Part 7 (2/2)

He had in his pocket a letter from the lawyer, warning him that, unless he altered his course, a writ would be served upon him. And a dozen times to-day he had in his mind called the church warden hard names. But yet he was not absolutely ill-pleased to see Miss Bonamy. He felt a certain excitement in the rencontre under the circ.u.mstances. He would meet her magnanimously, and of course she would ignore the quarrel. He hated Mr. Bonamy for a puritanical old pettifogger; but that was no reason why he should be rude to his daughter.

Lindo saw, when he was a few paces from her and had raised his hat, that her face expressed much more emotion, if not embarra.s.sment, than seemed to be called for by the occasion. And naturally this communicated itself to him. ”I have not seen you for a long time,” he said, as he shook hands. Perhaps the worst thing he could have said under the circ.u.mstances.

She a.s.sented, however. ”No,” she said, sloping her umbrella behind her so as to keep off the wind and a half-frozen drizzle with which it was laden. And, as she did this, her eyes met his gallantly. ”But I am glad, Mr. Lindo,” she continued, ”that I have met you to-day, because I have something I want to say to you.”

On the instant he vowed within himself that it would be in bad taste, in the worst taste, if she referred to the quarrel or to parish matters. And he answered very frigidly. ”What is that, Miss Bonamy?” he said. ”Pray speak on.”

She detected the change of tone, and for a second her gray eyes flashed. But she had come to say something. She had counted the cost, and nothing he could do should prevent her saying it. She had been awake all night, torturing herself with imagining the things he would think of her. But she was not to be deterred by the reality. ”Do you know, Mr. Lindo,” she said steadily, ”what is being said of you in the town?”

”A good many hard things.” he answered half lightly and half bitterly. ”So I have reason to believe. But I do not think that they will affect me one way or the other, Miss Bonamy.”

”And so,” she answered, with spirit, ”you will not thank any one for telling you of them? That is what you mean, is it not?”

He was very sore, and her interference annoyed him excessively--possibly because he valued her good opinion. He would not deny the feeling she imputed to him. ”Possibly I do mean something of that kind,” he said. ”Where ignorance is bliss--you know.”

”Yet there is one thing,” she replied, ”being said of you in the town, which I think you should be told, Mr. Lindo. Your friends probably will not hear it, or, if they do, they will not venture to tell you of it.”

”Indeed,” he answered. ”You pique my curiosity.”

”It is being commonly said,” she rejoined, looking down for the first time, ”that you have no right to the living, and were appointed by some mistake, or--or fraud.”

He did not answer her at once. He was so completely taken by surprise that he stood looking at her with his mouth open. His first and better impulse was to laugh heartily. But what he did was to say in a very quiet way, ”Indeed. That is being said, is it? It is quite true I had not heard it. May I ask, Miss Bonamy, if you had it from your father?”

If his tone had been cold before, it was freezing now. But she was not to be daunted, and she answered with considerable presence of mind, ”I heard from my father that that was the report in the town, but I also heard him express his disbelief in the greater part of it.”

”I am much obliged to him,” said the rector through his closed teeth. ”He did not think I had been guilty of fraud, then?”

”No, he did not,” Kate muttered, her voice faltering for the first time.

”Indeed. I am much obliged to him.”

He had received it even worse than she had expected. It was terrible to go on in the face of such scorn and incredulity. But to stop there was to have done only evil, as Kate knew, and she persevered. ”I have one more thing I wish to say, if you will permit me,” she continued steadying her voice and striving to speak in as indifferent a manner as possible.

He bowed, his face hard and contemptuous.

The wind had s.h.i.+fted slightly, and, to protect herself from the small rain which was falling, she changed her position, so as to face the churchyard. He saw only her profile. If he looked proud, involuntarily he remarked how proud she looked also--how pure and cold was the line of her features, softened only by the roundness of her chin. ”I am told,” she said in a low voice, ”that the fewer enemies you make, and the more quietly you proceed, the greater will be the chance of your remaining when the mistake is found out. Pray,” she said more sharply, for he had raised his hand, as if to interrupt, ”have patience for a moment, Mr. Lindo. I shall not trouble you again. I only wish you to know that those who have cause to dislike you--I do not mean my father, there are others--are congratulating themselves that you are playing into their hands, and consider that every disagreement between you and any part of the parish is a weapon given them, to be used when the crisis comes.”

”When the mistake is found out?” he said, grimly repeating her words. ”Or the fraud? But I forgot--Mr. Bonamy does not believe in that!”

”You understand me, I think,” she said, ignoring the latter part of his speech.

”And may I ask,” he continued, his eyes on her face, ”who my ill-wishers are?”

”I do not think that matters,” she replied.

”Then, at least, why am I indebted to you for this warning?”

His tone as he asked the question was as contemptuous as before. And yet Kate felt that this she must answer. To refuse to answer it, or to evade it, would be to lay herself open to surmises of all kinds.

”I thought it a pity that you should fall into a trap unwarned,” she answered, looking away at the yew-trees. ”And it seemed to me that, for several reasons, your friends were not likely to warn you.”

”There, I quite agree with you,” he retorted quickly. ”My friends would not have believed in the trap.”

”Perhaps not,” she said, outwardly unmoved.

”I am astonished that you did; I am astonished that you should have believed anything so absurd, Miss Bonamy!” he said severely. At that moment, as it happened, two people came round the flank of the church. The one was the curate; the other was Dr. Gregg. Kate looked at them, and her face flamed. The rector looked, and felt only relief. They would afford him an excuse to be gone. ”Ah, there is Mr. Clode,” he said indifferently. ”I was just looking for him. I think, if you will excuse me, Miss Bonamy, I will seize the opportunity of speaking to him now.” And raising his hat, with a formality which one of the men took to be a pretence and a sham, he left her and walked across to them.

CHAPTER XIII.

LAURA'S PROVISO.

When a mine has been laid, and the fuse lit, and the tiny thread of smoke has begun to curl upward, it is apt to seem a long time--so I am told by those who have stood and watched such things--before the earth flies into the air. So it seemed to Stephen Clode. The curate looked to see an explosion follow immediately upon the rector taking the decisive step of turning out the sheep. But week after week elapsed, until Christmas was some time gone, and nothing happened. Mr. Bonamy, with a lawyer's prudence, wrote another letter, and for a time, perhaps out of regard to the season, held his hand. There was talk of Lord Dynmore's return, but no sign of it as yet. And Dr. Gregg snapped and snarled among his intimates, but in public was pretty quiet.

It was noticeable, however, that the rector was invited to none of the whist-parties which were a feature of the town life at this season; and to those who looked closely into things and listened to the gossip of the place it was plain that the breach between him and the bulk of his paris.h.i.+oners was growing wider. The rector was much with the Hammonds, and carried his head high--higher than ever, one of his paris.h.i.+oners thought since a talk she had had with him in the churchyard. The habit of looking down upon a certain section of the town, because they were not quite so refined as himself, because they were narrow in their opinions, or because the Hammonds looked down upon them, was growing upon him. And he yielded to it none the less because he was all the time dissatisfied with himself. He was conscious that he was not acting up to the standard he had set himself on coming to the town. He was not living the life he had hoped to live. He visited his poor and gave almost too largely in the hard weather, and was diligent at services and sermon-writing. But there was a flaw in his life, and he knew it; and yet he had not the strength to set it right.

All this Mr. Clode might have observed--he was sagacious enough; but for the time his judgment was clouded by his jealousy, and in his impatience he fancied that the rector's troubles were pa.s.sing away. Each visit Lindo paid to the Town House, each time his name was coupled with Laura Hammond's, as people were beginning to couple it, chafed the curate's sore afresh and kept it raw. So that even Stephen Clode's self-restraint and command of temper began to fail him, and more than once he said sharp things to his commanding-officer, which made Lindo open his eyes in unaffected surprise.

Clode began to feel indeed that the position was becoming intolerable; and though he had long ago determined that the waiting-game was the one he ought to play, he presently--in the first week of the new year--changed his mind.

Lindo had announced his intention of devoting the afternoon--it was Wednesday--to his district; and, taking advantage of this, the curate thought he might indulge himself in a call at the Town House without fear of unpleasant interruption. He would not admit that he had any other motive in going there than just to pay a visit--which he certainly owed. But in truth he was in a dangerous humor. And, alas! when he had been ushered along the thickly carpeted pa.s.sage and entered the drawing-room, there, comfortably seated in the half-light before the fire, the tea-things gleaming beside them, were Laura and the rector!

The curate's face grew dark. He almost felt that Lindo, who had really been driven in by the rain, had betrayed him; and he shook hands with Laura and sat down in complete silence, unable to trust himself to answer the rector's cheery greeting by so much as a word. It was all he could do to answer ”Thank you,” when Miss Hammond asked him if he would take tea. She, of course, saw that something was amiss, and felt not a little awkward between her two friends; but luckily the rector remained ignorant and at his ease--he saw nothing, and went on talking. It was the best thing he could have done, only, unfortunately, he had to do with a man whom nothing in his present mood could please.

”I am glad you have turned up at this particular moment,” Lindo said. ”Let me have your opinion. Miss Hammond says that I am pauperizing the town by giving too much away.”

”If you are half as generous at our bazaar on the 10th,” she retorted, ”you will do twice as much good.”

”Or half as much evil!” he said lightly.

”Have it that way, if you like,” she answered laughing.

The curate set his teeth together in impotent rage. They were so easy, so unconstrained, on such excellent terms with one another. When Laura, who was secretly quaking, held out the toast to him and let her eyes dwell for an instant on his, he looked away stubbornly. ”Were you asking my opinion?” he said in a voice he vainly strove to render cold and dispa.s.sionate.

”To be sure,” said the rector, stirring his tea and enjoying himself. ”Miss Hammond is not impartial. She is bia.s.sed by her bazaar.”

If he had known the strong pa.s.sions that were at work on the other side of the tea-table! But the curate had his back to the shaded lamp, and only a fitful gleam of fire-light betrayed even to Laura's suspicious eyes that he was not himself. Yet, when he spoke, Lindo involuntarily started, so thinly veiled was the sneer in his tone. ”Well, there is one pensioner, I think, you would do well to strike off your list,” he said. ”He does not do you much credit.”

”Who is that? Old Martin at the Gas House?”

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