Chapter 36

IN WHICH SEVENOAKS EXPERIENCES A GREAT COMMOTION, AND COMES TO THE CONCLUSION THAT BENEDICT HAS MET WITH FOUL PLAY.

Thomas Buffum and his family slept late on Sunday morning, and the operating forces of the establishment lingered in their beds. When, at last, the latter rose and opened the doors of the dormitories, the escape of Benedict was detected. Mr. Buffum was summoned at once, and hastened across the street in his shirt-sleeves, which, by the way, was about as far toward full dress as he ever went when the weather did not compel him to wear a coat. Buffum examined the inner door and saw that it had been forced by a tremendous exercise of muscular power. He remembered the loss of the key, and knew that some one had assisted in the operation.

"Where's that boy?" wheezed the keeper.

An attendant rushed to the room where the boy usually slept, and came back with the report that the bed had not been occupied. Then there was a search outside for tracks, but the rain had obliterated them all. The keeper was in despair. He did not believe that Benedict could have survived the storm of the night, and he did not doubt that the boy had undertaken to hide his father somewhere.

"Go out, all of you, all round, and find 'em," hoarsely whispered Mr. Buffum, "and bring 'em back, and say nothing about it."

The men, including several of the more reliable paupers, divided themselves into little squads, and departed without breakfast, in order to get back before the farmers should drive by on their way to church. The orchards, the woods, the thickets--all possible covers--were searched, and searched, of course, in vain. One by one the parties returned to report that they could not find the slightest sign of the fugitives.

Mr. Buffum, who had not a question that the little boy had planned and executed the escape, assisted by the paroxysmal strength of his insane father, felt that he was seriously compromised. The flight and undoubted death of old Tilden were too fresh in the public mind to permit this new reflection upon his faithfulness and efficiency as a public guardian to pass without a popular tumult. He had but just assumed the charge of the establishment for another year, and he knew that Robert Belcher would be seriously offended, for more reasons than the public knew, or than that person would be willing to confess. He had never in his life been in more serious trouble. He hardly tasted his breakfast, and was too crusty and cross to be safely addressed by any member of his family. Personally he was not in a condition to range the fields, and when he had received the reports of the parties who had made the search, he felt that he had a job to undertake too serious for his single handling.

In the meantime, Mr. Belcher had risen at his leisure, in blissful unconsciousness of the calamities that had befallen his _protege_. He owned a pew in every church in Sevenoaks, and boasted that he had no preferences. Once every Sunday he went to one of these churches; and there was a fine flutter throughout the building whenever he and his family appeared. He felt that the building had received a special honor from his visit; but if he was not guided by his preferences, he certainly was by his animosities. If for three or four Sabbaths in succession he honored a single church by his presence, it was usually to pay off a grudge against some minister or member of another flock. He delighted to excite the suspicion that he had at last become attached to one clergyman, and that the other churches were in danger of being forsaken by him. It would be painful to paint the popular weakness and the ministerial jealousy--painful to describe the lack of Christian dignity--with which these demonstrations of worldly caprice and arrogance, were watched by pastor and flock.

After the town meeting and the demonstration of the Rev. Solomon Snow, it was not expected that Mr. Belcher would visit the church of the latter for some months. During the first Sabbath after this event, there was gloom in that clergyman's congregation; for Mr. Belcher, in his routine, should have illuminated their public services by his presence, but he did not appear.

"This comes," bitterly complained one of the deacons, "of a minister's meddling with public affairs."

But during the week following, Mr. Belcher had had a satisfactory interview with Mr. Snow, and on the morning of the flight of Benedict he drove in the carriage with his family up to the door of that gentleman's church, and gratified the congregation and its reverend head by walking up the broad aisle, and, with his richly dressed flock, taking his old seat.

As he looked around upon the humbler parishioners, he seemed to say, by his patronizing smile: "Mr. Snow and the great proprietor are at peace. Make yourselves easy, and enjoy your sunshine while it lasts."

Mr. Buffum never went to church. He had a theory that it was necessary for him to remain in charge of his establishment, and that he was doing a good thing by sending his servants and dependents. When, therefore, he entered Mr. Snow's church on the Sunday morning which found Mr. Belcher comfortably seated there, and stumped up the broad aisle in his shirt-sleeves, the amazement of the minister and the congregation may be imagined. If he had been one of his own insane paupers _en deshabille_ he could not have excited more astonishment or more consternation.

Mr. Snow stopped in the middle of a stanza of the first hymn, as if the words had dried upon his tongue. Every thing seemed to stop. Of this, however, Mr. Buffum was ignorant. He had no sense of the proprieties of the house, and was intent only on reaching Mr. Belcher's pew.

Bending to his patron's ear, he whispered a few words, received a few words in return, and then retired. The proprietor's face was red with rage and mortification, but he tried to appear unconcerned, and the services went on to their conclusion. Boys who sat near the windows stretched their necks to see whether smoke was issuing from the poor-house; and it is to be feared that the ministrations of the morning were not particularly edifying to the congregation at large. Even Mr. Snow lost his place in his sermon more frequently than usual. When the meeting was dismissed, a hundred heads came together in chattering surmise, and when they walked into the streets, the report of Benedict's escape with his little boy met them. They understood, too, why Buffum had come to Mr. Belcher with his trouble. He was Mr. Belcher's man, and Mr. Belcher had publicly assumed responsibility for him.

No more meetings were held in any of the churches of Sevenoaks that day. The ministers came to perform the services of the afternoon, and, finding their pews empty, went home. A reward of one hundred dollars, offered by Mr. Belcher to any one who would find Benedict and his boy, "and return them in safety to the home provided for them by the town," was a sufficient apology, without the motives of curiosity and humanity and the excitement of a search in the fields and woods, for a universal relinquishment of Sunday habits, and the pouring out of the whole population on an expedition of discovery.

Sevenoaks and its whole vicinity presented a strange aspect that afternoon. There had slept in the hearts of the people a pleasant and sympathetic memory of Mr. Benedict. They had seen him struggling, dreaming, hopeful, yet always disappointed, dropping lower and lower into poverty, and, at last, under accumulated trials, deprived of his reason. They knew but little of his relations to Mr. Belcher, but they had a strong suspicion that he had been badly treated by the proprietor, and that it had been in the power of the latter to save him from wreck. So, when it became known that he had escaped with his boy from the poor-house, and that both had been exposed to the storm of the previous night, they all--men and boys--covered the fields, and filled the woods for miles around, in a search so minute that hardly a rod of cover was left unexplored.

It was a strange excitement which stirred the women at home, as well as the men afield. Nothing was thought of but the fugitives and the pursuit.

Robert Belcher, in the character of principal citizen, was riding back and forth behind his gray trotters, and stimulating the search in every quarter. Poor Miss Butterworth sat at her window, making indiscriminate inquiries of every passenger, or going about from house to house, working off her nervous anxiety in meaningless activities.

As the various squads became tired by their long and unsuccessful search, they went to the poor-house to report, and, before sunset, the hill was covered by hundreds of weary and excited men. Some were sure they had discovered traces of the fugitives. Others expressed the conviction that they had thrown themselves into a well. One man, who did not love Mr. Belcher, and had heard the stories of his ill-treatment of Benedict, breathed the suspicion that both he and his boy had been foully dealt with by one who had an interest in getting them out of the way.

It was a marvel to see how quickly this suspicion took wing. It seemed to be the most rational theory of the event. It went from mouth to mouth and ear to ear, as the wind breathes among the leaves of a forest; but there were reasons in every man's mind, or instincts in his nature, that withheld the word "murder" from the ear of Mr. Belcher. As soon as the suspicion became general, the aspect of every incident of the flight changed. Then they saw, apparently for the first time, that a man weakened by disease and long confinement, and never muscular at his best, could not have forced the inner door of Benedict's cell. Then they connected Mr. Belcher's behavior during the day with the affair, and, though they said nothing at the time, they thought of his ostentatious anxiety, his evident perturbation when Mr. Buffum announced to him the escape, his offer of the reward for Benedict's discovery, and his excited personal appearance among them. He acted like a guilty man--a man who was trying to blind them, and divert suspicion from himself.

To the great horror of Mr. Buffum, his establishment was thoroughly inspected and ransacked, and, as one after another left the hill for his home, he went with indignation and shame in his heart, and curses on his lips. Even if Benedict and his innocent boy had been murdered, murder was not the only foul deed that had been committed on the hill. The poor-house itself was an embodied crime against humanity and against Christianity, for which the town of Sevenoaks at large was responsible, though it had been covered from their sight by Mr. Belcher and the keeper. It would have taken but a spark to kindle a conflagration. Such was the excitement that only a leader was needed to bring the tumult of a violent mob around the heads of the proprietor and his _protege_.

Mr. Belcher was not a fool, and he detected, as he sat in his wagon talking with Buffum in a low tone, the change that had come over the excited groups around him. They looked at him as they talked, with a serious scrutiny to which he was unused. They no more addressed him with suggestions and inquiries. They shunned his neighborhood, and silently went off down the hill. He knew, as well as if they had been spoken, that there were not only suspicions against him, but indignation over the state of things that had been discovered in the establishment, for whose keeper he had voluntarily become responsible. Notwithstanding all his efforts to assist them in their search, he knew that in their hearts they charged him with Benedict's disappearance. At last he bade Buffum good-night, and went down the hill to his home.

He had no badinage for Phipps during that drive, and no pleasant reveries in his library during that evening, for all the possibilities of the future passed through his mind in dark review. If Benedict had been murdered, who could have any interest in his death but himself? If he had died from exposure, his secrets would be safe, but the charge of his death would be brought to his door, as Miss Butterworth had already brought the responsibility for his insanity there. If he had got away alive, and should recover, or if his boy should get into hands that would ultimately claim for him his rights, then his prosperity would be interfered with. He did not wish to acknowledge to himself that he desired the poor man's death, but he was aware that in his death he found the most hopeful vision of the night. Angry with the public feeling that accused him of a crime of which he was not guilty, and guilty of a crime of which definitely the public knew little or nothing, there was no man in Sevenoaks so unhappy as he. He loved power and popularity. He had been happy in the thought that he controlled the town, and for the moment, at least, he knew the town had slipped disloyally out of his hands.

An impromptu meeting of citizens was held that evening, at which Mr. Belcher did not assist. The clergymen were all present, and there seemed to be a general understanding that they had been ruled long enough in the interest and by the will of a single man. A subscription was raised for a large amount, and the sum offered to any one who would discover the fugitives.

The next morning Mr. Belcher found the village quiet and very reticent, and having learned that a subscription had been raised without calling upon him, he laughingly expressed his determination to win the reward for himself.

Then he turned his grays up the hill, had a long consultation with Mr. Buffum, who informed him of the fate of old Tilden, and started at a rapid pace toward Number Nine.