The words were natural. They were the words Jack would have expected. But, unfortunately, Gregg at that moment pa.s.sed the rector's elbow, and the latter's manner was cold and shy--almost as if he resented the reference to his old life. Jack thought he did, and his lip curled. Fortunately, Daintry again intervened. "Here is Miss Hammond," she said. "She is looking for you, Mr. Lindo."

The rector turned as Laura, threading her way through the press, came smiling toward him. She glanced with some curiosity at Jack, and then nodded graciously to Kate, whom she knew at the Sunday school and from meeting her on such occasions as this. "How do you do, Miss Bonamy?" she said pleasantly. "Will you pardon me carrying off the rector? We want him to come to tea."

Kate bowed, and the rector took off his hat to the girls. Then he waved an awkward farewell toward Jack, muttered "See you soon!" and went off with his captor.

And that was all! Jack turned away with his cousins to the nearest stall, and bought and chatted. But he did both at random. His thoughts were elsewhere. He was a keen observer, and he had seen too much for comfort, yet not enough for comprehension. Nor did the occasional glance which he shot at Kate's preoccupied face, as she bent over the wool-work and "guaranteed hand-paintings," tend to clear up his doubts or render his mood more cheerful.

Meanwhile the rector's frame of mind, as he rejoined his party, was not a whit more enviable. He was angry with himself, angry with his friend. The sight of Jack standing by Kate's side had made his own conduct to the girl at his last interview with her appear in a worse light than before--more churlish, more ungrateful. He wished now--but morosely, not with any tenderness of regret--that he had sought some opportunity of saying a word of apology to her. And then Jack? He fancied he saw condemnation written on Jack's face, and that he too, to whom, in the old days, he had confided his aspirations and resolves, was on the enemy's side--was blaming him for being on bad terms with his church wardens and for having already come to blows with half the parish.

It was not pleasant. But the more unpleasant things he had to face, the higher he would hold his head. He disengaged himself presently--the Hammonds had already preceded him--from the throng and bustle of the heated room, and went down the stairs alone. Outside it was already dark, and small rain was falling. The outlook was wretched, and yet in his present mood he found a tiny satisfaction in the respect with which the crowd of ragam.u.f.fins about the door fell back to give him pa.s.sage. With it all, he was some one. He was rector of the town.

At the Hammond's door he found a carriage waiting in the rain. It was not one he knew, and as he laid down his umbrella he asked the servant whose it was.

"It is Lord Dynmore's, sir," the man answered, in his low trained voice. "His lordship is in the drawing-room, sir."

CHAPTER XVI.

"LORD DYNMORE IS HERE."

When Lord Dynmore, a few minutes before the rector found his carriage at the door, trotted at the heels of the servant into Mrs. Hammond's drawing-room, his entrance, unexpected as it was, caused a flutter among those a.s.sembled there. Lords are still lords in the country, and in the case of his hostess the sensation was wholly one of pleasure. She was pleased to see him. She was still more pleased that he had chosen to call at so opportune a moment, when his light would not be hidden, and James had on his best waistcoat. Consequently she rose to meet him with a beaming smile, and a cordiality only chastened by the knowledge that Mrs. Homfray and the archdeacon's wife were observing her with critical jealousy. "Why, Lord Dynmore," she exclaimed, "this is most kind of you!"

"How d'ye do? how d'ye do?" said the peer as he advanced. He was a slight, short man with bushy gray whiskers and grizzled hair which, being rather long, strayed over the fur collar of his overcoat. A n.o.ble aquiline nose and keen eyes helped to give him, despite his shortness, an air of being somebody. "How d'ye do? Why," he continued, locking round, "you are quite en fete here."

"We have been at a bazaar, Lord Dynmore," Laura answered. She was rather a favorite with him and could "say things." "I think you ought to have been there too, to patronize it. We did not know that you were in the country, but we sent you a card."

"Never heard a word of it!" replied his lordship positively.

"But you must have had the card," Laura persisted.

"Never heard a word of it!" repeated his lordship, who had by this time shaken hands with everyone in the room. When the company was not too large he made a rule of doing this, thereby obviating the ill results of a bad memory, and earning considerable popularity. "Archdeacon, you are looking very well," he continued.

"I think I may say the same of you," answered the clerical dignitary. "You have had good sport?"

"Capital! capital!" replied the peer in his jerky way. "But it won't last my time! In two years there will not be a head of buffalo in the States! By the way, I saw your nephew."

"My nephew!" echoed the archdeacon.

"Yes. Had him up to dinner in Kansas city. A good fellow--a very good fellow. He put me up to one or two things worth knowing."

"But, Lord Dynmore, you must be thinking of some one else!" replied the archdeacon in a fretful tone. "It could not be my nephew: I have not a nephew out there."

"No?" replied the earl. "Then it must have been the dean's. Or perhaps it was old Canon Frampton's--I am not sure now. But he was a good fellow, an excellent fellow!" And my lord looked round and wagged his head knowingly.

The archdeacon's niece, a young lady who had not seen the peer before, nor indeed any peers, and who consequently was busy making a study of him, looked astonished. Not so the others who knew him and his ways. It was popularly believed that Lord Dynmore could keep two things, and two only, in his mind--the head of game he had killed in each and every year since he first carried a gun, and the amount of his annual income from the time of the property coming to him.

"There have been changes in the parish since you were here last," said Mrs. Hammond, deftly intervening. She saw that the archdeacon looked a little put out. "Poor Mr. Williams is gone."

"Ah! to be sure! to be sure!" replied the earl. "Poor old chap. He was a friend of my fathers', and now you have a friend of mine in his place. From generation to generation, you know. I remember now," he continued, tugging at his whiskers peevishly, "that I meant to see Lindo before I called here. I must look him up by-and-by."

"I hope he will save you the trouble," Mrs. Hammond answered. "I am expecting him every minute."

"Capital! capital! He is a good fellow now, isn't he? A really good fellow! I am sure you ought to be much obliged to me for sending you such a cheery soul, Mrs. Hammond. And he is not so very old," the earl added waggishly. "Not too old, you know, Miss Hammond. Young for his years, at any rate."

Laura laughed and colored a little--what would offend in a commoner is in a peer pure drollery; and, as it happened, at this moment the rector came in. The news of the earl's presence had kindled a spark of elation in his eye. He had not waited for the servant to announce him; and as he stood a second at the door, closing it, he confronted the company with an air of modest dignity which more than one remarked. His glance rested momentarily upon the figure of the earl, who was the only stranger in the room, so that he had no difficulty in identifying him; and he seemed in two minds whether he should address him. On second thoughts he laid aside the intention, and advanced to Mrs. Hammond. "I am afraid I scarcely deserve any tea," he said pleasantly, "I am so late."

Laura, who had risen, touched his arm. "Lord Dynmore is here," she said in a low voice, which was nevertheless distinctly heard by all. "I do not think you have seen him."

He took it as an informal introduction, and turned to Lord Dynmore, who was leaning against the fireplace, toying with his teacup and talking to Mrs. Homfray. The young rector advanced a step and held out his hand, a slight flush on his cheek. "There is no one whom I ought to be better pleased to see than yourself, Lord Dynmore," he said with some feeling. "I have been looking forward for some time to this meeting."

"Ah, to be sure," replied the peer, holding out his hand readily, though he was somewhat mystified by the other's earnestness. "I am pleased to meet you, I am sure. Greatly pleased."

The listeners, who had heard what he had just said about his great friend, the rector, stared. Only the person to whom the words were addressed saw nothing odd in them. "You have not long returned to England, I think?" he answered.

"No; came back last Sat.u.r.day night. And how is the rector? Where is he? Why does he not show up? I understood Mrs. Hammond to say he was coming."

The archdeacon, Mrs. Hammond, and the others were dumb with astonishment. Even Lindo was surprised, thinking it very dull in the earl not to guess at once that he was the new inc.u.mbent. So no one answered, and the peer, glancing sharply round, discerned that every one was at a loss. "Eh! Oh, I see," he resumed in a different tone. "You are not one of his curates? I made a mistake, I suppose. Took you for one of his curates, do you see? That was all. Beg your pardon. Beg your pardon, I am sure. But where is he?"

"This is the rector, Lord Dynmore," said the archdeacon in an uncertain, puzzled way.

"No, no, no, no," replied the great man fretfully. "I mean the old rector--my old friend."

"He has forgotten that poor Mr. Williams is dead," Laura murmured to her mother, amid the general pause of astonishment.

He overheard her. "Nothing of the kind, young lady!" he answered irritably. "Nothing of the kind. Bless my soul, do you think I do not know whom I present to my own livings? My memory is not so bad as that! I thought this gentleman was Lindo's curate, that was all. That was all."

They stared at one another in awkward silence. The rector was the first to speak. "I am afraid we are somehow at cross purposes still, Lord Dynmore," he stammered, his manner constrained. "I am not my own curate--well, because I am myself Reginald Lindo, whom you were kind enough to present to this living."

"To Claversham, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"And do you say you are Reginald Lindo?" The peer grew very red in the face as he put this question.

"Yes, certainly I am."

"Then, sir, I say that certainly you are not!" was the rapid and startling answer. "Certainly you are not! You are no more Reginald Lindo than I am!" the peer repeated, striking his hand upon the table by his side. "What do you mean by saying that you are, eh? What do you mean by it?"

"Lord Dynmore----"

But the peer would not listen. "Who are you, sir? Answer me that question first!" he cried. He was a choleric man, and he saw already that there was something seriously amiss; so that the shocked, astonished faces round him tended rather to increase than lessen his wrath. "Answer me that!"

"I think, Lord Dynmore, that you must be mad," replied the rector, his lips quivering. "I am as certainly Reginald Lindo as you are Lord Dynmore!"

"But what are you doing here?" retorted the other, storming down the interruption which the archdeacon would have effected. "That is what I want to know. Who made you rector of Claversham?"

"The bishop, my lord," answered the young man sternly.

"Ay, but on whose presentation?"

"On yours."

"On mine?"

"Most a.s.suredly," 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 t.i.tle 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 inc.u.mbent'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 pa.s.sion. 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 a.s.sented, 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 a.s.sented 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."