The New Rector Part 14

In another moment the fast trotting cob was whirling the two men down the street. They turned the corner sharply, and as the breeze met them on the bridge, compelling Lindo to turn up the collar of his coat and draw the rug more closely round him, the church clock in the town behind them struck the half-hour. "Half-past five," said the rector. The surgeon did not answer. They were in the open country now, the hedges speeding swiftly by them in the light of the lamps, and the long outline of Bear Hill, a huge misshapen hump which rose into a point at one end, lying dim and black before them. A night drive is always impressive. In the gloom, in the sough of the wind, in the sky serenely star-lit, in a tumult of hurrying clouds, in the rattle of the wheels, in the monotonous fall of the hoofs, there is an appeal to the sombre side of a man. How much more when the sough of the wind seems to the imagination a cry of pain, and the night is a dark background on which the fancy paints dying faces! At such a time the cares of life, which day by day rise one beyond another and prevent us dwelling over-much on the end, sink into pettiness, leaving us face to face with weightier issues.

"There have been accidents here before?" the clergyman asked, after a long silence.

"Thirty-five years ago there was one!" his companion answered, with a groan which betrayed his apprehensions. "Good heavens, sir, I remember it now! I was young then and fresh from the hospitals; but it was almost too much for me!"

"I hope that this one has been exaggerated," Lindo replied, entering fully into the other's feelings. "I did not quite understand the man's account; but, as far as I could follow it, one of the two shafts--the downcast shaft I think it was---was jammed full of rubbish and rendered quite useless."

"Just what I expected!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed his companion.

"And they could now communicate with the workings only through the upcast shaft, in which they had rigged up some temporary lifting gear."

"Ay, and it is the deepest pit here," the surgeon chimed in, as the horse began to breast the steeper part of the ascent, and the furnace fires, before and above them, began to flicker and glow, now sinking into darkness, now flaming up like beacon-fires. "The workings are two thousand feet below the surface, man!"

"Stop!" Lindo said. "Here is some one looking for us, I think."

Two women with shawls over their heads came to the side of the gig. "Be you the doctors?" said one of them; and then in another minute the two were following her up the side of the cutting which here confined the road. The hillside gained, they were hurried round pit-banks and slag-heaps, and under cranes and ruinous sinking walls, and over and under mysterious obstacles, sometimes looming large in the gloom and sometimes lying unseen at their feet--until they emerged at length with startling abruptness into a large circle of dazzling light. Four great fires were burning close together, and round them, motionless and for the most part silent, in appearance almost apathetic, stood hundreds of dark shadows--men and women waiting for news.

The silence and inaction of so large a crowd struck a chill to Lindo's heart. When he recovered himself, he was standing in the midst of a dozen rough fellows, some half-stripped, some m.u.f.fled up in pilot-jackets or coa.r.s.e s.h.i.+ny clothes. The crowd seemed to be watching them, and they spoke now and then to one another in a desultory expectant fas.h.i.+on, from which he judged they were in authority.

"It is a bad job--a very bad job!" his companion was saying nervously. "Is there anything I can do yet?"

"Well, that depends, doctor," answered one of the men, his manner of speaking proving that he was not a mere working collier. "There is no one up yet," he added, eyeing the doctor dubiously. "But it does not exactly follow that you can do nothing. Some of us have just come up, and there is a s.h.i.+ft of men exploring down there now. Three bodies have been recovered, and they are at the foot of the shaft; and three poor fellows have been found alive, of whom one has since died. The other two are within fifty yards of the shaft, and as comfortable as we can make them. But they are bad--too bad to come up in a bucket; and we can rig up nothing bigger at present so there they are fixed. The question is, will you go down to them?"

Mr. Keogh's face fell, and he shook his head. He was no longer young, and to descend a sheer depth of five hundred yards in a bucket dangling at the end of a makes.h.i.+ft rope was not in his line. "No, thank you," he said, "I could not do it."

"Come, doctor," the man persisted--he was the manager of a neighboring colliery--"you will be there in no time."

"Just so," said the surgeon drily. "It is the coming back is the rub, you see, Mr. Peat. No, thank you, I could not."

The other still urged him. "These poor fellows are about as bad as they can be, and you know if the mountain will not go to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain."

"I know; and if it were a mountain, well and good," Mr. Keogh answered, smiling in sickly fas.h.i.+on as his eye strayed to a black well-like hole close at hand--a mere hole in some loose planks surmounted by a windla.s.s and fringed with ugly wreckage. "But it is not. It is quite the other thing, you see."

Mr. Peat, the manager, shrugged his shoulders, and glanced at his companions rather in sorrow than surprise. Lindo, standing behind the doctor, saw the look. Till then he had stood silent. Now he pressed forward. "Did I hear you say that one of the injured men died after he was found?" he asked.

"Yes, that is so," the manager answered, looking keenly at him, and wondering who he was.

"The others that are hurt--are their lives in danger?"

"I am afraid so," the man replied.

"Then I have a right to be with them," the rector answered quickly. "I am a clergyman, and I have hastened here, fearing this might be the case. But I have also attended an ambulance cla.s.s, and I can dress a burn. Besides, I am a younger man than our friend here, and, if you will let me down, I will go."

"By George, sir!" exclaimed the manager, looking round for approval and smiting his thigh heavily, "you are a man as well as a parson, and down you shall go, and thank you! You may make the men more comfortable, and any way you will put heart into them, for you have some to spare yourself. As for danger, there is none!--Jack!"--this in a louder voice to some one in the background--"just twitch that rope! And get that tub up, will you? Look slippery now."

Lindo felt a hand on his arm and, obeying the silent gesture of the nearest gaunt figure, stepped aside. In a twinkling the man stripped off the parson's long coat and put on him the pilot jacket from his own shoulders; a second man gave Lindo a peaked cap of stiff leather in place of his soft hat and a third fastened a pit lamp round his neck, explaining to him how to raise the wick without unlocking the lamp, and also showing him that, if it hung too much on one side or were upset, its flame would expire of itself. And upon one thing Lindo was never tired of dwelling afterward--the kindly tact of these rough men, and how by seemingly casual words, and even touches, the roughest sought to encourage him, while ignoring the possibility of his feeling alarm.

Meanwhile Mr. Keogh, standing in a state of considerable perplexity and discomfiture where the rector had left him, heard a well-known voice at his elbow, and turned to find that Gregg had arrived. The younger doctor was not the man to be awed into silence, and, as he came up, was speaking loudly. "Hallo, Mr. Keogh!" he said. "Heard you were before me. Have you got them all in hand? Cuts or burns mostly, eh?"

"They are not above ground yet," Mr. Keogh answered. He and Gregg were not on speaking; terms, but such an emergency as this was allowed to override their estrangement.

"Oh, then we shall have to wait," Gregg answered, looking round on the scene with a mixture of curiosity and professional aplomb. "I wish I had spared my horse. Any other medical man here?"

"No; and they want one of us to go down in the bucket," Keogh explained. "There are some injured men at the foot of the shaft. I have a wife and children, and I thought that perhaps you----"

"Would not mind breaking my neck!" Gregg retorted with decision. "No, thank you, not for me I hope to have a wife and children some day, and I will keep my neck for them. Go down!" he repeated, looking round with extreme scorn. "Pooh! No one can expect us to do it! It is these people's business, and they are used to it; but there is not a sane man in the kingdom, besides, would go down that place after what has just happened. It is a quarter of a mile as a stone falls, if it is an inch!"

"It is all that," a.s.sented the other, much relieved.

"And a height makes me giddy," Dr. Gregg added.

"I feel the same now," said his elder.

"No; every man to his trade," Gregg concluded, settling the matter to his satisfaction. "Let them bring them up, and we will doctor them. But while they are below ground---- Hallo!"

His last word was an oath of surprise and anger. Happening to glance round, the doctor saw Lindo coming forward to the shaft, and recognized him in spite of his disguise. One look, and Gregg would cheerfully have given ten pounds either to have had the rector away, or to have arrived a little later himself. He had reckoned already in his own mind that, if no outsider went down, he could scarcely be blamed for taking care of himself. But, if the rector went down, the matter would wear a different aspect. And Dr. Gregg saw this so clearly that he turned pale with rage and chagrin, and swore more loudly than before.

CHAPTER XXI.

IN PROFUNDIS.

The young clergyman's face, as he walked forward to the shaft, formed no index to his mind, for while it remained calm and even wore a faint smile, he was inwardly conscious of a strong desire to take hold of anything which presented itself, even a straw. He stepped gravely into the tub amid a low murmur, and, clutching the iron bar above it, felt himself at a word of command lifted gently into the air, and swung over the shaft. For an uncomfortable five seconds or so he remained stationary; then there was a jerk--another--and the dark figures, the lines of faces, and the glare of the fires leapt suddenly above his head. He found himself dropping through s.p.a.ce with a swift, sickening motion, as of one falling away from himself. His heart rose into his throat. There was a loud buzzing in his ears, and yet above this he heard the dull rattling sound of the rope being paid out. Every other sense was spent in the stern clutch of his hands on the bar above his head.

In a few seconds the horrible sensation of falling pa.s.sed away. He was no longer in s.p.a.ce with nothing stable about him, but in a small tub at the end of a tough rope. Except for a slight swaying motion, he hardly knew that he was still descending; and presently a faint light, more diffused than his own lamp, grew visible. Then he came gently to a standstill, and some one held up a lantern to his face. With difficulty he made out two huge figures standing beside him, who laid hold of his tub and pulled it toward them until it rested on something solid. "You are welcome," growled one, as, aided by a hand of each, Lindo stepped out. "You will be the doctor, I suppose, master? Well, this way. Catch hold of my jacket."

Lindo obeyed, being only too glad of the help thus given him; for though the men seemed to move about with ease and certainty, he could make out nothing but shapeless gloom. "Now you sit right down there," continued the collier, when they had moved a few yards, "and you will get the sight of your eyes in a bit."

He did as he was bid, and one by one the objects about him became visible. His first feeling was one of astonishment. He had put a quarter of a mile of solid earth between himself and the sunlight, and yet, for all he could see, he might be merely in a cellar under a street. He found himself seated on a rough bench, in a low-roofed, windowless, wooden cabin, strangely resembling a very dirty London office in a fog. True, everything was black--very black. On another bench, opposite him, sat the two colliers who had received him, their lamps between their knees. His first impulse was to tell them hurriedly that he was not the doctor. "I am afraid you must be disappointed," he added, "but I hope one will follow me down. I am a clergyman, and I want to do something for those poor fellows, if you will take me to them."

The two men betrayed no surprise, but he who had spoken before quietly poked up the wick of his lamp and held the lantern up so as to get a good view of his face. "Ay, ay," he said, nodding, as he lowered it again. "I thought you weren't unbeknown to me. You are the parson we fetched to poor Lucas a while ago. Well, Jim will have a rare cageful of his friends with him to-night."

The rector shuddered. Such apathy, such matter-of-factness was new to him. But though his heart sank as the collier rose and, swinging his lamp in his hand, pa.s.sed through the doorway, he made haste to follow him; and the man's next words, "You had best look to your steps, master, for there is a deal of rubbish come down"--pointing as they did to a material danger--brought him, in the diversion of his thoughts, something like relief.

The road on which he found himself, being the main heading or highway of the pit, was a good wide one. It was even possible to stand upright in it. Here and there, however, it was partially blocked by falls of coal caused by the explosion, and over one of these his guide put out his hand to a.s.sist him. Lindo's lamp was by this time burning low. The pitman silently took it and raised the wick, a grim smile distorting his face as he handed it back. "You will be about the first of the gentry," he muttered, "as has been down this pit without paying his footing."

Lindo took the words for a hint, and was shocked by the man's insensibility. "My good fellow," he answered, "if that is all, you shall have what you like another time. But for heaven's sake let us think of these poor fellows now."

The man turned on him and swore furiously. "Do you think I meant that?" he cried, with another violent oath.

The rector recoiled, not at the sound of the man's profanity, but in disgust at his own mistake. Then he held out his hand. "My man," he said, "I beg your pardon. It was I who was wrong."

The giant looked at him with another stare, but made no answer, and a dozen steps brought them to another cabin. Across the doorway--there was no door--hung a rough curtain of matting. This the man raised, and, holding his lamp over the threshold, invited the rector to look in. "I guess," he added significantly, "that you would not have made that mistake, master, after seeing this."

Lindo peered in. On the floor, which was little more than six feet square, lay four quiet figures, motionless, and covered with coa.r.s.e sacking. No human eye falling on them could have taken them for anything but what they were. The visitor shuddered, as his guide let the curtain fall again and muttered with a backward jerk of the head, "Two of them I came down with this morning--in the cage."

The rector had nothing to answer, and the man, preceding him to a cabin a few yards farther on, invited him by a sign to enter, and himself turned back the way they had come. A faint moaning warned Lindo, before he raised the matting, what he must expect to see. Instinctively, as he stepped in, his eyes sought the floor; and although three pitmen crouching upon one of the benches rose and made way for him, he hardly noticed them, so occupied was he with pitiful looking at the two men lying on coa.r.s.e beds on the floor. They were bandaged and m.u.f.fled almost out of human form. One of them was rolling his sightless face monotonously to and fro, pouring out an unceasing stream of delirious talk. The other, whose bright eyes met the newcomer's with eager longing, paused in the murmur which seemed to ease his pain, and whispered, "Doctor!" so hopefully that the sound went straight to Lindo's heart.

To undeceive him, and to explain to the others that he was not the expected surgeon, was a bitter task with which to begin his ministrations; but he was greatly cheered to find that, even in their disappointment, they took his coming as a kindly thing, and eyed him with surprised grat.i.tude. He told them the latest news from the bank--that a cage would be rigged up in a few hours at farthest--and then, conquering his physical shrinking, he knelt down by the least injured man and tried to turn his surgical knowledge to account. It was not much he could do, but it certainly eased the poor man's present sufferings. A bandage was laid more smoothly here, a little cotton-wool readjusted there, a change of posture managed, a few hopeful words uttered which helped the patient to fight against the shock--so that presently he sank into a troubled sleep. Lindo tried to do his best for the other also, terrible as was the task; but the man's excitement and unceasing restlessness, as well as his more serious injuries, made help here of little avail.

When he rose, he found one of the watchers holding a cup of brandy ready for him; and, sitting down upon the bench behind, he discovered a coat laid there to make the seat more comfortable, though no one seemed to have done it, or to be conscious of his surprise. They talked low to him, and to one another, in a disjointed taciturn fas.h.i.+on, with immense gaps and long intervals of silence. He learned that there were twenty-seven men yet missing, but it was thought that the afterdamp had killed them all. Those already found alive had been in the main heading, where the current of air gave them a better chance.

One or other of the workers was continually going out to listen for the return of the party who were exploring the workings near the foot of the other shaft; and once or twice a member of this party, exhausted or ill, looked in for a dose of tea or brandy, and then stumbled out again to get himself conveyed to the upper air. These looked curiously at the stranger, but, on some information being muttered in their ears, made a point on going out of giving him a nod which was full of tacit acknowledgment.

In a quiet interval he looked at his watch and wound it up, finding the time to be half-past two. The familiar action carried his mind back to his neat, spotless bedroom at the rectory and the cares and anxieties of everyday life, which had been forgotten for the last five hours. Could it be so short a time, he asked himself, since he was troubled by them? It seemed years ago. It seemed as if a gulf, deep as the shaft down which he had come, divided him from them. And yet the moment his thoughts returned to them the gulf became less, and presently, although his eyes were still fixed upon the poor collier's unquiet head and the murky cabin with its smoky lamp, he was really back in Claversham, busied with those thoughts again, and pondering on the time when he should be above ground. The things that had been important before rose into importance again, but their relative values among themselves were altered, in his eyes at any rate. With what he had seen and heard in the last few hours fresh in his mind, with the injured men lying still in his sight--one of them never to see the sun again--he could not but take a different, a wider, a less selfish view of life and its aims. His ideal of existence grew higher and purer, his notion of success more n.o.ble. In the light of his own self-forgetting energy and of others' pain he saw things as they affected his neighbor rather than himself and so presently--not in haste, but slowly in the watches of the night--he formed a resolution which shall be told presently. The determinations to which men come at such times are, in nine cases out of ten, as transitory as the emotions on which they are based. But this time, and with this man, it was not to be so. Kate Bonamy's words, bringing before his mind the responsibility which rested upon him, had in a degree prepared him to examine his position gravely and from a lofty standpoint; so that the considerations which now a.s.sailed him could scarcely fail to have due and lasting weight with him, and to leave impressions both deep and permanent.

He was presently roused from his reverie by a sound which caused his companions to rise to their feet with the first signs of excitement they had betrayed in their manner. It was the murmur of voices in the heading, which, beginning far away, rapidly approached and gathered strength. Going to the door of the cabin, he saw lights in the gallery becoming each instant more clear. Then the forms of men coming on by twos and threes rose out of the darkness. And so the procession wound in, and Lindo found himself suddenly surrounded--where a moment before no sounds but painful ones had been heard--by the hum and bustle, the quick question and answers, of a crowd. For the men brought good news. The missing were found; and though many of them were burned or scorched, and others were suffering from the effects of the afterdamp, the explorers brought back with them no still, ominous burden, nor even any case of hopeless injury, such as that of the poor fellow in delirium over whom his mates bent with the strange impa.s.sive patience which seems to be a quality peculiar to those who get their living underground.

Not that Lindo at the time had leisure to consider their behavior. The injured were brought to him as a matter of course, and he did what he could with simple bandages and liniment to keep the air from their wounds, and to enable the men to reach the surface with as little pain as possible. For more than an hour, as he pa.s.sed from one to the other, his hands were never empty; he could think only of his work. The deputy-manager, who had been leading the rescue party, was thoroughly prostrated. The rest never doubted that the stranger was a surgeon, and it was curious to see their surprise when the general taciturnity allowed the news to spread that he was only a parson. They were like savants with a specimen which, known to belong to a particular species, has none of the cla.s.s attributes, and sets at defiance all preconceived ideas upon the subject. He, too, when he was at length free to look about him, found matter for astonishment in his own sensations. The cabin and the roadway outside, where the men sat patiently waiting their turns to ascend, had become almost homelike in his eyes. The lounging figures here thrown into relief by a score of lamps, there lost in the gloom of the background, had grown familiar. He knew that this was here and that was there, and had his receptacles and conveniences, his special attendants and helpers. In a word, he had made the place his own, yet without forgetting old habits--for more than once he caught himself looking at his watch, and wondering when it would be day.

Toward seven o'clock a message directed to him by name came down. A cage would be rigged up within the hour. Before that period elapsed, however, he was summoned to see the poor fellow die who had been delirious ever since he was found and who now pa.s.sed away in the same state. It was a trying scene coming just when the clergyman's wrought-up nerves were beginning to feel a reaction--the more trying as all looked to him to do anything that could be done. But that was nothing; and he felt gravely thankful when the poor man's sufferings were over and the throng of swarthy faces melted from the open doorway.

He sat apart a little after that until a commotion outside the cabin and a cheery voice asking for Mr. Lindo summoned him to the door, where he found the same manager who had sent him down the night before, and who now greeted him warmly. "It is not for me to thank you," Mr. Peat said--"I have nothing to do with this pit--the owner, to whom what has happened will be reported, will do that; but personally I am obliged to you, Mr. Lindo, and I am sure the men are."

"I wanted only to be of help," the clergyman answered simply. "There was not much I could do."

"Well, that is a matter of opinion," the manager replied. "I have mine, and I know that the men who have come up have theirs. However, here is the cage; perhaps you will not mind going up with poor Edwards?"

"Not at all," said the rector; and, following the manager to the cage, he stepped into it without any suspicion that this was a trick on the part of Mr. Peat to insure his volunteer's services being recognized.

He found the ascent a very different thing from the descent. The steady upward motion was not unpleasant, and long before the surface was reached his eyes, accustomed to darkness, detected a pale gleam of light stealing downward, and could distinguish the damp brickwork gliding by. Presently the light grew stronger--grew dazzling in its wonderful whiteness. "We are going up nicely," his companion murmured, remembering in his grat.i.tude that the ascent, which was a trifle to him even with shattered nerves, might be unpleasant to the other--"we are nearly there."

And so they were; and slowly and gently they rose into the broad daylight and the suns.h.i.+ne which seemed to proclaim to the rector's heart that sorrow may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

Standing densely packed round the pit's mouth was a great crowd--a crowd, at any rate, of many hundreds. They greeted the appearance of the cage with a quick drawing-in of the breath and a murmur of pity. Lindo's face and hands were as black as any collier's; his dress seemed at the first glance as theirs. But as he helped to lift his injured companion out and carry him to the stretcher which stood at hand, the word who he was ran round; and, though no one spoke, the loudest tribute could scarcely have been more eloquent than the respect with which the rough a.s.semblage fell away to right and left that he might pa.s.s out to the trap which had been thoughtfully provided--first to carry him to the vicarage for a wash, and afterward to take him home. His heart was full as he walked down the lane, every man standing uncovered, and the women gazing on him with unspoken blessings in their eyes.

A very few hours before he had felt at war with the world. He had said, not perhaps that all men were liars, but that they were unjust, full of prejudice and narrowness, and ill-will; that, above all, they judged without charity. Now, as the pony-cart rattled down the road through the cutting, and the sunny landscape, the winding river, and the plain round Claversham opened before him, he felt far otherwise. He longed to do more for others than he had done. He dwelt with wonder on the grat.i.tude which services so slight had evoked from men so rough as those from whom he had just parted; and unconsciously he placed the balance in their favor to the general account of the world, and acknowledged himself its debtor.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE RECTOR'S DECISION.

The church clock was striking nine as the rector, jogging along behind the little pony, came in sight of the turnpike-house outside the town. He had no overcoat, and the drive had chilled him; and, anxious at once to warm himself and to reach the rectory as quietly as possible, he bade the driver stop at the gate and set him down. The lad had been strictly charged to see the parson home, and would have demurred, but Lindo persisted good-humoredly, and had his way. In two minutes he was striding briskly along the road, his shoulders squared, and the night's reflections still running like a rich purple thread through the common stuff of his every-day thoughts.

In this mood, which the pure morning air and crisp suns.h.i.+ne tended to favor and prolong, he came at a corner plump upon Mr. Bonamy, who, like all angular, uncomfortable men, was an early riser, and had this morning chosen to extend his before-breakfast walk in the direction of Baerton. The lawyer's energy had already been rewarded. He had met Mr. Keogh, and learned not only the earlier details of the accident--which were, indeed, known to all Claversham, for the town had sat up into the small hours listening for wheels and discussing the catastrophe--but had further received a minute description of the rector's conduct. Consequently his thoughts were already busy with the clergyman when, turning a corner, he came unexpectedly upon him.

Lindo met his glance and looked away hastily. The rector had been anxious to avoid, by going home at once, any appearance of parading what he had done, and he would have pa.s.sed on with a brief good-morning. But the lawyer seemed to be differently disposed. He stopped short in the middle of the path, so that the clergyman could not pa.s.s him without rudeness, and nodded a jerky greeting. "You have not walked all the way, I suppose, Mr. Lindo?" he said, his keen small eyes reading the other's face like a book.

"No," the rector answered, coloring uncomfortably under his gaze. "I drove as far as the turnpike, Mr. Bonamy."

"Well, you may think yourself lucky to be well out of it," the lawyer rejoined, with a dry smile. "To be here at all, indeed," he continued, with a gesture of the hand which seemed meant to indicate the suns.h.i.+ne and the upper air. "When a man does a foolhardy thing he does not always escape, you know."

The younger man reddened. But this morning he had his temper well under control and he merely answered, "I thought I was called upon to do what I did, Mr. Bonamy. But of course that is a matter of opinion. Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps right. I did what I thought best at the moment, and I am satisfied."

Mr. Bonamy shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, well, every man to his notion," he said. "I do not approve, myself, of people running risks which do not lie within the scope of their business. And as nothing has happened to you----"

"The risk of anything happening," the rector rejoined, with warmth, "was so small that the thing is not worth discussing, Mr. Bonamy. There is a matter, however," he continued, changing the subject on a sudden impulse, "which I think I may as well mention to you now as later. You, as churchwarden, have in fact, a right to be informed of it. I----"

"You are cold," said Mr. Bonamy abruptly. "Allow me to turn with you."

The rector bowed and complied. The request, however, had checked the current of his speech, even the current of his thoughts, and he did not finish his sentence. He felt, indeed, for a moment a temptation as sudden as it was strong. He saw at a glance what his resolve meant. He discerned that what had appeared to him in the isolation of the night an act of dignified self-surrender must, and would, seem to others an acknowledgment of defeat--almost an acknowledgment of dishonor. He recalled, as in a flash, all the episodes of the struggle between himself and his companion. And he pictured the latter's triumph. He wavered.

But the events of the night had not been lost upon him, and, after a brief hesitation, he set the seal on his purpose. "You are aware, I know, Mr. Bonamy," he said, "of the circ.u.mstances under which, in Lord Dynmore's absence, I accepted the living here."

"Perfectly," said the lawyer drily.

"He has made those circ.u.mstances the subject of a grave charge against me," the rector continued, a touch of hauteur in his tone. "That you have heard also, I know. Well, I desire to say once more that I repudiate that charge in the fullest and widest sense."

"So I understand," Mr. Bonamy murmured. He walked along by his companion's side, his face set and inscrutable. If he felt any surprise at the communication now being made to him he had the skill to hide it.

"I repudiate it, you understand!" the clergyman repeated, stepping out more quickly in his excitement, and glaring angrily into vacancy. "It is a false and wicked charge! But it does not affect me. I do not care a jot for it. It does not in any sense force me to do what I am going to do. If that were all, I should not dream of resigning the living, but, on the contrary, would hold it, as a few days ago I had determined to hold it, in the face of all opposition. However," he continued, lowering his tone, "I have now examined my position in regard to the parish rather than the patron, and I have come to a different conclusion, Mr. Bonamy--namely, to place my resignation in the proper hands as speedily as possible."

Mr. Bonamy nodded gently and silently. He did not speak, he did not even look at the clergyman; and this placid acquiescence irritated the young man into adding a word he had not intended to say. "I tell you this as my church-warden, Mr. Bonamy," he continued stiffly, "and not as desiring or expecting any word of sympathy or regret from you. On the contrary," he added, with some bitterness, "I am aware that my departure can be only a relief to you. We have been opposed to one another since my first day here."

"Very true," said Mr. Bonamy. "I suppose you have considered----"

"What?"

"The effect which last night's work may have on the relations between you and Lord Dynmore?"

"I do not understand you," the rector answered haughtily, and yet with some wonder. What did the man mean?

"You know, I suppose," Mr. Bonamy retorted, turning slightly so as to command a view of his companion's face, "that he is the owner of the Big Pit at Baerton from which you have just come?"

"Lord Dynmore is?"

"To be sure."

A flush of crimson swept over the rector's brow and left him red and frowning. "I did not know that!" he said, his teeth set together.

"So I perceive," the lawyer replied, with a nod. "But I can rea.s.sure you. It is not at all likely to affect the earl's plans. He is an obstinate man, though in some points a good-natured one, and he will most certainly accept your resignation if you send it in. But here you are at home." He paused, standing awkwardly by the clergyman's side. Then he added, "It is a comfortable house. I do not think that there is a more comfortable house in Claversham."

He retired a few steps into the churchyard as he spoke, and stood looking up at the ma.s.sive old-fas.h.i.+oned front of the rectory, as if he had never seen the house before. The clergyman, anxious to be indoors and alone, shot an impatient glance at him, and waited for him to go. But he did not go, and presently something in his intent gaze drew Lindo, too, into the churchyard, and the two ill-a.s.sorted companions looked up together at the old gray house. The early sun shone aslant on it, burnis.h.i.+ng the half-open windows. In the porch a robin was hopping to and fro. "It is a comfortable, roomy house," the lawyer repeated.