Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (346 page)

“It’s well you came so early, sir,” said the old man, when I had mentioned the object of my visit. “I should have been away in ten minutes more. Parish business, sir, and a goodish long trot before it’s all done for a man at my age. But, bless you, I’m strong on my legs still! As long as a man don’t give at his legs, there’s a deal of work left in him. Don’t you think so yourself, sir?”

He took his keys down while he was talking from a hook behind the fireplace, and locked his cottage door behind us.

“Nobody at home to keep house for me,” said the clerk, with a cheerful sense of perfect freedom from all family encumbrances. “My wife’s in the churchyard there, and my children are all married. A wretched place this, isn’t it, sir? But the parish is a large one — every man couldn’t get through the business as I do. It’s learning does it, and I’ve had my share, and a little more. I can talk the Queen’s English (God bless the Queen!), and that’s more than most of the people about here can do. You’re from London, I suppose, sir? I’ve been in London a matter of five-and-twenty year ago. What’s the news there now, if you please?”

Chattering on in this way, he led me back to the vestry. I looked about to see if the two spies were still in sight. They were not visible anywhere. After having discovered my application to the clerk, they had probably concealed themselves where they could watch my next proceedings in perfect freedom.

The vestry door was of stout old oak, studded with strong nails, and the clerk put his large heavy key into the lock with the air of a man who knew that he had a difficulty to encounter, and who was not quite certain of creditably conquering it.

“I’m obliged to bring you this way, sir,” he said, “because the door from the vestry to the church is bolted on the vestry side. We might have got in through the church otherwise. This is a perverse lock, if ever there was one yet. It’s big enough for a prison-door — it’s been hampered over and over again, and it ought to be changed for a new one. I’ve mentioned that to the churchwarden fifty times over at least — he’s always saying, ‘I’ll see about it’ — and he never does see. Ah, It’s a sort of lost corner, this place. Not like London — is it, sir? Bless you, we are all asleep here! We don’t march with the times.”

After some twisting and turning of the key, the heavy lock yielded, and he opened the door.

The vestry was larger than I should have supposed it to be, judging from the outside only. It was a dim, mouldy, melancholy old room, with a low, raftered ceiling. Round two sides of it, the sides nearest to the interior of the church, ran heavy wooden presses, worm-eaten and gaping with age. Hooked to the inner corner of one of these presses hung several surplices, all bulging out at their lower ends in an irreverent-looking bundle of limp drapery. Below the surplices, on the floor, stood three packing-cases, with the lids half off, half on, and the straw profusely bursting out of their cracks and crevices in every direction. Behind them, in a corner, was a litter of dusty papers, some large and rolled up like architects’ plans, some loosely strung together on files like bills or letters. The room had once been lighted by a small side window, but this had been bricked up, and a lantern skylight was now substituted for it. The atmosphere of the place was heavy and mouldy, being rendered additionally oppressive by the closing of the door which led into the church. This door also was composed of solid oak, and was bolted at the top and bottom on the vestry side.

“We might be tidier, mightn’t we, sir?” said the cheerful clerk; “but when you’re in a lost corner of a place like this, what are you to do? Why, look here now, just look at these packing-cases. There they’ve been, for a year or more, ready to go down to London — there they are, littering the place, and there they’ll stop as long as the nails hold them together. I’ll tell you what, sir, as I said before, this is not London. We are all asleep here. Bless you, WE don’t march with the times!”

“What is there in the packing-cases?” I asked.

“Bits of old wood carvings from the pulpit, and panels from the chancel, and images from the organ-loft,” said the clerk. “Portraits of the twelve apostles in wood, and not a whole nose among ‘em. All broken, and worm-eaten, and crumbling to dust at the edges. As brittle as crockery, sir, and as old as the church, if not older.”

“And why were they going to London? To be repaired?”

“That’s it, sir, to be repaired, and where they were past repair, to be copied in sound wood. But, bless you, the money fell short, and there they are, waiting for new subscriptions, and nobody to subscribe. It was all done a year ago, sir. Six gentlemen dined together about it, at the hotel in the new town. They made speeches, and passed resolutions, and put their names down, and printed off thousands of prospectuses. Beautiful prospectuses, sir, all flourished over with Gothic devices in red ink, saying it was a disgrace not to restore the church and repair the famous carvings, and so on. There are the prospectuses that couldn’t be distributed, and the architect’s plans and estimates, and the whole correspondence which set everybody at loggerheads and ended in a dispute, all down together in that corner, behind the packing-cases. The money dribbled in a little at first — but what CAN you expect out of London? There was just enough, you know, to pack the broken carvings, and get the estimates, and pay the printer’s bill, and after that there wasn’t a halfpenny left. There the things are, as I said before. We have nowhere else to put them — nobody in the new town cares about accommodating us — we’re in a lost corner — and this is an untidy vestry — and who’s to help it? — that’s what I want to know.”

My anxiety to examine the register did not dispose me to offer much encouragement to the old man’s talkativeness. I agreed with him that nobody could help the untidiness of the vestry, and then suggested that we should proceed to our business without more delay.

“Ay, ay, the marriage-register, to be sure,” said the clerk, taking a little bunch of keys from his pocket. “How far do you want to look back, sir?”

Marian had informed me of Sir Percival’s age at the time when we had spoken together of his marriage engagement with Laura. She had then described him as being forty-five years old. Calculating back from this, and making due allowance for the year that had passed since I had gained my information, I found that he must have been born in eighteen hundred and four, and that I might safely start on my search through the register from that date.

“I want to begin with the year eighteen hundred and four,” I said.

“Which way after that, sir?” asked the clerk. “Forwards to our time or backwards away from us?”

“Backwards from eighteen hundred and four.”

He opened the door of one of the presses — the press from the side of which the surplices were hanging — and produced a large volume bound in greasy brown leather. I was struck by the insecurity of the place in which the register was kept. The door of the press was warped and cracked with age, and the lock was of the smallest and commonest kind. I could have forced it easily with the walking-stick I carried in my hand.

“Is that considered a sufficiently secure place for the register?” I inquired. “Surely a book of such importance as this ought to be protected by a better lock, and kept carefully in an iron safe?”

“Well, now, that’s curious!” said the clerk, shutting up the book again, just after he had opened it, and smacking his hand cheerfully on the cover. “Those were the very words my old master was always saying years and years ago, when I was a lad. ‘Why isn’t the register’ (meaning this register here, under my hand) — ’why isn’t it kept in an iron safe?’ If I’ve heard him say that once, I’ve heard him say it a hundred times. He was the solicitor in those days, sir, who had the appointment of vestry-clerk to this church. A fine hearty old gentleman, and the most particular man breathing. As long as he lived he kept a copy of this book in his office at Knowlesbury, and had it posted up regular, from time to time, to correspond with the fresh entries here. You would hardly think it, but he had his own appointed days, once or twice in every quarter, for riding over to this church on his old white pony, to check the copy, by the register, with his own eyes and hands. ‘How do I know?’ (he used to say) ‘how do I know that the register in this vestry may not be stolen or destroyed? Why isn’t it kept in an iron safe? Why can’t I make other people as careful as I am myself? Some of these days there will be an accident happen, and when the register’s lost, then the parish will find out the value of my copy.’ He used to take his pinch of snuff after that, and look about him as bold as a lord. Ah! the like of him for doing business isn’t easy to find now. You may go to London and not match him, even THERE. Which year did you say, sir? Eighteen hundred and what?”

“Eighteen hundred and four,” I replied, mentally resolving to give the old man no more opportunities of talking, until my examination of the register was over.

The clerk put on his spectacles, and turned over the leaves of the register, carefully wetting his finger and thumb at every third page. “There it is, sir,” said he, with another cheerful smack on the open volume. “There’s the year you want.”

As I was ignorant of the month in which Sir Percival was born, I began my backward search with the early part of the year. The register-book was of the old-fashioned kind, the entries being all made on blank pages in manuscript, and the divisions which separated them being indicated by ink lines drawn across the page at the close of each entry.

I reached the beginning of the year eighteen hundred and four without encountering the marriage, and then travelled back through December eighteen hundred and three — through November and October — through —
 
—

No! not through September also. Under the heading of that month in the year I found the marriage.

I looked carefully at the entry. It was at the bottom of a page, and was for want of room compressed into a smaller space than that occupied by the marriages above. The marriage immediately before it was impressed on my attention by the circumstance of the bridegroom’s Christian name being the same as my own. The entry immediately following it (on the top of the next page) was noticeable in another way from the large space it occupied, the record in this case registering the marriages of two brothers at the same time. The register of the marriage of Sir Felix Glyde was in no respect remarkable except for the narrowness of the space into which it was compressed at the bottom of the page. The information about his wife was the usual information given in such cases. She was described as “Cecilia Jane Elster, of Park-View Cottages, Knowlesbury, only daughter of the late Patrick Elster, Esq., formerly of Bath.”

I noted down these particulars in my pocket-book, feeling as I did so both doubtful and disheartened about my next proceedings. The Secret which I had believed until this moment to be within my grasp seemed now farther from my reach than ever.

What suggestions of any mystery unexplained had arisen out of my visit to the vestry? I saw no suggestions anywhere. What progress had I made towards discovering the suspected stain on the reputation of Sir Percival’s mother? The one fact I had ascertained vindicated her reputation. Fresh doubts, fresh difficulties, fresh delays began to open before me in interminable prospect. What was I to do next? The one immediate resource left to me appeared to be this. I might institute inquiries about “Miss Elster of Knowlesbury,” on the chance of advancing towards the main object of my investigation, by first discovering the secret of Mrs. Catherick’s contempt for Sir Percival’s mother.

“Have you found what you wanted, sir?” said the clerk, as I closed the register-book.

“Yes,” I replied, “but I have some inquiries still to make. I suppose the clergyman who officiated here in the year eighteen hundred and three is no longer alive?”

“No, no, sir, he was dead three or four years before I came here, and that was as long ago as the year twenty-seven. I got this place, sir,” persisted my talkative old friend, “through the clerk before me leaving it. They say he was driven out of house and home by his wife — and she’s living still down in the new town there. I don’t know the rights of the story myself — all I know is I got the place. Mr. Wansborough got it for me — the son of my old master that I was tell you of. He’s a free, pleasant gentleman as ever lived — rides to the hounds, keeps his pointers and all that. He’s vestry-clerk here now as his father was before him.”

“Did you not tell me your former master lived at Knowlesbury?” I asked, calling to mind the long story about the precise gentleman of the old school with which my talkative friend had wearied me before he opened the register-book.

“Yes, to be sure, sir,” replied the clerk. “Old Mr. Wansborough lived at Knowlesbury, and young Mr. Wansborough lives there too.”