The Massingham Affair Part 9

"Do you truly think so? My dear sir, I can't tell you how much you relieve my mind. It certainly seemed what we were wanting. Poor fellow, there was honest contrition there. I sensed a desire to atone, but the flesh is weak. He may draw back."

"Then we must prevent it: we must join forces. Would he see me, do you suppose?"

"I think he might. I will find out tomorrow and send you a note to let you know what he says and where we should meet. Try to be patient."

All next morning Justin sat in his office and applied himself to the conveyances, beautiful in their pink and green ribbons, and to the clients Harris showed in to him. But as the shadows lengthened and the murk of the afternoon invaded the room he became restless and wandered to the window overlooking the square. People were hurrying home, wrapped tightly in their overcoats; he saw someone's hat go flying; and rivulets of rain were dribbling down the panes, mak- ing a maze of the points of light that sprang up one by one in the shops across the way.

"Nothing from Mr Lumley?" he asked of Harris, who brought in coffee soon after four o'clock. He had not felt so fidgety since he had been a youth in old Rees's office waiting for six o'clock to strike and release him into the live world outside, which never seemed so ad-ventureful as at the end of the day. He remembered best the winter nights: the ticking of the clock, the scratching of pens in ledgers long closed. There had always seemed to be a wind rattling at the windows, adding its voice to the burble and hiss of the gas, and so it was tonight, with the curtains asway and the fire billowing smoke into the room.

At half-past five, when he had almost given up hope of the message coming that day, a note was handed in asking him to be outside the King's Arms Hotel at six; and precisely to the minute, while the clocks were striking, he heard the rapid sound of footsteps approaching and the figure of the Vicar bounced into the lamplight like a genie.

"Is that you, my dear fellow?"

Not a word of explanation, Justin noted, of why such a meeting-place should have been chosen or why the Vicar had not simply called at his office, which was less than a furlong from the King's Arms. 'It would serve him right if the word went round that he was inside the taproom,' Justin thought, visualising the scene, for the notion of Mr Lumley and strong liquors in the same ring was captivating and opened up prospects he would have liked to explore. But clearly the Vicar was in no mood for badinage, and they had no sooner shaken hands than Justin found himself being marched at speed over the cobbles of the market-place in the direction of Bewley.

Arrived there, in the bleak street down which the wind came howling, driving before it great gusts and pellets of rain, the pace of the advance slowed down a little. It seemed to Justin that the elements alone were not to blame for this, for the grip on his arm had slackened, as though his friend were developing doubts-presumably of a non-theological nature-about the whole enterprise. "Did he ask for me?" he managed to shout into the Vicar's ear as they reached the corner of a tenement out of the worst fury of the gale.

"He agreed you might come," was the cautious answer.

"Oh."

THE QUEST: 1899.

"You must remember he's been distressed and in great confusion of mind. It would be foolish to expect too much."

Justin murmured that he would try to avoid expecting anything, as he had managed to do for some time, but a gust of wind blew the words away; and when they were next in shelter, near Sugden's door, the Vicar was bellowing at him: "He's incalculable. He's afraid of company-a most nervous man, most difficult and confused."

"As who isn't around here?"

But fortunately Mr Lumley did not hear this: he had pushed open the door of the tenement and was leading the way into the stale air of a hall in pitch darkness except for a slat of light under a door directly to their left. "Strike a match, my dear fellow," he urged in a whisper that sounded much louder than the clarion call of his voice in the wild night outside. "We go up a floor."

"So be it."

"Better mind your step. There's a loose board half-way up. The bannisters are most untrustworthy. If you'd care to follow me."

Justin struck another match and by its flickering gleam they went up, one behind the other, treading warily, drawing from the boards beneath them a protesting sound like a groan. "These old houses!" the Vicar said as they reached the narrow landing off which two doors opened. "A disgrace to the town. Yet such is the sense of property in our enlightened times. There are landlords drawing a good rent from these"-and he pointed to the walls from which the plaster was flaking in deep blisters like sores.

Justin was looking about him, holding his third match high above his head. They had stopped opposite the right-hand door: to the left was another, no doubt once the abode of the roadman Green: and in the same warren Miss Binns also had existed, and Sugden's mother too. "How many people live here?" he asked.

"A dozen or so. It might provide stabling for four horses if the hunt didn't protest about the overcrowding. But you will see what these worthy folk have made of their pittance."

The Vicar's voice had risen; and suddenly the door they were facing opened, and over his friend's shoulder Justin saw the figure of a man in shirtsleeves without collar or tie: dark eyes, a yellowing, drawn face, clean shaven, with a domed forehead from which the hair receded. "So you heard us, George!" sang out the Vicar in a hearty voice.

The man hesitated. He had one of those tight-skinned faces that are particularly revealing of thoughts, and Justin saw that what he most desired was to slam the door on them. But the parochial smile had already invaded the room; the clerical foot was inside the door. "This is George Sugden. George, this is Mr Deny, the solicitor from Bank Chambers."

"Pleased to meet the gentleman," Sugden said.

"You'll find him a great help to us."

"If you say so, sir, I'm sure."

It was Justin's first experience of the peculiar hazards of parish visiting and he felt a deep embarra.s.sment, but there was nothing he could do about it; he was in the presence of experts.

"A raw night, George." Indeed they could hear the buffets of the gale against the old porous walls of the house, and somewhere a window was rattling with desperate urgency as though someone were forcing his way in. "There'll be snow on the way maybe."

By this time, without even appearing to be trying, the Vicar had succeeded in edging himself into such a position that only force or gross rudeness could have kept him out. But Justin had had no doubt from the start who would win this battle of manoeuvre: he entered with the supporting troops and looked around him, finding himself in a room about fifteen feet square, lit by tallow candles and warmed by a wood fire. At the far end from them was an empty bed, the marital couch', as the Vicar would certainly have called it, and another and more rudimentary one in which three children lay. The room was scrupulously clean. It looked larger than it was, there was so little furniture, but the walls were hung with Biblical prints and texts, and on the mantelpiece stood a handsomely dressed doll with a mantilla on her head.

"This is Carmen," said the Vicar, introducing them. "A fine young lady, isn't she? If Mary were awake we would hear more about her ancestry, which is Spanish from the look of her. But Robert is awake, I see. We must talk quietly, for it wouldn't do to keep a young fellow from his beauty sleep. How old is Robert now?"

"Nearly nine, sir."

"How they grow." The Vicar had moved close to the bed, looking down at the children huddled together under the blanket, the boy in the centre with eyelids drooping, mouth slightly open to reveal four new buck teeth seemingly many sizes too large. "Master Robert is quite the prize scholar," he said. "Mr Sharp of Sheffield, like our good friend Copperfield before him. Can we talk safely, do you think?"

"Any minute now, sir," Sugden said.

"And your wife's out, it appears. How is she, by the way?"

"Middling. Much as can be expected, sir."

"We must count our blessings, George. It's one obligation of a Christian, and perhaps the one we forget most easily. But there! I didn't come to preach you a sermon. If anything's to be learnt tonight it must come from you, if you understand me."

"I do in a way, sir."

"I hope you'll talk to Mr Deny as you talked to me and think of him as one of us, someone who wants to help us. You can be sure of his discretion."

"You mean nothing will go further, sir? Then I don't quite see. ... No offence, sir, but why's he here? We don't want to waste the gentleman's time."

Mr Lumley's sigh was one of unnatural resignation. 'The meek shall inherit the earth,' his expression seemed to say, 'but let the inheritance come soon.' By nature a missionary, whose impulse in his own words was to rut a man in the stomach with a penny loaf and then give him a tract', it was only with difficulty that he had brought himself to this prolonged wrestling with a conscience; it made him feel like Jacob with his angel. But having made the match, he had no intention of giving up until he had subdued Satan and his own unbridled ardour into the bargain. "Mr Deny is here because you agreed he should come," he reasoned patiently. "You told me I might invite him, so I sent him a message and very kindly he came."

"No harm done, sir. I'm glad to see the gentleman."

"But it seems to me, George, that you have developed doubts in this matter and I want to remove them, so that we all know where we stand. You made a verbal statement to me about your part in the affair at Mr Verney's."

"And a great load off my conscience, sir."

A gust of wind swept down the chimney, billowing the smoke out into the room and affecting the Vicar's bronchial tubes to such a degree that he lost track of himself, causing him to splutter to Justin quite crossly: "What was I saying?"

"You were referring to the statement Sugden made."

"Oh yes. Now, George, we've had many a talk about this. I've tried to show you your duty as I see it and as I pray and believe you

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yourself have come to see it. You know at last you did wrong: a very great wrong in allowing two innocent men to suffer."

"I know it, sir."

"But you are making rest.i.tution, George, little by little. If the hardest part, the law's punishment, still lies ahead for you, the great decision is made, and that is what matters in the sight of G.o.d. All we need now are the means to turn righteous thoughts into the righteous act of self-sacrifice and confession."

There was silence in the room, broken only by one of the children turning on the rusty springs of the bed. Then Sugden murmured: "I don't quite understand that, sir."

"Don't you? Surely it's clear enough. You repent. All well and good. But how does that fact by itself benefit others? No man saves his soul at the expense of his fellows. You must know that from what you've been taught and what your Bible says."

"It says that, sir, no doubt."

"Well then? I don't see any problem."

"Where's this gentleman come into it?"

"He comes into it," replied the Vicar, speaking with an awful slowness, "firstly because we agreed he might come, and secondly because if we are to translate your good intentions into deeds we need his help in the taking of a statement in due legal form which will clear Milligan and Kelly and make your guilt quite plain to everyone. Does that answer your question, George?"

Apparently it did.

"Yes, sir, thank you, sir. I'll not be makin' any statement. I've changed me mind."

VI.

As they struggled home through the wind and the sleet, Mr Lumley never ceased to bewail the calamity that had descended like a thunderbolt on his head. The gale was so strong that Justin did not hear everything, but occasional s.n.a.t.c.hes reached him out of the night: ". . . extraordinary decision ... a soul apparently prepared . . . work wasted . . . not himself . . . powers of Satan. . . ." By the time they had reached the comparative shelter of the market-place the threads of discourse become connected and the Vicar could be heard blaming himself for everything. "It was no fault of yours, my dear fellow. Admittedly he seems to have been nervous of you and terrified of any mention of the law, but it was on my urging that you came and you said nothing that could have been misconstrued- nothing. I take the blame entirely. What can have changed him? Was it perhaps my reminding him of the harder road ahead?"

For an eternity at the Vicarage, in the cubicle of a study amid the litter of a dedicated life, the good man debated this problem, referring occasional points to his friend before answering them himself. As he talked he regained courage and, his natural buoyancy returning, began to rebuke sin instead of merely suffering it. "It was a wicked act. But the man himself is not wicked at heart, only misguided and afraid. I am confident he can be saved. All we need to do is to keep faith. I will never abandon Sugden."

"And I will never desert Mr Micawber," murmured Justin under his breath as he excused himself and went back home. It was well past ten o'clock and 'The Laurels' had settled down for the night, with only a glimmer of gaslight from the drawing-room, where two mantles had been left burning. But the fire was still in behind its screen, and on the round table reposed a decanter of madeira which Flo accepted as a 'gentlemanly' wine on the strength of an old partiality of their father's at Christmas time.

He ate the sandwiches and poured himself a gla.s.s, nearly asleep from the warmth of the room after the bitter cold of the night outside. A fearsome draught was whistling in the hall as he lit the candle and glanced around to make sure that he had carried out the various duties Flo expected of him in order to preserve the house from fire and rapine. All gas jets were out and the front door bolted. There was something unexpected in his line of sight, however: something that looked like a square of paper lying on the linoleum under the letter-box which had no cage. He picked it up, shading the flame which was guttering madly, and read what was written in two lines of spindly script: Be at the griffin bridge at eight tomorrow night keep N beyond the lamp.

When had it come? He opened the door and peered out, but the snow which had begun to fall in earnest had already covered his own tracks, laying a smooth carpet across the path and garden to the gate into the road. There was nothing to be learnt there and nothing helpful in the message itself, which was unsigned and writ-

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ten on a sheet of ruled paper that might have been torn from a child's exercise book. A very cautious person, apparently, this informant, who preferred to say things and not write them, but that was the hallmark of a cla.s.s which distrusted the written word and the whole machinery of communication as a kind of witchcraft. That the man (he supposed it was a man) had written at all was remarkable. He must have something worth while to say and feel a pressing need of saying it-unless there were some other reason behind this suggestion of a rendezvous in the darkness, some less agreeable reason.

"Was it a quiet evening? Did anyone call?" he asked his sisters next morning over the breakfast marmalade. While Flo was there he did not press the matter beyond their rather surprised a.s.surance that of course it had been a quiet evening and of course no one had called, for she was an excessively nervous person who had never quite recovered from the news of a burglary that had occurred some years earlier in a neighbouring street, but getting Mamie to himself for a moment, he asked her straight out whether she had heard any suspicious sounds.

"Heard anyone? Where? Inside the house? Do you mean a burglar? How too simply perfect!" Mamie cried. Not for a long time had he engaged her sympathies so deeply, and the disillusionment when it came was proportionately great-"You mean no one broke in! Not even an attempt! I could have sworn I heard someone outside in the snow while we were having supper."

He seized on that. "What time?"

"About eight."

"Did you hear footsteps?"

"It was someone prowling. Flo heard him too; she was quite alarmed. She has heard it other nights, she says-like someone who wants to come in but won't."

It was a phrase that kept recurring to him, for on two recent occasions he himself had heard someone walking up and down in the lane by the front gate and had wondered what brought a man out strolling in such bitter weather. He might know very soon; the directions in the message were clear enough: eight o'clock on the north side of the Griffin Bridge, beyond range of the gas lamp, which was the last outrider of the munic.i.p.al lighting on that side.

At ten minutes to the hour he approached the rendezvous from the Warbury Road, seeing ahead of him the lights in the market- THE QUEST: 1899.

place and to his left the bulk of the castle towering up dimly above the haughs and the griffin on his plinth half-way along the parapet. The night was overcast, with an east wind tearing at the trees and bringing to him, sharp and distinct, the clatter of the southbound express as it raced along the embankment above the estuary, its whistle screaming as it approached the bend by Warbury Halt. Five to eight. One could set one's watch even in winter by that train, whose lighted carriages shone like a glow-worm in the darkness towards the sea.

As the sound of it died away into a distant muttering he stepped off the road into the shelter of the trees and moved down towards the bridge, where a feeble gleam of gaslight illumined the stones against which the snow had drifted. He had reached his chosen point of vantage, about thirty yards from the lamp and close against the hedgerow that followed the highway on its eastern side, when the belfry of the parish church began to strike the hour, followed by the altogether more worldly chimes of the castle clock from directly across the stream. Almost at once he heard a noise in the wood behind him and swung round. Something was there, perhaps a fox or some other wild creature disturbed by his coming, moving very lightly in the undergrowth on a carpet of dead leaves, but he could see nothing in the gloom beyond the dim line of the hedge and after a while it ceased, leaving him in a silence broken only by the moaning of the wind in the trees.

Minutes pa.s.sed. It was bitterly cold, with a raw dampness that seemed to strike to the marrow of his bones. Even his curiosity had atrophied in the cold, to be replaced by a feeling of unease as the minutes ticked by, and the lights in the castle across the water went out, and that faint rustling began again in the depths of the wood, only nearer to him than before. Suddenly, when all his attention had become centred on the dark terrain to his left, he heard footsteps on the highway to the south.

He drew back further and stooped down, so that there might be no chance of being seen in silhouette before he had made out who his visitor might be. All was quiet now in the wood behind him: and on the bridge the footsteps paced along like laggards behind the beating of his heart. At the far edge of the lamplight a dark shape appeared, then seemed to dissolve in two-two shadows moving as one in the faint aureole of light. He saw their bulk, the tall conical helmets of the Police, then recognised the men themselves: Constables Pogh and Moffat, who had been among the witnesses at the Moot Hall and Blair's particular henchmen.

He remained crouching in the hedge as they went past and along the Warbury Road, walking as one: two police officers on their beat. He thought that now they had gone his mysterious informant might materialise. But though he waited until nine had struck, no one came.

VII.

"Whoever he may be, he will have plenty more opportunities of seeing me," reasoned Justin philosophically next day. He could detect a number of reasons, apart from the intrusion of Pogh and Moffat, to keep a timid man from a rendezvous on such a night, and he had no intention of being cast down by one failure of communication. If this "informant", as he called him in his mind, had failed, the only thing to do was to turn to other sources, and that meant Sugden first in spite of everything.

When he approached Mr. Lumley, however, with a suggestion that they should return together to Bewley Street he was met with a coolness so marked that in another man he might have suspected some ulterior motive, even jealousy. The Vicar did not seem to want to talk about it. He avoided questions. It was only gradually to be got from him that Sugden had taken to his bed where he lay silent and unmoving, refusing to be roused by gifts of food or medicine or the comfort of words. It was something inside the man, the Vicar said when he was led at last to express himself about these things. "Some failure of the will. I know very little about it, but I've read somewhere that missionaries in Africa have found the black fellows often die quite unaccountably--from discouragement, it seems, or fear. We could add remorse, and perhaps that's what ails George Sugden."

"Even a dying declaration would be something," mused Justin, "provided it was made in 'settled and hopeless expectation of death' as the jargon has it, and was taken down in writing and signed."

"My dear fellow, isn't that rather callous?" cried Mr Lumley, revolted by the suggestion. "I couldn't think of helping in such a plan ... unless the man himself desired it. Which, it seems, he wont."

Justin was left with what he had begun to dub in his own mind 'the reserves'. Their form was not encouraging. From young Merrick, by the mouth of Mr Verney, he had received one suggestive piece of information, but of the others, Miss Binns had failed him, the roadman Green refused to see him, and Miss Kelly, for all her fierce devotion to her brother, had been of no practical help.

Then he remembered Kelly's fiancee, Amy Dodds.

"I want young Spinks to take this letter down to Pelegate to Miss Kelly," he instructed Harris on his way out to lunch. "He's to wait for an answer. You might tell him to jolly his ideas along a bit."

He had only asked for Amy's address, and it was a surprise to find on his return a somewhat sheepish Spinks with Miss Kelly herself in tow-a rampant, bridling Miss Kelly hard put to it to contain herself. "I thought fine that you'd be after Geordie Sugden, sir," she burst out the moment they were alone on the private side of the baize door.

"So I have been 'after' him. But the fellow's sick."

"Shamming, sir, more likely, he's that artful. Don't you be took in, sir."

Justin replied that he would do his best not to be taken in. He was amused and at the same time touched by this combative spirit that gave no rest to itself or to anyone else. "Now try and look at it sensibly," he urged. "Sick, shamming, afraid or all three at once, what does it matter? He's dug in his heels for the time being. If it's any comfort to you I believe he was at Ma.s.singham."

"Of course he was, sir," she snapped back at him indignantly. She was far too intelligent a woman to be satisfied by empty words.

"Very well, I understand your point of view. Now try and see mine. Presumably you want me to help you?" He saw in her eyes the sudden start of fear that perhaps he was going to throw up the case, and hurried on: "And I will help you if you'll give me a chance. But Sugden's only one side of the problem and there are others we shouldn't ignore. That's why I want to see Miss Dodds."

"Just as you say, sir."