Kitabı oku: «Strange Stories», sayfa 7
As soon as all the persons concerned had returned to Churnside, Walter sent at once for Joe Harley. The poacher came to see him in the vicarage library. He was elated and coarsely exultant with his victory, as a relief from the strain he had suffered, after the manner of all vulgar natures.
"Joe," said the clergyman slowly, motioning him into a chair at the other side of the desk, "I know that after this trial Churnside will not be a pleasant place to hold you. All your neighbours believe, in spite of the verdict, that you killed the vicar. I feel sure, however, that you did not commit this murder. Therefore, as some compensation for the suffering of mind to which you have been put, I think it well to send you and your wife and family to Australia or Canada, whichever you like best. I propose also to make you a present of a hundred pounds, to set you up in your new home."
"Make it five hundred, passon," Joe said, looking at him significantly.
Walter smiled quietly, and did not flinch in any way. "I said a hundred," he continued calmly, "and I will make it only a hundred. I should have had no objection to making it five, except for the manner in which you ask it. But you evidently mistake the motive of my gift. I give it out of pure compassion for you, and not out of any other feeling whatsoever."
"Very well, passon," said Joe sullenly, "I accept it."
"You mistake again," Walter went on blandly, for he was himself again now. "You are not to accept it as terms; you are to thank me for it as a pure present. I see we two partially understand each other; but it is important you should understand me exactly as I mean it. Joe Harley, listen to me seriously. I have saved your life. If I had been a man of a coarse and vulgar nature, if I had been like you in a similar predicament, I would have pressed the case against you for obvious personal reasons, and you would have been hanged for it. But I did not press it, because I felt convinced of your innocence, and my sense of justice rose irresistibly against it. I did the best I could to save you; I risked my own reputation to save you; and I have no hesitation now in telling you that to the best of my belief, if the verdict had gone against you, the person who really killed the vicar, accidentally or intentionally, meant to have given himself up to the police, rather than let an innocent man suffer."
"Passon," said Joe Harley, looking at him intently, "I believe as you're tellin' me the truth. I zeen as much in that person's face afore the verdict."
There was a solemn pause for a moment; and then Walter Dene said slowly, "Now that you have withdrawn your claim as a claim, I will stretch a point and make it five hundred. It is little enough for what you have suffered. But I, too, have suffered terribly, terribly."
"Thank you, passon," Joe answered. "I zeen as you were turble anxious."
There was again a moment's pause. Then Walter Dene asked quietly, "How did the vicar's face come to be so bruised and battered?"
"I stumbled up agin 'im accidental like, and didn't know I'd kicked 'un till I'd done it. Must 'a been just a few minutes after you'd 'a left 'un."
"Joe," said the curate in his calmest tone, "you had better go; the money will be sent to you shortly. But if you ever see my face again, or speak or write a word of this to me, you shall not have a penny of it, but shall be prosecuted for intimidation. A hundred before you leave, four hundred in Australia. Now go."
"Very well, passon," Joe answered; and he went.
"Pah!" said the curate with a face of disgust, shutting the door after him, and lighting a perfumed pastille in his little Chinese porcelain incense-burner, as if to fumigate the room from the poacher's offensive presence. "Pah! to think that these affairs should compel one to humiliate and abase one's self before a vulgar clod like that! To think that all his life long that fellow will virtually know – and misinterpret – my secret. He is incapable of understanding that I did it as a duty to Christina. Well, he will never dare to tell it, that's certain, for nobody would believe him if he did; and he may congratulate himself heartily that he's got well out of this difficulty. It will be the luckiest thing in the end that ever happened to him. And now I hope this little episode is finally over."
When the Churnside public learned that Walter Dene meant to carry his belief in Joe Harley's innocence so far as to send him and his family at his own expense out to Australia, they held that the young parson's charity and guilelessness was really, as the doctor said, almost Quixotic. And when, in his anxiety to detect and punish the real murderer, he offered a reward of five hundred pounds from his own pocket for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the criminal, the Churnside people laughed quietly at his extraordinary childlike simplicity of heart. The real murderer had been caught and tried at Dorchester Assizes, they said, and had only got off by the skin of his teeth because Walter himself had come forward and sworn to a quite improbable and inconclusive alibi. There was plenty of time for Joe to have got to the gate by the short cut, and that he did so everybody at Churnside felt morally certain. Indeed, a few years later a blood-stained bowie-knife was found in the hedge not far from the scene of the murder, and the gamekeeper "could almost 'a took his Bible oath he'd zeen just such a knife along o' Joe Harley."
That was not the end of Walter Dene's Quixotisms, however. When the will was read, it turned out that almost everything was left to the young parson; and who could deserve it better, or spend it more charitably? But Walter, though he would not for the world seem to cast any slight or disrespect upon his dear uncle's memory, did not approve of customs of primogeniture, and felt bound to share the estate equally with his brother Arthur. "Strange," said the head of the firm of Watson and Blenkiron to himself, when he read the little paragraph about this generous conduct in the paper; "I thought the instructions were to leave it to his nephew Arthur, not to his nephew Walter; but there, one forgets and confuses names of people that one does not know so easily." "Gracious goodness!" thought the engrossing clerk; "surely it was the other way on. I wonder if I can have gone and copied the wrong names in the wrong places?" But in a big London business, nobody notes these things as they would have been noted in Churnside; the vicar was always a changeable, pernickety, huffy old fellow, and very likely he had had a reverse will drawn up afterwards by his country lawyer. All the world only thought that Walter Dene's generosity was really almost ridiculous, even in a parson. When he was married to Christina, six months afterwards, everybody said so charming a girl was well mated with so excellent and admirable a husband.
And he really did make a very tender and loving husband and father. Christina believed in him always, for he did his best to foster and keep alive her faith. He would have given up active clerical duty if he could, never having liked it (for he was above hypocrisy), but Christina was against the project, and his bishop would not hear of it. The Church could ill afford to lose such a man as Mr. Dene, the bishop said, in these troubled times; and he begged him as a personal favour to accept the living of Churnside, which was in his gift. But Walter did not like the place, and asked for another living instead, which, being of less value – "so like Mr. Dene to think nothing of the temporalities," – the bishop even more graciously granted. He has since published a small volume of dainty little poems on uncut paper, considered by some critics as rather pagan in tone for a clergyman, but universally allowed to be extremely graceful, the perfection of poetical form with much delicate mastery of poetical matter. And everybody knows that the author is almost certain to be offered the first vacant canonry in his own cathedral. As for the little episode, he himself has almost forgotten all about it; for those who think a murderer must feel remorse his whole life long, are trying to read their own emotional nature into the wholly dispassionate character of Walter Dene.
AN EPISODE IN HIGH LIFE
Sir Henry Vardon, K.C.B., electrician to the Admiralty, whose title, as everybody knows, was gazetted some six weeks since, is at this moment the youngest living member of the British knighthood. He is now only just thirty, and he has obtained his present high distinction by those remarkable inventions of his in the matter of electrical signalling and lighthouse arrangements which have been so much talked about in Nature this year, and which gained him the gold medal of the Royal Society in 1881. Lady Vardon is one of the youngest and prettiest hostesses in London, and if you would care to hear the history of their courtship here it is.
When Harry Vardon left Oxford, only seven years ago, none of his friends could imagine what he meant by throwing up all his chances of University success. The son of a poor country parson in Devonshire, who had strained his little income to the uttermost to send him to college, Vardon of Magdalen had done credit to his father and himself in all the schools. He gained the best demyship of his year; got a first in classical mods.; and then unaccountably took to reading science, in which he carried everything before him. At the end of his four years, he walked into a scientific fellowship at Balliol as a matter of course; and then, after twelve months' residence, he suddenly surprised the world of Oxford by accepting a tutorship to the young Earl of Surrey, at that time, as you doubtless remember, a minor, aged about sixteen.
But Harry Vardon had good reasons of his own for taking this tutorship. Six months after he became a fellow of Balliol, the old vicar had died unexpectedly, leaving his only other child, Edith, alone and unprovided for, as was indeed natural; for the expenses of Harry's college life had quite eaten up the meagre savings of twenty years at Little Hinton. In order to provide a home for Edith, it was necessary that Harry should find something or other to do which would bring in an immediate income. School-mastering, that refuge of the destitute graduate, was not much to his mind; and so when the senior tutor of Boniface wrote a little note to ask whether he would care to accept the charge of a cub nobleman, as he disrespectfully phrased it, Harry jumped at the offer, and took the proposed salary of 400l. a year with the greatest alacrity. That would far more than suffice for all Edith's simple needs, and he himself could live upon the proceeds of his fellowship, besides finding time to continue his electrical researches. For I will not disguise the fact that Harry only accepted the cub nobleman as a stop-gap, and that he meant even then to make his fortune in the end by those splendid electrical discoveries which will undoubtedly immortalize his name in future ages.
It was summer term when the appointment was made; and the Surrey people (who were poor for their station) had just gone down to Colyford Abbey, the family seat, in the valley of the Axe near Seaton. You have visited the house, I dare say – open to visitors every Tuesday, when the family is absent – a fine somewhat modernized mansion, with some good perpendicular work about it still, in spite of the havoc wrought in it by Inigo Jones, who converted the chapel and refectory of the old Cistercians into a banqueting-hall and ballroom for the first Lord Surrey of the present creation. It was lovely weather when Harry Vardon went down there; and the Abbey, and the terrace, and the park, and the beautiful valley beyond were looking their very best. Harry fell in love with the view at once, and almost fell in love with the inmates too at the first glance.
Lady Surrey, the mother, was sitting on a garden seat in front of the house as the carriage which met him at Colyford station drove up to the door. She was much younger and more beautiful than Harry had at all expected. He had pictured the dowager to himself as a stately old lady of sixty, with white hair and a grand manner; instead of which he found himself face to face with a well-preserved beauty of something less than forty, not above medium height, and still strikingly pretty in a round-faced, mature, but very delicate fashion. She had wavy chestnut hair, regular features, an exquisite set of pearly teeth, full cheeks whose natural roses were perhaps just a trifle increased by not wholly ungraceful art, and above all a lovely complexion quite unspoilt as yet by years. She was dressed as such a person should be dressed, with no affectation of girlishness, but in the style that best shows off ripe beauty and a womanly figure. Harry was always a very impressionable fellow; and I really believe that if Lady Surrey had been alone he would have fallen over head and ears in love with her at first sight.
But there was something which kept him from falling in love at once with Lady Surrey, and that was the girl who sat half reclining on a tiger-skin at her feet, with a little sketching tablet on her lap. He could hardly take full stock of the mother because he was so busy looking at the daughter as well. I shall not attempt to describe Lady Gladys Durant; all pretty girls fall under one of some half-dozen heads, and description at best can really do no more than classify them. Lady Gladys belonged to the tall and graceful aristocratic class, and she was a good specimen of the type at seventeen. Not that Harry Vardon fell in love with her at once; he was really in the pleasing condition of Captain Macheath, too much engaged in looking at two pretty women to be capable even mentally of making a choice between them. Mother and daughter were both almost equally beautiful, each in her own distinct style.
The countess half rose to greet him – it is condescension on the part of a countess to notice the tutor at all, I believe; but though I am no lover of lords myself, I will do the Durants the justice to say that their treatment of Harry was always the very kindliest that could possibly be expected from people of their ideas and traditions.
"Mr. Vardon?" she said interrogatively, as she held out her hand to the new tutor. Harry bowed assent. "I'm glad you have such a lovely day to make your first acquaintance with Colyford. It's a pretty place, isn't it? Gladys, this is Mr. Vardon, who is kindly going to take charge of Surrey for us."
"I'm afraid you don't know what you're going to undertake," said Gladys, smiling and holding out her hand. "He's a dreadful pickle. Do you know this part of the world before, Mr. Vardon?"
"Not just hereabouts," Harry answered; "my father's parish was in North Devon, but I know the greater part of the county very well."
"That's a good thing," said Gladys quickly; "we're all Devonshire people here, and we believe in the county with all our hearts. I wish Surrey took his title from it. It's so absurd to take your title from a place you don't care about only because you've got land there. I love Devonshire people best of any."
"Mr. Vardon would probably like to see his rooms," said the countess. "Parker, will you show him up?"
The rooms were everything that Harry could wish. There was a prettily furnished sitting-room for himself on the front, looking across the terrace, with a view of the valley and the sea in the distance; there was a study next door, for tutor and pupil to work in; there was a cheerful little bedroom behind; and downstairs at the back there was the large bare room for which Harry had specially stipulated, wherein to put his electrical apparatus, for he meant to experiment and work busily at his own subject in his spare time. There was a special servant, too, told off to wait upon him; and altogether Harry felt that if only the social position could be made endurable, he could live very comfortably for a year or two at Colyford Abbey.
There are some men who could never stand such a life at all. There are others who can stand it because they can stand anything. But Harry Vardon belonged to neither class. He was one of those who feel at home in most places, and who can get on in all society alike. In the first place, he was one of the handsomest fellows you ever saw, with large dark eyes, and that particular black moustache that no woman can ever resist. Then again he was tall and had a good presence, which impressed even those most dangerous of critics for a private tutor, the footmen. Moreover, he was clever, chatty, and agreeable; and it never entered into his head that he was not conferring some distinction upon the Surrey family by consenting to be teacher to their young lordling – which, indeed, was after all the sober fact.
The train was in a little before seven, and there was a bit of a drive from the station, so that Harry had only just had time to dress for dinner when the gong sounded. In the drawing-room he met his future pupil, a good-looking, high-spirited, but evidently lazy boy of sixteen. The family was alone, so the earl took down his mother, while Harry gave his arm to Lady Gladys. Before dinner was over, the new tutor had taken the measure of the trio pretty accurately. The countess was clever, that was certain; she took an interest in books and in art, and she could talk lightly but well upon most current topics in the easy sparkling style of a woman of the world. Gladys was clever too, though not booky; she was full of sketching and music, and was delighted to hear that Harry could paint a little in water-colours, besides being the owner of a good violin. As to the boy, his fancy clearly ran for the most part to dogs, guns, and cricket; and indeed, though he was no doubt a very important person as a future member of the British legislature, I think for the purposes of the present story, which is mainly concerned with Harry Vardon's fortunes, we may safely leave him out of consideration. Harry taught him as much as he could be induced to learn for an hour or two every morning, and looked after him as far as possible when he was anywhere within hearing throughout the rest of the day; but as the lad was almost always out around the place somewhere with a gamekeeper or a stable-boy, he hardly entered practically into the current of Harry's life at all, outside the regular hours of study. As a matter of fact, he never learnt much from anybody or did anything worth speaking of; but he has since married a Birmingham heiress with a million or so of her own, and is now one of the most rising young members of the House of Lords.
After dinner, the countess showed Harry her excellent collection of Bartolozzis, and Harry, who knew something about them, showed the countess that she was wrong as to the authenticity of one or two among them. Then Gladys played passably well, and he sang a duet with her, in a way that made her feel a little ashamed of her own singing. And lastly Harry brought down his violin, at which the countess smiled a little, for she thought it audacious on the first evening; but when he played one of his best pieces she smiled again, for she had a good ear and a great deal of taste. After which they all retired to bed, and Gladys remarked to her maid, in the privacy of her own room, that the new tutor was a very pleasant man, and quite a relief after such a stick as Mr. Wilkinson.
At breakfast next morning the party remained unchanged, but at lunch the two younger girls appeared upon the scene, with their governess, Miss Martindale. Though very different in type from Gladys, Ethel Martindale was in her way an equally pretty girl. She was small and mignonne, with delicate little hands, and a light pretty figure, not too slight, but very gracefully proportioned. Her cheeks and chin were charmingly dimpled, and her complexion was just of that faintly-dark tinge that one sees so often combined with light-brown hair and eyes in the moorland parts of Lancashire. Altogether, she was a perfect foil to Gladys, and it would have been difficult for almost any man as he sat at that table to say which of the three, mother, daughter, or governess, was really the prettiest. For my own part, I give my vote unreservedly for the countess, but then I am getting somewhat grizzled now and have long been bald; so my liking turns naturally towards ripe beauty. I hate your self-conscious chits of seventeen, who can only chat and giggle; I like a woman who has something to say for herself. But Harry was just turned twenty-three, and perhaps his choice might, not unnaturally, have gone otherwise.
The governess talked little at lunch, and seemed altogether a rather subdued and timid girl. Harry noticed with pain that she appeared half afraid of speaking to anybody, and also that the footmen made a marked distinction between their manner to him and their manner to her. He would have liked once or twice to kick the fellows for their insolence. After lunch, Gladys and the little ones went for a stroll down towards the river, and Harry followed after with Miss Martindale.
"Do you come from this part of England?" he asked.
"No," answered Ethel, "I come from Lancashire. My father was rector of a small parish on the moors."
Harry's heart smote him. It might have been Edith. What a little turn of chance had made all the difference! "My father was a parson too," he said, and then checked himself for the half-disrespectful word, "but he lived down here in Devonshire. Do you like Colyford?"
"Oh yes, – the place, very much. There are delightful rambles, and Lady Gladys and I go out sketching a great deal. And it's a delightful country for flowers."
The place, but not the life, thought Harry. Poor child, it must be very hard for her.
"Mr. Vardon, come on here, I want you," called out Gladys from the little stone bridge. "You know everything. Can you tell me what this flower is?" and she held out a long spray of waving green-stuff.
"Caper spurge," said Harry, looking at it carelessly.
"Oh no," Miss Martindale put in quickly, "Portland spurge, surely."
"So it is," Harry answered, looking closer. "Then you are a bit of a botanist, Miss Martindale?"
"Not a botanist, but very fond of the flowers."
"Miss Martindale's always picking lots of ugly things and bringing them home," said Gladys laughingly; "aren't you, dear?"
Ethel smiled and nodded. So they went on past the bridge and out upon the opposite side, and back again by the little white railings into the park.
For the next three months Harry enjoyed himself in a busy way immensely. Every morning he had his three hours' teaching, and every afternoon he went a walk, or fished in the river, or worked at his electrical machines. To the household at the Abbey such a man was a perfect godsend. For he was a versatile fellow, able to turn his hand to anything, and the Durants lived in a very quiet way, and were glad of somebody to keep the house lively. The money was all tied up till the boy came of age, and even then there wouldn't be much of it. Surrey had been sent to Eton for a month or two and then removed, by request, to prevent more violent measures; after which he was sent to two or three other schools, always with the same result. So he was brought home again and handed over to the domestic persuasion of a private tutor. The only thing that kept him moderately quiet was the possibility of running around the place with the keepers; and the only person who ever taught him anything was Harry Vardon, though even he, I must admit, did not succeed in impressing any very valuable lessons upon the lad's volatile brain. The countess saw few visitors, and so a man like Harry was a real acquisition to the little circle. He was perpetually being wanted by everybody, everywhere, and at the end of three months he was simply indispensable.
Lady Surrey was always consulting him as to the proper place to plant the new wellingtonias, the right aspect for deodars, the best plan for mounting water-colours, and the correct date of all the neighbouring churches. It was so delightful to drive about with somebody who really understood the history and geology and antiquities of the county, she said; and she began to develop an extraordinary interest in prehistoric archæology, and to listen patiently to Harry's disquisitions on the difference between long barrows and round barrows, or on the true nature of the earthworks that cap the top of Membury Hill. Harry for his part was quite ready to discourse volubly on all these subjects, for it was his hobby to impart information, whereof he had plenty; and he liked knocking about the country, examining castles or churches, and laying down the law about matters architectural with much authority to two pretty women. The countess even took an interest in his great electrical investigation, and came into his workshop to hear all about the uses of his mysterious batteries. As for Lady Gladys, she was for ever wanting Mr. Vardon's opinion about the exact colour for that shadow by the cottage, Mr. Vardon's aid in practising that difficult bit of Chopin, Mr. Vardon's counsel about the decorative treatment of the passion-flower on that lovely piece of crewel-work. Indeed, contrary to Miss Martindale's express admonition, and all the dictates of propriety, she was always running off to Harry's little sitting-room to ask his advice about five hundred different things, five hundred times in every twenty-four hours.
There was only one person in the household who seemed at all shy of Harry, and that was Miss Martindale. Do what he could, he could never get her to feel at home with him. She seemed always anxious to keep out of his way, and never ready to join in any of his plans. This was annoying, because Harry really liked the poor girl and felt sorry for her lonely position. But as she would have nothing to say to him, why, there was nothing else to be done; so he contented himself with being as polite to her as possible, while respecting her evident wish to be let alone.
One afternoon, when the four had been out for a drive together to visit the old ruins near Cowhayne, and Harry had been sketching with Gladys and lecturing to the countess to his heart's content, he was sitting on the bench by the red cedars, when to his surprise he saw the governess strolling carelessly across the terrace towards him. "Mr. Vardon," she said, standing beside the bench, "I want to say something to you. You mustn't mind my saying it, but I feel it is part of my duty. Do you think you ought to pay so much attention to Gladys? You and I come into a family of this sort on peculiar terms, you know. They don't think we are quite the same sort of human beings as themselves. Now, I'm half afraid – I don't like to say so, but I think it better I should say it than my lady – I'm half afraid that Gladys is getting her head too much filled with you. Whatever she does, you are always helping her. She is for ever running off to see you about something or other. She is very young; she meets very few other men; and you have been extremely attentive to her. But when people like these admit you into their family, they do so on the tacit understanding that you will not do what they would call abusing the position. To-day, I half fancied that my lady looked at you once or twice when you were talking to Gladys, and I thought I would try to be brave enough to speak to you about it. If I don't, I think she will."
"Really, Miss Martindale," said Harry, rising and walking by her side towards the laburnum alley, "I'm very glad you have unburdened your mind about this matter. For myself, you know, I don't acknowledge the obligation. I should marry any girl I liked, if she would have me, whatever her artificial position might be; and I should never let any barriers of that sort stand in my way. But I don't know that I have the slightest intention of ever trying to marry Lady Gladys or anybody else of the sort; so while I remain undecided on that point, I shall do as you wish me. By the way, it strikes me now that you have been trying to keep her away from me as much as possible."
"As part of my duty, I think I ought to do so. Yes."
"Well, you may rely upon it, I will give you no more cause for anxiety," said Harry; "so the less we say about it the better. What a lovely sunset, and what a glorious colour on the cliffs at Axmouth!" And he walked down the alley with her two or three times, talking about various indifferent subjects. Somehow he had never managed to get on so well with her before. She was a very nice girl, he thought, really a very nice girl; what a pity she would never take any notice of him in any way! However, he enjoyed that quiet half-hour immensely, and was quite sorry when Lady Surrey came out a little later and joined them, exactly as if she wanted to interrupt their conversation. But what a beautiful woman Lady Surrey was too, as she came across the lawn just then in her garden hat and the pale blue Umritzur shawl thrown loosely across her shapely shoulders! By Jove, she was as handsome a woman, after all, as he had ever seen.
After dinner that evening Lady Surrey sent Gladys off to Miss Martindale's room on some small pretext, and then put Harry down on the sofa beside her to help in arranging those interminable ferns of hers. Evening dress suited the countess best, and she knew it. She was looking even more beautiful than before, with her hair prettily dressed, and the little simple turquoise necklet setting off her white neck; and she talked a great deal to Harry, and was really very charming. No more fascinating widow, he thought, to be found anywhere within a hundred miles. At last she stopped, leaning over the ferns, and sat back a little on the sofa, half fronting him. "Mr. Vardon," she said suddenly, "there is something I wish to speak to you about, privately."
