Chapter 11

"I know what's to be done, and I shall do it," Leach repeated in a louder tone; "And all the sentimental rot ever talked in the village about the Five Sisters won't make me change my mind,--no, nor all the sermons on meek and quiet spirits neither! That's my last word, Mr. Walden, and you may take it for what it is worth!"

Walden swung round on his heel and went his way without replying. Outwardly, he was calm enough, but inwardly he was in a white heat of anger. His thoughts dwelt with a passionate insistence on the grand old trees with their great canopies of foliage, where hundreds of happy birds annually made their homes,--where, with every recurring Spring, the tender young leaves sprouted forth from the aged gnarled boughs, expressing the joy of a life that had outlived whole generations of men--where, in the long heats of summer broad stretches of shade lay dense on the soft grass, offering grateful shelter from the noon-day sun to the browsing cattle,--and where with the autumn's breath, the slow and glorious transformation of green leaves to gold, with flecks of scarlet between, made a splendour of colour against the pale grey-blue sky, such as artists dream of and with difficulty realise. All this wealth of God-granted natural beauty,--the growth of centuries,--was to perish in a single morning! Surely it was a crime!--surely it was a wicked and wanton deed, for which, there could be no sane excuse offered! Sorrowfully, and with bitterness, did Walden relate to his gardener, Bainton, the failure of his attempt to bring Oliver Leach to reason,--solemnly, and in subdued silence did Bainton hear the tale.

"Well, well, Passon," he said, when his master had finished; "You doos your best for us, and no man can't say but what you've done it true ever since you took up with this 'ere village,--and you've tried to save the Five Sisters, and if 'tain't no use, why there's no more to be said. Josey Letherbarrow was for walkin' up to the Manor an' seein' Miss Vancourt herself, as soon as iver she gets within her own door,--but Lord love ye, he'd take 'arf a day to jog up there on such feet as he's got left after long wear and tear, an' there ain't no liftin' 'im into a cart nohow. Sez he to me: 'I'll see the little gel wot I used to know, and I'll tell 'er as 'ow the Five Sisters be chalked, an' she'll listen to me--you see if she don't!' I was rather took with the idee myself, but I sez, sez I: 'Let alone, Josey,--you be old as Methusaleh, and you can't get up to the Manor nohow; let Passon try what he can do wi' Leach,'--and now you've been and done your best, and can't do nothin', why we must give it up altogether."

Walden walked up and down, Ms hands loosely clasped behind his back, lost in thought.

"We won't give it up altogether, Bainton," he said; "We'll try and find some other way--"

"There's goin' to be another way," declared Bainton, significantly; "There's trouble brewin' in the village, an' m'appen when Oliver Leach gets up to the woods to-morrow mornin' he'll find a few ready to meet 'im!"

Walden stopped abruptly.

"What do you mean?"

"'Tain't for me to say;" and Bainton pretended to be very busy in pulling up one or two plantains from the lawn; "But I tells ye true, Passon, the Five Sisters ain't goin' to be laid low without a shindy!"

John's eyes sparkled. He scented battle, and was not by any means displeased.

"This is Tuesday, isn't it?" he asked abruptly; "This is the day Miss Vancourt has arranged to return?"

"It is so, sir," replied Bainton; "and it's believed the arrangements 'olds good--for change'er mind as a woman will, 'er 'osses an' groom's arrived--and a dog as large as they make 'em, which 'is name is Plato."

Walden gave a slight gesture of annoyance. Here was a fresh cause of antipathy to the approaching Miss Vancourt. No one but a careless woman, devoid of all taste and good feeling, would name a dog after the greatest of Greek philosophers!

"Plato's a good name," went on Bainton meditatively, unconscious of the view his master was taking of that name in his own mind; "I've 'eard it somewheres before, though I couldn't tell just where. And it's a fine dog. I was up at the Manor this mornin' lookin' round the grounds, just to see 'ow they'd been a-gettin' on--and really it isn't so bad considerin', and I was askin' a question or two of Spruce, and he showed me the dog lyin' on the steps of the Manor, lookin' like a lion's baby snoozin' in the sun, and waitin' as wise as ye like for his mistress. He don't appear at all put out by new faces or new grounds--he's took to the place quite nat'ral."

"You saw Spruce early, then?"

"Yes, sir, I see Spruce, and arter 'ollerin' 'ard at 'im for 'bout ten minutes, he sez, sez he, as gentle as a child sez he: 'Yes, the Five Sisters is a-comin' down to-morrow mornin', and we's all to be there a quarter afore six with ropes and axes.'"

John started walking up and down again.

"When is Miss Vancourt expected?" he enquired.

"At tea-time this arternoon," replied Bainton. "The train arrives at Riversford at three o'clock, if so be it isn't behind its time,--and if the lady gets a fly from the station, which if she ain't ordered it afore, m'appen she won't get it, she'll be 'ere 'bout four."

Instinctively Walden glanced at his watch. It was just two o'clock. Another hour and the antipathetic 'Squire-ess' would be actually on her way to the village! He heaved a short sigh. Forebodings of evil infected the air,--impending change, disturbing and even disastrous to St. Rest suggested itself troublously to his mind. Arguing inwardly with himself, he presently began to think that notwithstanding all his attempts to live a Christian life, after the manner Christianly, he was surely becoming a very selfish and extremely narrow-minded man! He was unreasonably, illogically vexed at the return of the heiress of Abbot's Manor; and why? Why, chiefly because he would no longer be able to walk at liberty in Abbot's Manor gardens and woods,--because there would be another personality perhaps more dominant than his own in the little village, and because--yes!--because he had a particular aversion to women of fashion, such as Miss Vancourt undoubtedly must be, to judge from the brief exhibition of her wardrobe which, through the guilelessness of Mrs. Spruce, had been displayed before his reluctant eyes.

These objections were after all, so he told himself, really rooted in masculine selfishness,--the absorbing selfishness of old bachelorhood, which had grown round him like a shell, shutting him out altogether from the soft influences of feminine attraction,--so much so indeed that he had even come to look upon his domestic indoor servants as obliging machines rather than women,--machines which it was necessary to keep well oiled with food and wages, but which could scarcely be considered as entering into his actual life more than the lawn-mower or the roasting-jack. Yet he was invariably kind to all his dependants,--invariably thoughtful of all their needs,--nevertheless he maintained a certain aloofness from them, not only because he was by nature reserved, but because he judged reserve necessary in order to uphold respect. In sickness or trouble, no one could be more quietly helpful or consolatory than he; and in the company of children he threw off all restraint and was as a child himself in the heartiness and spontaneity of his mirth and good humour,--but with all women, save the very aged and matronly, he generally found himself at a loss, uncertain what to say to them, and equally uncertain as to how far he might accept or believe what they said to him. The dark eyes of a sparkling brunette embarrassed him as much as the dreamy blue orbs of a lily-like blonde,--they were curious dazzlements that got into his way at times, and made him doubtful as to whether any positive sincerity ever could or ever would lurk behind such bewildering brief flashes of light which appeared to shine forth without meaning, and vanish again without result. And in various ways,--he now began to think,-- he must certainly have grown inordinately, outrageously selfish!-- his irritation at the prospective return of Miss Vancourt proved it. He determined to brace himself together and put the lurking devil of egotism down.

"Put it down!" he said inwardly and with sternness,--"put it down-- trample it under foot, John, my boy! The lady of the Manor is perhaps sent here to try your patience and prove the stuff that is in you! She is no child,--she is twenty-seven years of age--a full grown woman,--she will have her ways, just as you have yours,--she will probably rub every mental and moral hair on the skin of your soul awry,--but that is really just what you want, John,--you do indeed! You want something more irritating than Sir Morton Pippitt's senile snobberies to keep you clean of an overgrowth or an undergrowth of fads! Your powers of endurance are about to be put to the test, and you must come out strong, John! You must not allow yourself to become a querulous old fellow because you cannot always do exactly as you like!"

He smiled genially at his own mental scolding of himself, and addressing Bainton once more, said:

"I shall probably write a note to Miss Vancourt this afternoon, and send you up with it. I shall tell her all about the Five Sisters, and ask her to give orders that the cutting down of the trees may be delayed till she has seen them for herself. But don't say anything about this in the village," here he paused a moment, and then spoke with greater emphasis--"I don't want to interfere with anything anybody else may have on hand. Do you understand? We must save the old beeches somehow. I will do my best, but I may fail; Miss Vancourt may not read my letter, or if she does, she may not be disposed to attend to it; it is best that all ways and means should be, tried,--"

He broke off,--but his eyes met Bainton's in a mutual flash of understanding.

"You're a straight man, Passon, and no mistake," observed Bainton with a slow smile; "No beatin' about the bush in the likes o' you! Lord, Lord! What a mussy we ain't saddled with a poor snuffling, addle-pated, whimperin' man o' God like we 'ad afore you come 'ere-- what found all 'is dooty an' pleasure in dinin' with Sir Morton Pippitt up at the 'All! And when there was a man died, or a baby born, or some other sich like calamity in the village, he worn't never to 'and to 'elp,-but he would give a look in when it was all over, and then he sez, sez he: 'I'm sorry, my man, I wasn't 'ere to comfort ye, but I was up at the 'All.' And he did roll it round and round in his mouth like as 'twas a lump o' butter and 'oney--'up at the 'All'! Hor-hor-hor! It must a' tasted sweet to 'im as we used to say,--and takin' into consideration that Sir Morton was a bone- melter by profession, we used to throw up the proverb 'the nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat'--not that it had any bearin' on the matter, but a good sayin's a good thing, and a proverb fits into a fancy sometimes better'n a foot into a shoe. But you ain't a snuffler, Passon!--and you ain't never been up at the 'All, nor wouldn't go if you was axed to, and that's one of the many things what makes you a gineral favourite,--it do reely now!"

Walden smiled, but forbore to continue conversation on this somewhat personal theme. He retired into his own study, there to concoct the stiffest, most clerical, and most formal note to Miss Vancourt that he could possibly devise. He had the very greatest reluctance to attempt such a task, and sat with a sheet of notepaper before him for some time, staring at it without formulating any commencement. Then he began: "The Rev. John Walden presents his compliments to Miss Vancourt, and begs to inform her--"

No, that would never do! 'Begs to inform her' sounded almost threatening. The Rev. John Walden might 'beg to inform her' that she had no business to wear pink shoes with high heels, for example. He destroyed one half sheet of paper, put the other half economically aside to serve as a stray leaflet for 'church memoranda,' and commenced in a different strain.

"Dear Madam,"

"Dear Madam!" He looked at the two words in some annoyance. They were very ugly. Addressed to a person who wore pink shoes, they seemed singularly abrupt. And if Miss Vancourt should chance to resemble in the least her ancestress, Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt, they were wholly unsuitable. A creditor might write 'Dear Madam' to a customer in application for an outstanding bill,-- but to Mary Elia Adelgisa one would surely begin,--Ah!--now how would one begin? He paused, biting the end of his penholder. Another half sheet of notepaper was wasted, and equally another half sheet devoted to 'church memoranda.' Then he began:

"Dear Miss Vancourt,"

At this, he threw down his pen altogether. Too familiar! By all the gods of Greece, whom he had almost believed in even while studying Divinity at Oxford, a great deal too familiar!

"It is just as if I knew her!" he said to himself in vexation. "And I don't know her! And what's more, I don't want to know her! If it were not for this business of the Five Sisters, I wouldn't go near her. Positively I wouldn't!"

A mellow chime from the old eight-day clock in the outer hall struck on the silence. Three o'clock! The train by which Miss Vancourt would arrive, was timed to reach Riversford station at three,--if it was not late, which it generally was. Nebbie, who had been snoozing peacefully near the study window in a patch of sunlight, suddenly rose, shook himself, and trotted out on to the lawn, sniffing the air with ears and tail erect. Walden watched him abstractedly.

"Perhaps he scents a future enemy in Miss Vancourt's dog, Plato!" And this whimsical idea made him smile. "He is quite intelligent enough. He is certainly more intelligent than I am this afternoon, for I cannot write even a commonplace ordinary note to a commonplace ordinary woman!" Here a sly brain-devil whispered that Miss Vancourt might possibly be neither commonplace nor ordinary,--but he put the suggestion aside with a 'Get thee behind me, Satan' inflexibility. "The fact is, I had better not write to her at all. I'll send Bainton with a verbal message; he is sure to give a quaint and pleasant turn to it,--he knew her father, and I didn't;--it will be much better to send Bainton."

Having made this resolve, his brow cleared, and he was more satisfied. Tearing up the last half sheet of wasted note-paper he had spoilt in futile attempts to address the lady of the Manor, he laughed at his failures.

"Even if it were etiquette to use the old Roman form of correspondence, which some people think ought to be revived, it wouldn't do in this case," he said. "Imagine it! 'John Walden to Maryllia Vancourt,--Greeting!' How unutterably, how stupendously ridiculous it would look!"

He shut all his writing materials in his desk, and following Nebbie out to the lawn, seated himself with a volume of Owen Meredith in his hand. He was soon absorbed. Yet every now and again his thoughts strayed to the Five Sisters, and with persistent fidelity of detail his mind's eye showed him the grassy knoll so soft to the tread, where the doomed trees stood proudly and gracefully, clad just at this season all in a glorious panoply of young green,--where, as the poet whose tender word melodies he was reading might have said of the surroundings:

"For moisture of sweet showers, All the grass is thick with flowers."

"Yes, I shall send Bainton up to the Manor with a civil message," he mused--"and he can--and certainly will--add anything else to it he likes. Of course the lady may be offended,--some women take offence at anything--but I don't much care if she is. My conscience will not reproach me for having warned her of the impending destruction of one of the most picturesque portions of her property. But personally, I shall not write to her, nor will I go to see her. I shall have to pay a formal call, of course, in a week or two,--but I need not go inside the Manor for that. To leave my card, as minister of the parish, will be quite sufficient."

He turned again to the volume in his hand. His eyes fell casually on a verse in the poem of 'Resurrection':

"The world is filled with folly and sin; And Love must cling where it can, I say,--For Beauty is easy enough to win, But one isn't loved every day."

He sighed involuntarily. Then to banish an unacknowledged regret, he began to criticise his author.

"If the world and the ambitions of diplomatic service had not stepped in between Lord Lytton and his muse, he would have been a fine poet," he said half aloud;--"A pity he was not born obscurely and in poverty--he would have been wholly great, instead of as now, merely greatly gifted. He missed his true vocation. So many of us do likewise. I often wonder whether I have missed mine?"

But this idea brooked no consideration. He knew he had not mistaken his calling. He was the very man for it. Many of his 'cloth' might have taken a lesson from him in the whole art of unselfish ministration to the needs of others. But with all his high spiritual aim, he was essentially human, and pleasantly conscious of his own failings and obstinacies. He did not hold himself as above the weaker brethren, but as one with them, and of them. And through the steady maintenance of this mental attitude, he found himself able to participate in ordinary emotions, ordinary interests and ordinary lives with small and outlying parishes in the concerns of the people committed to their charge. It is not too much to say that though he was in himself distinctly reserved and apart from the average majority of men, the quiet exercise of his influence over the village of St. Rest had resulted in so attracting and fastening the fibres of love and confidence in all the hearts about him to his own, that anything of serious harm occurring to himself, would have been considered in the light of real fatality and ruin to the whole community. When a clergyman can succeed in establishing such complete trust and sympathy between himself and his parishioners, there can be no question of his fitness for the high vocation to which he has been ordained. When, on the contrary, one finds a village or town where the inhabitants are split up into small and quarrelsome sects, and are more or less in a state of objective ferment against the minister who should be their ruling head, the blame is presumably more with the minister than with those who dispute his teaching, inasmuch as he must have fallen far below the expected standard in some way or other, to have thus incurred general animosity.

"If all fails," mused Walden presently, his thoughts again reverting to the Five Sisters' question,--"If Bainton does his errand awkwardly,--if the lady will not see him,--if any one of the thousand things do happen that are quite likely to happen, and so spoil all chance of interceding with Miss Vancourt to spare the trees,--why then I will go myself to-morrow morning to the scene of intended massacre before six o'clock. I will be there before an axe is lifted! And if Bainton meant anything at all by his hint, others will be there too! Yes!--I shall go,--in fact it will be my duty to go in case of a row."

A smile showed itself under his silver-brown moustache. The idea of a row seemed not altogether unpleasant to him. He stooped and patted his dog playfully.

"Nebuchadnezzar!" he said, with mock solemnity; whereat Nebbie, lying at his feet, opened one eye, blinked it lazily and wagged his tail--"Nebuchadnezzar, I think our presence will be needed to-morrow morning at an early hour, in attendance on the Five Sisters! Do you hear me, Nebuchadnezzar?" Again Nebbie blinked. "Good! That wink expresses understanding. We shall have to be there, in case of a row."

Nebbie yawned, stretched out his paws, and closed both eyes in peaceful slumber. It was a beautiful afternoon;--'sufficient for the day was the evil thereof' according to Nebbie. The Reverend John turned over a few more pages of Owen Meredith, and presently came to the conclusion that he would go punting. The decision was no sooner arrived at than he prepared to carry it out. Nebbie awoke with a start from his doze to see his master on the move, and quickly trotted after him across the lawn to the river. Here, the sole occupant of the shining stream was a maternal swan, white as a cloud on the summit of Mont Blanc, floating in stately ease up and down the water, carrying her young brood of cygnets on her back, under the snowy curve of her arching wings. Walden unchained the punt and sprang into it,--Nebbie dutifully following,--and then divested himself of his coat. He was just about to take the punting pole in hand, when Bainton's figure suddenly emerged from the shrubbery.

"Off on the wild wave, Passon, are ye?" he observed,--"Well, it's a fine day for it! M'appen you ain't seen the corpses of four rats anywhere around? No? Then I 'spect their lovin' relations must ha' been an' ate 'em up, which may be their pertikler way of doin' funerals. I nabbed 'em all last night in the new traps of my own invention. mebbe the lilies will be all the better for their loss. I'll be catchin' some more this evenin'. Lord; Passon, if you was to 'old out offers of a shillin' a head, the rats 'ud be gone in no time,--an' the lilies too!"

Walden absorbed in getting his punt out, only smiled and nodded acquiescingly.

"The train must ha' been poonctual," went on Bainton, staring stolidly at the shining water. "Amazin' poonctual for once in its life. For a one 'oss fly, goin' at a one 'oss fly pace, 'as jes' passed through the village, and is jiggitin' up to the Manor this very minute. I s'pose Miss Vancourt's inside it."

Walden paused,--punt-pole in hand.

"Yes, I suppose she is," he rejoined. "Come to me at six o'clock, Bainton. I shall want you."

"Very good, sir!"

The pole splashed in the water,--the punt shot out into the clear stream,--Nebbie gave two short barks, as was his custom when he found himself being helplessly borne away from dry land,--and in a few seconds Walden had disappeared round one of the bends of the river. Bainton stood ruminating for a minute.

"Jest a one 'oss fly, goin' at a one 'oss fly pace!" he repeated, slowly;--"It's a cheap way of comin' 'ome to one's father's 'Alls-- jest in a one 'oss fly! She might ha' ordered a kerridge an' pair by telegram, an' dashed it up in fine style, but a one 'oss fly! It do take the edge off a 'ome-comin'!--it do reely now."

And with a kind of short grunt at the vanity and disappointment of human expectations, he went his way to the kitchen garden, there to 'chew the cud of sweet and bitter memory' over the asparagus beds, which were in a highly promising condition.

VIII

The one-horse fly, going at a one-horse fly pace, had made its way with comfortable jaunting slowness from Riversford to St. Rest, its stout, heavy-faced driver being altogether unconscious that his fare was no less a personage than Miss Vancourt, the lady of the Manor. When a small, girlish person, clad in a plain, close-fitting garb of navy-blue serge, and wearing a simple yet coquettish dark straw hat to match, accosted him at the Riversford railway station with a brief, 'Cab, please,' and sprang into his vehicle, he was a trifle sulky at being engaged in such a haphazard fashion by an apparently insignificant young female who had no luggage, not so much as a handbag.

"Wheer be you a-goin'?" he demanded, turning his bull neck slowly round--"I baint pertikler for a far journey."

"Aren't you?" and the young lady smiled. "You must drive me to St. Rest,--Abbot's Manor, please!"