“Hold your tongue!” retorted the Captain, aroused to anger. “A pretty example you’d set, let you have your way. Every one of the lot shall be made to pay to the last farthing. Who the devil is to pay, do you suppose, if they don’t?”
“Rates are imposed upon the parish needlessly, Captain Monk; it has been so ever since my time here. Pardon me for saying that if you put up chimes to gratify yourself, you should bear the expense, and not throw it upon those who have a struggle to get bread to eat.”
Captain Monk drank off another glass. “Any more treason, Parson?”
“Yes,” said Mr. West, “if you like to call it so. My conscience tells me that the whole procedure in regard to setting up these chimes is so wrong, so manifestly unjust, that I have determined not to allow them to be heard until the rates levied for them are refunded to the poor and oppressed. I believe I have the power to close the belfry-tower, and I shall act upon it.”
“By Jove! do you think you are going to stand between me and my will?” cried the Captain passionately. “Every individual who has not yet paid the rate shall be made to pay it to-morrow.”
“There is another world, Captain Monk,” interposed the mild voice of the minister, “to which, I hope, we are all——”
“If you attempt to preach to me——”
At this moment a spoon fell to the ground by the sideboard. The Vicar turned to look; his back was towards it; the Captain peered also at the end of the rapidly-darkening room: when both became aware that one of the servants—Michael, who had shown in Mr. West—stood there; had stood there all the time.
“What are you waiting for, sirrah?” roared his master. “We don’t want you. Here! put this window open an inch or two before you go; the room’s close.”
“Shall I bring lights, sir?” asked Michael, after doing as he was directed.
“No: who wants lights? Stir the fire into a blaze.”
Michael left them. It was from him that thus much of the conversation was subsequently known.
Not five minutes had elapsed when a commotion was heard in the dining-room. Then the bell rang violently, and the Captain opened the door—overturning a chair in his passage to it—and shouted out for a light. More than one servant flew to obey the order: in his hasty moods their master brooked not delay: and three separate candles were carried in.
“Good lack, master!” exclaimed the butler, John Rimmer, who was a native of Church Dykely, “what’s amiss with the Parson?”
“Lift him up, and loosen his neck-cloth,” said Captain Monk, his tone less imperious than usual.
Mr. West lay on the hearthrug near his chair, his head resting close to the fender. Rimmer raised his head, another servant took off his black neck-tie; for it was only on high days that the poor Vicar indulged in a white one. He gasped twice, struggled slightly, and then lay quietly in the butler’s arms.
“Oh, sir!” burst forth the man in a horror-stricken voice to his master, “this is surely death!”
It surely was. George West, who had gone there but just before in the height of health and strength, had breathed his last.
How did it happen? How could it have happened? Ay, how indeed? It was a question which has never been entirely solved in Church Leet to this day.
Captain Monk’s account, both privately and at the inquest, was this: As they talked further together, after Michael left the room, the Vicar went on to browbeat him shamefully about the new chimes, vowing they should never play, never be heard; at last, rising in an access of passion, the Parson struck him (the Captain) in the face. He returned the blow—who wouldn’t return it?—and the Vicar fell. He believed his head must have struck against the iron fender in falling: if not, if the blow had been an unlucky one (it took effect just behind the left ear), it was only given in self-defence. The jury, composed of Captain Monk’s tenants, expressed themselves satisfied, and returned a verdict of Accidental Death.
“A false account,” pronounced poor Mrs. West, in her dire tribulation. “My husband never struck him—never; he was not one to be goaded into unbecoming anger, even by Captain Monk. George struck no blow whatever; I can answer for it. If ever a man was murdered, he has been.”
Curious rumours arose. It was said that Mrs. Carradyne, taking the air on the terrace outside in the calmness of the autumn evening, heard the fatal quarrel through the open window; that she heard Mr. West, after he had received the death blow, wail forth a prophecy (or whatever it might be called) that those chimes would surely be accursed; that whenever their sound should be heard, so long as they were suffered to remain in the tower, it should be the signal of woe to the Monk family.
Mrs. Carradyne utterly denied this; she had not been on the terrace at all, she said. Upon which the onus was shifted to Michael: who, it was suspected, had stolen out to listen to the end of the quarrel, and had heard the ominous words. Michael, in his turn, also denied it; but he was not believed. Anyway, the covert whisper had gone abroad and would not be laid.
III
Captain Monk speedily filled up the vacant living, appointing to it the Reverend Thomas Dancox, an occasional visitor at Leet Hall, who was looking out for one.
The new Vicar turned out to be a man after the Captain’s heart, a rollicking, jovial, fox-hunting young parson, as many a parson was in those days—and took small blame to himself for it. He was only a year or two past thirty, good-looking, of taking manners and hail-fellow-well-met with the parish in general, who liked him and called him to his face Tom Dancox.
All this pleased Captain Monk. But very soon something was to arrive that did not please him—a suspicion that the young parson and his daughter Katherine were on rather too good terms with one another.
One day in November he stalked into the drawing-room, where Katherine was sitting with her aunt. Hubert and Eliza were away at school, also Mrs. Carradyne’s two children.
“Was Dancox here last night?” began Captain Monk.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Carradyne.
“And the evening before—Monday?”
Mrs. Carradyne felt half afraid to answer, the Captain’s tone was becoming so threatening. “I—I think so,” she rather hesitatingly said. “Was he not, Katherine?”
Katherine Monk, a dark, haughty young woman, twenty-one now, turned round with a flush on her handsome face. “Why do you ask, papa?”
“I ask to be answered,” replied he, standing with his hands in the pockets of his velveteen shooting-coat, a purple tinge of incipient anger rising in his cheeks.
“Then Mr. Dancox did spend Monday evening here.”
“And I saw him walking with you in the meadow by the rill this morning,” continued the Captain. “Look here, Katherine, no sweethearting with Tom Dancox. He may do very well for a parson; I like him as such, as such only, you understand; but he can be no match for you.”
“You are disturbing yourself unnecessarily, sir,” said Katherine, her own tone an angry one.
“Well, I hope that is so; I should not like to think otherwise. Anyway, a word in season does no harm; and, take you notice that I have spoken it. You also, Emma.”
As he left the room, Mrs. Carradyne spoke, dropping her voice: “Katherine, you know that I had already warned you. I told you it would not do to fall into any particular friendship with Mr. Dancox; that your father would never countenance it.”
“And if I were to?—and if he did not?” scornfully returned Katherine. “What then, Aunt Emma?”
“Be silent, child; you must not talk in that strain. Your papa is perfectly right in this matter. Tom Dancox is not suitable in any way—for you.”
This took place in November. Katherine paid little heed to the advice; she was not one to put up with advice of any sort, and she and Mr. Dancox met occasionally under the rose. Early in December she went with Mr. Dancox into the Parsonage, while he searched for a book he was about to lend her. That was the plea; the truth, no doubt, being that the two wanted a bit of a chat in quiet. As ill-luck had it, when she was coming out again, the Parson in attendance on her as far as the gate, Captain Monk came by.
A scene ensued. Captain Monk, in a terrible access of passion, vowed by all the laws of the Medes and Persians, which alter not, that never, in life or after death, should those two rebellious ones be man and wife, and he invoked unheard-of penalties on their heads should they dare to contemplate disobedience to his decree.
Thenceforth there was no more open rebellion; upon the surface all looked smooth. Captain Monk understood the folly to be at an end: that the two had come to their senses; and he took Tom Dancox back into favour. Mrs. Carradyne assumed the same. But Katherine had her father’s unyielding will, and the Parson was bold and careless, and in love.
The last day of the year came round, and the usual banquet would come with it. The weather this Christmas was not like that of last; the white snow lay on the ground, the cold biting frost hardened the glistening icicles on the trees.
And the chimes? Ready these three months past, they had not yet been heard. They would be to-night. Whether Captain Monk wished the remembrance of Mr. West’s death to die away a bit first, or that he preferred to open the treat on the banqueting night, certain it was that he had kept them silent. When the church clock should toll the midnight knell of the old year, the chimes would ring out to welcome the new one, and gladden the ears of Church Leet.
But not without a remonstrance. That morning, as the Captain sat in his study writing a letter, Mrs. Carradyne came to him.
“Godfrey,” she said in a low and pleading tone, “you will not suffer the chimes to play to-night, will you? Pray do not.”
“Not suffer the chimes to play?” cried the Captain. “But indeed I shall. Why, this is the special night they were put up for.”
“I know it, Godfrey. But—you cannot think what a strangely strong feeling I have against it: an instinct, it seems to me. The chimes have brought nothing but discomfort and disaster yet; they may bring more in the future.”
Captain Monk stared at her. “What d’ye mean, Emma?”
“I would never let them be heard,” she said impressively. “I would have them taken down again. The story went about, you know, that poor George West in dying prophesied that whenever they should be heard woe would fall upon this house. I am not superstitious, Godfrey, but——”
Sheer passion had tied, so far, Godfrey Monk’s lips. “Not superstitious!” he raved out. “You are worse than that, Emma—a fool. How dare you bring your nonsense here? There’s the door.”
The banquet hour approached. Nearly all the guests of last year were again present in the warm and holly-decorated dining-room, the one notable exception being the ill-fated Parson West. Parson Dancox came in his stead, and said grace from the post of honour at the Captain’s right hand. Captain Monk did not appear to feel any remorse or regret: he was jovial, free, and grandly hospitable; one might suppose he had promoted the dead clergyman to a canonry instead of to a place in the churchyard.
“What became of the poor man’s widow, Squire?” whispered a gentleman from the neighbourhood of Evesham to Mr. Todhetley, who sat on the left hand of his host; Sir Thomas Rivers taking the foot of the table this year.
“Mrs. West? Well, we heard she opened a girls’ school up in London,” breathed the Squire.
“And what tale was that about his leaving a curse on the chimes?—I never heard the rights of it.”
“Hush!” said the Squire cautiously. “Nobody talks of that here. Or believes it, either. Poor West was a man to leave a blessing behind him; never a curse.”
Hubert, at home for the holidays, was again at table. He was fourteen now, tall of his age and slender, his blue eyes bright, his complexion delicately beautiful. The pleated cambric frill of his shirt, which hung over the collar of his Eton jacket after the fashion of the day, was carried low in front, displaying the small white throat; his golden hair curled naturally. A boy to admire and be proud of. The manners were more decorous this year than they ever had been, and Hubert was allowed to sit on. Possibly the shadow of George West’s unhappy death lay insensibly upon the party.
It was about half-past nine o’clock when the butler came into the room, bringing a small note, twisted up, to his master from Mrs. Carradyne. Captain Monk opened it and held it towards one of the lighted branches to read the few words it contained.
“A gentleman is asking to speak a word to Mr. Dancox. He says it is important.”
Captain Monk tore the paper to bits. “Not to-night, tell your mistress, is my answer,” said he to Rimmer. “Hubert, you can go to your aunt now; it’s past your bed-time.”
There could be no appeal, as the boy knew; but he went off unwillingly and in bitter resentment against Mrs. Carradyne. He supposed she had sent for him.
“What a cross old thing you are, Aunt Emma!” he exclaimed as he entered the drawing-room on the other side the hall. “You won’t let Harry go in at all to the banquets, and you won’t let me stay at them! Papa meant—I think he meant—to let me remain there to hear the chimes. Why need you have interfered to send for me?”
“I neither interfered with you, Hubert, nor sent for you. A gentleman, who did not give his name and preferred to wait outside, wants to see Mr. Dancox; that’s all,” said Mrs. Carradyne. “You gave my note to your master, Rimmer?”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied the butler. “My master bade me say to you that his answer was not to-night.”
Katherine Monk, her face betraying some agitation, rose from the piano. “Was the message not given to Mr. Dancox?” she asked of Rimmer.
“Not while I was there, Miss Katherine. The master tore the note into bits, after reading it; and dropped them under the table.”
Now it chanced that Mr. Dancox, glancing covertly at the note while the Captain held it to the light, had read what was written there. For a few minutes he said nothing. The Captain was busy sending round the wine.
“Captain Monk—pardon me—I saw my name on that bit of paper; it caught my eye as you held it out,” he said in a low tone. “Am I called out? Is anyone in the parish dying?”
Thus questioned, Captain Monk told the truth. No one was dying, and he was not called out to the parish. Some gentleman was asking to speak to him; only that.
“Well, I’ll just see who it is, and what he wants,” said Mr. Dancox, rising. “Won’t be away two minutes, sir.”
“Bring him back with you; tell him he’ll find good wine here and jolly cheer,” said the Captain. And Mr. Dancox went out, swinging his napkin in his hand.
In crossing the hall he met Katherine, exchanged a hasty word with her, let fall the serviette on a chair as he caught up his hat and overcoat, and went out. Katherine ran upstairs.
Hubert lay down on one of the drawing-room sofas. In point of fact, that young gentleman could not walk straight. A little wine takes effect on youngsters, especially when they are not accustomed to it. Mrs. Carradyne told Hubert the best place for him was bed. Not a bit of it, the boy answered: he should go out on the terrace at twelve o’clock; the chimes would be fine, heard out there. He fell asleep almost as he spoke; presently he woke up, feeling headachy, cross and stupid, and of his own accord went up to bed.
Meanwhile, the dining-room was getting jollier and louder as the time passed on towards midnight. Great wonder was expressed at the non-return of the parson; somebody must be undoubtedly grievously sick or dying. Mr. Speck, the quiet little Hurst Leet doctor, dissented from this. Nobody was dying in the parish, he affirmed, or sick enough to need a priest; as a proof of it, he had not been sent for.
Ring, ring, ring! broke forth the chimes on the quiet midnight air, as the church clock finished striking twelve. It was a sweet sound; even those prejudiced against the chimes could hear that: the windows had been opened in readiness.
The glasses were charged; the company stood on their legs, some of them not at all steady legs just then, bending their ears to listen. Captain Monk stood in his place, majestically waving his head and his left hand to keep time in harmony with The Bay of Biscay. His right hand held his goblet in readiness for the toast when the sounds should cease.
Ring, ring, ring! chimed the last strokes of the bells, dying away to faintness on the still evening air. Suddenly, amidst the hushed silence, and whilst the sweet melody fell yet unbroken on the room, there arose a noise as of something falling outside on the terrace, mingled with a wild scream and the crash of breaking glass.
One of the guests rushed to the window, and put his head out of it. So far as he could see, he said (perhaps his sight was somewhat obscured), it was a looking-glass lying further up on the terrace.
Thrown out from one of the upper windows! scornfully pronounced the Captain, full of wrath that it should have happened at that critical moment to mar the dignity of his coming toast. And he gave the toast heartily; and the new year came in for them all with good wishes and good wine.
Some little time yet ere the company finally rose. The mahogany frame of the broken looking-glass, standing on end, was conspicuous on the white ground in the clear frosty night, as they streamed out from the house. Mr. Speck, whose sight was rather remarkably good, peered at it curiously from the hall steps, and then walked quickly along the snowy terrace towards it.
Sure enough, it was a looking-glass, broken in its fall from an open window above. But, lying by it in the deep snow, in his white night-shirt, was Hubert Monk.
When the chimes began to play, Hubert was not asleep. Sitting up in bed, he disposed himself to listen. After a bit they began to grow fainter; Hubert impatiently dashed to the window and threw it up to its full height as he jumped on the dressing-table, when in some unfortunate way he overbalanced himself, and pitched out on the terrace beneath, carrying the looking-glass with him. The fall was not much, for his room was in one of the wings, the windows of which were low; but the boy had struck his head in falling, and there he had lain, insensible, on the terrace, one hand still clasping the looking-glass.
All the rosy wine-tint fading away to a sickly paleness on the Captain’s face, he looked down on his well-beloved son. The boy was carried indoors to his room, reviving with the movement.
“Young bones are elastic,” pronounced Mr. Speck, when he had examined him; “and none of these are broken. He will probably have a cold from the exposure; that’s about the worst.”
He seemed to have it already: he was shivering from head to foot now, as he related the above particulars. All the family had assembled round him, except Katherine.
“Where is Katherine?” suddenly inquired her father, noticing her absence.
“I cannot think where she is,” said Mrs. Carradyne. “I have not seen her for an hour or two. Eliza says she is not in her room; I sent her to see. She is somewhere about, of course.”
“Go and look for your sister, Eliza. Tell her to come here,” said Captain Monk. But though Eliza went at once, her quest was useless.
Miss Katherine was not in the house: Miss Katherine had made a moonlight flitting from it that evening with the Reverend Thomas Dancox.
THE SILENT CHIMES
II.—PLAYING AGAIN
I
It could not be said the Church Leet chimes brought good when they rang out that night at midnight, as the old year was giving place to the new. Mrs. Carradyne, in her superstition, thought they brought evil. Certainly evil set in at the same time, and Captain Monk, with all his scoffing obstinacy, could not fail to see it. That fine young lad, his son, fell through the window listening to them; and in the self-same hour the knowledge reached him that Katherine, his eldest and dearest child, had flown from his roof in defiant disobedience, to set up a home of her own.
Hubert was soon well of his bruises; but not of the cold induced by lying in the snow, clad only in his white night-shirt. In spite of all Mr. Speck’s efforts, rheumatic fever set in, and for some time Hubert hovered between life and death. He recovered; but would never again be the strong, hearty lad he had been—though indeed he had never been very physically strong. The doctor privately hoped that the heart would be found all right in future, but he would not have answered for it.
The blow that told most on Captain Monk was that inflicted by Katherine. And surely never was disobedient marriage carried out with the impudent boldness of hers. Church Leet called it “cheek.” Church Leet (disbelieving the facts when they first oozed out) could talk of nothing else for weeks. For Katherine had been married in the church hard by, that same night.
Special licenses were very uncommon things in those days; they cost too much; but the Reverend Thomas Dancox had procured one. With Katherine’s money: everybody guessed that. She had four hundred a-year of her own, inherited from her dead mother, and full control over it. So the special license was secured, and their crafty plans were laid. The stranger who had presented himself at the Hall that night (by arrangement), asking for Mr. Dancox, thus affording an excuse for his quitting the banquet-room, was a young clergyman of Worcester, come over especially to marry them. When tackled with his deed afterwards, he protested that he had not been told the marriage was to be clandestine. Tom Dancox went out to him from the banquet; Katherine, slipping on a bonnet and shawl, joined them outside; they hastened to the rectory and thence into the church. And while the unconscious master of Leet Hall was entertaining his guests with his good cheer and his stories and his hip, hip, hurrah, his Vicar and Katherine Monk were made one until death should them part. And death, as it proved, intended to do that speedily.
At first Captain Monk, in his unbounded rage, was for saying that a marriage celebrated at ten o’clock at night by the light of a solitary tallow candle, borrowed from the vestry, could not hold good. Reassured upon this point, he strove to devise other means to part them. Foiled again, he laid the case before the Bishop of Worcester, and begged his lordship to unfrock Thomas Dancox. The Bishop did not do as much as that; though he sent for Tom Dancox and severely reprimanded him. But that, as Church Leet remarked, did not break bones. Tom had striven to make the best of his own cause to the Bishop, and the worst of Captain Monk’s obdurate will; moreover, stolen marriages were not thought much of in those days.
An uncomfortable state of things was maintained all the year, Hall Leet and the Parsonage standing at daggers drawn. Never once did Captain Monk appear at church. If he by cross-luck met his daughter or her husband abroad, he struck into a good fit of swearing aloud; which perhaps relieved his mind. The chimes had never played again; they pertained to the church, and the church was in ill-favour with the Captain. As the end of the year approached, Church Leet wondered whether he would hold the annual banquet; but Captain Monk was not likely to forego that. Why should he? The invitations went out for it; and they contained an intimation that the chimes would again play.
The banquet took place, a neighbouring parson saying grace at it in the place of Tom Dancox. While the enjoyment was progressing and Captain Monk was expressing his marvel for the tenth time as to what could have become of Speck, who had not made his appearance, a note was brought in by Rimmer—just as he had brought in one last year. This also was from Mrs. Carradyne.
“Please come out to me for one moment, dear Godfrey. I must say a word to you.”
Captain Monk’s first impulse on reading this was to send Rimmer back to say she might go and be hanged. But to call him from the table was so very extreme a measure, that on second thoughts he decided to go to her. Mrs. Carradyne was standing just outside the door, looking as white as a sheet.
“Well, this is pretty bold of you, Madam Emma,” he began angrily. “Are you out of your senses?”
“Hush, Godfrey! Katherine is dying.”
“What?” cried the Captain, the words confusing him.
“Katherine is dying,” repeated his sister, her teeth chattering with emotion.
In spite of Katherine’s rebellion, Godfrey Monk loved her still as the apple of his eye; and it was only his obstinate temper which had kept him from reconciliation. His face took a hue of terror, and his voice a softer tone.
“What have you heard?”
“Her baby’s born; something has gone wrong, I suppose, and she is dying. Sally ran up with the news, sent by Mr. Speck. Katherine is crying aloud for you, saying she cannot die without your forgiveness. Oh, Godfrey, you will go, you will surely go!” pleaded Mrs. Carradyne, breaking down with a burst of tears. “Poor Katherine!”
Never another word spoke he. He went out at the hall-door there and then, putting on his hat as he leaped down the steps. It was a wretched night; not white, clear, and cold as the last New Year’s Eve had been, or mild and genial as the one before it; but damp, raw, misty.
“You think I have remained hard and defiant, father,” Katherine whispered to him, “but I have many a time asked God’s forgiveness on my bended knees; and I longed—oh, how I longed!—to ask yours. What should we all do with the weight of sin that lies on us when it comes to such an hour as this, but for Jesus Christ—for God’s wonderful mercy!”
And, with one hand in her father’s and the other in her husband’s, both their hearts aching to pain, and their eyes wet with bitter tears, poor Katherine’s soul passed away.
After quitting the parsonage, Captain Monk was softly closing the garden gate behind him—for when in sorrow we don’t do things with a rush and a bang—when a whirring sound overhead caused him to start. Strong, hardened man though he was, his nerves were unstrung to-night in company with his heartstrings. It was the church clock preparing to strike twelve. The little doctor, Speck, who had left the house but a minute before, was standing at the churchyard fence close by, his arms leaning on the rails, probably ruminating sadly on what had just occurred. Captain Monk halted beside him in silence, while the clock struck.
As the last stroke vibrated on the air, telling the knell of the old year, the dawn of the new, another sound began.
Ring, ring, ring! Ring, ring, ring!
The chimes! The sweet, soothing, melodious chimes, carolling forth The Bay of Biscay. Very pleasant were they in themselves to the ear. But—did they fall pleasantly on Captain Monk’s? It may be, not. It may be, a wish came over him that he had never thought of instituting them. But for doing that, the ills of his recent life had never had place. George West’s death would not have lain at his door, or room been made by it for Tom Dancox, and Katherine would not be lying as he had now left her—cold and lifeless.
“Could nothing have been done to save her, Speck?” he whispered to the doctor, whose arms were still on the churchyard railings, listening to the chimes in silence—though indeed he had asked the same question indoors before.
“Nothing; or you may be sure, sir, it would have been,” answered Mr. Speck. “Had all the medical men in Worcestershire been about her, they could not have saved her any more than I could. These unfortunate cases happen now and then,” sighed he, “showing us how powerless we really are.”
Well, it was grievous news wherewith to startle the parish. And Mrs. Carradyne, a martyr to belief in ghosts and omens, grew to dread the chimes with a nervous and nameless dread.
II
It was but the first of February, yet the weather might have served for May-day: one of those superb days that come once in a while out of their season, serving to remind the world that the dark, depressing, dreary winter will not last for ever; though we may have half feared it means to, forgetting the reassuring promise of the Divine Ruler of all things, given after the Flood:
“While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease.”
The warm and glorious sunbeams lay on Church Leet, as if to woo the bare hedges into verdant life, the cold fields to smiling plains. Even the mounds of the graveyard, interspersed amidst the old tombstones, looked green and cheerful to-day in the golden light.
Turning slowly out of the Vicarage gate came a good-looking clergyman of seven-or-eight-and-twenty. A slender man of middle height, with a sweet expression on his pale, thoughtful face, and dark earnest eyes. It was the new Vicar of Church Leet, the Reverend Robert Grame.
For a goodish many years have gone on since that tragedy of poor Katherine’s death, and this is the second appointed Vicar since that inauspicious time.
Mr. Grame walked across the churchyard, glancing at the inscriptions on the tombs. Inside the church porch stood the clerk, old John Cale, keys in hand. Mr. Grame saw him and quickened his pace.
“Have I kept you waiting, Cale?” he cried in his pleasant, considerate tones. “I am sorry for that.”
“Not at all, your reverence; I came afore the time. This here church is but a step or two off my home, yonder, and I’m as often out here as I be indoors,” continued John Cale, a fresh-coloured little man with pale grey eyes and white hair. “I’ve been clerk here, sir, for seven-and-thirty years.”
“You’ve seen more than one parson out then, I reckon.”
“More than one! Ay, sir, more than—more than six times one, I was going to say; but that’s too much, maybe. Let’s see: there was Mr. Cartright, he had held the living I hardly know how many years when I came, and he held it for many after that. Mr. West succeeded him—the Reverend George West; then came Thomas Dancox; then Mr. Atterley: four in all. And now you’ve come, sir, to make the fifth.”
“Did they all die? or take other livings?”
“Some the one thing, sir, and some the other. Mr. Cartright died, he was old; and Mr. West, he—he——” John Cale hesitated before he went on—“he died; Mr. Dancox got appointed to a chaplaincy somewhere over the seas; he was here but about eighteen months, hardly that; and Mr. Atterley, who has just left, has had a big church with a big income, they say, given to him over in Oxfordshire.”
“Which makes room for me,” smiled Robert Grame.
They were inside the church now; a small and very old-fashioned church, with high pews, dark and sombre. Over the large pew of the Monks, standing sideways to the pulpit, sundry slabs were on the wall, their inscriptions testifying to the virtues and ages of the Monk family dead and gone. Mr. Grame stood to read them. One slab of white marble, its black letters fresh and clear, caught especially his eye.
“Katherine, eldest child of Godfrey Monk, gentleman, and wife of the Reverend Thomas Dancox,” he read out aloud. “Was that he who was Vicar here?”
“Ay, ’twas. She married him again her father’s wish, and died, poor thing, just a year after it,” replied the clerk. “And only twenty-three, as you see, sir! The Captain came down and forgave her on her dying bed, and ’twas he that had the stone put up there. Her baby-girl was taken to the Hall, and is there still: ten years old she must be now; ’twas but an hour or two old when the mother died.”
“It seems a sad history,” observed Mr. Grame as he turned away to enter the vestry.
John Cale did the honours of its mysteries: showing him the chest for the surplices; the cupboard let into the wall for the register; the place where candles and such-like stores were kept. Mr. Grame opened a door at one end of the room and saw a square flagged place, containing grave-digging tools and the hanging ropes of the bell which called people to church. Shutting the door again, he crossed to a door on the opposite side. But that he could not open.
“What does this lead to?” he asked. “It is locked.”
“It’s always kept locked, that door is, sir; and it’s a’most as much as my post is worth to open it,” said the clerk, his voice sinking to a mysterious whisper. “It leads up to the chimes.”
“The chimes!” echoed the new parson in surprise. “Do you mean to say this little country church can boast of chimes?”
John Cale nodded. “Lovely, pleasant things they be to listen to, sir, but we’ve not heard ’em since the midnight when Miss Katherine died. They play a tune called ‘The Bay o’ Biscay.’”
Selecting a key from the bunch that he carried in his hand, he opened the door, displaying a narrow staircase, unprotected as a ladder and nearly perpendicular. At the top was another small door, evidently locked.
“Captain Monk had all this done when he put the chimes up,” remarked he. “I sweep the dust off these stairs once in three months or so, but otherwise the door’s not opened. And that one,” nodding to the door above, “never.”
“But why?” asked the clergyman. “If the chimes are there, and are, as you say, melodious, why do they not play?”
“Well, sir, I b’lieve there’s a bit of superstition at the bottom of it,” returned the clerk, not caring to explain too fully lest he should have to tell about Mr. West’s death, which might not be the thing to frighten a new Vicar with. “A feeling has somehow got abroad in the parish (leastways with a many of its folk) that the putting-up of its bells brought ill-luck, and that whenever the chimes ring out some dreadful evil falls on the Monk family.”
“I never heard of such a thing,” exclaimed the Vicar, hardly knowing whether to laugh or lecture. “The parish cannot be so ignorant as that! How can the putting-up of chimes bring ill-luck?”
“Well, your reverence, I don’t know; the thing’s beyond me. They were heard but three times, ringing in the new year at midnight, three years, one on top of t’other—and each time some ill fell.”
“My good man—and I am sure you are good—you should know better,” remonstrated Mr. Grame. “Captain Monk cannot surely give credence to this?”
“No, sir; but his sister up at the Hall does—Mrs. Carradyne. It’s said the Captain used to ridicule her finely for it; he’d fly into a passion whenever ’twas alluded to. Captain Monk, as a brave seaman, is too bold to tolerate anything of the sort. But he has never let the chimes play since his daughter died. He was coming out from the death-scene at midnight, when the chimes broke forth the third year, and it’s said he can’t abear the sound of ’em since.”
“That may well be,” assented Mr. Grame.
“And finding, sir, year after year, year after year, as one year gives place to another, that they are never heard, we have got to call ’em amid ourselves, the Silent Chimes,” spoke the clerk, as they turned to leave the church. “The Silent Chimes, sir.”
Clinking his keys, the clerk walked away to his home, an ivy-covered cottage not a stone’s-throw off; the clergyman lingered in the churchyard, reading the memorials on the tombstones. He was smiling at the quaintness of some of them, when the sound of hasty footsteps caused him to turn. A little girl was climbing over the churchyard-railings (as being nearer to her than the entrance-gate), and came dashing towards him across the gravestones.
“Are you grandpapa’s new parson?” asked the young lady; a pretty child of ten, with a dark skin, and dusky-violet eyes staring at him freely out of a saucy face.
“Yes, I am,” said he. “What is your name?”
“What is yours?” boldly questioned she. “They’ve talked about you at home, but I forgot it.”
“Mine is Robert Grame. Won’t you tell me yours?”
“Oh, it’s Kate.—Here’s that wicked Lucy coming! She’s going to groan at me for jumping here. She says it’s not reverent.”
A charming young lady of some twenty years was coming up the path, wearing a scarlet cloak, its hood lined with white silk; a straw hat shaded her fair face, blushing very much just now; in her dark-grey eyes might be read vexation, as she addressed Mr. Grame.
“I hope Kate has not been rude? I hope you will excuse her heedlessness in this place. She is only a little girl.”
“It’s only the new parson, Lucy,” broke in Kate without ceremony. “He says his name’s Robert Grame.”
“Oh, Kate, don’t! How shall we ever teach you manners?” reprimanded the young lady, in distress. “She has been very much indulged, sir,” turning to the clergyman.
“I can well understand that,” he said, with a bright smile. “I presume that I have the honour of speaking to the daughter of my patron—Captain Monk?”
“No; Captain Monk is my uncle: I am Lucy Carradyne.”
As the young clergyman stood, hat in hand, a feeling came over him that he had never seen so sweet a face as the one he was looking at. Miss Lucy Carradyne was saying to herself, “What a nice countenance he has! What kindly, earnest eyes!”
“This little lady tells me her name is Kate.”
“Kate Dancox,” said Lucy, as the child danced away. “Her mother was Captain Monk’s eldest daughter; she died when Kate was born. My uncle is very fond of Kate; he will hardly have her controlled at all.”
“I have been in to see my church! John Cale has been doing its honours for me,” smiled Mr. Grame. “It is a pretty little edifice.”
“Yes, and I hope you will like it; I hope you will like the parish,” frankly returned Lucy.
“I shall be sure to do that, I think. As soon, at least, as I can feel convinced that it is to be really mine,” he added, with a quaint expression. “When I heard, a week ago, that Captain Monk had presented me—an entire stranger to him—with the living of Church Leet, I could not believe it. It is not often that a nameless curate, without influence, is spontaneously remembered.”
“It is not much of a living,” said Lucy, meeting the words half jestingly. “Worth, I believe, about a hundred and sixty pounds a-year.”
“But that is a great rise for me—and I have a house to myself large and beautiful—and am a Vicar and no longer a curate,” he returned, laughingly. “I cannot imagine, though, how Captain Monk came to give it me. Have you any idea how it was, Miss Carradyne?”
Lucy’s face flushed. She could not tell this gentleman the truth: that another clergyman had been fixed upon, one who would have been especially welcome to the parishioners; that Captain Monk had all but nominated him to the living. But it chanced to reach the Captain’s ears that this clergyman had expressed his intention of holding the Communion service monthly, instead of quarterly as heretofore, so he put the question to him. Finding it to be true, he withdrew his promise; he would not have old customs broken in upon by modern innovation, he said; and forthwith he appointed the Reverend Robert Grame.
“I do not even know how Captain Monk heard of me,” continued Mr. Grame, marking Lucy’s hesitation.
“I believe you were recommended to him by one of the clergy attached to Worcester Cathedral,” said Lucy.—“And I think I must wish you good-morning now.”
But there came an interruption. A tall, stately, haughty young woman, with an angry look upon her dark and handsome face, had entered the churchyard, and was calling out as she advanced:
“That monkey broken loose again, I suppose, and at her pranks here! What are you good for, Lucy, if you cannot keep her in better order? You know I told you to go straight on to Mrs. Speck, and——”
The words died away. Mr. Grame, who had been hidden by a large upright tombstone, emerged into view. Lucy, with another blush, spoke to cover the awkwardness.
“This is Miss Monk,” she said to him. “Eliza, it is the new clergyman, Mr. Grame.”
Miss Monk recovered her equanimity. A winning smile supplanted the anger on her face; she held out her hand, grandly gracious. For she liked the stranger’s look: he was beyond doubt a gentleman—and an attractive man.
“Allow me to welcome you to Church Leet, Mr. Grame. My father chances to be absent to-day; he is gone to Evesham.”
“So the clerk told me, or I should have called this morning to pay my respects to him, and to thank him for his generous and most unexpected patronage of me. I got here last night,” concluded Mr. Grame, standing uncovered as when he had saluted Lucy. Eliza Monk liked his pleasant voice and taking manners: her fancy went out to him there and then.
“But though papa is absent, you will walk up with me now to the Hall to make acquaintance with my aunt, Mrs. Carradyne,” said Eliza, in tones that, gracious though they were, sounded in the light of a command—just as poor Katherine’s had always sounded. And Mr. Grame went with her.
But now—handsome though she was, gracious though she meant to be—there was something about Eliza Monk that seemed to repulse Robert Grame, rather than attract him. Lucy had fascinated him; she repelled. Other people had experienced the same kind of repulsion, but knew not where it lay.
Hubert, the heir, about twenty-five now, came forward to greet the stranger as they entered the Hall. No repulsion about him. Robert Grame’s hand met his with a warm clasp. A young man of gentle manners and a face of rare beauty—but oh, so suspiciously delicate! Perhaps it was the extreme slenderness of the frame, the wan look in the refined features and their bright hectic that drew forth the clergyman’s sympathy. An impression came over him that this young man was not long for earth.
“Is Mr. Monk strong?” he presently asked of Mrs. Carradyne, when Hubert had temporarily quitted the room.
“Indeed, no. He had rheumatic fever some years ago,” she added, “and has never been strong since.”
“Has he heart disease?” questioned the clergyman. He thought the young man had just that look.
“We fear his heart is weak,” replied Mrs. Carradyne.
“But that may be only your fancy, you know, Aunt Emma,” spoke Miss Monk reproachfully. She and her father were both passionately attached to Hubert; they resented any doubt cast upon his health.
“Oh, of course,” assented Mrs. Carradyne, who never resented anything.
“We shall be good friends, I trust,” said Eliza, with a beaming smile, as her hand lay in Mr. Grame’s when he was leaving.
“Indeed I hope so,” he answered. “Why not?”
III
Summer lay upon the land. The landscape stretched out before Leet Hall was fair to look upon. A fine expanse of wood and dale, of trees in their luxuriant beauty; of emerald-green plains, of meandering streams, of patches of growing corn already putting on its golden hue, and of the golden sunlight, soon to set and gladden other worlds, that shone from the deep-blue sky. Birds sang in their leafy shelters, bees were drowsily humming as they gathered the last of the day’s honey, and butterflies flitted from flower to flower with a good-night kiss.
At one of the windows stood, in her haughty beauty, Eliza Monk. Not, surely, of the lovely scene before her was she thinking, or her face might have worn a more pleasing expression. Rather did she seem to gaze, and with displeasure, at two or three people who were walking in the distance: Lucy Carradyne side by side with the clergyman, and Miss Kate Dancox pulling at his coat-tails.
“Shameful flirt!”
The acidity of the tone was so pronounced that Mrs. Carradyne, seated near and busy at her netting, lifted her head in surprise. “Why, Eliza, what’s the matter? Who is a flirt?”
“Lucy,” curtly replied Eliza, pointing with her finger.
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Carradyne, after glancing outwards.
“Why does she persistently lay herself out to attract that man?” was the passionate rejoinder.
“Be silent, Eliza. How can you conjure up so unjust a charge? Lucy is not capable of laying herself out to attract anyone. It lies but in your imagination.”
“Day after day, when she is out with Kate, you may see him join her—allured to her side.”
“The ‘allurer’ is Kate, then. I am surprised at you, Eliza: you might be talking of a servant-maid. Kate has taken a liking for Mr. Grame, and she runs after him at all times and seasons.”
“She ought to be stopped, then.”
“Stopped! Will you undertake to do it? Could her mother be stopped in anything she pleased to do? And the child has the same rebellious will.”
“I say that Robert Grame’s attraction is Lucy.”
“It may be so,” acknowledged Mrs. Carradyne. “But the attraction must lie in Lucy herself; not in anything she does. Some suspicion of the sort has, at times, crossed me.”
She looked at them again as she spoke. They were sauntering onwards slowly; Mr. Grame bending towards Lucy, and talking earnestly. Kate, dancing about, pulling at his arm or his coat, appeared to get but little attention. Mrs. Carradyne quietly went on with her work.
And that composed manner, combined with her last sentence, brought gall and wormwood to Eliza Monk.
Throwing a summer scarf upon her shoulders, Eliza passed out at the French window, crossed the terrace, and set out to confront the conspirators. But she was not in time. Seeing her coming, or not seeing her—who knew?—Mr. Grame turned off with a fleet foot towards his home. So nobody remained for Miss Monk to waste her angry breath upon but Lucy. The breath was keenly sharp, and Lucy fell to weeping.
“I am here, Grame. Don’t go in.”
The words fell on the clergyman’s ears as he closed the Vicarage gate behind him, and was passing up the path to his door. Turning his head, he saw Hubert Monk seated on the bench under the may tree, pink and lovely yet. “How long have you been here?” he asked, sitting down beside him.
“Ever so long; waiting for you,” replied Hubert.
“I was only strolling about.”
“I saw you: with Lucy and the child.”
They had become fast and firm friends, these two young men; and the minister was insensibly exercising a wonderful influence over Hubert for good. Believing—as he did believe—that Hubert’s days were numbered, that any sharp extra exertion might entail fatal consequences, he gently strove, as opportunity offered, to lead his thoughts to the Better Land.
“What an evening it is!” rapturously exclaimed Hubert.
“Ay: so calm and peaceful.”
The rays of the setting sun touched Hubert’s face, lighting up its extreme delicacy; the scent of the closing flowers filled the still air with sweetness; the birds were chanting their evening song of praise. Hubert, his elbow on the arm of the bench, his hand supporting his chin, looked out with dreamy eyes.
“What book have you there?” asked Mr. Grame, noticing one in his other hand.
“Herbert,” answered the young man, showing it. “I filched it from your table through the open window, Grame.”
The clergyman took it. It chanced to open at a passage he was very fond of. Or perhaps he knew the place, and opened it purposely.
“Do you know these verses, Hubert? They are appropriate enough just now, while those birds are carolling.”
“I can’t tell. What verses? Read them.”