Kitabı oku: «Peccavi», sayfa 18

XXVII
AN ESCAPE

Mr. Fuller had made a hasty exit; but he waylaid Gwynneth on the road. "Excuse me, miss," he cried, and the girl felt bound to do so. Next moment she was trying to sort the mixed emotions in the saddler's face, for a few steps had brought them to his house, and he had halted at the workshop window.

"Well, miss, and what do you think of it?"

"Oh, Mr. Fuller, please don't ask me."

"I don't mean the sermon, miss; I mean the flock of sheep that come and listened to the sermon," said the saddler, with a bitterness that astonished Gwynneth.

"But, surely, Mr. Fuller, you were glad they did come? I was so thankful!" declared the girl.

"So was I, miss; so was I," said the saddler, grimly; "but, Gord love yer, do you suppose they ever would have shown their noses if you an' me hadn't given 'em the lead?"

"Then we ought to be very proud, Mr. Fuller; at least you ought, since but for you I never should have known in time."

"But do you think a man of 'em 'll admit it?" continued Fuller fiercely. "Not they – I know 'em. They'll take the credit, the moment there's any credit to take – them that hasn't given him a word or a look in all these years. But the reverend, he know —he know!"

"I'm sure he does," said Gwynneth, kindly; and left the forerunner to his ignoble jealousy, only hoping there was some foundation for it, and that a real reaction was already in the air.

Even on her way home there were further signs. Jones the schoolmaster, an implacable enemy these five years, but an emotional man all his life, was still dabbing his eyes as he held unguarded converse with the phlegmatic owner of the mill on the lock, who had been his fellow churchwarden in the days before the fire.

"I'll be his churchwarden again," declared the schoolmaster, "and Sir Wilton can say what he likes. We know who ruled the roast before, and we know – "

Gwynneth caught no more as she hurried on, her first desire a quiet hour without a whisper from the world. She wished to recall every word of the sermon, while every syllable remained in her mind, and then to write it all down and to possess it for ever. Such was her first feverish resolve; nor, analytical as she was, did she stop to analyse this. The stable gates were open; it never occurred to Gwynneth to wonder why. There was a good way through the stable-yard to the garden, whose uttermost end she might thus reach without being seen from the house. And Fraulein Hentig had known where she was thinking of going, had shaken Gwynneth not a little with her remonstrances, but would be none the less certain to ask questions when next they met.

Near the Italian garden was a certain walk, with stark yew hedges on either hand, and fine grass stretched like a drugget from end to end. Across this strip the old English flowers, poppies and peonies, hollyhocks and larkspur, faced each other in serried lines as in a country dance; and the vista ended in a thatched summer-house where it was always cool. The spot was a favourite haunt of Gwynneth, who would catch herself humming the old English songs there, and thinking of patches and powder and the minuet. It had not that effect this morning; she neither saw nor smelt the flowers, nor heard the thrush which was singing to her with persistent sweetness from the stately trees upon the lawn beyond. Gwynneth was in that other world which had existed all these years within half-a-mile of this one. What she heard was the virile cadence of the voice which had always thrilled her; strong and masterful in the beginning; softening all at once, as the people pressed in to hear; then for a little high-pitched and hoarse, spasmodic, tremulous, too touching even to remember with dry eyes; then that last pause, and the silver clarion of his proper voice once more and to the end. And what Gwynneth saw, through her tears, was the sunlight resting on that stricken head, as though God had stretched out His hand in final mercy and forgiveness.

But what she was to see, before many minutes were past, or the sermon over in her mind, was a dapper figure approaching between the old flowers and the spruce hedges, a figure in riding breeches, swinging a cutaway coat in his walk.

It was Sidney, ridden over from Cambridge on a hired horse. Gwynneth had time to come out of the summer-house to meet him, but none to think. So he had given her a kiss before she realised what that meant – and knew in her heart that it must be the last. And the next moment she saw that he was displeased.

"So here you are!" was his verbal greeting: "I've been looking for you all over the shop."

"I'm so sorry," said poor Gwynneth. "If you had only let us know – "

"Oh, that's all right; I took my risk, of course."

He looked her up and down, as she stood in the sunlight, tall and comely, her state of mind instinctively and successfully concealed; and the brown tinge came upon his handsome face as the annoyance vanished. Endearments fell from his lips, but now she made him keep his distance, though so tactfully that he obviously did not realise his repulse. Gwynneth looked at him for an instant with great compassion; then she led the way into the summer-house, her mind made up.

"You haven't been here all the morning, have you?" he went on. "No, I see you haven't; there are your gloves."

"Yes."

"Been for a walk?"

"Well, I did go for one."

"What do you mean?" demanded Sidney, struck at last by her manner.

"I've been to church!"

"What! Over to Linkworth and back?"

"No."

Her tone trembled; he was not helping her at all.

"Then what church did you go to, and what on earth's up with you, darling?"

"I went to our own church."

"But I thought that Lakenhall chap only came in the afternoon?"

"He doesn't go to the church."

Sidney stared an instant, and was on his feet the next. "You don't mean to say you've been up to the church talking to – to Carlton?" he cried.

"No, not talking to him."

"Then do you mind telling me what you do mean?"

Gwynneth did her best to explain the occasion and to describe the service, but found herself unable to do the subject justice in a few words, and drifted into a nervous enthusiasm as she went. Sidney's eyes seemed smaller than when she began; she had never known he had so sharp a chin. But he heard her out, standing in the doorway, and not always looking her way; it was when averted that his face looked so hard. When she had finished he gave her his whole attention, and was some time regarding her, his hands in his pockets, without a word.

"So you deliberately went to hear that blackguard!"

"You needn't call him that," said Gwynneth, hotly.

"But I do."

"I should be ashamed to abuse him after all he has done!"

"That doesn't alter what – what you apparently and very properly know nothing about, Gwynneth."

"And I don't want to know!" cried the girl, indignant at his tone. "I only say, whatever he has done, he has paid very bitterly for it, and made such amends as were never made by anybody I ever heard of. He may have been all you say. He is more than all that I can say now!"

"And what do you say?" inquired Sidney, with polite contempt.

"That we shall honour ourselves in future by honouring him, and dishonour ourselves by continuing to dishonour him. He has had his punishment, and look how he has borne it! Why, he has done what was never done in the world before by one solitary man."

Gwynneth stopped breathless. Sidney eyed her coolly, his nostrils curling. "So that's your opinion," he sneered.

"It's a good deal more than that," cried Gwynneth. "It's my fixed conviction and personal resolve."

"To honour that fellow, eh?"

Gwynneth coloured.

"To the extent of attending his services when I happen to be here," she said. And Sidney gave her a pregnant look – a more honest look – angry and determined as her own.

"And what about me?" he said. "What if I object?"

Gwynneth was slow to answer, to tell him the sharp truth outright.

"Do you mean to go your own way in spite of me, in spite of the governor, in spite of all of us?"

Gwynneth saw that she could not remain at the hall and follow such a course. So this question went unanswered like the last, though for a different reason. Meanwhile Sidney was accounting for her silence to his own satisfaction, and he now conceived that the moment had arrived for him to play the strong man.

"Look here, Gwynneth," said he, "this is all rot and bosh, and worse – if you'll take my word for it. And you must take my word, and take it on trust in a thing like this, or you never will in anything. I tell you this fellow Carlton is the most unspeakable skunk. But it isn't a thing we can discuss together. Isn't that enough for you? Isn't my wish enough, in a thing like this, which I know all about and you don't? Have I got to enforce it while we're still engaged? If so – "

Gwynneth had raised her head slowly, and at last she spoke.

"We are not engaged, Sidney," she said quietly.

"Not – engaged?"

"It has never been a proper engagement."

"A proper engagement!" Sidney gasped. "Not a public one, if you like! What difference does that make?"

"No difference. It only makes it – easier – "

"What does it make easier?" he demanded fiercely.

Gwynneth was choking with humiliation. It was some moments before she could command her voice. Her distress was pitiful; but the young man was already busy pitying himself. A sudden change had come over Sidney. It was not in all respects a change for the worse. His cynical aplomb had already disappeared, leaving a tremulous, an angry, but a human being behind. So Gwynneth felt a leaning to him even at the last; but this time she knew her mind.

And she spoke it with equal candour and humility: it was all her fault: she could never forgive herself; but he would forgive her, when he saw for himself what the woman will always see quicker than the man. She liked him better than anybody she knew; that week at Cambridge had been the happiest week in her life; one day they would, they must, be good friends again. Meanwhile they had both made a miserable mistake. This was not love.

"Speak for yourself," cried Sidney, all bitterness and mortification. "And I never believed in a woman before," he groaned; "my God, I never shall again!"

And he strode out savagely into the sun; but a different Sidney was back next moment, one that reminded Gwynneth of the very old days, when he would pass her whistling with his dog. A sneer was on his lips, and his dry eyes glittered.

"I beg your pardon for making a scene, Gwynneth; it isn't in my line, as you know, and I apologise. But do you mind telling me when you discovered that you had – changed?"

"I have not changed, Sidney. That is my shame."

"Do you mean that you never did care about me?"

"Never in that way. I am ashamed to say it – more humiliated and ashamed than you can ever know. But it's the truth."

"Yet at the First Trinity ball, I remember, if you don't – "

His tone was more than Gwynneth could endure.

"Yes, I remember," she cried; "and I can explain it, though explanations are no excuse. Sidney, you know what my life was until the last few months? Happy enough in heaps of ways, but not the least gaiety in it; and suddenly I felt the want of it. I felt it first abroad, and you met that want in your May-week in a way beyond my dreams. You may sneer at me now, but you were awfully nice to me then, and I shall never, never forget it. You were so nice that I honestly did think for a little that you met every other want as well! Yet I tell you now, what I tried to tell you once before, that when once you had spoken nothing was the same. It was like touching a bubble. The bubble had burst."

"You felt like that from the first?"

Gwynneth turned away, for now they were both upon their feet, restlessly hovering between the summer-house and the sunlight.

"And yet it has taken you two months to tell me," pursued Sidney without remorse.

"I know; it was dreadful of me; yet I could not tell you till I was absolutely certain, and it is not so easy to be certain of oneself in such things. If you find no difficulty, Sidney, then you might pity those who do. Nevertheless, I did write, on my birthday, when you sent me those beautiful pearls. Sidney, you must take them back – for my sake. I meant to send them back at once, but you know what I heard that very morning! It may have been cowardly and weak, but how could I tell you I did not love you the moment I knew I was to have a little money of my own? It's hard enough as it is; but I had not the pluck for that. Yet it is hard enough now," repeated Gwynneth, with great feeling; "and you haven't made it easier, Sidney. No, I don't mean anything you may have said; you have not said more than I deserve. But you tempted me – you little know how you have tempted me – to be dishonest with you to the end. It would have been so easy to make poor Mr. Carlton the whole cause, and not to have told you the truth at all!"

"Then I wish to God you had done so!" Sidney cried out, revealing the character of his wound unawares, yet once more human, young, and vain. Moreover there was passion enough in his eyes and voice, as there had been in his wooing. "Besides," he continued, "poor Mr. Carlton, as you call him, is the cause, I don't care what you say. Curse him! Curse him, body and soul!"

Gwynneth was outside in the sun, doubly adorable now that he had lost her, and for other reasons too. Her sweet skin was flushed, and even her tears inflamed the unhappy young man. He looked at her long and passionately, then muttered venom through his teeth.

"What did you say?"

"I said it was like him, too, the blackguard!"

"I don't know what you mean, and I don't want to."

"It's as well," jeered Sidney, with exceeding malice; but already she was turning away. She was turning away without one word. In an instant he had her by both wrists, as the devil possessed himself.

"Let me go," cried Gwynneth. "You're hurting me!"

"I'm not. I'm not. I'm only going to let you know the kind of beast that's come between us."

Gwynneth stood with unresisting wrists. Her scorn was splendid.

"I am not sorry to have seen you in your true colours, Sidney."

"You are going to see some one else in his."

Her scorn had destroyed his last scruple. His eyes were devilish now.

"Let me go, you brute!"

"There are worse, Gwynneth, there are worse. It isn't a thing we can discuss, as I told you. But did you never notice the likeness?"

Her blank face put the involuntary question he desired.

"Only between the one big villain in this parish – and the one rather jolly little boy!"

At last her wrists were released. But Gwynneth remained standing in the sun. She was not looking at Sidney; on the contrary, her face declared her oblivious to his continued presence. It was white with several kinds of horror; it was pinched with many separate pangs. So she stood a few moments, then went her way slowly, only turning with a shudder. As for him, his fever subsided as he watched; and, before the diminishing figure had passed out of the vista of cropped hedges and crude flowers, even Sidney Gleed knew himself, for once in his life, for what he was and would be to its end.

XXVIII
THE TURNING TIDE

Next Sunday there was a real congregation. Yet the benches were almost as empty as before, the people herding near the porch until entreated either to occupy such seats as there were, or to leave the church. "Curiosity may have brought some of you here," said Mr. Carlton; "but I earnestly hope that none will remain in that spirit." The benches were full in a minute, and many had still to stand. All the next week Robert Carlton spent in sawing more planks to one length, and more props to one height for their support. And on the third Sunday his church was packed.

The summer of 1887 was, however, a remarkable one. And the month of August was an ideal month for the inauguration of open-air services, where there were trees.

In those hot still days came visitors of every type, and in greater numbers than Robert Carlton desired. The tide had turned; he was early aware of his danger now. Again and again it became his own sore duty to remind this one or the other, distantly perhaps, yet none the less unmistakably, of that which they might forget, but he never. Their open admiration tried him acutely. He did like it a little for its own sake, after five years' ostracism; more for the fresh purchase it gave him over simple hearts; but he was very hard on himself for liking it at all. On the other hand, he knew that it must put many a mind, the subtler minds, more than ever against him. It also renewed his own shame. So it was not admiration that he wanted at all; it was confidence, forgiveness, love; and these if possible by degrees. It was not possible, and Robert Carlton had to suffer in turn from the saddler, the schoolmaster, and the rest. The first would come to hedge and hedge with a view to Sir Wilton's imminent return; the next would intercept him as he came away, learn what he had been saying, and forthwith step across to the church to let the reverend know how the schoolmaster's character impressed itself upon a man of his experience. It was an unattractive trait in Fuller that he questioned everybody's sincerity but his own, albeit his strictures were not seldom justifiable. He talked, however, as though for years he had been the one and only philanthropist to hold any dealings with the rector; at last it became necessary to set him right on the point, which Mr. Carlton did with a mild account of his illness and the sexton's aid.

"I do wish I'd ha' known," said Fuller, with perfect truth; "I do wish I'd ha' known an' had the nursun of yer, reverend, instead o' him. And he never come near you no more; so I should expect."

"But you tell me he's very ailing, Fuller."

"He haven't been ailun all these years."

"We – we had a little tiff in the end. It was my fault. I wonder if he'd see me now?"

"I'll make him, reverend, I'll tell him he's got to."

"No, Fuller, I can't allow that. Besides, he has not got to do anything of the sort; he has turned dissenter, and may prefer me to stop away. Nevertheless I shall call, if only to ask how he is."

There was no need to ask, in the event. The old sexton was failing fast, and "not long for this world," as his daughter announced in front of him. The poor man was in bed, and very dirty, but as sensible as he ever had been; and he welcomed the rector with cadaverous grins.

"They tell me," he whispered, "you fare to finish the church with your own two hands. You're a wonderful man, sir – and I'm another."

"You are, indeed. Why, you must be nearly ninety, Busby?"

"Eighty-eight, sir, come next September. But I wasn't thinkun o' my age, sir. Do you remember that little varmin I swallered out 'f a pond?"

"I remember."

"I've killed that, sir!"

And the sunken eyes shone like lamps.

"I congratulate you, Busby."

"I killed that two year ago; and you'll never guess how!" The ex-sexton proceeded to rehearse the various remedies he had tried in vain. "I killed that with bacca-smoke," he concluded in sepulchral triumph. "It was the minister's idea. I had to swaller the bacca-smoke instead o' puffun that out, an' that choked that in three pipes!"

The rector said it must be a great relief to be rid of such an incubus. Busby, however, with a sick man's reluctance to admit any alleviating circumstance in his case, was not so sure about that. He sometimes fared to wish he had the little varmin back. Croap, croap, croap! That had been wonderful good company after all. The ex-sexton was not too ill to wax eloquent upon his favourite topic. And the tenor of his talk was that mankind had been building churches since the world began, but what other man had lived for years with a live frog on his chest?

Their religious dispute was evidently forgotten, and Mr. Carlton did not feel it incumbent upon him to risk another in the circumstances of the case. On the way home the other egotist waylaid him, with his opinion of old Busby's hallucination and general sanity since the saddler could remember him.

"But half the village and half the county is the same, reverend. Silly Suffolk!"

"Yet you're a Suffolk man yourself, Fuller," observed Mr. Carlton, mildly.

"Yes, reverend, but there was corn in Egypt, if you recollect."

Meanwhile the building still went on, and was rapidly nearing a point beyond which Carlton himself could not proceed unaided. That point was the last window; the others were all finished. He had left out the single mullions and all the tracery. They might be added afterwards by an expert hand. They were not essential to the windows, which were ready for glazing as they were. But the east window was another affair. It must have its two mullions as before, with the quatrefoil tracery which had remained undamaged in the west window opposite. All this was beyond the self-taught hewer of coursed rubble and of gargoyles; the arch itself must be two feet wider than any he had yet attempted; but on a worthy east window he had set his heart.

Such was the dilemma in which Robert Carlton found himself at the end of August, and there seemed only one thing to be done. He must call for aid at last, and now he knew that aid would come, for he had received various offers of assistance since the beginning of the month. Some of these were from local firms which had refused his work in the beginning; Carlton had promised that if he called for tenders he would consider theirs; and now call he must. Yet he could not bring himself to do so all at once.

To call in the world after all! To open his leafy solitude to the British workmen in gangs, to hear their chaff, to smell their tobacco, where he had laboured in quiet and alone through so many, many seasons!

But it had to come. A tinge of autumn was on the trees. Any Sunday now the open-air service might prove a discomfort and a peril to all; in a few weeks at most it would become impossible. But the people must have their church. They had waited long enough. Therefore any further reluctance in him was little and unworthy, as Carlton saw at once for himself. Yet there was now so much else to do, so many poor folks to see, so many old threads to take up, that for once he temporised. And even as he temporised, his mind made up, and a competition pending between the masons of the neighbourhood, Sir Wilton Gleed arrived in Long Stow for the shooting.

Sir Wilton arrived with a frown. It deepened but little at what he heard. He was prepared for everything; and about Gwynneth he knew. She had left his house, she had gone her own way, he washed his hands of her, and only congratulated Sidney on his escape. That chapter was closed. It was the older matter that harassed Sir Wilton Gleed.

So that devil had reinstated himself after all! The fact might not be finally accomplished; it was none the less inevitable, imminent. And Sir Wilton had long been prepared for it; for the last two years he had been unable to move without hearing the name he abhorred; it dogged him in town, it followed him to Scotland, it awaited him in every hole and corner of the Continent. Once he had been fond of speaking of his property; but in two senses it was hard to do this without giving the place a name. Sir Wilton was learning to deny himself the boast altogether.

Long Stow? Could there be two Long Stows? Then that must be the place where the parson was building up his church. What a romance! And what a man! Oh, no doubt he was a very dreadful person also; but there, in any case, was a Man.

Sir Wilton could not deny it; and by degrees he wearied of insisting upon the deplorable side of the man's character. The task was ungrateful; it put himself in an ungenerous light, which was the harder upon one who was by no means ill-natured in grain. Gradually he took to admitting his adversary's good points; even admitted them to himself; but that did not remove the chronic irritation of infallible defeat. And defeated Sir Wilton already was, with the people flocking to that man again, and doubtless willing to help him finish his church. His own parishioners had forgiven him – and well they might, said Sir Wilton's friends in every country-house. Besides, the suspended parson was a figure of the past; the law was done with him; he was absolutely free to begin afresh. Henceforth the vindictiveness of the individual must recoil deservedly upon the individual's head.

Sir Wilton saw all this before his actual return; and he realised the madness of either urging or attempting to coerce his tenantry to harden their hearts, a second time, against one who had committed no second sin. If he failed it would destroy his influence in the neighbourhood; even if he succeeded it would damage his popularity elsewhere. And a chat with the schoolmaster, a call upon one or two of the neighbouring clergy, a word with old Marigold in his gig, all served but to convince him finally of these facts.

Sir Wilton's mind was made up. He had come back primed with a desperate measure for the last of all. Once it was resolved upon, his spirits rose.

He told his wife and took her breath away; but a very little reasoning brought the lady round the compass to his view. This was after breakfast on the second day. The same forenoon Sir Wilton went up the village, brisk and rosy, a flower in his coat, and a word for all. Past the Flint House he began to walk slowly, took no notice of a courtesy, swung round suddenly himself, and was knocking at Jasper Musk's door that minute, still a thought less confident than he had been.

Musk was in his garden, fast as usual to his chair. Mrs. Musk brought out another chair for Sir Wilton, and drove Georgie indoors on her way back. Sir Wilton watched the child out of sight, and then favoured Jasper with his peculiarly fixed stare. There was unusual meaning in it this morning.

"So the world has forgiven him," said Sir Wilton Gleed.

Musk stared in his turn, his great face glowing with contempt. "Have you?" said he at last.

"Not yet," replied Sir Wilton, a shade more pink in the face. He had meant to lead up to his intention. He was taken aback.

"But you mean to, do you?" pursued Musk, pressing his point in no respectful tone: in all their relations this one had never pandered to the other.

"I don't say that, either," replied Sir Wilton, in studied tones.

"Then what do you say?"

"Less than anybody else, a good deal less," declared the squire. "I – I don't quite understand your tone, Musk, I must say; but I can well understand your position in this matter. It is unique, of course. So is mine, in a sense. But I must beg of you not to jump to conclusions. I am the last person to make a hero of the man I did my best to kick out of the parish five years ago; next to yourself, no one has reason to love the fellow less. I thought it a public scandal that he should be empowered to stay here against all our wills. My opinion of that whole black matter is absolutely and totally unchanged. But I do confess to you, Musk, that this last year or two have somewhat modified my opinion of the man himself."

Musk's eyes had never dropped or lifted from his visitor's face. Their expression was inscrutable. The iron cast of that massive countenance was the only key to the workings of the mind within: the lines seemed subtly emphasised, as in the faces of the dead. And his gigantic body was the same; only the eyes seemed alive; and they were as still as the rest of him.

"What if I've modified mine?"

Sir Wilton looked up quickly; for the habitual starer had been for once outstared. "Do you mean that you have?" cried he.

"I don't say as I have or I haven't. But that's a man, Sir Wilton, and I won't deny it."

"Exactly what everybody is saying. I say no more myself."

"And I won't say no less.. Suppose you was to patch it up with him, Sir Wilton?"

"I should help him finish his church."

Musk sat silent for some time. His eyes seemed smaller. But they had not moved.

"That would be a wonderful good action on your part, Sir Wilton," he said at last.

"Not at all, Musk. I should be doing it for the people, not for Mr. Carlton."

Another pause.

"And yet, Sir Wilton, in a manner o' speaking, you might say as he deserved it, too?"

Sir Wilton was quite himself again – a gentleman in keeping with the flower in his coat.

"I certainly never expected to hear you say so, Musk," said he frankly; "though it's what I've sometimes thought myself."

"I haven't said as I forgave him, have I?"

"No, no, Musk, you haven't; it is not in human nature that you could."

It was a strange tongue that had spoken in the massive head; there was no forgiveness in that voice. Yet in the next breath the note of hate was hushed as suddenly as it had been struck.

"That may be in human natur'," said Musk, "but that ain't in mine. I'm not a religious man, Sir Wilton. That may be the reason. But I do have enough respect for religion to wish to see that church up again before I die."

"I consider it very generous of you to say so, Musk," declared the other, with enthusiasm.

"But I do say it, Sir Wilton, and I never said a truer word."

"So I hear; and that decides me!" cried Sir Wilton, jumping up. "I really had decided – for the sake of the parish – and was actually on my way to the church to take the whole job over. A gang of competent workmen could polish it off in a couple of months; and it ought to be polished off. But it's really wonderful what he has done!"

"I don't deny it," said Musk; and waited for the squire to recover his point, his own set face unchanged.

"Yes," resumed Sir Wilton, suddenly, "I was on my way up to make him that proposal just now; but as I passed your door I could not resist coming in. I thought I would like to tell you what I intended to do, and to give you my reasons for doing it."

"There was no need to do that," said Musk, with an upward movement of the lips, hardly to be called a smile; for once also his great head moved slowly from side to side.

"And now I shall be going on," announced Sir Wilton, who did not like this look, and was now less inclined to suffer disrespect.