University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
IN WHICH SEVENOAKS EXPERIENCES A GREAT COMMOTION, AND
COMES TO THE CONCLUSION THAT BENEDICT HAS MET
WITH FOUL PLAY.

Thomas Buffum and his family slept late on Sunday morning,
and the operating forces of the establishment lingered in
their beds. When, at last, the latter rose and opened the
doors of the dormitories, the escape of Benedict was detected.
Mr. Buffium was summoned at once, and hastened across the
street in his shirt-sleeves, which, by the way, was about as far
toward full dress as he ever went when the weather did not
compel him to wear a coat. Buffum examined the inner door
and saw that it had been forced by a tremendous exercise of
muscular power. He remembered the loss of the key, and
knew that some one had assisted in the operation.

“Where's that boy?” wheezed the keeper.

An attendant rushed to the room where the boy usually
slept, and came back with the report that the bed had not
been occupied. Then there was a search outside for tracks,
but the rain had obliterated them all. The keeper was in
despair. He did not believe that Benedict could have survived
the storm of the night, and he did not doubt that the
boy had undertaken to hide his father somewhere.

“Go out, all of you, all round, and find 'em,” hoarsely
whispered Mr. Buffum, “and bring 'em back, and say nothing
about it.”

The men, including several of the more reliable paupers,
divided themselves into little squads, and departed without
breakfast, in order to get back before the farmers should drive

by on their way to church. The orchards, the woods, the
thickets—all possible covers—were searched, and searched, of
course, in vain. One by one the parties returned to report
that they could not find the slightest sign of the fugitives.

Mr. Buffum, who had not a question that the little boy had
planned and executed the escape, assisted by the paroxysmal
strength of his insane father, felt that he was seriously compromised.
The flight and undoubted death of old Tilden
were too fresh in the public mind to permit this new reflection
upon his faithfulness and efficiency as a public guardian
to pass without a popular tumult. He had but just assumed
the charge of the establishment for another year, and he
knew that Robert Belcher would be seriously offended, for
more reasons than the public knew, or than that person would
be willing to confess. He had never in his life been in more
serious trouble. He hardly tasted his breakfast, and was too
crusty and cross to be safely addressed by any member of his
family. Personally he was not in a condition to range the
fields, and when he had received the reports of the parties
who had made the search, he felt that he had a job to undertake
too serious for his single handling.

In the meantime, Mr. Belcher had risen at his leisure, in
blissful unconsciousness of the calamities that had befallen his
protegè. He owned a pew in every church in Sevenoaks, and
boasted that he had no preferences. Once every Sunday he
went to one of these churches; and there was a fine flutter
throughout the building whenever he and his family appeared.
He felt that the building had received a special honor from
his visit; but if he was not guided by his preferences, he certainly
was by his animosities. If for three or four Sabbaths
in succession he honored a single church by his presence, it
was usually to pay off a grudge against some minister or
member of another flock. He delighted to excite the suspicion
that he had at last become attached to one clergyman,
and that the other churches were in danger of being forsaken
by him. It would be painful to paint the popular weakness

and the ministerial jealousy—painful to describe the lack of
Christian dignity—with which these demonstrations of
worldly caprice and arrogance, were watched by pastor and
flock.

After the town meeting and the demonstration of the Rev.
Solomon Snow, it was not expected that Mr. Belcher would
visit the church of the latter for some months. During the
first Sabbath after this event, there was gloom in that clergyman's
congregation; for Mr. Belcher, in his routine, should
have illuminated their public services by his presence, but he
did not appear.

“This comes,” bitterly complained one of the deacons,
“of a minister's meddling with public affairs.”

But during the week following, Mr. Belcher had had a
satisfactory interview with Mr. Snow, and on the morning of
the flight of Benedict he drove in the carriage with his family
up to the door of that gentleman's church, and gratified the
congregation and its reverend head by walking up the broad
aisle, and, with his richly dressed flock, taking his old seat.

As he looked around upon the humbler parishioners, he
seemed to say, by his patronizing smile: “Mr. Snow and the
great proprietor are at peace. Make yourselves easy, and
enjoy your sunshine while it lasts.”

Mr. Buffum never went to church. He had a theory that
it was necessary for him to remain in charge of his establishment,
and that he was doing a good thing by sending his servants
and dependents. When, therefore, he entered Mr.
Snow's church on the Sunday morning which found Mr. Belcher
comfortably seated there, and stumped up the broad aisle in
his shirt-sleeves, the amazement of the minister and the congregation
may be imagined. If he had been one of his own
insane paupers en deshabille he could not have excited more
astonishment or more consternation.

Mr. Snow stopped in the middle of a stanza of the first
hymn, as if the words had dried upon his tongue. Every
thing seemed to stop. Of this, however, Mr. Buffum was ignorant.

He had no sense of the proprieties of the house,
and was intent only on reaching Mr. Belcher's pew.

Bending to his patron's ear, he whispered a few words,
received a few words in return, and then retired. The proprietor's
face was red with rage and mortification, but he
tried to appear unconcerned, and the services went on to their
conclusion. Boys who sat near the windows stretched their
necks to see whether smoke was issuing from the poor-house;
and it is to be feared that the ministrations of the morning
were not particularly edifying to the congregation at large.
Even Mr. Snow lost his place in his sermon more frequently
than usual. When the meeting was dismissed, a hundred
heads came together in chattering surmise, and when they
walked into the streets, the report of Benedict's escape with
his little boy met them. They understood, too, why Buffum
had come to Mr. Belcher with his trouble. He was Mr. Belcher's
man, and Mr. Belcher had publicly assumed responsibility
for him.

No more meetings were held in any of the churches of
Sevenoaks that day. The ministers came to perform the services
of the afternoon, and, finding their pews empty, went
home. A reward of one hundred dollars, offered by Mr. Belcher
to any one who would find Benedict and his boy, “and
return them in safety to the home provided for them by the
town,” was a sufficient apology, without the motives of curiosity
and humanity and the excitement of a search in the
fields and woods, for a universal relinquishment of Sunday
habits, and the pouring out of the whole population on an
expedition of discovery.

Sevenoaks and its whole vicinity presented a strange aspect
that afternoon. There had slept in the hearts of the people
a pleasant and sympathetic memory of Mr. Benedict. They
had seen him struggling, dreaming, hopeful, yet always disappointed,
dropping lower and lower into poverty, and, at last,
under accumulated trials, deprived of his reason. They knew
but little of his relations to Mr. Belcher, but they had a

strong suspicion that he had been badly treared by the proprietor,
and that it had been in the power of the latter to save
him from wreck. So, when it became known that he had
escaped with his boy from the poor-house, and that both had
been exposed to the storm of the previous night, they all—
men and boys—covered the fields, and filled the woods for
miles around, in a search so minute that hardly a rod of cover
was left unexplored.

It was a strange excitement which stirred the women at
home, as well as the men afield. Nothing was thought of
but the fugitives and the pursuit.

Robert Belcher, in the character of principal citizen, was
riding back and forth behind his gray trotters, and stimulating
the search in every quarter. Poor Miss Butterworth sat at
her window, making indiscriminate inquiries of every passenger,
or going about from house to house, working off her nervous
anxiety in meaningless activities.

As the various squads became tired by their long and unsuccessful
search, they went to the poor-house to report, and,
before sunset, the hill was covered by hundreds of weary and
excited men. Some were sure they had discovered traces of
the fugitives. Others expressed the conviction that they had
thrown themselves into a well. One man, who did not love
Mr. Belcher, and had heard the stories of his ill-treatment of
Benedict, breathed the suspicion that both he and his boy had
been foully dealt with by one who had an interest in getting
them out of the way.

It was a marvel to see how quickly this suspicion took wing.
It seemed to be the most rational theory of the event. It
went from mouth to mouth and ear to ear, as the wind
breathes among the leaves of a forest; but there were reasons
in every man's mind, or instincts in his nature, that withheld
the word “murder” from the ear of Mr. Belcher. As soon
as the suspicion became general, the aspect of every incident
of the flight changed. Then they saw, apparently for the
first time, that a man weakened by disease and long confinement,

and never muscular at his best, could not have forced
the inner door of Benedict's cell. Then they connected Mr.
Belcher's behavior during the day with the affair, and, though
they said nothing at the time, they thought of his ostentatious
anxiety, his evident perturbation when Mr. Buffum announced
to him the escape, his offer of the reward for Benedict's discovery,
and his excited personal appearance among them. He
acted like a guilty man—a man who was trying to blind them,
and divert suspicion from himself.

To the great horror of Mr. Buffum, his establishment was
thoroughly inspected and ransacked, and, as one after another
left the hill for his home, he went with indignation and
shame in his heart, and curses on his lips. Even if Benedict
and his innocent boy had been murdered, murder was not the
only foul deed that had been committed on the hill. The
poor-house itself was an embodied crime against humanity
and against Christianity, for which the town of Sevenoaks at
large was responsible, though it had been covered from their
sight by Mr. Belcher and the keeper. It would have taken
but a spark to kindle a conflagration. Such was the excitement
that only a leader was needed to bring the tumult of a
violent mob around the heads of the proprietor and his protege.

Mr. Belcher was not a fool, and he detected, as he sat in
his wagon talking with Buffum in a low tone, the change that
had come over the excited groups around him. They looked
at him as they talked, with a serious scrutiny to which he was
unused. They no more addressed him with suggestions and
inquiries. They shunned his neighborhood, and silently went
off down the hill. He knew, as well as if they had been
spoken, that there were not only suspicions against him, but indignation
over the state of things that had been discovered in
the establishment, for whose keeper he had voluntarily become
responsible. Notwithstanding all his efforts to assist them in
their search, he knew that in their hearts they charged him with
Benedict's disappearance. At last he bade Buffum good-night,
and went down the hill to his home.

He had no badinage for Phipps during that drive, and no
pleasant reveries in his library during that evening, for all the
possibilities of the future passed through his mind in dark review.
If Benedict had been murdered, who could have any
interest in his death but himself? If he had died from exposure,
his secrets would be safe, but the charge of his death
would be brought to his door, as Miss Butterworth had already
brought the responsibility for his insanity there. If he had
got away alive, and should recover, or if his boy should get
into hands that would ultimately claim for him his rights, then
his prosperity would be interfered with. He did not wish to acknowledge
to himself that he desired the poor man's death,
but he was aware that in his death he found the most hopeful
vision of the night. Angry with the public feeling that accused
him of a crime of which he was not guilty, and guilty
of a crime of which definitely the public knew little or nothing,
there was no man in Sevenoaks so unhappy as he. He
loved power and popularity. He had been happy in the
thought that he controlled the town, and for the moment, at
least, he knew the town had slipped disloyally out of his
hands.

An impromptu meeting of citizens was held that evening,
at which Mr. Belcher did not assist. The clergymen were all
present, and there seemed to be a general understanding that
they had been ruled long enough in the interest and by the
will of a single man. A subscription was raised for a large
amount, and the sum offered to any one who would discover
the fugitives.

The next morning Mr. Belcher found the village quiet and
very reticent, and having learned that a subscription had been
raised without calling upon him, he laughingly expressed his
determination to win the reward for himself.

Then he turned his grays up the hill, had a long consultation
with Mr. Buffum, who informed him of the fate of old
Tilden, and started at a rapid pace toward Number Nine.