Waynflete

As the young clergyman expounded the details of the newest and most up-to-date recipe for social, moral, and religious improvement, Guy moved the hand with which – it was a trick he had – he was shading his eyes, and looked him full in the face with such a gaze as brought him suddenly to a dead stop, a look of awe, inspiration, and resolute daring beyond description.

“That’s right. That shall be done!” he said. “That will turn the devil’s flank!”

Mr Clifton believed quite orthodoxly in the devil; but he had used his name at the moment more or less metaphorically. He felt as he looked at Guy, as he had never felt before, that “improving” his parish meant literally dragging it away from the power of evil.

“The place won’t answer in that depressing hole,” said Godfrey. “It gives one the shivers to think of it.”

“It’ll answer, if we’re not afraid,” said Guy.

It was not surprising, on any grounds, that he had a bad fit of palpitation and faintness that night, after the long discussion was over.

“I must lie still,” he said in the morning; “but bring Clifton here before he goes. I want to speak to him.”

“I am afraid I over-tired you last night,” said the vicar, penitently, when he obeyed this summons.

Guy was lying back on his pillows, with the winter morning sun shining through his unshaded window, full on his hair and face.

“Thanks – it couldn’t possibly be helped,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. You’re quite right about the Dragon. Don’t give the notion up. You know we have neither of us much money, but we’ll help. And you’re right about the subscription. Every one that lends a hand brings more force to help.”

“We must give a long pull and a strong pull and a pull all together,” said the vicar, cheerily.

“Yes,” said Guy, with a vivid smile. “Now I understand that. And when we have won, you could paint in Michael above the Dragon, beating him down under his feet.”

“Surely, most appropriate in Saint Michael’s parish. Oh, I felt very much out of heart before; but you have greatly encouraged me, and I hope and pray that we may make some way now.”

“Pray?” said Guy. “Yes. That’s a very hard thing to do; but it makes a great difference.”

And the young vicar, as he looked into Guy’s eyes, felt for the first time that he understood what was meant by “wrestling in prayer.” He was so much impressed that he could make no sort of obvious and natural answer. He was silent for a moment, and then said —

“You will tell me every idea that occurs to you? I shall be too grateful. And – when you are strong enough – if the Hall is occupied, or uninhabitable, do come to the Vicarage. I’ve made that weather-tight, and – you could see everything for yourself.”

“Thanks,” said Guy; “I think I could do that – I will, sometime. And Godfrey will be coming over about the repairs.”

To Godfrey it was a distinct relief when Guy called him after the visitor was gone, and dictated the letter to be written to the agent of the Australian sheep-farmers, who supplied the mill with raw wool, and who had not supplied it in the past, according to the samples offered. Palmer Brothers did not intend to be cheated in the future.

Then Guy was left alone in the wintry sunshine to think over the past night.

“The Enemy” – as he phrased it – had indeed come to him as before; but he had not been afraid, for, in the same inward region of unspeakable experience, he had felt for the first time, the presence of a Friend.

Part 3, Chapter IV

The Family Face

Mrs John Palmer replied by a handsome subscription to the letter informing her of the condition of Waynflete church. “Miss S.J. Palmer” sent fifty pounds as a tribute to her dear aunt’s memory, from the Riviera, where she had gone with her mother; and others of the family and neighbours came forward liberally enough to put Mr Clifton in very high spirits. Miss Florella Vyner offered a modest five pounds, and, finally, Constancy sent fifteen, being the entire fruit of the story that had come into being at Moorhead. She sent it to Guy, and stated that it was a token of affection for dear Mrs Waynflete; but it was, perhaps, something of a sin-offering as well.

Godfrey beheld her contribution with strange thrills. He was pleased, and yet life was harder after he had read, and secreted her little note, on the loss of which Guy did not comment.

Life could not be very easy. Apart from his own troubles, there was a strain in living with any one in such a state of nervous tension as Guy, carefully as the elder brother controlled himself. His very reticence began to have an effect on Godfrey, and though he himself felt more and more the blessing of comparative inward peace, he could not but suffer much from the outward trial, and once his carefully maintained caution gave way, and he made a great mistake.

“Look here,” he said one morning in the early spring, as he studied his letters, “I asked Clifton to get this done for me.”

“What?” said Godfrey, looking. “A photo graph? Oh, that picture. What did you want it for?”

“You don’t mind? I wanted really to see it.”

“It’s not much like you now,” said Godfrey. Guy got up, and, unlocking a drawer, he laid a row of small objects on the table, setting the photograph of the Waynflete picture beside them.

These were the old likenesses of their father and grandfather, a handsome, well-set-up photograph of himself taken at Oxford, and another more recent one.

“Oh, I say,” said Godfrey, “why did you sit when you were looking so ill? Yes, there’s a good deal of likeness; but, oh, chuck this one with the eyes into the fire – I don’t like it. Eh! What’s this? Have you been drawing yourself? You have made yourself look quite fiendish.”

Guy had laid a rough pen-and-ink outline beside the line of photographs. They certainly formed a curious study of a persistent type, but the last photograph of the living Guy seemed to blot the others out, the mournful eyes were so full of terrible suggestion, the mocking lips were set into lines of so much stronger purpose. And the drawing repeated the photograph with a difference.

“What?” said Godfrey, as Guy’s silence suddenly suggested an idea to him. “What? Do you mean that – the ghost – your bogie – looks like that?”

“Yes,” said Guy, “I think so.”

Godfrey swept the pictures together with an angry motion. He had believed in the ghost, but somehow this definite presentment struck a sudden scepticism into him.

“Oh, come,” he said, “nonsense! You never ought to look at them. It’s very bad for you. You may get to fancy anything.”

Guy gave him an odd look of comprehension.

“Never mind,” he said quietly, “I ought not to have brought them out. They won’t hurt me. Here’s quite another matter. You’ve managed those Devonshire dyers very well. They’re coming round to our terms. See.”

In the gentle steady look with which Guy spoke these encouraging words, the likeness to these wild versions of the family face was lost; but Godfrey had received a shock. In the instinctive recoil of his being from the incredible horror, he doubted Guy’s sanity, even his truth; he shrank from him, even while he loyally obeyed him, and did all he knew for his comfort. And yet as the slow days wore on, in close contact with his brother, an awful sense of comprehension began to steal into him. He too was a son of the Waynfletes; he too had been tempted, was tempted hourly to give up the hateful drudgery, to shake off the fate to which he was bound. He began to understand Guy. And though Guy controlled not only his face and words, but his very thoughts, before Godfrey, the mischief was done. Guy’s very presence filled him with weird suggestions. It struck him that that other figure must be there too, and the longing for escape became almost irresistible, a longing much intensified when he received the following letter from Mrs Joshua Palmer, one Saturday, by the second post —

“Jeanie enjoys the new places and the amusements of hotel life, and I may say, without a mother’s vanity, that she is greatly admired; but I think she loves her old friends, and has enjoyed nothing so much as her Christmas at Raby. We are most glad to hear that the Ingleby business is prosperous, and that Guy is stronger, and we look forward to seeing you on our return from abroad, my dear Godfrey, with great pleasure. Jeanie hears from a Rilston friend, who has a cousin at Constancy Vyner’s college, that there is a very learned professor there who admires her very much, and that when she has taken her degree they will be married, a very suitable arrangement; but I am an old-fashioned, ignorant person, and I don’t think that these new studies teach girls how to make home happy, and I am glad dear Jeanie has simpler tastes.”

Godfrey flung the letter down, and tore open another. It was from a college friend in Queensland, and gave a lively picture of the life of a sheep-farmer.

“Come out and join me,” it said; “let your brother manage the business. He can buy our wool, and we’ll make a good thing of it.”

If he could but go, and escape from his misery! He looked up and started violently as he saw Guy standing beside him, watching him with his intent, searching look.

“I’ve been having a turn with Rawdie,” he said, and sat down by the fire, still looking at Godfrey, under his hand.

There was a short silence, and then suddenly, without warning, Godfrey burst out.

“I see no good in all this work, nor in anything else. I believe there is a curse upon us. We’d better cut each other’s throats.”

“That’s what I want to talk about,” said Guy; “not about cutting throats, but because I know you’re in a bad way. I’ve been thinking a great deal about you. What’s the matter?”

Then Godfrey showed his two letters, and in confused words, helped out by Guy’s questions, he told that he loved Constancy to distraction, that she had failed him in his hour of need, that Jeanie was his inevitable fate, and, finally, that he wanted to run away. He hated Waynflete – no, not only because of the way he had got it, but because – well, there was something – Waynflete took the heart out of him. Guy leant forward and looked hard into his brother’s face.

“We have got to go down to the bottom of it together,” he said. “It won’t do to be afraid of one’s thoughts. There are no other ghosts so fatal. And as for cutting one’s throat, no doubt it’s simple, but how about when it’s done?”

“Guy,” said Godfrey, hurriedly, “do you – do you really see that Thing – you showed me?”

“Yes,” said Guy, gently; “but that has nothing at all to do with you. That is only a nervous affection, wholly physical. It has no existence whatever for you.”

“But you said you had seen the ghost?”

“I believe,” said Guy, choosing his words carefully, “that I have gone through experiences, not new in our family, and to which our constitutions make us liable. It’s an unusual kind of thing, but there are other cases on record. As to what agency causes these delusions and visions – I use both words advisedly – I am not prepared to say. As to the Waynflete traditions, it is my belief that there is some connection between these experiences and the place where they occur, and the people to whom they happen, somehow, where nerves and Spirit and the hidden forces of Nature meet. I know no more, and I don’t think they’ll fall to your share.”

The definite words, the composed manner steadied Godfrey’s spirit. He had felt the brush of the unseen wings, and he was able to recognise what Guy meant.

“There is something more,” said Guy. “It is under these forms of experience that I have had to resist temptation. Temptation is common to man, but some of us are made so as to know when it tears soul and spirit – yes, and body, asunder. But it’s just as hard, no doubt, for other people to keep their heads above water as for me. But,” he paused and hesitated; then went on in still quieter tones, “whatever men, in all ages and all places, have meant by spiritual experience, what they meant when they said that they were ‘tempted of the devil,’ that I have known, and I know. And I know, also, what they meant when they said that the Lord had delivered them out of his hands. And I thank God for the knowledge, even if it came by fire! Remember that! But as for you, the devil, or what he stands for, would give you just as much trouble in Queensland as here. You’re not married to Jeanie yet, nor even engaged to her. And you promised not to leave me alone with the ghosts.”

Guy’s manner was so reticent and calm that Godfrey hardly grasped at once all the force of what he had said. He leant his head on his hands, and was silent for some minutes. Then he said, not very steadily —

“If I left you now, I should be a deserter. But I nearly did. And you know what I did do – as to you – and what a fool I was at Christmas. Some day I shall knock under.”

“No, you won’t,” said Guy; “you’ll stick to your colours. You’ll stand by me.”

Godfrey nodded; he still sat with hidden face. Guy laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Poor old lad!” he said. “I’d rather fight seven devils, more wicked than the first, than have my angel fail me! But, Godfrey, stick to this. Never mind what the fate or the curse may be. We have to fight it, and, God helping us, we can. And I’ve no reason to suppose that the fight would be over, even if we had cut our throats, and been – gathered to our fathers. If it were, it would be a dirty trick to turn tail and leave the fiends – or the bailiffs – in possession at Waynflete.”

Poor Godfrey looked hardly reassured by this suggestive speech; but suddenly Guy’s face softened, and he said, pleadingly —

“Don’t make me into a bugbear, old boy; it’s rather hard, and there’s really no occasion.”

“I should be a confounded fool if I did,” said Godfrey, with some embarrassment. “No, I’ll not turn tail. I’ll stick to the shop.”

He kept his promise manfully; but it was a relief to both brothers when Easter week brought Cuthbert Staunton for a flying visit. He was going abroad, he said, to look up materials for a set of lectures on the sources of English culture. He had set his heart on getting Guy to come with him.

“We’ll take it easy,” he said; “and drop all the bogies in the Channel as we go.”

“Paradise wouldn’t be in it,” said Guy, with a long breath. “But no; first I must go to Waynflete.”

“I don’t approve of that move.”

“I’m much better, and I mean to go.”

“That’s always conclusive.”

“Well, I know best. But by-and-by – Poor Godfrey frames very well to the business. Perhaps he would be better without me. I say, is Constancy Vyner really going to marry a learned professor?”

“Not that I know of. She is going abroad with my sisters, as soon as the term is over. She is not coming to Waynflete, and that, perhaps, is best.”

“Well, I don’t know. I think the heavens will have to fall some time.”

“Florella Vyner has a sweet little drawing, which she means for the Academy. ‘Above the Stars’ – a ditch full of wide-open celandines.”

“Does she come to Waynflete?”

“I believe so – to study primroses,” said Cuthbert, sedately.

Guy pulled Rawdie’s ears, and said nothing; but Cuthbert ceased to oppose his intention of accepting Mr Clifton’s invitation, and looking after the improvements for himself.

Part 3, Chapter V

T’ Owd Gen’leman

Guy went to Waynflete. The sweet, clear atmosphere, fresh from the moors, delighted him, and he felt daily stronger and better, while his inborn love for the home of his fathers withstood all painful associations. On his little rough pony, with Rawdie beside him he appeared suddenly in the fields and lanes, like “t’ owd Guy hissel,” as Jem Outhwaite’s old mother declared.

“Eh! but we’ve got a master!” one old man said, quite unimpressed by Guy’s careful quoting of his brother’s name, as he gave orders about repairs and improvements, and made himself acquainted with every dilapidation. He bearded old Cowperthwaite, the publican of the Dragon, in his den, resisted the telling plea that Cowperthwaites had kept the Dragon before Waynfletes lost the Hall, and refused him the renewal of his lease at Michaelmas on the ground of disorder and disreputableness, and of various poaching scandals, which he hunted up as diligently as if old Margaret had bought back Waynflete for the single purpose of preserving its game. It was a proceeding calculated to bring a hornet’s nest about Godfrey’s ears; but Guy was as determined as if no other spot in the valley would have served for a village club. His aims were so visionary, and his methods of carrying them out so practical, that the vicar felt as if two men were working beside him. Guy knew nothing of the parochial side of a country squire’s life; but he hunted down the old Dragon, as if turning a public-house into a coffee-tavern was his life work.

One glorious morning of spring and promise, as he was riding in and out of the lanes in the valley, his pony cast a shoe. He took him into the forge, which was close to the Dragon, to have him re-shod, and, while he waited, strolled on by the side of the dancing, laughing beck towards the old footbridge. In this blue and sunny air, when the once weird and desolate wood was beginning to swell with living green, when the birds were singing, and the earth was full of life, he felt able to look again on the scene of his trial.

He saw the rocky field down which he had stumbled in weary haste, now fresh and green, with a dozen or so of little black-faced lambs skipping about on it. The sunlight shot through and through the opposite wood, now bright and delicate with primroses and anemones; the sky was of cold, but radiant blue. Rawdie pricked his long black ears, and watched the lambs with deep interest, but with admirable self-restraint.

Guy sat down on a bit of broken wall at the foot of the field, and looked across the river. The haunted hollow was lovely with all the rough charm of the north; for Guy it had the charm of home.

“New heavens and a new earth!” he thought.

“Good day t’ ye, Mr Waynflete!”

He turned with a start, and saw a tall old woman, with a red shawl over her head and a handsome, weather-beaten face.

“Good day,” he said. “Mrs Outhwaite, isn’t it?”

“Ay, sir. Margaret Outhwaite’s my name. My old man and I were cousins – I’m as good as the last of ’em. Ye’ll ha’ heard, sir, maybe, that the Outhwaites ha’ the reet to see t’ owd Guy —him as walks– as John Outhwaite, my husband, could have told ye.”

“Ay!” said Guy. “So I’ve heard. Won’t you sit down, and tell me about it?”

“Nay, I’ll stand. But sit ye down, sir; ye look but poorly. Ay? Ye’ll maybe have had a warstle wi’ him yersell. Eh – ay? John saw him, here on t’ brig. He held to it – at his death, and said ’twas a warning. Eh dear – he never took it!”

“Did you ever see him yourself?” asked Guy.

“Nay – I never saw un; the Lord’s left un no room. Eh, sir, have ye got religion?”

“Not quite,” said Guy.

“Eh, sir, ye mun get it; ye’re the sort to need it.”

“I do,” said Guy; “that’s so.”

“Sithee,” said the old woman, resting the basket she carried on the wall, and dropping the tone of honest pride with which she had spoken of her family’s share in the Waynflete ghost, for a coaxing whisper, “sithee, Mr Waynflete. There’s my lad; he’s a bit soft is Jemmy; but he can do a job of work; he can use a besom wi’ the best, and he’ve fettled up t’ kirk for t’ oud sexton, and pu’d t’ bell and fetched t’ watter for t’ christenings, these twenty year. But this ’ere vicar he’s a stranger. Now, Mr Waynflete, canna’ ye speak a word for my lad, t’ last Outhwaite as Waynflete’ll ever see. T’ vicar, he knows nought o’ Waynflete, and ’twas from the Glory Hallelujah men I got salvation. But ’tis all the same, sithee, t’ kirk’s never opened without my Jem, and I doubt na the Lord speaks to his saul. Eh, here a be; I’ve been a looking for him. He’s feared to cross t’ brig by ’issell. There’s no telling, there’s no telling, sir, what t’ ow’d Guy may have done to him.”

Jem, still with the weird boyishness that often clings to those of imperfect intellect, came shambling down the path from the Dragon.

“T’ pony’s shod,” he said, in a high, cracked voice, as he came in sight.

“Thanks,” said Guy, moving. “Good day to you, Mrs Outhwaite; I’ll see the vicar.”

The sunny valley had lost its smile, and for the moment Guy yielded to his sudden sense of shrinking distaste, and hurried on without a backward glance. This burlesque of his most inward and individual experience gave him a new sensation. He took his pony, and rode on up the hill to the church, where the vicar was watching the placing of the new grey slabs of stone, in place of the broken ones on the high-pitched roof. Guy tied up his pony, and sitting down on a flat tombstone, looked on also.

“Peter cast a shoe,” he said; “and Mrs Outhwaite has been pleading for Jem’s place as second grave-digger.”

“Oh, of course, one must let him literally ‘fool around’ as long as he can. His mother is pretty much of a Ranter; but so is every one here with any religion. How else would they have got it? She watches over poor Jemmy. Now and then he gets drunk at the Dragon. It’ll be a good day for him when we close it. He’s a nervous, timid creature; I’ve seen him shiver and shake sometimes in a way that was pitiful.”

“The mother says t’ owd Guy scared him.”

“Oh, well,” said the vicar, “I believe that tradition would have died out long ago but for old Peggy Outhwaite. She takes a pride in it. ‘T’ owd Guy’ is used as a sort of bogie to frighten the children; I’ve heard a mother say, ‘T’ owd Guy’ll get ye.’ It’s a sort of proverb.”

Guy made no answer; but he reflected that Mr Clifton was a South-country stranger, to whom the natives did not confide their inmost beliefs, and, being himself a North-country man, and no stranger, he enjoyed this opinion in silence. He started a little when he turned and saw the subject of the conversation standing close by him, touching his cap, and smiling at him, a slow, foolish smile.

“So you’re come to look after the church?” said Guy.

“When t’ church is fettled oop, me and sexton’ll have new clothes,” he said, in a cracked but confidential whisper.

“That’ll be fine,” said Guy, good-naturedly.

Jem grinned, nodded, and shambled off again; but, from that day forward, he attached himself to Guy with curious persistency, watching for his coming, starting up unexpectedly to hold the pony, made happy by a word or smile. He followed Guy as closely, and more humbly than Rawdie.

So it came to pass that, on the morning after her arrival with her aunt at the Hall, Florella, having found her way into part of the wood that covered Flete Edge, heard a sharp bark, and beheld Rawdie come scurrying over last year’s leaves and this year’s primroses, till a shrill whistle stopped him short.

Florella stood still also, as, coming across a clearing in the underwood, she saw Guy riding his little rough pony, and behind him, like a shadow, the grotesque figure of Jem Outhwaite. They were a strange and unusual pair, with the grotesque little dog for a herald.

Guy sprang off the pony, and came forward with an eager greeting.

“We knew you were coming yesterday,” he said. “Clifton and I meant to call this afternoon. I am so glad I am still here. Oh yes,” as she murmured an inquiry and a greeting, “I am quite strong now.”

After a few more sentences, he paused and said, with a smile, and a little shyness, “I want to show you something.”

He led her a few steps aside, along a little foot-track towards a bank, covered all over with the long trails and open flowers of the smaller periwinkle.

“There!” he said. “I have been watching these every day, to see if they would be ready for you. The spring blue-bells won’t be here for a long time; but these – they are blue – they are like stars – won’t they make a picture?”

“They are just what I wanted to see,” she said. “I have hardly ever been in the country in spring.”

“Let me get you some to take home and learn them. When I look at flowers, I almost think of how you will see them, and then I know how pretty they are.”

He put the long sprays into her hand, and they looked into one another’s eyes, and felt nothing but the spring, the flowers, and each other’s presence.

At first Guy wished for no more. He did not try to draw Florella more closely into his inner life, she made the outer one so fair. It was delightful to see her cut cake and pour out tea, to hear her chat to her aunt, or play with Rawdie, and when, at Mr Clifton’s suggestion, she undertook some little kindnesses to a few old women, a little notice of some rough girls, when she put her hand to the help of Waynflete, it seemed to Guy in truth like the descent of an angel.