The XIth Commandment

Front matter

The XIth Commandment popular 6s. Hovels. The Manxman. By Hall Caine. The Bondman. By Hall Caine. The Scapegoat. By Hall Caine. The Ebb-Tide. By R. L. Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. The Heavenly Twins. By Sarah Grand. Ideala. A Study from Life. By Sarah Grand. Our Manifold Nature. By Sarah Grand. The Master. By I. Zangwill. The King of Schnorrers. Bv I. Zangwill. Illustrated. Children of the Ghetto. By I. Zangwill. The Premier and the Fainter. By I. Zangwill and Louis Cowen. A Drama in Dutch. By ' Z. Z A Victim of Good Luck. By W. E. Norris. The Countess Radna. By W. E. Norris. Corruption. By Percy White. Stories for Ninon. By Emile Zola. A Comedy of Sentiment. By Max Nordau. Herbert Vanlennert. By C. F. Keary. In Haste and at Leisure. By E. Lynn Linton. The Potter's Thumb. By Flora Annie Steel.

Prom the Five Rivers. By Flora Annie Steel. The Last Sentence. By Maxwell Gray. The Tower of Taddeo. By Ouida. Illustrated. The Naulahka. By Rudyard Kipling and Wolcott Balestier. The O'Connors of Ballinahinoh. By Mrs. Hungerford. A Superfluous Woman. By E. F. Brooke. Transition. By the Author of ' A Superfluous Woman.' At the Gate of Samaria. By W. J. Locke. Elder Conklin, and other Stories. By Frank Harris. Terminations. By Henry James. Sentimental Studies. By H. Crackanthorpe. Chimæra. By F. Mabel Robinson. An Imaginative Man. By R. S. Hichens. Out of Due Season. By Adeline Sergeant. Miss Grace of All Souls'. By W. E. Tirebuck. The Years that the Locust hath Eaten. By Annie E. Holdsworth. A Self-Denying Ordinance. By M. Hamilton. London: WM. HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford St., W.C. The XIth Commandment By Halliwell Sutcliffe London William Heinemann All rights reserved CONTENTS BOOK THE FIRST.

Chapter- Page I. The New Curate ..... 3 //. And the Old Adam II ///. A Brother and— a Man? . . . .19 IV. The Leaven of Sincerity .... 30 V. The Awakening of Godfrey Knipe . . 36 VI. A Fen Paradise 48 VII. ' Qui Sera Sera ' 57 VIII. Water Lilies 64 IX. The Squire ttnbends ..... 67 X. Smith of Trinity 77 XI. The Nightingale Way .... 85 XII. The Family Temper 95 XIII. A Dog named Towzer .... 106 XIV. An Advertisement and a Reply . . .112 XV. The New Gamekeeper . . . .120 BOOK THE SECOND. /. An Al Fresco Honeymoon .... 129 II. A Latter-day Bishop 135 ///. Dante Gabriel 145 IV. Fool and Knave 151 V. A Proposal 161 VI. And a Contrast CONTENTS VI Chapter Page VII. A Daughter of the Paneho/mes . . . 175 VIII. Kelmar entertains . . . • .187 IX. The Resurrection of Buried 'Treasons . . 199 X. The Squire forgets Himself . . 21 3 XI.

Chapter II. And The Old Adam

The Hon. Mrs. Daneholme, the Squire's wife, was a tall, well-preserved woman of perhaps fifty, whose chief feature was a pair of lorgnettes. These lorgnettes were as essential a part of her as the eyes to whose vision they rendered a doubtful assistance. No living being outside Plover Court had ever seen her without them — except one man, who found her in an unguarded moment, and who confessed afterwards that he had blushed to the roots of his hair. To see Mrs. Daneholme un lorgnetted was, as it were, to see her a little more un clothed than propriety permitted. She had also one other distinctive characteristic, namely, the phrase ' How odd !' This phrase, as in the case of the lorgnettes, had commenced as an affectation, and had grown to be a habit. Everything was odd to her. It was odd that a man should have brains, or disbelieve anything he had been taught.

It was odd that her butler, who had been in the family for twenty years, should one day incontinently die. 'My dear, how excessively odd!' she had said to her husband on this occasion. ' And so disturbing, too ; he might have waited until after Lord Paunceforth's visit.' When, a few days after his visit to Mrs. Bilbram, he was taken to call on the Squiress, the new curate found the experience as instructive as any that had preceded it. One of the rafters in the dining-room at Plover Court had been smouldering for days, and they had discovered the fact on the preceding Sunday morning. ' And I have been so worried, Mr. Burmantofts, you really have no idea. I had to be here, there, and every where, directing the servants and sending for help and so on. If you will believe me, I had not time even to go to church.' The pious intonation on the ' even,' and the saint-like expression assumed, were done with admirable trans parency, as was the Vicar's responding solemnity. ' Such a worry these firemen are,' went on Mrs. Dane holme, turning to Knipe. ' We had the local brigade up, and they seemed to think that smoke, soot, and fire were not enough — they must needs deluge the dining-room with water.

Really, I could not decide whether the fire men or the fire itself were preferable. But then, poor things, I suppose they couldn't do anything else, if one comes to think of it.' ' You escaped very lightly, I think,' said Knipe. ' Once a beam begins to smoulder in that way, the whole house may be on fire before you get to know where the mischief lies.' ' The whole house on fire ! Mr. Knipe, you horrify me ! It would be so very odd to be left without a roof over one's head ; one can scarcely imagine what it would be like. Yes, I suppose I ought to be grateful — I really ought to be grateful — though I am sure I don't know why fires and things slwuld happen.' The Vicar interjected an appropriately dull remark, and a lull occurred. Conversation in the Plover drawing-room was apt to be like April showers, light and inter mittent.

In the midst of the pause the lorgnettes went up, and the curate found himself being critically sur veyed. His exterior was prepossessing, and Mrs. Dane holme's countenance expressed satisfaction. ' And I hope you like your new sphere of action, Mr. Knipe ? There are terrible responsibilities connected with a position such as yours, but I trust you will find us hospitable.' Knipe could not quite see the connection between the two halves of this little speech ; but that was only because he was new to the place. The Saxilton habit of combining religious with social slang was apt to be a little perplexing to strangers. Before he could respond to his hostess, the Rev. Charles Burmantofts, fearful of some sincerity escaping his curate, as it had done at Stonylands House and elsewhere, intervened. ' I think no one could complain of your hospitality, Mrs. Daneholme,' he said with a pleased smile.

The Vicar was in earnest now. A glance at his well developed anatomy, or the sleek curve of his enormous chin, was sufficient testimony to his appreciation of all hospitality that came in his way. ' And you must dine with us quite soon,' Mrs. Dane holme prattled on. ' My husband will be sorry he has missed you ; he is out somewhere with Beatrice. Do you know,' turning to the Vicar, ' I do so want him to take us up to town for the season next year ; is it not dull here ? Besides, it would do Beatrice so much good ; girls are apt to become terribly provincial if they do not see something of society, are they not ? But my husband is wedded to his fields and woods, and he turns a deaf ear to all my persuasions.' She stopped for a moment in order to make a little grimace of despair, and Mr. Burmantofts seized the opportunity to descant on the advantages of a London season, hinting vaguely at beautiful women he had met in drawing-rooms, and letting it be understood that it was only his systematic caution which had enabled him to escape their wiles.

And the Squiress looked archly at him, and shook her lorgnettes reprovingly. The Vicar was not a pleasant object to look upon when he talked of pretty women. All that was fleshly and cunning and suggestive about him came to the front, and he seemed to say plainly that he could be quite fascinatingly depraved if it were not for his position. The fact was, he was a matrimaniac ; that is, he would dearly have liked to marry every pretty woman he saw, had it not been that his income was limited and that he was loath to give up bachelor comforts. This very tendency caused him, in practice, to shun marriageable women as if they were the victims of a plague. ' What will people say ?' was his anxious thought, if he chanced merely to walk down the street with a lady. And yet he dearly loved to be rallied on the subject, in spite of his fears.

Marriage was to him a delicately baited trap, round and round which he was everlastingly meekly stealing, with a soft-footed prowling that to a spectator was both unpleasant and ridiculous. They met the Squire and his daughter soon after leaving the house, and the curate was formally intro duced. He looked at Beatrice Daneholme and saw a dainty figure of medium height, brown hair curling over a low, wide forehead, soft grey eyes and a sensitive mouth and chin ; and even in the act of acknowledging the Squire's brief ' My daughter,' he compared this refreshing vision with the lorgnetted lady whom he had so lately left. He almost expostulated with Mr. Dane holme ; it seemed absurd that the two could be mother and daughter, and some strange mistake must have been made. The Squire turned back with Mr. Burmantofts in order to discuss some details of parish business, and the others followed them at a little distance.

The Rev. Godfrey Knipe discovered, to his great delight, that the girl was indeed ' terribly provincial ' — in her mother's sense of the term : her manners were so pretty and unaffected, and she talked as if she had some respect for human nature and herself. He heaved a sigh of relief : after his experiences of the last few days, it was like a draught of cool spring-water to be in her company. Beatrice, on her side, was rapidly coming to the con clusion that her early experience had been unfortunate, and that a parson might likewise be a man, when the others stopped and waited for them. ' We must be going back, Beatrice,' said the Squire. Then, turning to Knipe, he added, in the cold, grave tone that was habitual with him : ' I trust we shall see you again soon at Plover Court. My wife has asked you to dine with us ?' And the light pressure of the girl's hand as she said good-bye rendered the prospect of a formal dinner at the Squire's much less terrible than Knipe would have thought possible half an hour ago. ' Most hospitable people — excellent people 1'interjected the Vicar, as they resumed their walk. 'The present Squire is a very different man from the old, if the gossip of the place is to be believed.' ' Yes ?' queried Knipe, who wished to know more about this tall, stern man with the upright carriage and the clean-shaven face that seemed to have been chiselled from a block of one of his own oak-trees. ' The old Squire was known to half the county : a hard-swearing, hard-living, hard-riding man, who had not set his face inside a church for years.

But Mr. Daneholme, his son, is our best supporter : entertains all the clergy of the neighbourhood, gives largely to charities, and is altogether a most respectable man.' ' And is there no trace of the old Adam in him ?' asked Knipe, who, truth to tell, was a little disappointed at the contrast afforded by the Squire's face and the character which Mr. Burmantofts had just given him. ' Hasn't the paternal hard living left some sort of mark on him ?' ' Oh, well, he has sown his wild oats, you know, like most people ; but that was in his younger days, forgotten long before I came here.' The Vicar moved closer to his companion, in a suggestive, confidential way that was peculiarly his own. ' I say, Knipe, though, I could tell you a few stories about him that would make you jump. People don't remember them much now, but I have gathered some strange tales — queer woman living away in the middle of the moor — little Daneholmes that aren't known by that name— midnight orgies with poachers.

But ' — the Rev. Charles, having exhausted what Uttle he had learned of the Squire's past, drew himself up with an air of dignity — ' but what is the good of raking up things that are over and done with ? I don't believe in keeping scandal alive. Mr. Daneholme is a man in a thousand now, whatever he may have been.' ' His past was picturesque, at any rate,' Knipe murmured to himself ; ' which can scarcely be said of his present mode of life, if my Vicar has not maligned him. And, of course, he'll break out again one day, to a certainty ; a man with a face like that can't play the hypocrite to the end.' ' Is he popular in the place ?' he asked, after a pause. ' Well, perhaps not quite so much as he ought to be among the townspeople ; but, then, they are a radical lot, you know, and always ready to find fault with their betters.' Later, the curate learnt that the Squire, some years after coming into possession, had signalized his reign by putting up twice as many trespass boards on his estate as had been there formerly, and by demanding from the township an additional £500 to the £1,000 which they had paid his predecessor for their water-supply.

All things considered, it was hardly likely that the poorer classes would look impartially on the Squire's compen sating respectability and alms-giving : they have not often much to gain by liberality of that kind. The Vicar rambled on in his description, but Knipe could not learn that Walter Daneholme had one single trait of gentleness or kindly feeling in his whole nature. ' Then, he makes no apology for himself ?' he asked abruptly. ' Apology ! What do you mean by apology ?' ' Merely that, holding such a position as his in a hard headed North-Country town, he appears to be the most impertinent of anachronisms, and I thought that a little gilding of the pill might have been advisable.' ' Why, Knipe, I believe you are a regular democrat,' observed the Vicar, with an attempt at raillery. ' Yes, I try to be fairly consistent,' the other responded in a light tone, intended to remove any latent sting from the tail of his remark.

The levity notwithstanding, the Rev. Charles Burman tofts had a glimmering of his meaning, and did not care to pursue the subject further. When you have been a Vicar for five years, it is unpleasant to have a raw curate come and sting into hfe what rudiments of conscience are still left to you. That Knipe was raw as yet, admitted of no question ; despite his thirty years, he brought to his new work a hot-headed enthusiasm, and a contempt for any but theoretic rights and wrongs, such as would not have dis graced a boy of twenty. He was eager to run his head violently against any brick wall of prejudice which came in his way ; and he was quite unprepared, at present, to admit that a quiet and unobtrusive climbing of the said wall might be productive of better results than he could ever achieve by the breaking of his head.

Yet the parish of Saxilton was perhaps none the worse for an over-dose of such stimulant as the new curate was prepared to offer it. Knipe's thoughts, meanwhile, had wandered from the Squire's general characteristics to a particular blemish. He found himself regarding the blemish from every standpoint, he assigned every cause to it, with that odd wayward persistency which takes hold of all of us at times. ' How did the Squire come by that curious mark on his under-lip ?' he queried absently, as they turned out of the wood-road and over the bridge by the old corn-mill. ' Oh, a dog of his bit him, or something ; I forget the story,' said the Vicar carelessly. ' A strange place for a dog to tackle,' mused the curate. ' It does seem so, but I never heard any other explanation. By the way, I should have told you that the Squire has a nephew.

He and the son are in their last year at Oxford — a perfectly awful man ! He says the most out rageous things just as they come into his head. What do you think he said to me once, when I had been trying to get him to church on a saint's day ? He remarked that the Millennium was only possible when our saints were out of the way. What do you think of that, Knipe ?' ' I think,' said Knipe, with a gentle laugh, ' that I should like to know that man.' ' Did you meet the new curate and Mr. Burmantofts on your way here ?' asked Mrs. Daneholme, as her husband entered the drawing-room. The Squire indicated assent. ' Do you know, I liked him from the first ; and it is so odd, my dear — I was struck with his name, which is a very uncommon one, and I asked him if he was any relation of Sir Gerald Knipe.

He turns out to be his second son, and it is quite delightful : I shall have so much more interest in him. Sir Gerald and I were great friends in the old days, before I met you, you know,' she finished, with a coquettish nod of the head and a smile that suggested infinite romance. Mr. Daneholme looked down on his wife with much the same air that a mastiff assumes when a puppy is taking liberties with him. ' Really ! most interesting !' he murmured. ' Thank you — yes, I will have some tea. Mr. Knipe appears to be an earnest man, although I have not had more than a few words with him.' How earnest the Rev. Godfrey Knipe was, the Squire had yet to learn by somewhat painful experience.

Chapter III

A BROTHER AND A MAN ? The Rev. Godfrey Knipe had just returned to his rooms, weary and a little sick at heart. He had that afternoon finished his round of calls upon the substantial parishioners ; he had found ill-bred vacuity on one side of the valley, well-bred vacuity on the other, and there was apparently little of culture or education to which he would be able to turn for occasional comfort. After tea — which was his substitute for dinner — he assumed a disreputable old boating blazer, seated him self before the fire, and placed his legs on the mantelpiece. Then, having filled and lighted a large briar, he abandoned himself to smoke-wreaths and reflection. His spirits were perceptibly rising, for he remembered Beatrice Daneholme and the little she seemed to have in common with the people about her ; he remembered, also, that his work here lay among the poor, and that he was at last free to enter, heart and soul, into his labours.

His eyes wandered to a large engraving of the ' Bath of Psyche' which hung over the mantelpiece, and he laughed as he recalled his Vicar's horror on first seeing it. ' What's this, Knipe ? Why, really, really, a nude figure ! Most indelicate ! most unsuitable for the room of a clergyman ! What'll people say when they see it ?' he had expostulated. Mr. Burmantofts' conception of purity was temptation smothered in clothes ; Knipe's was a healthy ability to dispense with draperies — which revealed a radical differ ence in the two men's characters. From this, Knipe fell to pondering on the difficulty of working with a Vicar who was summed up in the two phrases, ' You must be cautious ' and ' What will people think ?' An odd fancy occurred to him. He saw, among the smoke-clouds over his head, the hoary old parish church, situated in the heart of the town, its graveyard barely warding off the houses from pressing on its very walls.

On the coping of the roof was lying his Vicar, equipped with a magnificent pair of wings, and with the ? 21 tips of the wings he was delicately tickling the south and north sides of the valley, thus preserving a nicely-adjusted equilibrium. ' As a gymnastic exhibition it is pretty enough,' murmured Knipe ; ' I can't hope to rival Burmantofts in that direction. But he is in danger of losing his balance at any moment ; if I could once show him how much safer it is to abandon the wings and the posture ' His reverie was interrupted by the entry of his land lady, who ushered in a stranger. ' Ah— Mr. Knipe, I believe ? How d'ye do ? The— er — Vicar said that I might find you in. I am the — ah — other cuwate, don't you know. Have just weturned from my holiday.' Knipe had heard of the other curate, the Rev. Fordham Fynche, from his Vicar, who had explained that he was an extreme High Churchman, and that he was kept as a kind of compliment to the Squire and the ladies of the place.

Looking at him now, Knipe could readily believe it. In the apologetically rounded shoulders, the delicately pink cheeks, and the lank flaxen hair, he saw every detestable weakness that goes to make a parson popular with the average Churchy woman. Mr. Fynche was one of those sweet curates whom one wanted to tie up with a piece of pink ribbon and put away in a drawer, lest he should come to grief among the perils of an un sympathizing world. He was described by the young ladies of the place as ' sweet and heavenly, and such a love of a man.' He pronounced his ' r's ' as ' w's,' and lisped slightly. These last peculiarities had been carefully cultivated, because he did not wish people to forget that he was grand-nephew to an earl. ' Glad to meet you,' murmured Knipe, as they shook hands ; ' won't you take off your things ?' When finally Mr. Fynche had emerged from the multiplicity of his outer wraps (it was still October, but he was ' so sensitive to— ah— chills, don't you know '), and had taken a chair on the other side of the hearth, Knipe pushed the tobaccoj ar towards him. ' Pipe ?' he asked. 'Ah — no, thank you; I don't smoke,' responded the other, as though tobacco were one of the pitfalls he had triumphantly avoided.

In reality, his first attempts in that direction had not encouraged him to proceed ; but he was not alone in his system of regarding weaknesses as virtues — we most of us do. ' And — er — how do you like the pawish ?' asked Mr. Fynche, leaning back languidly in his chair. ' I can hardly say as yet ; you see, I have not begun my real work here, and have seen scarcely anyone,' Knipe responded, as he resumed his old attitude of comfort. ' Ah, then, the Vicar has not taken you — er — about much yet ?' ' Only to a few of the rich parishioners,' answered Knipe carelessly. Mr. Fynche looked at his host ; it seemed odd that he should speak in so light a way of the bulwarks of the Church. Then his eyes wandered to the pipe, and from the pipe to the boating blazer, and from the blazer to the slippered feet that were reposing amongst the photographs on the mantelpiece.

And Mr. Fynche sighed a little as he pieced all these outward and visible signs together, for he began to fear that his ' ah — bwother-in-arms ' was one of those uncomfortable people with ideas. 'And they are so rarely gentlemen,' he whispered plaintively to himself. He struggled manfully, however, to maintain a flow of conversation; he talked of stoles, of altars, of the need they had for a new organ in the church, and so on, until he reached the people who were able to appreciate the stoles, and decorate the altar, and furnish funds for the new organ. ' And Miss Bilbram, you have met her ? Is she not perfectly — ah — adowable?' The curate assumed an ex pression half pious, half diffident, as of one who did not altogether refuse the admission of small amours into his life. ' She is so good, so devoted to the Church, so — er — pure, don't you know, in every way.

Perhaps it is carnal, just a little worldly, but one cannot help feeling that God's most faithful servants ought to be chosen from these fair maidens with the saintlike faces and the — ah — the exquisite waists.' Knipe began to think that Mr. Fynche must be a man of originality, of imagination ; it was an entirely new view of Edith Bilbram that had been put forward just now. If a man could consider her face saint-like, or her waist as a passport to serious consideration, he must be either a seer or an imbecile; perhaps Mr. Fynche appeared at first sight to come under the second heading, but, then, it was unjust to judge a man by first impressions. 'And what are the poor people like?' Knipe asked presently. ' Ah, the poor ? I fear that I am — er — unacquainted with them. You see, when I first came here, my Vicar wished me to visit at their houses, and it seemed to be — ah — an understood thing that a small part of one's time should be taken up in that way, as a kind of formality ; but I found it quite impossible to continue my ministwations in that diwection.

The people were most wude and disagweeable to me, and I am exceptionally sensitive to wudeness ; they tweated me as if I were one of themselves.' ' Did they !' exclaimed Knipe. \Then I should say you succeeded uncommonly well ; it was the greatest compliment they could pay you.' ' Ah, but I fear you do not understand the howwible kind of poor people you get here. I mean, when I say that they sweated me as one of themselves, that they — ah— swore at me, and — and weally they showed no wespect at all.' Knipe continued the easy process of drawing out the Rev. Fordham Fynche. ' But what did you do to cause this expression of sentiment ? Surely they must have mistaken your motives in visiting them ?' ' Yes, that was just what they did. They are so — so dead to the finer feelings, you know, and they could not see how much I was sacwificing for them.

There was one man I went to visit : I think his name was Dacey ; he lives in a most disreputable part of the town. I had made up my mind to be quite — ah — condescending, quite affable, with this kind of person, and I entered his house and went stwaight up to him. " We must be — ah — fwiends, you know," I said to him, holding out my hand. Those were my exact words, and — would you believe it ? — the fellow did not appear in the least gwateful ; on the contwawy, he placed his hand behind his back and asked me who I was, and why I had come into his house without a by-your-leave ; and he re peatedly spoke of — of the Prince of Evil. Then all the people in the woom — there was quite a large number of them dwinking and smoking— laughed bwutally, and I should have been vewy angwy if I had not recalled my sacwed mission, and how we are taught to offer the other cheek.

So I just stood there and let them see how I despised them ; then I asked Dacey if he did not think dwinking and smoking harmful to his soul's welfare, and if at least he had not better smoke milder tobacco, and he suddenly became quite unweasonably fewocious, and said — er — "damn," several times. Of course, I could not stay to hear language of that kind, and I hastened to the door. Just as I was leaving he called me a — a ' Yes ?' asked Knipe gently. ' I weally do not know whether I ought to wepeat the expwession. How shall I put it ? He said I was a — sanguinary black-beetle : was it not howwible ?' Knipe did not laugh outwardly ; self-restraint was an instinct with him. ' But, you see,' he remarked, with an outward gravity that did him credit, ' the mere use of oaths does not mean the same thing to him and to you.