Part 12 (2/2)
”Quite right, too,” said the barrister. ”Who are they?”
”Turner & Grey, of Birmingham.”
”Well, I will write,” Jack answered, ”if you will let me, and tell them to let the matter stand for the present. I think that will be the best course. Bonamy won't object.”
”But he has issued a writ,” the rector explained. A writ seemed to him a formidable engine. As well dally before the mouth of a cannon.
But Jack knew better. The law's delays were familiar to him. He was aware of many a pleasant little halting-place between writ and judgment. ”Never mind about that,” he answered, with a confident laugh. ”Shall I settle it for you? I shall know better, perhaps, what to say to them.”
The rector a.s.sented gladly; adding: ”Here is their address.” It was stuck in the corner of a picture hanging over the fireplace. He took it down as he spoke and gave it to Jack, who put it carelessly into his pocket, and, seizing his hat, said he must go at once--that it was close on twelve. The rector would have repeated his thanks; but Jack would not stop to hear them, and in a moment was gone.
Reginald Lindo returned to the study after letting him out, and, dropping into the nearest chair, looked round with a sigh. Yet, the sigh notwithstanding, he was a hundredfold less unhappy now than he had been at dinner or while looking over that number of ”Punch.” His friend's visit had both cheered and softened him. His thoughts no, longer dwelt on the earl's injustice, the desertion of his friends, or the humiliations in store for him; but went back again to the warning Kate Bonamy had given him. Thence it was not unnatural that they should revert to the beginning of his acquaintance with her. He pictured her at Oxford, he saw her scolding Daintry in the stiff drawing-room, or coming to meet him in the Red Lane; and, the veil of local prejudice torn from his eyes by the events of the day, he began to discern that this girl, with all the drawbacks of her surroundings, was the fairest, bravest, and n.o.blest girl he had met at Claversham, or, for aught he could remember, elsewhere. His eyes glistened. He was sure--so sure that he would have staked his life on the result--that for all the earls in England Kate Bonamy would not have deserted him!
He had reached this point, and Jack had been gone some five minutes or more, when he was startled by a loud rap at the house door. He stood up and, wondering who it could be at this hour, took a candle and went into the hall. Setting the candlestick on a table, he opened the door, and there, to his astonishment, was Jack come back again!
”Capital!” said the barrister, slipping in and shutting the door behind him, as though his return were not in the least degree extraordinary, ”I thought it was you. Look here; there is one thing I forget to ask you, Lindo. Where did you get the address of those lawyers?”
He asked the question so earnestly, and his face, now it could be seen by the strong light of the candle at his elbow, wore so curious an expression, that the rector was for a moment quite taken aback. ”They are good people, are they not?” he said, wondering much.
”Oh, yes, the firm is good enough,” Jack answered impatiently. ”But who gave you their address?”
”Clode,” the rector answered. ”I went round to his lodgings and he wrote it down for me.”
”At his lodgings?” cried the barrister.
”To be sure.”
”Ah! then look here,” Jack replied, laying his hand on Lindo's sleeve and looking up at him with an air of peculiar seriousness--”just tell me once more, so that I may have no doubt about it: Are you sure that from the time you docketed those letters until now you have never removed them--from this house, I mean?”
”Never!”
”Never let them go out of the house?”
”Never!” answered the rector firmly. ”I am as certain of it as a man can be certain of anything.”
”Thanks!” Jack cried. ”All right. Good night.” And that was all; for, turning abruptly, in a twinkling he had the door open and was gone, leaving the rector to go to bed in such a state of mystification as made him almost forget his fallen fortunes.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE DAY AFTER.
Oddly enough, the rector's first thought on rising next morning was of his curate. He had expected, as we have seen, that Clode would call before bedtime. Disappointed in this, he still felt so certain that the curate would hasten as soon as possible to offer his sympathy and a.s.sistance that after breakfast he repaired to his study for the express purpose of receiving him. To find one friend in need is good, but to find two is better. The young clergyman felt, as people in trouble of a certain kind do feel, that though he had told Jack all about it, it would be a relief to tell Stephen all about it also; the more as Jack, whom he had told, was his personal friend, while Clode was identified with the place and his unabated confidence and esteem--of retaining which the rector made no doubt--would go some way toward soothing the latter's wounded pride.
It was well, however, that Lindo, sitting down at his writing-table to await his visitor, found there some scattered notes upon which he could employ his thoughts, and which without any great concentration of mind he could form into a sermon. For otherwise his time would have been wasted. Ten o'clock came, and eleven, and half-past eleven; but no curate.
Mr. Clode, in fact, was engaged elsewhere. About half-past ten he turned briskly into the drive leading to Mrs. Hammond's house and walked up it at a good pace, with the step of a man who has news to tell, and is going to tell it. The morning was bright and sunny, the air crisp and fresh, yet not too cold. The gravel crunched pleasantly under his feet, while the h.o.a.r-frost melting on the dark green leaves of the laurels bordered his path with a million gems as brilliant as evanescent. Possibly the pleasure he took in these things, possibly some thought of his own, lent animation to the curate's face and figure as he strode along. At any rate, Miss Hammond, meeting him suddenly at a turn in the approach, saw a change in him, and, reading the signs aright, blushed.
”Well?” she said, smiling a question as she held out her hand. They had scarcely been alone together since the afternoon when the rector's inopportune call had brought about an understanding between them.
”Well?” he answered, retaining her hand. ”What is it, Laura?”
”I thought you were going to tell me,” she said, glancing up with shy a.s.surance. The morning air was not fresher. She was so bright and piquant in her furs and with her dazzling complexion, that other eyes than her lover's might have been pardoned for likening her to the frost drops on the laurels. At any rate, she sparkled as they did.
He looked down at her, fond admiration in his eyes. Had he not come up on purpose to see her?
”I think it is all right,” he said, in a slightly lower tone. ”I think I may answer for it, Laura, that we shall not have much longer to wait.”
She gazed at him, seeming for the moment startled and taken by surprise. ”Have you heard of a living, then?” she murmured, her eyes wide, her breath coming and going.
He nodded.
”Where?” she asked, in the same low tone. ”You do not mean--here!”
He nodded again.
”At Claversham!” she exclaimed. ”Then will he have to go, really?”
”I think he will,” Clode replied, a glow of triumph warming his dark face and kindling his eyes. ”When Lord Dynmore left here yesterday he drove straight to Mr. Bonamy's. You hardly believe it, do you? Well, it is true, for I had it from a sure source. And, that being so, I do not think Lindo will have much chance against such an alliance. It is not as if he had many friends here, or had got on well with the people.”
”The poor people like him,” she urged.
”Yes,” Clode answered sharply. ”He has spent money among them. It was not his own, you see.”
It was a brutal thing to say, and she cast a glance of gentle reproof at him. She did not remonstrate, however, but, slightly changing the subject, asked, ”But even if Mr. Lindo goes, are you sure of the living?”
”I think so,” he answered, smiling confidently down at her.
She looked puzzled. ”How do you know?” she asked. ”Did Lord Dynmore promise it to you?”
”No; I wish he had,” he answered. ”All the same, I think I am fairly sure of it without the promise.” And then he related to her what the archdeacon had told him as to Lord Dynmore's intention of presenting the curates in future. ”Now do you see, Laura?” he asked.
”Yes, I see,” she answered, looking down and absently poking a hole in the gravel with the point of her umbrella.
”And you are content?”
”Yes,” she answered, looking up brightly from a little dream of the rectory as it should be, when feminine taste had transformed it with the aid of Persian rugs and old china and the hundred knickknacks which are half a woman's life--”Yes, I am content, Mr. Clode.”
”Say 'Stephen.'”
”I am quite content, Stephen,” she answered obediently, a bright blush for a moment mingling with her smile.
He was about to make some warm rejoinder, when the sound of footsteps approaching from the house diverted his attention, and he looked up. The new-comer was Mrs. Hammond, also on her way into the town. She waved her hand to him. ”Good morning,” she cried in her cheery voice--”you are just the person I wanted to see, Mr. Clode. This is good luck. Now, how is he?”
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