Janey was only five-and-twenty, and it seemed to her that already the plundering years had come. What little she had was being wrested from her. And an immense distaste and fatigue of life invaded her as she made her lily and maiden-hair cross for the font. How often she had made it, as she was making it now! Should she go on for ever, till she was sixty, making crosses for the font at Harvest Homes, and putting holly in the windows at Christmas, and "doing the reading-desk" with primroses at Easter?
Harry working beside her, concocting little sheaves out of the great bundle of barley which Roger had sent in the night before, was blissfully happy. He held up each sheaf in turn, and she nodded surprise and approbation. It seemed to her that after all Harry had the best of the bargain, the hard bargain which life drives with some of us.
It was all as it had always been.
Soon after eleven, Miss Amy Blinkett, a little fluttered and self-conscious, appeared as usual, followed up the aisle by a wheelbarrow, in which reposed an enormous vegetable marrow with "Trust in the Lord" blazoned on it in red flannel letters. These "marrer texes," as the villagers called them, were in great request, not only in Riff, but in the adjoining parishes; and it was not an uncommon thing for "Miss Amy"s marrer" to be bespoken, after it had served at Riff, for succeeding Harvest Homes in the neighbourhood. It had been evolved out of her inner consciousness in her romantic youth, and in the course of thirty years it had grown from a dazzling novelty to an important a.s.set, and was now an inst.i.tution. Even the lamentable Mr. Jones, who had "set himself against" so many Riff customs, had never set himself against "Miss Amy"s marrer." And an admiring crowd always gathered round it after service to view it reclining on a bed of moss beneath the pulpit.
By common consent, Miss Amy had always been presented with the largest vegetable marrow that Riff could produce. But this year none adequate for the purpose could be found, and considerable anxiety had been felt on the subject. Mrs. Nicholls, who sent in the finest, had to own that even hers was only about fourteen inches long. "No bigger nor your foot," as she expressed it to Janey. Fortunately, at the last moment Roger obtained one from Sweet Apple Tree, about the size of a baby, larger than any which had been produced in Riff for many years past.
That Sweet Apple Tree could have had one of such majestic proportions when the Riff marrows had failed, was not a source of unmixed congratulation to Riff. It was feared that the Sweet Applers "might get c.o.c.ked up."
The suspense had in the meanwhile given Miss Amy a sharp attack of neuralgia, and the fact that the marrow really came up to time in the wheelbarrow was the result of dauntless and heroic efforts on her part.
This splendid contribution was wheeled up the aisle, having paused near the font to receive Janey"s tribute of admiration, and then a few minutes later, to her amazement, she saw it being wheeled down again, Miss Amy walking very erect in dignified distress beside it. With cold asperity, and without according it a second glance, Miss Black had relegated it--actually relegated "Miss Amy"s marrer"--to the Ringers"
Arch. The other helpers stopped in their work and gazed at Miss Black, who, unconscious of the doubts of her sanity which had arisen in their minds, continued rearing white flowers against the east window, regardless of the fact that nothing but their black silhouettes were visible to the congregation.
At this moment Mr. Black came into the church, so urbane, and so determined to show that he was the kind of man who appreciated the spirit in which the humblest offerings were made, that it was some time before Janey could make him aware of the indignity to which Miss Amy"s unique work of art had been subjected.
"But its grotesqueness will not be so obvious at the Ringers" Arch," he said. "It"s impossible, of course, but it has been a labour of love, I can see that, and I should be the last man in the world to laugh at it."
He had to work through so many sentiments which did him credit that Janey despaired of making him understand, of ever getting him to listen to her.
"Miss Blinkett"s marrow is always under the pulpit," she repeated anxiously. "No, the Ringers" Arch is _not_ considered such an important place as the pulpit. The people simply love it, and will be disappointed if they don"t see it there as usual. And Miss Blinkett will be deeply hurt. She is hurt now, though she does not show it."
At last her words took effect, and Mr. Black was guided into becoming the last man to wound the feelings of one of his parishioners. Greatly to Janey"s relief, the marrow was presently seen once more to ascend the aisle, was a.s.sisted out of its wheelbarrow by Mr. Black himself and installed on a bed of moss at the pulpit foot; Miss Black standing coldly aloof during the transaction, while Miss Conder, short-sighted and heavy-footed, walked backwards into an arrangement of tomatoes and dahlias in course of construction round the reading-desk.
Mr. Black and his sister had had an amicable discussion the evening before as to the decoration of the church, and especially of the pulpit, for this their first Harvest Thanksgiving at Riff. They had both agreed, with a cordiality which had too often been lacking in their conversations of late, that they would make an effort to raise the decoration to a higher artistic level than in the other churches in the neighbourhood, some of which had already celebrated their Harvest Thanksgivings. Miss Black had held up to scorn the nave attempts of Heyke and Drum, at which her brother had preached the sermon, and he had smiled indulgently and had agreed with her.
But Riff was his first country post, and he had not been aware until he stepped into it, of the network of custom which surrounded Harvest decoration, typified by Miss Blinkett"s vegetable marrow. With admirable good sense, he adjusted himself to the occasion, and shutting his ears to the hissing whispers of his sister, who for the hundredth time begged him not to be weak, gave himself up to helping his parishioners in their own way. This way, he soon found, closely resembled the way of Heyke and Drum, and presently he was a.s.sisting Mrs. Nicholls to do "Thy Will be Done" in her own potatoes, backed by white paper roses round the base of the majestic monument of the Welyshams of Swale, with its two ebony elephants at which Harry always looked with awe and admiration.
As he and Janey were tying their bunches of barley to its high iron railings, a telegram was brought to her. Telegrams were not so common twenty years ago as they are now, and Janey"s heart beat. Her mind flew to Roger. Had he had some accident? She knew he had gone to Noyes about the bridge.
She opened it and read it, and then looked fixedly at Harry, stretching his hand through the railing to stroke the elephants and whisper gently to them. She almost hated him at that moment.
She folded up the telegram and sought out Mr. Black, who, hot and tired, and with an earwig exploring down his neck, was now making a cardboard dais for Sayer"s loaf of bread.
"My brother d.i.c.k is dead," she said. "I must go home at once. Harry can stay and finish the railings. He knows exactly how to do them, and he has been looking forward to helping for days."
Harry looked towards her for approval, and her heart smote her. It was not his fault if his shadowy existence was the occasion of a great injustice. She went up to him and patted his cheek, and said, "Capital, capital! What should we do without you, Harry?"
"I"m taking my place, aren"t I?" he said, delighted. "That"s what Nurse is always saying. I must a.s.sert myself and take my place."
CHAPTER x.x.xI
"Remember, Lord, Thou didst not make me good.
Or if Thou didst, it was so long ago I have forgotten--and never understood, I humbly think."
GEORGE MACDONALD.
On a sunny September day d.i.c.k the absentee was gathered to his fathers at Riff.
Is there any church in the world as beautiful as the old church of Riff where he was buried?--with its wonderful flint-panelled porch; with the chalice, host, and crown carved in stone on each side of the arched doorway as you go in; beautiful still in spite of the heavy hand of Cromwell"s men who tore all the dear little saints out of their niches in the great wooden font cover, which mounts richly carved and dimly painted like a spire, made of a hundred tiny fretted spires, to the very roof of the nave, almost touching the figures of the angels leaning with outstretched wings from their carved and painted hammerbeams. In spite of all the sacrilege of which it has been the victim, the old font cover with the coloured sunshine falling aslant upon it through the narrow pictured windows remains a tangle of worn, mysterious splendour. And the same haggard, forlorn beauty rests on the remains of the carved screen, with its company of female saints painted one in each panel.
Poor saints! savagely obliterated by the same Protestant zeal, so that now you can barely spell out their names in semicircle round their heads: Saint Cecilia, Saint Agatha, Saint Osyth.
But no desecrating hand was laid on the old oaken benches with their carved finials. Quaint intricate carvings of kings and queens, and coifed ladies kneeling on ta.s.selled cushions, and dogs licking their own backs,--outlandish dogs with curly manes and shaved bodies and rosetted tails,--and harts crowned and belted with branching antlers larger than their bodies, and knights in armour, and trees with acorns on them so big that each tree had only room for two or three, and the ragged staff of the Earls of Warwick with the bear. All these were spared, seeing they dealt with man and beast, and not with G.o.d and saint. And by mistake Saint Catherine and her wheel and Saint Margaret and her dragon were overlooked and left intact. Perhaps because the wheel and the dragon were so small that the destroyers did not recognize that the quaint little ladies with their parted hair were saints at all. And there they all are to this day, broken some of them, alas!--one of them surrept.i.tiously mutilated by d.i.c.k as a small boy,--but many intact still, worn to a deep black polish by the hands of generation after generation of the st.u.r.dy people of Riff taking hold of them as they go into their places.
The Manvers monuments and hatchments jostle each other all along the yellow-plastered walls: from the bas-relief kneeling figure of the first Roger Manvers, Burgess of Dunwich, to the last owner, John Manvers, the husband of Lady Louisa Manvers.
But their predecessors, the D"Urbans and de Uffords, had fared ill at the hands of Dowsing and his men, who tore up their bra.s.ses with "orate pro anima" on them, and hacked their "popish" monuments to pieces, barely leaving the figures of Apphia de Ufford, noseless and fingerless, beside her lord, Nicholas D"Urban of Valenes. One Elizabethan bra.s.s memorial of John de la Pole, drowned at Walberswick, was spared, representing a skeleton, unkindly telling others that as he is we soon shall be, which acid inscription no doubt preserved him. But you must look up to the hammerbeams if you care to see all that is left of the memorials of the D"Urbans and De la Poles and the de Uffords, where their shields still hang among the carved angels.
d.i.c.k had not been worthy of his forbears, and it is doubtful whether if he had had any voice in the matter he would have wished to be buried with them. But Roger brought his coffin back to Riff as a matter of course.
His death had caused genuine regret among the village people, if to no one else. They had all known him from a boy. There had been a reckless bonhomie about him which had endeared him to his people, in a way that Roger, who had to do all the disagreeable things, could not expect. In time past, d.i.c.k had fought and ferreted and shared the same hunk of cake and drunk out of the same mug with half the village lads of Riff. They had all liked him, and later on in life, if he would not or could not attend to their grievances or spend money on repairs, he always "put his hand in his pocket" very freely whenever he came across them. Even the local policeman and the bearers decorously waiting at the lychgate had sown their few boyish wild oats in d.i.c.k"s delightful company. He was indissolubly a.s.sociated with that short heyday of delirious joy; he had given them their one gulp from the cup of adventure and escapade. They remembered the taste of it as the hea.r.s.e with its four plumed black horses came in sight between the poplars along the winding road from Riebenbridge. d.i.c.k had died tragically at thirty-three, and the kindly people of Riff were sorry.
Janey and Roger were the only chief mourners, for at the last moment Harry had been alarmed by the black horses, and had been left behind under the nurse"s charge. They followed the coffin up the aisle, and sat together in the Squire"s seats below the step. Close behind them, pale and impa.s.sive, sitting alone, was Jones the valet, perhaps the only person who really mourned for d.i.c.k. And behind him again was a crowd of neighbours and family friends, and the serried ranks of the farmers and tenants.
In the chancel was the choir, every member present except Mrs. Nicholls, d.i.c.ks foster-mother, who was among the tenantry. So the seat next to Annette was empty, and to Mr. Stirling down by the font it seemed as if Annette were sitting alone near the coffin.
Janey sat and stood and knelt, very pale behind her long veil, her black-gloved hands pinching tightly at a little Prayer Book. She was not thinking of d.i.c.k. She had been momentarily sorry. It is sad to die at thirty-three. It was Roger she thought of, for already she knew that no will could be found. Roger had told her so on his return from Paris two days ago. A sinister suspicion was gradually taking form in her mind that her mother on her last visit to d.i.c.k in Paris had perhaps obtained possession of his will and had destroyed it, in the determination that Harry should succeed. Janey reproached herself for her a.s.sumption of her mother"s treachery, but the suspicion lurked nevertheless like a shadow at the back of her mind. Was poor Roger to be done out of his inheritance? for by every moral right Hulver ought to be his. Was treachery at work on _every_ side of him? Janey looked fixedly at Annette. Was she not deceiving him too? How calm she looked, how pure, and how beautiful! Yet she had been the mistress of the man lying in his coffin between them. Janey"s brain seemed to shake. It could not be. But so it was. She shut her eyes and prayed for Roger, and d.i.c.k, and Annette. It was all she could do.
Roger, beside her, kept his eyes fixed on a carved k.n.o.b in front of him.
He knew he must not look round, though he was anxious to know whether c.o.c.ks and Sayler had seated the people properly. His mind was as full of detail as a hive is full of bees. He was tired out, and he had earache, but he hardly noticed it. He had laboured unremittingly at the funeral.
It was the last thing he could do for d.i.c.k, whom he had once been fond of, whom he had known better than anyone, for whom he had worked so ruefully and faithfully; who had caused him so many hours of exasperation, and who had failed and frustrated him at every turn in his work for the estate.
He had arranged everything himself, the distant tenants" meals, the putting up of their horses. He had chosen the bearers, and had seen the gloves and hat-bands distributed, and the church hung with black. His mind travelled over all the arrangements, and he did not think anything had been forgotten. And all the time at the back of his mind also was the thought that no will was forthcoming, even while he followed the service.
"d.i.c.k might have left Hulver to me. "_We brought nothing into the world and it is certain we can carry nothing out._" Poor old d.i.c.k! I dare say he meant to. But he was too casual, and had a bee in his bonnet. But if he had done nothing else, he ought to have made some provision for Mary Deane and his child. He could not tell Molly would die before him. "_For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday._" Seeing Harry is what he is and Janey is to have Noyes, d.i.c.k might have remembered me. I shall have to work the estate for Harry now, I suppose. Doesn"t seem quite fair, does it? "_O teach us to number our days: that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom._" Never heard Black read the service better.
He"ll be a bishop some day. And now that d.i.c.k has forgotten me, how on earth am I ever to marry? "_Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery._" That"s the truest text of the whole lot."
Roger looked once at Annette, and then fixed his eyes once more on the carved finial of the old oaken bench on which he was sitting, where his uncle had sat before him, and where he could just remember seeing his grandfather sit in a blue frock-coat thirty years ago. He looked for the hundredth time at the ragged staff of the Warwicks carved above the bear, the poor bear which had lost its ears if it ever had any. His hand in its split glove closed convulsively on the bear"s head. _How was he going to marry Annette!_
Annette"s eyes rested on the flower-covered coffin in front of her, but she did not see it. She was back in the past. She was kneeling by d.i.c.k"s bed with her cheek against the pillow, while his broken voice whispered, "The wind is coming again, and I am going with it."
The kind wind had taken the poor leaf at last, the drifting shredded leaf.
And then she felt Roger look at her, and other thoughts suddenly surged up. Was it possible--was it possible--that d.i.c.k might part her and Roger? Their eyes met for an instant across the coffin.
Already Roger looked remote, as if like d.i.c.k he were sinking into the past. She felt a light touch on her hand. The choir had risen for the anthem.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est la, Simple et tranquille.