The Argosy | Page 8

was towards it; the Captain peered also at the end of the rapidly-darkening room: when both became aware that one of the servants--Michael, who had shown in Mr. West--stood there; had stood there all the time.
"What are you waiting for, sirrah?" roared his master. "We don't want you. Here! put this window open an inch or two before you go; the room's close."
"Shall I bring lights, sir?" asked Michael, after doing as he was directed.
"No: who wants lights? Stir the fire into a blaze."
Michael left them. It was from him that thus much of the conversation was subsequently known.
Not five minutes had elapsed when a commotion was heard in the dining-room. Then the bell rang violently, and the Captain opened the door--overturning a chair in his passage to it--and shouted out for a light. More than one servant flew to obey the order: in his hasty moods their master brooked not delay: and three separate candles were carried in.
"Good lack, master!" exclaimed the butler, John Rimmer, who was a native of Church Dykely, "what's amiss with the Parson?"
"Lift him up, and loosen his neck-cloth," said Captain Monk, his tone less imperious than usual.
Mr. West lay on the hearthrug near his chair, his head resting close to the fender. Rimmer raised his head, another servant took off his black neck-tie; for it was only on high days that the poor Vicar indulged in a white one. He gasped twice, struggled slightly, and then lay quietly in the butler's arms.
"Oh, sir!" burst forth the man in a horror-stricken voice to his master, "this is surely death!"
It surely was. George West, who had gone there but just before in the height of health and strength, had breathed his last.
How did it happen? How could it have happened? Ay, how indeed? It was a question which has never been entirely solved in Church Leet to this day.
Captain Monk's account, both privately and at the inquest, was this: As they talked further together, after Michael left the room, the Vicar went on to browbeat him shamefully about the new chimes, vowing they should never play, never be heard; at last, rising in an access of passion, the Parson struck him (the Captain) in the face. He returned the blow--who wouldn't return it?--and the Vicar fell. He believed his head must have struck against the iron fender in falling: if not, if the blow had been an unlucky one (it took effect just behind the left ear), it was only given in self-defence. The jury, composed of Captain Monk's tenants, expressed themselves satisfied, and returned a verdict of Accidental Death.
"A false account," pronounced poor Mrs. West, in her dire tribulation. "My husband never struck him--never; he was not one to be goaded into unbecoming anger, even by Captain Monk. _George struck no blow whatever_; I can answer for it. If ever a man was murdered, he has been."
Curious rumours arose. It was said that Mrs. Carradyne, taking the air on the terrace outside in the calmness of the autumn evening, heard the fatal quarrel through the open window; that she heard Mr. West, after he had received the death blow, wail forth a prophecy (or whatever it might be called) that those chimes would surely be accursed; that whenever their sound should be heard, so long as they were suffered to remain in the tower, it should be the signal of woe to the Monk family.
Mrs. Carradyne utterly denied this; she had not been on the terrace at all, she said. Upon which the onus was shifted to Michael: who, it was suspected, had stolen out to listen to the end of the quarrel, and had heard the ominous words. Michael, in his turn, also denied it; but he was not believed. Anyway, the covert whisper had gone abroad and would not be laid.
III.
Captain Monk speedily filled up the vacant living, appointing to it the Reverend Thomas Dancox, an occasional visitor at Leet Hall, who was looking out for one.
The new Vicar turned out to be a man after the Captain's heart, a rollicking, jovial, fox-hunting young parson, as many a parson was in those days--and took small blame to himself for it. He was only a year or two past thirty, good-looking, of taking manners and hail-fellow-well-met with the parish in general, who liked him and called him to his face Tom Dancox.
All this pleased Captain Monk. But very soon something was to arrive that did not please him--a suspicion that the young parson and his daughter Katherine were on rather too good terms with one another.
One day in November he stalked into the drawing-room, where Katherine was sitting with her aunt. Hubert and Eliza were away at school, also Mrs. Carradyne's two children.
"Was Dancox here last night?" began Captain Monk.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Carradyne.
"And the