The New Rector

"No," the other answered. "I was putting things straight when you entered and startled me. He had dropped the money about the floor, but you will find it right, I think. He has made a mess among the papers, I fear, and damaged the cupboard door in forcing it, but that is the extent of the mischief. By the way," the curate added, "I have a key to this cupboard at my lodgings. Williams gave it to me. He only kept parish matters here. I must let you have it."

"Right," said the rector carelessly; and, a few more words having passed between them as to the attempted robbery, and the manner in which the outer door had been opened, the curate took his hat and prepared to go. "You had a pleasant party, I suppose?" he said, pausing and turning when halfway across the hall.

"A very pleasant one," Lindo answered with enthusiasm.

"They are nice people," said Clode smoothly.

"They are-very nice. You told me I should find them so, and you were right. Good-night."

"Good-night."

Such harmless words! And yet they roused the curate's jealousy anew. As he walked home, the church clock tolling midnight above his head, he drank in no peaceful influence from the dark stillness or the solemn sound. He was gnawed by fresh hatred of the man who had surprised and confounded him, and forced him to lie and quibble in order to escape from a dishonorable position. If you would make a man your enemy come upon him when he is doing something of which he is ashamed. He will fear you afterward, but he will hate you more. In the curate's case it was only he who knew himself discovered, so that he had no ground for fear. But he hated none the less vigorously.

And, somehow, in a few days an ugly rumor of which the new rector was the subject began to gain currency in the town. It was an ill-defined rumor, coming to one thing in one person's mouth and to a different thing in another's-a kind of cloud on the rector's fair fame, shifting from moment to moment, and taking ever a fresh shape, yet always a cloud.

One whispered that he had obtained the presentation as the reward of questionable services rendered to the patron. Another that he had forged his own deed of presentation, if such a thing existed. A third that he had been presented by mistake; and a fourth that he had deceived the authorities as to his age. It was noticeable that these rumors began low down in the social scale of the town and worked their way upward, which was odd; and that, whatever form the rumor took, there was not one who heard it who did not within a fortnight or three weeks come to associate it with the presence of a seedy, down-looking, unwholesome man, who was much about the rector's doorway, and, when he was not there, was generally to be found at the Bull and Staff. Whether he was the disseminator of the reports, or, alike with the rector, was the unconscious subject of them, was not known; but at sight of him-particularly if he were seen, as frequently happened, in the rector's neighborhood-people shrugged their shoulders and lifted their eyebrows, and expressed a great many severe things without using their tongues.

To the circle of the rector's personal friends the rumors did not reach. That was natural enough. To tell a person that his or her intimate friend is a forger or a swindler is a piquant but somewhat perilous task. And no one mentioned the matter to the Hammonds, or to the archdeacon, or to the Homfrays of Holberton, or the other county people living round, with whom it must be confessed that, after that dinner-party at the Town House, he consorted perhaps too exclusively. It might have been thought that even the townsfolk, seeing the young fellow's frank face passing daily about their streets, and catching the glint of his fair curly hair when, the wintry sunlight pierced the lanthorn windows and fell in gules and azure on the reading-desk, would have been slow to believe such tales of him.

They might have been; but circumstances and Mr. Bonamy were against him. The lawyer did not circulate the stories; he had not even mentioned them out-of-doors, nor, for aught the greater part of Claversham knew, had heard of them at all. But all his weight-and with the Low-Church middle-class in the town it was great-was thrown into the scale against the rector. It was known that he did not trust the rector. It was known that day by day his frown on meeting the rector grew darker and darker. And the why and the wherefore not being understood-for no one thought of questioning the lawyer, or observed how frequently of late the curate happened upon him in the street or the reading-room-many concluded that he knew more of the clergyman's antecedents than appeared.

There was one person, and perhaps only one, who openly circulated and rejoiced in these rumors. That was a man whom Lindo met daily in the street and passed with a careless nod and a word, not dreaming for an instant that the spiteful little busybody was concerning himself with him. The man was Dr. Gregg, the snappish, ill-bred man who had chanced upon Lindo and the Bonamy girls breakfasting together at Oxford. The sight, it will be remembered, had not pleased him, for he had long had a sneaking liking for Miss Kate himself, and had only refrained from trying to win her because he still more desired to be of the "best set" in Claversham. He had been ashamed, indeed, up to this time of his passion; but, reading on that occasion unmistakable admiration of the girl in the young clergyman's face, and being himself rather cavalierly treated by Lindo, he had somewhat changed his views. The girl had acquired increased value in his eyes. Another's appreciation had increased his own, and, merely as an incident, the man who had effected this has earned his hearty jealousy and ill-will. And this, while Lindo thought him a vulgar but harmless little man.

But if the rector, immersed in new social engagements, did not see whither he was tending, others, though they knew nothing of the unpleasant tales we have mentioned, saw more clearly. The archdeacon, coming into town one Saturday five or six weeks after Lindo's arrival, did his business early and turned his steps toward the rectory. He felt pretty sure of finding the young fellow at home, because he knew it was his sermon day. A few yards from the door he fell in, as it chanced, with Stephen Clode. The two stood together talking, while the archdeacon waited to be admitted, and presently the curate said, "If you wish to see the rector, archdeacon, I am afraid you will be disappointed. He is not at home."

"But I thought that he was always at home on Saturdays?"

"Generally he is," Clode replied, looking down and tracing a pattern with the point of his umbrella. "But he is away to-day."

"Where?" said the archdeacon rather abruptly.

"He has gone to the Homfrays' at Holberton. They have some sort of party to-day, and the Hammonds drove him over." Despite himself, the curate's tone was sullen, his manner constrained.

"Oh!" said the archdeacon thoughtfully. The Homfrays were his very good friends, but of the county families round Claversham they were reckoned the fastest and most frivolous. And he sagely suspected that a man in Lindo's delicate position might be wiser if he chose other companions. "Lindo seems to see a good deal of the Hammonds," he remarked after a pause.

"Yes," said Clode. "It is very natural."

"Oh, very natural," the archdeacon hastened to say; but his tone clearly expressed the opinion that "toujours Hammonds" was not a good bill of fare for the rector of Claversham. "Very natural, of course. Only," he continued, taking courage, for he really liked the rector, "you have had some experience here, and I think it would be well if you were to give him a hint not to be too exclusive. A town rector must not be too exclusive. It does not do."

"No," said Clode.

"It is different in the country, of course. And then there is Mr. Bonamy. He is unpleasant, I know, and yet he is honest after a fashion. Lindo must beware of getting across with him. He has done nothing about the sheep yet, has he?"

"No."

"Well, do not let him, if you can help it. You are not urging him on in that, are you?"

"On the contrary," the curate answered rather warmly, "I have all through told him that I would not express an opinion on it. If anything, I have discouraged him in the matter."

"Well, I hope he will let it drop now. I hope he will let it drop."

They parted then, and the archdeacon, sagely revolving in his mind the evils of exclusiveness, strolled back to the hotel where he put up his horses. On his way, casting his eye down the wide, quiet street, with its old-fashioned houses on this side and that, he espied Mr. Bonamy's tall spare figure approaching, and he purposely passed the inn and went to meet him. As a county magnate the archdeacon could afford to know Mr. Bonamy, and even to be friendly with him. I am not sure, indeed, that he had not a sneaking liking and respect for the rugged, snappish, self-made man.

"How do you do, Mr. Bonamy?" he began. And then, after saying a few words about closing a road in which he was interested, he slid into a mention of Lindo, with a view to seeing how the land lay. "I have just been to call on your rector," he said.

"You did not find him at home," replied Bonamy, with a queer grin, and a little jerk of his head which sent his hat still farther back.

"No, I was unlucky."

"Not more than most people," said the churchwarden, with much enjoyment. "I will tell you what it is, Mr. Archdeacon. Mr. Lindo is better suited for your place. He would make a very good archdeacon. With a pair of horses and a park phaeton and a small parish, and a little general superintendence of the district-with that and the life of a country gentleman he would get on capitally."

There was just so much of a jest in the words that the clergyman had no choice but to laugh. "Come, Bonamy," he said good-humoredly, "he is young yet."

"Oh, yes, he is quite out of place here in that respect, too!" replied the lawyer naïvely.

"But he will improve," pleaded the archdeacon.

"I am not sure that he will have the chance," Mr. Bonamy answered in his gentlest tone.

The archdeacon was so far from understanding him that he did not answer save by raising his eyebrows. Could Bonamy really be so foolish, he wondered, as to think he could get rid of a beneficed clergyman. The archdeacon was surprised, and yet that was all he could make of it.

"He is away at Mr. Homfray's of Holberton now," the lawyer continued, condemnation in his thin voice.

"Well, there is no harm in that, Mr. Bonamy," replied the archdeacon, somewhat offended, "as long as he is back to do the duty to-morrow."

Mr. Bonamy grunted. "A one-day-a-week duty is a very fine thing," he said. "You clergymen are to be envied, Mr. Archdeacon!"

"You would be a great deal more to be envied yourself, Mr. Bonamy," the magnate returned with heat, "if you did not carp at everything and look at other people through distorted glasses. Fie! here is a young clergyman new to the parish, and, instead of helping him, you find fault with everything he does. For shame! For shame, Mr. Bonamy!"

"Ah!" said the lawyer, quite unabashed, "you did not mean to say that when you came across the street to me. But-well, least said soonest mended, and I will wish you good evening. You will have a wet drive home, I am afraid, Mr. Archdeacon."

And he put up his umbrella and went his way sturdily, while the archdeacon, crossing to his carriage, which was in front of the inn, entertained an uncomfortable suspicion that he had done more harm than good by his intercession. "I am afraid," he said to himself, as he handled the reins and sent his horses down the street in a fashion of which he was not a little proud-"I am afraid that there is trouble in front of that young man. I am afraid there is."

If he had known all, he might have shaken his head still more gravely,

CHAPTER X

OUT WITH THE SHEEP

Stephen Clode, while listening with a certain pleasure to the archdeacon's hints, did not dream of the good turn which fortune was about to do him. If he had foreseen it, he would probably have taken a bolder part in the conversation, and parted from the elder clergyman with a more jubilant step. As it was, he heard no rumor that evening, nor was it until ten o'clock on the Sunday morning that he learned anything was amiss. Calling at the house in the churchyard at that hour, he was received by Mrs. Baker herself; and he remarked at once that the housekeeper's face fell in a manner far from flattering when she recognized him.

"Oh, it is you, is it, Mr. Clode?" she said, her tone one of disappointment. "You have not seen him, sir, have you?"

"Seen whom?" the curate replied in surprise.

"Mr. Lindo, sir?"

"Why? Is he not here?"