Chapter 15

"Something was wrong," Parson Jack decided after a while, finding that his messages to them met with no answer; and he felt a delicacy in asking questions. He believed that the children had been sent home to England--he did not know where--and would have liked to pay them a visit. But for him a journey was out of the question. So he lived on, alone and forgotten.

On Sundays he wore a black suit, which had lasted him for ten years, and would have to last for another five at least. On week-days he dressed in blue guernsey and corduroys, and smoked a clay pipe. His broad-brimmed clerical hat alone distinguished him from the farm-labourers in his parish; but when at work upon the church--patching its shingle roof, or pouring mortar into its gaping wounds--he discarded this for a maroon-coloured cap, not unlike a biretta, which offered less surface to the high winds.

He knew nothing of architecture: could not, in fact, distinguish Norman work from Perpendicular; and at first had taken to these odd jobs of masonry as a handy way of killing time. He had wit enough, however, to learn pretty soon that the whole fabric was eaten with rot and in danger from every gale; and by degrees (he could not explain how) the ruin had set up a claim on him. In his worst dreams he saw it toppling, falling; during the winter gales he lay awake listening, imagining the throes and shudders of its old beams, and would be abroad before daybreak, waiting for the light to assure him that it yet stood. A casual tourist, happening on him at work, some summers before, had mistaken him for a hired mason, and discoursed learnedly on the beauties of the edifice and the pity of its decay. "That's a vile job you have in hand, my friend-- a bit of sheer vandalism," said the tourist; "but I suppose the Parson who employs you knows no better." Parson Jack had been within an ace of revealing himself, but now changed his mind and asked humbly enough what was amiss. Whereupon the tourist pulled out a pencil and an old envelope, and explained. "But there," he broke off, "it would take me a week to go into these matters, and you a deal longer to understand. I'd enjoy twenty minutes' talk with your Parson. The church wants restoration from beginning to end, and by a first-class man. It deserves no less, for it's interesting throughout; in some points unique." "That would cost money now?" suggested Parson Jack, pitching his voice to the true Langona sing-song. "Two thousand pounds would go a long way."--The tourist scanned the waggon-roof critically, and lowering his eyes, at length observed the Parson's smile. "Ah, I see! a sum that would take some collecting hereabouts. Parson's none too well off, eh?" "Fifty pounds a year or so." "Scandalous! Who's the lay impropriator?" He was told. "Well, but wouldn't he help?" Parson Jack shook his head; he had never asked a penny from Sir Harry Vyell, who was a notorious Gallio in all that concerned religion. He had a further reason, too. He suspected that Sir Harry chafed a little in a careless way at his continuing to hold the living, and would be glad to see him replaced by an incumbent with private means and no failings to be apologised for with a shrug of the shoulders. Sir Harry, he knew, was aware of these hateful lapses, though too delicate to allude to them, and far too charitable to use them (unless under compulsion) as a lever for getting rid of him. And this knowledge was perhaps the worst of his shame. Yet what could he do? since to surrender Langona was to starve. "Your Parson might at least make a beginning," pursued the tourist. "A box, now, inviting donations--that would cost nothing, and might relieve a visitor here and there of a spare sovereign. He could put up a second box for himself: it's quite a usual thing in churches when the parish priest is poor. You might make the suggestion, if he's not too proud."

"I will," said Parson Jack, and after the tourist had gone he thought much of these two boxes. Indeed, he made and fixed up the first that same week, though he labelled it "For Church Repairs," fighting shy of "Restoration" as too magniloquent. The second cost him long searchings of heart, and he walked over and laid the case before Parson Kendall, Rector of the near parish of St. Cadox, a good Christian and a good fellow, with whom he sometimes smoked a pipe. "Why not?" answered Parson Kendall; "it's the most ordinary thing in the world." "But Sir Harry may not like it." The Rector chuckled. "If he doesn't, he'll consult me; and I shall ask him why he hunts a pack by subscription."

So the second box was nailed beside the first, and excited little discussion. Indeed, the pair hung in so obscure a corner--behind the font--that at the first service only Parson Jack and the Widow Copping were aware of them. The Parson stumbled and hesitated so badly over the prayers that one or two worshippers felt sure he had been drinking; which was not the fact. The Widow Copping took no interest in collecting-boxes; and, besides, she could not read. So the innovation missed fire. Moreover, it suggested neither popery nor priestcraft, and only a fool would suspect Parson Flood of either.

The "Parson's Box" remained, provoking no criticism. He himself had a little plan for its contents. He would spend the money on a journey to his nephew and nieces, if they were anywhere in England. He would find out. There was no hurry, he told himself, with a queer smile.

There was not. The box provoked neither ill-criticism nor effusive charity. On Trinity Sunday, when he opened it and counted out one shilling in silver and sevenpence in coppers, Parson Jack pulled a wry face and then laughed aloud.

II.

_Toot--toot--toot!_

The postman's horn in the village street above him shook the Parson out of his idleness, if not out of his dark thoughts. He sprang up, gripped his shovel, and began spading the white river-sand into his sack.

"It is useless, after all," said he to himself. "The crack on the south of the tower stands still, but the smaller and more dangerous one--the one on the weather side--is widening fast. This winter, even, may finish matters."

He took up a few more shovelfuls. "Anyhow, it will not last my time; and since it will not--" He paused, as a thought rose before him like a blank wall. If the church fell--nay, _when_ it fell--this comrade which had taken possession of his purposes, his fears, his fate--this enigmatic building of which he knew neither the history nor the founder's name, but only its wounds--why, then his occupation was gone! He might outlive it for years, perhaps a third of a lifetime; but he had no hopes beyond. In imagination he saw it fall, and after that-- nothing. And he laughed--not the laugh with which he had counted out the money in his collecting-box, but one of sheer self-contempt, and passing bitter.

The impression had been so sharp that he flung a glance up at the grey tower topping the grey-green rise; and with that was aware of the postman swinging, with long strides, down the slope towards him.

He turned in confusion and resumed his shovelling. Why was the man coming this way, by a path out of his daily beat? Parson Jack stooped over his work. He wished to avoid greeting him. There was talk, no doubt, up at the village. . . .

But the postman was not to be denied. He stopped and hailed across the stream.

"Hulloa, Parson! I've just left a letter for you up at the Parsonage: a long blue letter, and important, by the look of it, with a seal--a man's hand coming out of a castle. Do you know it?"

"No," answered Parson Jack. "Did you come out of your way to tell me this?"

"Not quite; though I'd do as much for 'ee any day, out of friendliness. But, tell 'ee the truth, I was sent to seek you with a message."

"A message?"

"Sir Harry has ridden over from Carwithiel, and wants you up to church. He's there waitin' with his nephew, a narra-chested slip of a chap with a square-cut collar and a Popish sort of face."

Parson Jack lifted his shovel and passed his palm over its blade, which the sand had already polished. "Thank you," said he, "I'll be going at once."

But he made no motion to start while the postman stood eyeing him. A sudden selfish fear paralysed him. Had Sir Harry heard? And was this the end of his patron's forbearance? No; the news could not have reached Carwithiel so quickly. He had no enemy to arise early and carry it; to no living creature were even his follies of such importance.

"Don't forget your letter," the postman reminded him, moving off towards the foot-bridge.

Parson Jack watched him as he crossed it, and until he had scaled the western slope and disappeared over its shoulder. Then, kneeling by the stream, he dipped his head, and let the icy water run past his temples. When he raised it again his plain face was glowing, for hard fare and life in the open weather kept his complexion clear and ruddy. But the hand gripping the sack on his shoulder shook as he climbed the hill.

By the lych-gate he found two saddle-horses tethered, and just outside the porch stood Sir Harry Vyell--a strikingly handsome man with a careless thoroughbred look; in fact, well over sixty, but apparently ten years younger. By habit he dressed well, and was scrupulously careful of his person; by habit, too, he remained sweet of temper and kindly of speech. But beneath this mask of habit the heart had withered, a while ago, to dust, and lay in the grave of his only son.

"Ah? Good morning, Flood!" cried Sir Harry genially. Parson Jack, reassured, felt the colour rushing into his face. "I've brought over my nephew Clem to introduce to you--he's in Orders, you know--scholar of Balliol, Fellow of All Souls, and what not. High Anglican, too--he'll be a bishop one of these days, if money doesn't make him lazy. He's inside, dancing with delight in front of your chancel-screen--or, rather, the remains of it. Church architecture is his craze just now-- that and Church History. Between ourselves"--Sir Harry glanced over his shoulder--"he has a bee or two in his bonnet; but that's as it should be. Every lad at his age wants to eat up the world."

Parson Jack could remember no such ambition. They passed into the church together.

Now the surprise which awaits you in Langona Church is its chancel, which stands high above the level of the nave, and, rising suddenly beneath a fine Early English arch, carries the eye upward to the altar with a strange illusion of distance. Even in those days the first impression was one of rare, almost singular, beauty--an impression lost in a series of small pangs as your eye rested on the ruinous details one by one. For of the great screen nothing remained but two tall uprights, surmounted by hideous knops--the addition of some local carpenter. Between the lozenge-shaped shafts of the choir arches, the worm-riddled parclose screens dripped sawdust in little heaps. Down in the nave, bench-ends leaned askew or had been broken up, built as panels into deal pews, and daubed with paint; the floor was broken and ran in uneven waves; the walls shed plaster, and a monstrous gallery blocked the belfry arch. Upon this gallery Parson Jack had spent most of his careful, unsightly carpentry, for the simple reason that it had been unsafe; and, for the simple reason that they had let in the rain, he had provided half a dozen windows with new panes, solid enough, but in appearance worthy only to cover cucumbers.

As he entered with Sir Harry, the Rev. Clement Vyell swung round upon him eagerly, but paused with a just perceptible start at sight of his unclerical garb.

"Let me introduce you, Clem. This is Mr. Flood."

Parson Jack bowed, and let his eyes travel around the church, which he had often enough pitied, but of which he now for the first time felt ashamed.

"We're in a sad mess, I'm afraid," he muttered.

"It's most interesting, nevertheless," Clement Vyell answered. He was a thin-faced youth with a high pedagogic voice. "Better a church in this condition than one restored out of all whooping--though I read on the box yonder that you are collecting towards a restoration."

Parson Jack blushed hotly.

"You have made a start, eh? What are your funds in hand?"

"Two pounds four shillings--as yet."

Sir Harry laughed outright; and after a moment Parson Jack laughed too-- he could not help it. But Clement Vyell frowned, having no sense of humour.

"I patch it up, you know--after a fashion." Parson Jack's tone was humble enough and propitiatory; nevertheless, he glanced at his handiwork with something like pride. "The windows, for instance--"

The younger man turned with a shudder. "I suppose now," he said abruptly, staring up at an arch connecting the choir-stalls with the southern transept, "this bit of Norman work will be as old as anything you have?"

That it was Norman came as news to Parson Jack. He, too, stared up at it, resting a palm on a crumbling bench-end.

"Well," said he ingenuously, "I'm no judge of these things, you know; but I always supposed the tower was the oldest bit."

He broke off in confusion--not at his speech, but because Clement Vyell's eyes were resting on the back of his hand, which shook with a tell-tale palsy.

"The tower," said the young man icily, "is Perpendicular, and later than 1412, at all events, when a former belfry fell in, destroyed the nave, and cracked the pavement, as you see. All this is matter of record, as you may learn, sir, from the books which, I feel sure, my uncle will be pleased to lend you. I need not ask, perhaps, if in the course of your--ah--excavations you have come on any traces of the original pre-Augustine Oratory, or of the conventual buildings which existed here till, we are told, the middle of the thirteenth century."

He turned away, obviously expecting no answer, addressed himself henceforward to Sir Harry, and ignored Parson Jack, who followed him abashed, yet secretly burning to hear more, and wondering where all this knowledge could be obtained.

"But it is inconceivable!" Clement Vyell protested to his uncle, half an hour later, as they rode back towards Carwithiel. "The man has had the cure of that parish for--how long, do you say?--twenty-five years, and has never had the curiosity to discover the most rudimentary facts in its history."

"A hard case," assented Sir Harry. "He lifts his elbow, too."

"Eh?"

"Drinks." Sir Harry illustrated the idiom, lifting an imaginary glass to his mouth. "Oh, it's notorious. But what the deuce can we do? Kick him out?--not so easy; and, besides, he'd die under a hedge. You're hard on him, Clem. He has his notions of duty. Why"--the Baronet laughed--"I've seen him on the roof with a tar-bucket, caulking the leaks for dear life. He's a gentleman, too."

Clement Vyell tightened his lips and rode on in silence.

Left alone, Parson Jack stared around his church. His repairs, in which he had taken pride before now, seemed nakedly, hideously mean at this moment. But a new sense fought with his dejection--a sense altogether new to him--that his church had a history, a meaning into which he had never penetrated. The aisles seemed to expand, the chancel to reach up into a distance in which space and time were confused; and, following it, his eye rested on a patch of colour in the east window between the wooden tablets of the Law--a cluster of fragments of stained glass, rescued by some former vicar and set amid the clear panes--the legs and scarlet robe of a saint, an angel's wing, a broken legend on a scroll, part of a coat-of-arms, azure with a fesse,--wavy of gold--all thrown together as by a kaleidoscope gone mad. Each of these scraps had once a meaning: so this church held meanings, too long ignored by him, partly intelligible yet, soon to be mixed inextricably in a common downfall. For Clement Vyell might be wise in the history of architecture, but his eye had not read the one plain warning which stared a common workman in the face--that the days of this building were surely numbered, and were probably few.

Parson Jack had a mind to run after him. He must learn, and speedily, all about the church, its builders, this old colony of monks. But where? In books doubtless. Where could those books be found?

He had almost reached the door, when his eye fell on the two collecting-boxes. With a sudden thought he paused, drew a key from the pocket of his corduroys, and unlocked his own--the Parson's box. A sovereign lay within.

He picked up the coin and considered it, a dark flush growing on his face. Parson Jack had a temper, though few guessed it. With an effort he controlled it now, dropped the sovereign into the box labelled "Church Repairs," and walked slowly out.

He had no longer a mind to run after Clement Vyell. Instead, he bent his steps towards the four-roomed cottage which he called the Parsonage and found too large for his needs.

On the sitting-room table lay a letter, in a large blue envelope with a red seal.

III.

That same day, and soon after three o'clock in the afternoon, Parson Jack knocked at the door of St. Cadox Rectory.

The Rector, a widower, usually ate his dinner in the middle of the day, and immediately afterwards retired to his study (with a glass of hot brandy-and-water), presumably to meditate. At Parson Jack's entrance he started up from his arm-chair with a flushed face and a somewhat incoherent greeting, in the middle of which he suddenly observed that his friend's face, too, was agitated.

"But what brings you? Nothing wrong, I hope?"

"No--o," answered Parson Jack dubiously. Then, "Oh no; on the contrary, I came to ask if you have any books bearing on this part of the world-- county histories, ecclesiastical histories, and the like--especially ecclesiastical histories. I want to read up about Langona."

The Rector's eyes twinkled. "This is rather sudden, eh?"

"After five-and-twenty years? I suppose it is." Parson Jack blushed like a schoolboy; but he laughed, nevertheless, for he held news, and it bubbled within him.

"Preparing a lecture?"

"No; the fact is"--he straightened his face--"I've just learnt of my brother Lionel's death in India. I've never seen him since we were boys," he added apologetically.

"H'm, h'm." The Rector paid his respect to Death in a serious little cough. "Still, I don't quite understand--"

"He has left me five thousand pounds."

"Ah? A very tidy sum--my dear Flood, I congratulate you; with all my heart I do. You have the prospect now of many happy days." He shook his friend's hand warmly. "But--excuse me--what has this to do with reading ecclesiastical history, of Langona or any other place?"

"Well," Parson Jack answered shyly, sitting down and filling his pipe, "I thought of restoring the church."

"My dear fellow, don't be a fool--if I may speak profanely. Five thousand pounds is a tidy sum, no doubt, in Langona especially. But you'll be leaving Langona. You can buy yourself a decent little living, or retire and set up comfortably as a bachelor on two hundred and fifty pounds a year, with a cob, and a gig as you grow older."

Parson Jack shook his head. "I've been paying debts all my life, with the help of Langona," said he, puffing slowly. "And now I see that I owe the place repayment. But it isn't _that_ exactly," he went on with a quickening voice and another of his shy blushes, "and I don't want you to mistake that for the real reason. The fact is, I'm attached to the place--to the church especially. It seems a silly thing to say, when I haven't troubled to learn ten words of its history, and don't know Norman work from--well, from any but my own." He laughed grimly, biting on his pipe-stem. "But that can be mended, I suppose--and the old barn has become a sort of companion--and that's about the long and short of it."

The Rector leaned forward and tapped the bowl of his pipe reflectively on the fender-bars.

"You are the residuary legatee, I take it. Your brother was unmarried?"

"Oh dear, no! Lionel was married, and had three children--two girls and a boy: 'has,' I should say, for I imagine they're all alive--the widow, too. I don't know where they are. The lawyers merely speak of my five thousand as a legacy; they say nothing of the rest of the will."

"That's queer." The Rector reached for his tobacco-jar.

"Eh? You mean my not knowing the whereabouts of the family? Between ourselves, I believe there was a screw loose in Lionel's domestic affairs. I know nothing definite--positively. We corresponded now and then," continued Parson Jack--"say twice a year--and of late years he dropped all mention of them, and I gathered that questions were not wanted. But the wife and children are provided for, you may depend; and there's the pension."

"You are not an executor even?"

"No; it seems there were two; but one died. The survivor, a Major Bromham, lives in Plymouth--retired, apparently, and I suppose an old friend of Lionel's. It's through his solicitors that I had the news."

"And with it the first announcement of your brother's death. It seems queer to me that this Major Bromham didn't send you a line of his own. How do the lawyers put it?"

"Oh, the barest announcement. Here it is; you can read for yourself: 'On the instruction of our client, Major Bromham, late 16th Bengal Lancers, we have to inform you of the death, by syncope, at Calcutta, on the 5th of July last, of your brother, Lionel Flood, Esq., late of the Indian Civil Service, Assistant-Commissioner; and also that by the terms of his will, executed'--so-and-so--'of which our client is the surviving executor,' etc.--all precious formal and cold-blooded. No doubt his death was telegraphed home to the newspapers, and they take it for granted that I heard or read of it."

"Perhaps." The Rector rose. "Shall we have a stroll through the stables? Afterwards you shall have a book or two to carry off."

"But look here, Kendall; I came to you as a friend, you know. It seems to me all plain sailing enough. But you seem to imply--"

"Do I? Then I am doubtless an ass."

"You think this Major Bromham should have written to me direct--I see that you do. Well, he lives no farther away than Plymouth. I might run up and call on him. Why, to be sure"--Parson Jack's brow cleared--"and he can give me the address of the wife and children."

IV.