BEFORE the first day of his return to Rishton was over, Ned Mitchell had to submit to the threatened interrogatory of the vicar.
Ned had strolled into the churchyard, and was examining with a rather cynical expression a beautiful marble monument, one of the chief ornaments of the enclosure, on which were set forth, at great length, in gilt letters, the many virtues of his late brother, “Samuel Robert Mitchell, of Rishton Hall Farm, who departed this life February the eighteenth, eighteen hundred and——, aged thirty-nine. He was a kind husband, a devoted father, a loyal citizen, a faithful member of the Church,” etc., etc.
And below was a similar epitaph for “Lydia Elizabeth, relict of Samuel Robert Mitchell.”
At the foot of this was a text, cut in larger letters than the rest: “In death they were not divided.”
“They were in life though,” murmured Ned, shaking his head slowly. “Never a meal passed but they were at it, hammer and tongs, about something or other. Marble had need to be tough or it would split up into shivers under the weight of lies we put on it.”
At that moment he became aware that the vicar, who had come over the grass from his house, was standing behind him looking much amused.
“Thinking aloud!” said Mr. Brander. “A bad habit, Mr. Mitchell. Imagine what it might lead to if one had any crime on one’s conscience.”
“But parsons are supposed never to commit crimes, aren’t they?”
“Or never to have any consciences?”
“No, I won’t say that. The only criminal of your cloth that has happened to come in my way has felt many a prick of conscience, I’m ready to wager.”
The vicar looked at him inquiringly, and did not attempt to hide that he felt some anxiety as to the other’s meaning.
“Whoever he may be, I hope so, for the credit of my order,” said he, gravely.
“Yes, vicar, and for the credit of your family,” retorted Ned, drily.
Mr. Brander did not look surprised, but only deeply grieved. He laid his handsome white hand on the colonist’s shoulder, and addressed him in tones of almost fatherly expostulation and entreaty.
“Look here,” he said; “I don’t want to preach; there’s nothing I dislike more than preaching out of the pulpit. But I must say a few words to you now I have the chance; and you may be angry with me if you like.”
“All right, vicar, fire away—I mean go on,” he corrected, respectfully. “Let me tell you, it’s not many men of your profession I would listen to (except in church, where you all have a prescriptive right to do your worst on us.) But I’ve learnt something about you quite recently which makes me think you’re different from the rest. So, sir, when you please, I’m all attention.”
“Well, then,” began the vicar in his most persuasive tones, “don’t you think it’s very uncharitable of you to come over here with the fixed intention of ruining a man? And all for what? What good can it do your unfortunate sister now to have the past raked up, and her sins as well as those of others dragged again into the light? Now, do you even think, going to work in the spirit you do, that you are sure to light upon the right person to punish? Isn’t it possible that, acting with such a vindictive feeling as animates you, you may make an innocent man suffer, for lack of finding the guilty one?”
“No; to be plain with you, vicar, I don’t think anything of the kind. As for the feeling which animates me, I think I ought to understand that better than anybody; and I’ll let you know what it is. I’m not a generous man, parson; years ago I might have been, perhaps, at least as far as my favorite sister was concerned. But I’ve roughed it a good bit in the world since then, and all the pretty bloom has been rubbed off my character, d’ye see? But I’m a just man: and I don’t see why, if a man and a woman sin, the woman should get all the kicks and the man all the halfpence. That’s a vulgar way of putting it, but you’ll know what I mean. My poor sister goes wrong. I don’t say she was worth much sympathy; and my private feeling has nothing to do with it; but she had her punishment. She was ruined, and then brutally murdered. Yes, don’t tell me any humbugging stories about her going away of her own accord; I know better. Whatever happened, poor Nell was not the girl to slink off like that, and never be heard of again. She’d have come over to me, if she’d had to work her own passage in men’s clothes, as they say the lasses do sometimes. Well, that’s the woman’s end; now for the man. He gets the woman’s love, for what it’s worth. I don’t put much value on such things myself; but anyhow, he gets it. Then when he’s tired of it and of her, and the girl grows importunate and her love inconvenient, he quietly puts her out of the way, and no questions asked—”
“Oh, but there were questions asked, and very inconvenient ones too,” interrupted the vicar, gently.
Then he bit his lips, as if he had not meant to say so much.
“Aha, vicar, it looks very much as if you had a notion who it is I’m driving at!”
“I don’t pretend to deny that you mean my unlucky brother,” said the vicar, gravely. “To admit that is really to admit nothing, as everybody knows he was suspected, just as they know too that I myself never believed he did it.”
“You judge him by yourself, I expect. You, being of calm and well-regulated temperament, can’t understand how a member of your family can be so different from yourself.”
“There you are mistaken, Mitchell, as others have been mistaken before you. People think I am calm because I am fat. As a matter of fact, I have been so worried over these suspicions of my brother that my wife has caught me pacing up and down the room in my sleep, too much disturbed on his account to be able to rest.”
“It does you great credit to be so fond of him; I don’t blame you in the least for it. You do your duty as a brother, and I’ll do mine.”
“And I believe you’ll soon come to the conclusion that it is your duty as a brother to let the unhappy girl and her history be forgotten as soon as possible.”
“My duty as a brother is to leave your brother alone, in fact!”
“Haven’t I told you I believe him to be as innocent of this business as I am myself? But these suspicions, which he can’t ignore—for you take no pains to hide them—are demoralizing in the extreme. They make him silent, sullen, mistrustful; in fact they breed in him all the appearances of guilt.”
“Ay, that they do.”
“Supposing that he had committed the crime, don’t you believe in atonement? After ten years of self-denial and hard work and sacrifice, might not a man reasonably suppose that his sin was, humanly speaking, washed out, and that he might indulge the hope of some human happiness with a woman who loved him?”
Ned Mitchell turned at this, from contemplation of the highly ornamental, castellated tower of the little church, to curious consideration of his companion’s face.
“Oh,” he said very drily, “I didn’t know you were encouraging him to marry.”
A deep flush overspread the vicar’s face at this speech. Even his striking amiability was not quite proof against the quiet sneer. No annoyance, however, appeared in his tone as he said—
“Certainly I should not think of encouraging him to marry while these cruel rumors continue to be spread about him. It would only be misery for both of them. But if once the evil reports were silenced and forgotten, I should urge him to find happiness in what I have myself found to be the surest and best place to look for it—domestic pleasures.”
Ned appeared to consider this proposition thoughtfully for some moments. Then he said—
“It’s curious that you should be the first of your family that I ever heard to be of your way of thinking, parson, isn’t it?”
Again Mr. Brander reddened. It was an annoying thing for a popular spiritual autocrat to be questioned in this inquisitorial way by a man in no way qualified to be a judge of him or his family. But his patience was equal even to this trial. He said, very mildly—
“Yes, I am afraid—that is I believe that is so.”
“Well, then, I think it’s too much to expect to find another in the same generation.”
There was a pause; the vicar looking mildly grieved, Ned munching a bit of stick with much relish, while he regarded his companion out of the corners of his eyes.
Evening was closing in rapidly. A thin mist was gathering under the trees on the top of the hill, enshrouding the tombstones and softening the outlines of the little white stone church and of the pretty ivy-grown Vicarage. Not a sound was to be heard in the near neighborhood; and the noises of the village—children’s voices, lowing of cattle, and the carter’s cry to his horses—came up faint and subdued from below.
Suddenly this peaceful stillness was broken by a long and dismal howl, which startled the vicar and caused Ned Mitchell to turn his head attentively in the direction of his cottage. A minute later it was repeated, and before a word had been exchanged between the two men on the subject of this strange interruption, a yelping and barking began, and mingled with the howls, which still continued, until the air seemed to vibrate with the discordant sounds.
“You’ve brought back a dog with you, I perceive,” said the vicar.
“H’m, yes. I’ve brought two. Fond of dogs, vicar?”
“Very. Are you going to offer me one of yours?”
“I don’t think so. They’re not exactly the sort Mrs. B. would fancy poking about her pretty garden. They’ve got queer ways have my dogs.”
“You’ve had them some time?”
“Ten hours. But they were being prepared for me beforehand. In fact, they have been some time in training.”
“Sporting dogs, eh?”
“Yes, and trained for a particular sort of game.”
Ned Mitchell was rubbing his chin slowly and listening to the harsh duet with much satisfaction. There was a quiet significance in his words and manner which kept alive the curiosity of the vicar.
“I should like to see these dogs, Mr. Mitchell,” said he.
“Well, sir,” said Ned, with great heartiness; “choose your own time.”
“Suppose, then, we say now?”
“Now it is, then.”
Ned removed his arm from the tombstone against which he had been leaning, and led the way out of the churchyard with alacrity.
“This place gives me the horrors towards night time,” he explained as, with unwonted civility, he opened the gate for the vicar to pass out first.
“Why, surely a man of your sound practical sense doesn’t believe in the ghosts and goblins that keep the ignorant out of churchyards at night?”
“No: but such things can be done in lonely churchyards, under cover of the popular horror. You agree with me there, vicar, don’t you?”
This pigheaded colonist would harp always upon the same string. As plainly as if he had mentioned the name, his tone intimated St. Cuthbert’s churchyard and the murder of a girl there by Vernon Brander. But the vicar was learning how to “take” him, and he assented at once. They crossed the little village green, under trees whose bare branches began now to show small tufts of delicate young leaves. There was a strip of garden in front of the cottage; it had little space for flowers, but was well filled with shrubs and evergreens, which grew close up to the lower windows and almost shut out all light from the tiny sitting-room on the left-hand side of the door. Ned Mitchell, leaving the path, forced his way through the evergreens, and, holding the branches apart with his hands, beckoned his companion to the window, before which the vicar perceived a couple of strong iron bars had been put up.
“Why,” said he, as he picked his way daintily over the moist mould, “is it a menagerie of wild beasts you have in there?”
“Something very like it,” answered Ned, as a couple of brute faces, with hanging jaws and bloodshot eyes, dashed up against the window, licking the dusty frames with long red tongues, and jostling each other with hungry eagerness. “Whoa!” cried Ned, as he pushed up the window, and stretching a fearless hand through the bars, stroked and patted their sleek heads with an assured strength and coolness which told them he was their master. “I must have the glass taken out of these panes—what there’s left of it—or my pets will be hurting themselves.”
“Your pets!” said the vicar, as he peered into the room, felt their hot breath on his face, and listened to their hungry growling, “Well, Mitchell, you have an odd taste in your choice of domestic favorites. If my inclination lay in the direction of a couple of fierce hounds like that, I think I should consider that old kennel in the back garden a near enough abode for them.”
“What, for friends I count upon to do me a great service!” exclaimed Ned, grimly. “Oh, no! my hounds are already more to me than his pig is to an Irishman. No place that’s not good enough for me is good enough for them. Besides, if they were put into the kennel they would be almost close under some of your windows, and would disturb you and your good lady at night. They make more than a lapdog’s yapping when they are uncomfortable, I can tell you,” he added, turning with admiration to his hounds, who were snapping savagely at each other, and sniffing the air with dilated nostrils.
“They seem to be hungry,” said the vicar, who, if he did not share their master’s admiration, was much interested in the brutes.
“Well, which of us wouldn’t be, if he’d had nothing to eat all day? It’s a part of their education, that,” he went on, as he drew back from the window and took up an iron spade which stood inside the little porch. “Now I’m going to show you how accomplished they are, if you care to see. If I bury an old bone with next to no flesh on it in any part of this garden, they’ll hunt it up. That is, they will if they answer to the warranty I had with them. That’s the accomplishment I bought them for.”
“Dear me, very curious,” murmured the vicar, with great interest. “And this is your first trial of them?”
“Yes. I only brought them back with me in the small hours this morning, and they’ve been without food ever since.”
“And are you sure of getting them out of that room without their making a meal of you?”
“I must chance that. I didn’t buy them for lapdogs, and I think I can manage them. Anyhow, I intend to try. I suppose, vicar, you’ve no mind to help me,” he added, rather maliciously, as he turned to go into the cottage. “It isn’t work for gentlemen of your cloth, I know. I don’t suppose anything fiercer than a toy terrier is allowed by the Thirty-Nine Articles.”
“There’s no mention of bloodhounds in them, certainly; but I’m willing to help you all the same, if I can,” said the vicar, mildly, preparing to follow his host into the cottage.
Ned Mitchell looked surprised. Then he glanced rather contemptuously from the plump hands and neat white cuffs to the handsome, placid pink face, and said, drily—
“I’m afraid they’ll make rather a mess of your linen, parson, if they don’t of you.”
“I must chance that, as you say yourself,” said the vicar, calmly.
Ned nodded, and saying he would be back in a moment, he disappeared through the porch with a grim chuckle. When he returned, a few minutes later, holding in his rough fingers a handful of mouldy bones, the vicar was leaning against the porch, thoughtfully turning up his cuffs and his coat sleeves with the most scrupulous neatness.
“Not a very tempting feast that, one would have thought.”
“Well, if they want anything more tempting than that to make them hunt with a will, I’ve been deceived in them, that’s all, and back they go to the man I bought them from.”
As he spoke he took up the spade, and began to search for a suitable place in which to bury the fleshless bones. He decided on a spot in the back garden, under the prickly leaves of an auricula. There, right under the branches, he dug a deep hole, not without much damage to his hands and his clothes. Into this hole he threw the bones, covering them carefully with the displaced earth. The vicar laughed as Ned flattened down the mould and stamped upon it.
“You are expecting too much of those unlucky brutes,” said he. “I quite believe that they might grub up a nice fresh leg of mutton, or the body of a newly-killed rabbit. But old bones like that, and under two feet of earth! No, my dear Mitchell, it’s not in reason.”
“All right,” said Ned, putting his hands in his pockets. “If you think my little experiment is not worth watching, I won’t trouble you with my company or my dogs.”
“Oh, but of course I must see the end of this. And if your hounds do answer your expectations after all, I quite agree with you that the best room in the house is not too good for such clever beasts.”
They went round to the front of the cottage again, and through the porch into the narrow passage. Ned brought a lighted candle from the kitchen, and proceeded to search among a bunch of large keys which hung from a nail in the wall. Meanwhile the dogs, disappointed at the disappearance of their master, from whom they had expected food, howled and yelped with redoubled vehemence, and flung themselves against the door of the room in which they were confined until it shook and creaked on its old hinges. Ned glanced at the vicar with a sardonic smile.
“Have you still a mind to go in there, parson?” he asked, rather maliciously. “You clergymen are holy men, as we all know, but things have changed since Daniel’s time, and I doubt, no offence to you, whether he’d have got off so well if he’d been pitched into a lion’s cage at the Zoo as he did among those old Persians!”
The vicar looked nervous, certainly. But he still stuck to his resolution of going into the room. Ned shrugged his shoulders, and whistled softly, staring into his companion’s face as he fumbled with the keys, and seeming rather to enjoy the notion of the change which would come over that pink, plump, mildly jolly countenance when the fangs of one of the hounds should meet in the clerical anatomy. He felt quite sure that it was the vicar’s entire ignorance of hungry bloodhounds and their little ways which gave him such an appearance of placid pluck.
“Are you ready?” he asked, as he put the key in the door. “We shall have to dash in pretty quick to prevent the brutes from coming out.”
The vicar nodded, and came close up beside him. Ned gave him a last and, as it were, a farewell look, and opened the door. The hounds, with hungry growls and jaws dripping with foam, rushed at the opening. Ned Mitchell was too quick for them; he was in the room, with the door closed behind him, before either of the brutes could get so much as his nose outside. Quick as he was, however, the portly vicar was before him, and was well in the middle of the small room by the time the door closed.
Then Ned Mitchell found, cool as he was, that in fancying himself able to master these two fierce brutes, he had reckoned without his host. In a moment he discovered that it was only when satisfied with food and carefully muzzled, as they had been for their journey in the small hours that morning, that he could attempt to cope with them successfully. Both together they now flew at him, springing, the one at his throat, the other at his right hand. The attack was so sudden, so fierce, that he staggered back against the door, in danger of being overpowered, and struck out with unsure aim, failing to beat them off. He had been forced to drop his candle when the hounds set upon him, and it was almost in darkness that the struggle went on, the man cursing and the animals growling, while they bit at and worried him with the savagery of ravenous hunger.
The vicar was standing, motionless, in the middle of the room. Ned saw his portly figure in outline between him and the faint light, and in the midst of his own occupation wondered, not having any great respect for the physical powers of the Church, that Mr. Brander did not edge further away from the scene of combat, or show some other sign of nervousness.
“Shall I help you?” asked the vicar, tranquilly, when the struggle between man and hounds had gone on for several exciting moments.
Ned was too busy, trying to keep off the dogs, to express the astonishment he felt at these words and the tone in which they were spoken.
“Yes, for Heaven’s sake, yes, if you can!” he panted out.
He had scarcely uttered these words in answer, when the vicar came to his aid with a promptitude and dash which a professional tamer of beasts could scarcely have exceeded. Seizing by the throat first one of the hounds and then the other, he choked them off his half-bewildered companion, and held them, yelping and gurgling, while Ned, savagely angry at “the parson’s” superiority more than grateful for his timely help, picked up and relit the candle with affected unconcern.
“Well done, vicar!” said he, in a tone which betrayed that he was not particularly well pleased. “If you can manage to hold the brutes while I find the key, we’ll soon be shut of them.”
“Don’t hurry on my account,” said Mr. Brander, quite pleasantly.
His bland tone made Ned’s blood boil. The colonist resolved, since he seemed to like his occupation, not to curtail his pleasure. He took twice the necessary time to find the key and place it in the lock. Then, before turning it, he inclined his head over his shoulder, and asked, maliciously—
“Getting tired?”
“Not a bit!” said the vicar, mildly.
“Hang you!” muttered Ned below his breath.
The next moment he heard a rush and a growl, and felt the teeth of one of the hounds meet in his right leg.
“Hallo!” cried Mr. Brander; “can’t you manage him?”
Ned did not answer. Between pain and rage, indeed, he would scarcely have been articulate if he had done so. He gave the dog a vicious kick, which sent him howling away, and, turning the key in the lock, beckoned to the vicar to follow him out. Before doing so, however, Mr. Brander had to dispose of the animal he was still holding. His arms, strong as they were, had begun to ache with the strain, for the dog had writhed and struggled the whole time. Then Ned, holding the candle high, and examining the vicar’s face with exceeding interest and equal malevolence, saw upon it an expression very different from its habitual, placid mildness. The blue eyes were flashing; the handsome mouth was drawn in a tight, straight line; the clear-cut features seemed to have in a moment lost their plumpness, and to have become hard and cruel; while the soft, white hands looked strong and sinewy as they clasped the dog’s throat. Ned watched him curiously. The vicar looked into the animal’s bloodshot eyes with the expression not merely of a master, but of a tyrant. Lifting him with both hands high into the air, he gave the dog such a shaking as set him gurgling and howling and twisting his body with pain, and flung him to the far end of the room to join his companion. Then he crossed the room without any haste, and went out at the door, which Ned shut and locked.
“And now,” said the vicar, “how about the experiment?”
Mitchell, who was engaged in an examination of his injured leg, looked up quickly.
“Well,” he muttered, in unwilling admiration, “you are a cool hand, I must say.”
“Cool!” exclaimed the vicar as pleasantly as ever; “one needs to be cool with acquaintances who invite one into a sitting-room furnished with a couple of bloodhounds and nothing else. Ugh!” he cried, as he suddenly noticed the condition of his hands, which were smeared with blood and foam, “what a mess those brutes have made me in!”
Ned laughed shortly, and continued to stare at him with the deepest interest.
“It looks very unsuitable now, that same mess, when you are all the parson again,” he said, drily. “But, curse me with book and with bell if I don’t think that a minute ago you looked as if you could stand the sight of blood as well as any soldier.”
“And why not?” asked Mr. Brander, who had this time wiped his hands, pulled down his cuffs, and almost recovered his usual exquisite appearance. “People seem to forget that we parsons were not born in the surplice, and that we have all been through the same training as other men from whom a little readiness with wrists and fists is expected at a matter of course.”
“That’s true, parson. But we’d always looked upon you as one of the meek ’uns. Now if it had been your brother——”
“Ah, poor Vernon! I think all the spirit has been badgered out of him.”
“Well, but, parson,” said Ned, still gazing at him with the same steady and curious stare, “I think you have spirit enough for two.”
Mr. Brander turned and met his look straight, eye to eye.
“Yes,” he said quietly and firmly; “and when it comes to an attack upon my brother, you’ll find that spirit a more serious thing to deal with than you expect.”
They had come through the porch out into the garden again, and were standing very near together, with the setting sun throwing a weak and watery light upon their faces. A passer-by, noticing their attitudes, looks, and tones, would have guessed that a challenge had been thrown down and taken up.
The two men bade each other good-night in a manner which showed on each side both caution and mutual respect. And having retired each to his house, they instinctively tried to get a sight each of the other. The clergyman went to his study, and seated himself with a book at the window; Ned Mitchell took the air at his back door. The vicar remained calm and smiling, and looked amused when he caught Ned’s anxious look. The colonist took things less easily.
“That parson’ll be a very difficult beggar to tackle,” he said to himself almost despondingly. “I could manage Vernon by himself, but with this old ‘Soap-your-sides’ behind him it’ll be a long job—a very long job.”
But he comforted himself before going to bed by a look at his bloodhounds!