwise ignoring Clode's interruption.

"But why you find him in board and lodging at the Bull and Staff free, gratis, and for nothing," interposed the curate again with the same rudeness, "pa.s.ses my comprehension!"

"Perhaps that is my business," said the rector, losing patience.

Both men stood up. Laura rose, too, with a scared face, and stood gazing at them, amazed at the storm which had so suddenly arisen. The curate's height, as the two stood confronting one another, seemed to give him the advantage; and his dark rugged face, kindling with long-repressed feelings, wore the provoking smile of one who, confident in his own powers, has wilfully thrown down the glove and is determined to see the matter through. The rector's face, on the other hand, was red; and, though he faced his man squarely and threw back his head with the haughtiness of his kind, his anger was mixed with wonder, and it was plain that he was at a loss to understand the other's ebullition or to decide how to deal with it. There was a moment's silence, which Laura had not the presence of mind, nor the curate the will, to break. Then the rector said, "Perhaps we had better let this drop for the moment, Mr. Clode."

"As you will," replied the curate recklessly.

"Well, I do will," Lindo rejoined, with some hauteur. And he looked, still standing erect and expectant, as if he thought that Clode could not do otherwise than take his leave.

But that was just what the curate had not the slightest intention of doing. Instead, with a cynical smile, he coolly sat himself down again. His superior's eyes flashed with redoubled anger at this, which seemed to him, after what had pa.s.sed, the grossest impertinence; but Mr. Clode in his present mood cared nothing for that, and made it very plain that he did not. "Will you think me exacting if I ask for another cup of tea, Miss Hammond?" he said quietly.

That was enough to make the rector's cup run over. He did not wait to hear Laura's answer, but himself said. "Perhaps I had better say good evening, Miss Hammond."

"You will not forget the bazaar?" she answered, making no demur, but at once holding out her hand.

There was a faint note of appeal in her voice which begged him not to be angry, and yet he was angry. "The bazaar?" he said coldly. "Oh, yes, I will not forget it."

And with that he took up his hat and went, feeling much as a man does who, walking along a well-known road, has put his foot into a hole and fallen heavily. He was almost more astonished and aggrieved than hurt.

When he was gone there was silence in the room. I do not know whether Laura had been conscious, while the two men wrangled before her, that she was the prize of the strife, and so, like the maidens of old, had been content to stand by pa.s.sive and expectant, satisfied to see the best man win, or whether she had been too much alarmed to interpose. But certain it is that, when she was left alone with the curate, she felt almost as uncomfortable as she had ever felt in her life. She tried to say something indifferent, but for once she was too nervous to frame the words. And Mr. Clode, instead of a.s.sisting her, instead of bridging over the awkwardness of the moment, as he should have done, since he was the person to blame for it all, sat silent and morose, brooding over the fire and sipping his tea. At last he spoke. "Well," he said abruptly, turning his dark eyes suddenly on hers. "Which is it to be, Laura?"

He had never spoken to her in that tone before, and had any one told her that morning that she would submit to it, she would have laughed her informant to scorn. But there was a new-born masterfulness in the curate's manner which cowed her. "I do not know what you mean," she murmured, her face hot, her heart beating.

"I think you do," he answered sternly, without removing his eyes from her. "Is it to be the rector, or is it to be me, Laura? You must choose between us."

She recovered herself with a kind of gasp. "Are you not going a little too fast?" she said, trying to smile, and speaking with something of her ordinary manner. "I did not know that my choice was limited to the two you mention, Mr. Clode, or that I had to choose one at all."

"I think you must," was his only answer. "You must choose between us." Then, with a sudden movement, he rose and stood over her. "Laura!" he said in a different tone, in a low voice, which thrilled through her and awoke feelings and emotions. .h.i.therto asleep. "Laura, do not play with me! I am a man. Is he more? Is he as much? I love you with all my being! He cares only to kill time with you! Will you throw me over because he is a little richer, because I am the curate and he is the rector? If so, well, tell me, and I shall understand you!"

It was not the way she had thought he would end. The force, the abruptness, the almost menace of the last four words took her by surprise and subdued her afresh. If she had had any doubt before which of the two men had her liking, she had none now. She knew that Clode's little finger was more to her than Lindo's whole hand; for, like most women, she had a secret admiration for force, even when exercised without much regard to good taste.

"You need not speak to me like that," she said, in gentle deprecation of his manner.

He stooped over her. "Laura," he said, "do you really mean it? Do you mean you will----"

"Wait, please!" she answered, recovering a little of her ascendency. "Give me a little time. I want to think something out."

But time to think was just what he feared--ignorant as yet of his true position--to give her; and his face grew dark and sullen again. "No," he said, "I will not!"

She rose suddenly. "You will do as I ask you now," she said, a.s.serting herself bravely, "or I shall leave you."

He bowed silently, and she sat down again. "Sit down, please," she said to him. He obeyed her. "Now," she continued, raising her hand so as to shade her eyes from the fire, "I will be candid with you, Mr. Clode. If I had no other alternative than the one you have mentioned--to choose between you and Mr. Lindo--I--I should certainly prefer you. No!" she continued sharply, bidding him with her hand to keep his seat, "hear me out, please. You have not stated the case correctly. In the first place--well, you put me in the awkward position of having to confess that Mr. Lindo has made no such proposal as you seem to fancy; and, secondly, there are others in the world."

"I do not care," the curate exclaimed, his deep voice trembling with exultation--"I do not care though there be millions--now!"

She moved her hand, and for a second her eyes, full of a tenderness such as he had never seen in them before, met his. The look drew him from his seat again, but she sent him back to it by an imperious gesture. "I said I would be candid," she continued, "and I intend to be so, though until a few minutes ago I never thought that I should speak to you as I am doing."

"You shall never repent it," he answered fondly.

"I hope not," she rejoined. But then she paused and was silent.

He sat waiting patiently for a while; but, as she still said nothing, he rose. "Laura," he said.

"Yes, I know," she answered, almost abruptly. "But candor does not come very easily, sir, under certain circ.u.mstances. Don't you know you have made me afraid of you?"

He showed that he would have rea.s.sured her in the most convincing and practical manner. But, notwithstanding her words, she had regained her power and presence of mind, and she repelled him.

"Wait until you have heard what I have got to say," she said. "It is this. I would not marry Mr. Lindo because he is a rector with a living and a position--not though he were six times a rector! But all the same I will not marry a curate! No," she added in a lower tone, and with a glance which intoxicated him afresh--"not though he be you!"

He stood silent, looking down at her, waiting for more. Neither by word nor gesture did he express dissent. It is possible he already understood, and felt with her.

"To marry a curate," she continued in a low voice, "is, for a girl such as I am, failure. I have held my head rather high, and I have stood by and seen other girls married. Therefore to marry a curate, after all, would be an ignominious failure. Are you very angry with me?" she continued quietly, "or do you understand?"

"I think I understand," he answered, with just a tinge of bitterness in his tone.

"And despise me? Well, you must. I told you I was going to be candid, and perhaps it is as well--as well, I mean, that you should know me," she replied, apparently unmoved.

"I am content," he answered, catching her spirit.

"And so am I," she said. "To no one else in the world would I have said as much as I have said to you. To no other man would I say, 'Win a living, and I will be yours!' But I say it to you. Do as much as that for me and I will marry you, Stephen. If you cannot, I cannot."

"You are very prosaic," he replied, lapsing into bitterness again.

"Oh, if you are not content" she retorted.

He did not let her finish the sentence. "You will marry me on the day I obtain a living?" he asked.

"I will," she answered bravely.

She was standing up now, and he too--standing where the rector had stood an hour before. She let him pa.s.s his arm round her waist, but when he would have drawn her closer to him, and bent his head to kiss her, she hung back. "No," she said, blushing hotly, "I think"--with a shy laugh--"that you are making too certain, sir."

"Do you wish me not to succeed?" he replied, looking down at her; and it must be confessed the lover's role became him better than nine-tenths of those who knew his dark, rugged face would have believed.

She shook her head, smiling.

"Then if you wish me success," he replied, "you must send me out with some guerdon of your favor." And this time she did not resist. He drew her to him and kissed her thrice. Then she escaped from him and took refuge on the other side of the fireplace.

"You must not do that again," she said, biting her lip and trying to look at him reproachfully. "At any rate, you have had your guerdon now. When you come back a victor I will crown you. But until then we are friends only. You understand, sir?"

And, though he demurred, he presently said he understood.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE LETTERS IN THE CUPBOARD.

When Stephen Clode left the Town House after his interview with Laura, he was in a state of exaltation--lifted completely out of his ordinary cool and calculating self by what had happened. It was raining, but he had gone some distance before he remarked it, and even then he did not at once put up his umbrella, but strode along through the darkness, his thoughts in a whirl of triumph and excitement. The crisis had come suddenly, but he had not been found unequal to it. He had gone in through the gates despondent, and come out in joy. He had pitted himself against his rival, and had had the best of it. He had wooed, and, almost in spite of his mistress, had won!

He did not for the first few moments consider whether his altercation with the rector was likely to have unpleasant consequences, nor did he trouble himself about the manner in which he was to do Laura's bidding. Such considerations would come later--with the reaction. For the present they did not occur to him. It was enough that Laura might be his--that she never could be the rector's.

He felt the need, in his present excited mood, of some one to speak to, and instead of turning into his own lodgings he pa.s.sed on to the reading-room, a large, barely furnished room, looking upon the top of the town, and used as a club by the leading townsfolk and a few of the local magnates who lived near. He entered it, and, to his surprise, found the archdeacon seated under the naked gas-burners, interested in the "Times." The sight filled him with astonishment, for it was seldom the county members used the room after sunset.

"Why, Mr. Archdeacon," he said--his tongue naturally hung loose at the moment, and a bonhomie, difficult to a.s.sume at another time, came easily to him now--"what in the world brings you here at this hour?"

The archdeacon laid down his paper. "Upon my word I think I was half asleep," he said. "I am in for the 'Free Foresters" supper. I thought the hour was half-past six, and came into town accordingly, whereas I find it is half-past seven. I have been here the best part of three-quarters of an hour killing time."

"But I thought that the rector always said grace for the 'Free Foresters,' the curate answered in some surprise.

"It has been the custom for them to ask him," the archdeacon replied cautiously. "By the way you did it last year, did you not?"

"Yes, for Mr. Williams. He was confined to his room."

"I thought so. Well, this year these foolish people seem to have taken a fancy not to have the rector, and they came to me. I tried to persuade them to have him, but it was no good. And so," the archdeacon added, in a lower tone, "I thought it would look less like a slight if I came than if any other clergyman--you, for instance--were the clerical guest."

"To be sure," said the curate warmly. "It was most thoughtful of you."

The archdeacon hitched his chair a little nearer the fire. He felt the influence of the curate's sympathy. The latter had said little, but his manner warmed the old gentleman's heart, and his tongue also grew more loose. "I wonder whether you know," he said genially, rubbing his hands up and down his knees, which he was gently toasting, and looking benevolently at his companion, "how near you were to having the living, Clode?"

"Do you mean Claversham?" replied the curate, experiencing a kind of shock at this reference to the subject so near his heart.

"Yes, of course."

"I never thought I had a chance of it!"

"You had so good a chance," responded the archdeacon, nodding his head wisely, "that only one thing stood between you and it."

"May I ask what that was?" the curate rejoined, his heart beating fast.

"A promise. The earl had promised his old friend that he should have this living. Lord Dynmore told me so himself, the last time I saw him. That would be nearly a year ago, when poor Williams was already ailing."

"Well, that I supposed to be the case," Clode answered, his tone one of disappointment. "But I do not quite see how I was affected by it--more, I mean, than others, archdeacon."

"That is what I am going to tell you, only it must not go farther," the archdeacon answered. "Lord Dynmore told me of this promise a propos of a resolution he had just come to--namely, that, subject to it, he intended in future to give his livings (he has seven in all, you know) to the curate, wherever the latter had been two years at least in the parish, and stood well with it. I am not sure that I agree with him; but he is a conscientious man, though an odd one, and he had formed the opinion that that was the right course. So, come now, if anything should happen to Lindo you would certainly drop into it. I am not quite sure," added the archdeacon confidentially, "though no one likes Lindo better than I do, that yours would not have been the better appointment."

The curate disclaimed this so warmly and loyally that the archdeacon was more than ever pleased with him; and, half-past seven striking, they parted at the door of the reading-room on the best of terms with one another. The archdeacon crossed to his supper and speech, and the curate turned into his rooms, and, throwing himself into the big leather chair before the fire, fixed his eyes on the glowing coals, and began to think--to apply what he had just heard to what he had known before.

A living? He had got to get a living. And without capital to invest in one, or the favor of a patron, how was it to be done? The bishop? He had no claim there. He had not been long enough in the diocese, and he knew nothing of the bishop's wife. There was only one living he could get, only one living upon which he had a claim, and that was Claversham. It all came back to that--with this added, that he had now a stronger motive than ever for ejecting Lindo from it, and the absolute knowledge to boot that, Lindo ejected, he would be his successor.

Stephen Clode's face grew dark and gloomy as he reached this stage in his reflections. He believed that the rector was enjoying what he had no right to enjoy, but still he would fain have had no distinct part in depriving him of it. He would have much preferred to stand by and, save by a word here and there, by little acts scarcely palpable, and quite incapable of proof--do nothing himself to injure him. He knew what loyalty was, and would fain have been loyal in big things at least. But he did not see how it could be done. He fancied that the stir against the rector was dying away. Bonamy had not moved. Gregg was a coward, and of this matter of the "Free Foresters" he thought nothing. Probably they would return to their allegiance another year, and among the poor the rector's liberality would soon make friends for him. Altogether, the curate, getting up and walking the room restlessly and with a knitted brow, was forced to the conviction that, if he would be helped, he must help himself, and that now was the time. The iron must be struck before it cooled. Something must be done.

But what? Clode's mind reverted first to the discharged servant, and discussed more than one way in which he might be used. There was an amount of danger, however, in tampering with him which the thinker's astuteness did not fail to note, and which led him presently to determine to leave Felton alone. Perhaps he had made as much capital out of him as could be made with safety.

From him the curate's thoughts pa.s.sed naturally to the packet of letters in the cupboard at the rectory, the letters which he had once held in his hand, and which he could not but believe would prove the rector's knowledge of the fraud he was committing. Those letters! Clode, walking up and down the room, pishing and pshawing from time to time, could not disentangle his thoughts from them. The narrow chance which had prevented him reading them before somehow made him feel the more certain of their value now--the more anxious to hold them again in his hands.

Were they still in the cupboard, he wondered. He had retained, not with any purpose, but in pure inadvertence, the key which he had mentioned to the rector; and he had it now. He took it from the mantel-shelf, toyed with it, dropped it into his pocket. Then he took up his hat, and was going abruptly from the room when the little servant who waited on him met him. She was bringing up his simple dinner. The curate's first impulse was to order it to be taken down and kept warm for him. His second, to resume his seat and eat it hastily. When he had finished--he could not have said an hour later what he had had--he took his hat again and went out.

Two minutes saw him at the rectory door, where he was just in time to meet the rector going out. Lindo's face flushed as he saw who his visitor was, and there was more than a suspicion of haughtiness in his tone as he greeted him. "Good-evening," he said. "Do you want to see me, Mr. Clode?"

"If you please," the curate answered simply. "May I come in?"

For answer, Lindo silently held the door open, and Clode pa.s.sed through the hall into the library. He was in the habit of entering this room a dozen times a week, but he never did so after leaving his own small lodgings without being struck by its handsome proportions, by the grave harmonious color of its calf-lined walls, and the air of studious quiet which always reigned within them. Of all the rector's possessions he envied him this room the most. The very sight of the shaded lamp standing on the revolving bookcase at the corner of the hearth, and of the little table beside it, which still bore the rector's coffee-cup and a tiny silver ewer and basin, aroused his spleen afresh. But he gave no outward sign of this. He stood with his hat in one hand, his other leaning on the table, and his head slightly bent. "Rector," he said, "I am afraid I behaved very badly this afternoon."

"I certainly thought your manner rather odd," replied the rector shortly. But he was half disarmed already.

"I was annoyed, much annoyed, about a private matter," the curate proceeded in an even, rather despondent tone. "It is a matter about which I expect I shall presently have to take your opinion. But for the present I am not at liberty to name it. However, I was in trouble, and I foolishly wreaked my annoyance upon the first person I came across."

"That was, unfortunately, myself," said Lindo, smiling.

"It would have been very unfortunate indeed for me, if you were as some rectors I could name," the curate replied gravely, still with his eyes cast down. "As it is--well, I think you will accept my apology."

"Say no more about it," answered the rector hastily. There was nothing he hated so much as a scene. "Have a cup of coffee, my dear fellow. I will ring for a cup and saucer." And, before the curate could protest, Lindo was at the bell and had rung it, his manner almost the manner of a boy.

"Sit down, sit down!" he continued. "Sarah, a cup and saucer, please."

"But you were going out," protested the curate, as he complied.

"Only to the post with some letters," the rector explained. "I will send Sarah instead."

Clode sprang up again, a peculiar flush on his dark cheek, and a glint as of excitement in his eye.