The New Rector

"On yours."

"On mine?"

"Most assuredly," replied the clergyman doggedly-"as the archdeacon here, who indicted me, can bear witness."

"It is false!" Lord Dynmore almost screamed. He turned to the panic-stricken listeners, who had instinctively grouped themselves round the two, and appealed to them. "I presented a man nearly thrice his age, do you hear! – a man of sixty. As for this-this Reginald Lindo, I never heard of him in my life! Never! If he had letters of presentation, I did not give them to him."

The young clergyman's eyes flashed, and his face grew hard as a stone. He guessed already the misfortune which had happened to him, and his heart was sore, as well as full of wrath. But in his pride he betrayed only the anger. "Lord Dynmore," he said fiercely, "you will have to answer for these insinuations. If there has been any error, the fault has not lain with me!"

"An error, you call it, do you? Let me-"

"Oh, Lord Dynmore!" Mrs. Hammond gasped.

"One moment, Lord Dynmore, if you please." This from the archdeacon; and he pressed his interruption, placing himself between the two men, and almost laying his hands on the excited peer. "If there has been a mistake," he urged, "a few words will make it clear. I fully believe-nay, I feel sure, that my friend here is not in fault, whoever is."

"Ask your questions," grunted my lord, breathing hard, and eyeing the young clergyman as a terrier eyes the taller dog it means to attack. "He will not answer them, trust me!"

"I think he will," replied the archdeacon with decision. His esprit de corps was rising. The earl's rude insistance disgusted him. He remarked, his eyes wandering for a moment while he considered how he should frame his question, that another person, Mr. Clode, had silently entered the room, and was listening with a darkly thoughtful face. It occurred to the archdeacon to suggest that the ladies should withdraw, but then again it seemed fair that, as they had heard the charges, they should hear what answer the rector had to make; and he proceeded. "First, Lord Dynmore," he said, "I must ask you whom you intended to present."

"My old friend, Reginald Lindo, of course."

"His address, please," continued the archdeacon rather curtly.

"Somewhere in the East End of London," the earl answered. "Oh, I remember now, St. Gabriel's, Aldgate."

The archdeacon turned silently to the clergyman. "He was my uncle," Lindo explained gravely. "He died a year ago last October."

"Died!" The exclamation was Lord Dynmore's.

"Yes, died," the young man retorted bitterly. "Your lordship keeps a watchful eye upon your friends!"

The shaft went home. The earl caught a quick breath, and his face changed. The words awoke a slumbering chord in his memory and recalled-not as might have been expected, old days of frolic and sport spent with the friend whose death was thus coldly flung in his face-but a scene in another world. He saw upon the instant a rock-bound valley, inclosed by hills that rose in giant steps to the snowy line of the Andes; and in its depths a tiny hunter's camp. He saw an Indian fishing in the brook, and near him a white man wandering away-a letter in his hand. Then had come a shot, an alarm, a hasty striking of the tent, and for many hours-even days-a rapid, dangerous march. In the excitement the letter had been forgotten, to be recalled with its tidings here-and now.

He winced, and muttered, "Good heavens, and I had heard it." The clergyman caught the words, and his resentment waxed hot. "My uncle's death," he continued grimly, in the tone of one rather making than answering an accusation, "occurred a year before the presentation was offered to me by your solicitors!"

"Lord help us!" said the peer in a helpless, bewildered tone. "But are you a clergyman, sir?"

"That is a fresh insult, Lord Dynmore!" he replied warmly.

"Hoity-toity!" retorted my lord, recovering himself, "you are a fine man to talk of insults! And you in my living, without a shadow of title to it! You must have had some suspicion, sir, that all was not right."

"I think I can answer for Mr. Lindo, there!" interposed the curate, stepping forward for the first time. His face was deeply flushed, and he spoke hurriedly, not looking up; perhaps, because all eyes were on him. "When Mr. Lindo came here, I had reason to expect an older man. I heard by chance from him-I think it was on the evening of his arrival-that he had not long lost an uncle of the same name, and it occurred to me then as just possible that there might have been a mistake. But I particularly observed that he was perfectly free from any suspicion of that kind himself."

"Pooh! There is nothing in that!" replied the archdeacon snappishly.

"I think there is!" cried the earl in triumph. "A great deal in it. If the idea occurred to a stranger, is it possible that the incumbent's own mind could be free from it?"

"Is it possible," the rector answered viciously, a ring as of steel in his voice, "that a man who had had his dear friend's death announced to him could forget the news in a year, and think of him as still alive?"

The earl gasped with passion. By a tremendous effort he refrained from using bad words, and even forbore, in view of the alarmed looks of the ladies and the archdeacon's hasty expostulation, to call his opponent, a villain or a scoundrel. He stammered only, "You-you-are you going to give up my living?"

"No," was the answer.

"You are not?"

"Certainly I am not!" the rector answered. "If you had treated me differently, Lord Dynmore," he continued, speaking with his arms crossed and his lip curling with scorn and defiance, "my answer might have been different! Now, though the mistake has been with yourself or your people, you have accused me of fraud! You have treated me as an impostor! You have dared to ask me, though I have been ministering to the people in this parish for months, whether I am a clergyman! You have insulted me grossly, and, so doing, have put it out of my power to resign had I been so minded! And you may be sure I shall not resign."

He looked handsome enough as he flung down his defiance. But the earl cared nothing for his looks. "You will not?" he stuttered.

"No! I acknowledge no authority whatever in you," was the answer. "You are functus officio. I am subject to the bishop, and to him only."

"Give me my hat," mumbled the peer, turning abruptly away; and, tugging up the collar of his fur coat, he began to grope about in a manner which at another time would have been laughable. "Give me my hat, some one," he repeated. "Let me get out before I swear. I am functus officio, am I? I have never been so insulted in my life! Never, so help me heaven! Never! Let me get out!"

His murmurs died away in the hall, Mr. Clode with much presence of mind opening the door for him and letting him out. When they ceased, in the room he had left there was absolute silence. The men avoided one another's eyes. The women, their lips parted, looked each at her neighbor. Mrs. Homfray, the young wife of an old husband, was the first to speak. "Well, I never!" she sighed.

That broke the spell. The rector, who had hitherto gazed darkly, with flushed brow and compressed lips, at the hearth-rug, roused himself. "I think I had better go," he said, his tone hard and ungracious, "You will excuse me, I am sure, Mrs. Hammond. Good-night. Good-night."

The archdeacon took a step forward, with the intention of intercepting him, but thought better of it, and stopped, seeing that the time was not propitious. So, save to murmur an answer to his general farewell, no one spoke, and he left the room under the impression, though he himself had set the tone, that he stood alone among them; that he had not their sympathies. Afterward he remembered this, and it added to his unhappiness, and to the pride with which he endured it. But at the moment he was scarcely aware of the impression. The blow had fallen so swiftly, it was so unexpected and so crushing, that he went out into the darkness stunned and bewildered, conscious only, as are men whom some sudden accident has befallen, that in a moment all was changed with him.

An hour later Mrs. Hammond and her daughter alone remained. The last of the visitors had departed, the dinner hour was long past, but they still sat on, fascinated by the topic, reproducing for one another's benefit the extraordinary scene they had witnessed, and discussing its probable consequences. "I am sure, quite sure, poor fellow, that he knew nothing about it," Mrs. Hammond declared for the twentieth time.

"So the archdeacon seemed to think, mamma," Laura answered. "And yet he said that probably Mr. Lindo would have to go."

"Because of the miserable attacks these people have made upon him!" her mother rejoined with indignation. "But think of the pity of it! Think of the income! And such a house as it is!"

"It is a nice house," Laura assented, thoughtfully gazing into the fire, a slight access of color in her cheeks.

"I think it is abominable!"

"And then," Laura said, continuing her chain of reflection, "there is the view from the drawing-room windows."

"Oh, it is too bad! It is really too bad! I declare I am quite upset, I am so sorry for him. Lord Dymnore ought to be ashamed of himself!"

"Yes," Laura assented rather absently, "I quite agree with you. And as for the hall, with a Persian rug or two it would be quite as good as another room."

"What hall? Oh, at the rectory?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Hammond rose with a quick, pettish air of annoyance. "Upon my word, Laura," she exclaimed, drawing a little shawl about her comfortable shoulders, "you seem to think more of the house than of the poor fellow himself! Let us go to dinner. It is half-past eight, and more."

CHAPTER XVII

THE LAWYER AT HOME

If Mr. Clode, when he stepped forward to open the door for Lord Dynmore, had any thought beyond that of facilitating his departure-if, for instance, as is just possible, he had set his mind on having a little private talk with the peer-he was disappointed. Lord Dynmore, after what had happened, was in no mood for conversation. As, still muttering and mumbling, he seized his hat from the hall table, he did indeed notice his companion, but it was with the red angry glare of a bull about to charge. The next moment he plunged headlong into his brougham, and roared "Home."

The carriage plunged away into the darkness of the drive, as if it would reach the Park at a leap. But it had barely cleared Mrs. Hammond's gates, and was still rattling over the stony pavement of the top of the town, when the footman heard his master lower the window and shout "Stop!" The horses were pulled up as suddenly as they had been started, and the man got down and went to the door. "Do you know where Mr. Bonamy the lawyer's offices are?" Lord Dynmore said curtly.