Читать книгу A Man Under Authority - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 4

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“I shall certainly call upon her myself,” said Mrs. Winch. “And I shall advise the Vicar to do the same.”

“I am sure he will follow your advice,” said Miss Barnet rather fulsomely. Miss Barnet was always nervously fulsome in the presence of her employer.

Mrs. Winch paid no attention of any sort to her—also her invariable custom. To speak to Miss Barnet was very much the same as to speak to oneself. She never disagreed and nearly always applauded.

“Yes,” she pursued musingly. “I shall call. Now I wonder what would be the best day. To-morrow I have to attend the Infant Welfare Committee Meeting at the Village Hall, and the day after there is the S. P. G. Sewing Party at the Vicarage and then there is the Guild of Church Workers on the following afternoon. Really, it is quite difficult to fit things in.”

“Your busy life!” murmured Miss Barnet.

“Perhaps I might get her in before the Sewing Party,” soliloquised Mrs. Winch. “But no! If she were at home that might make me late, and they so depend on me.”

“Who does not?” earnestly ejaculated Miss Barnet.

“Which reminds me,” said Mrs. Winch. “I promised poor old Mrs. Henderson to drop in and show her how to make a snow-flake pudding for the Vicar’s luncheon. She says that he eats so little, and I say that it is because so little is offered him that is worth the eating.”

Miss Barnet tittered. “How like you, dear Mrs. Winch! I am sure he will eat anything you make, with relish. What a treat it will be for him!”

“Poor Mrs. Henderson is so completely lacking in originality,” continued Mrs. Winch, still soliloquising. “Clean to a fault and most respectable, but so deplorably unenterprising. As for her pastry——” An eloquent silence here indicated that the subject was beyond words.

“I am sure of it,” said Miss Barnet.

“It is so uninspiring for the Vicar.” Mrs. Winch spoke pathetically. “People expect so much from a man in his position, but very few remember how little he has to uplift him in his own life. He must get so tired of ‘the daily round, the common task.’ I think it is our duty to do all we can to help him to rise above it.”

“Oh, quite, quite!” said Miss Barnet with fervour.

“I wonder if Mrs. Rivers would be willing to take a class in the Sunday School,” mused Mrs. Winch. “I must make a note to ask her that when I call. We could very well do with an extra helper.”

“We could indeed,” said Miss Barnet. “And if she is musical, she might perhaps be persuaded to sing in the choir.”

But any suggestion made by her companion was almost invariably regarded with disfavour by Mrs. Winch. She at once and firmly trampled upon this one.

“You know very well, Miss Barnet,” she said severely, “that it is the one wish of my life to see a surpliced choir established at Rickaby Church, and we do not wish to increase the unfortunate feminine element which at present renders this impossible.”

“To be sure! To be sure!” Humbly agreed Miss Barnet. “I had forgotten that. So foolish of me!”

Mrs. Winch’s silence tacitly confirmed the last remark. Miss Barnet had been foolish from her girlhood upwards, and now in drab middle-age nothing else was expected of her, at least by her contemporaries. The fact that children adored her was not one which most of them regarded as indicative of any sign of intellect. Only the Vicar had once said in his kindly way, “We couldn’t have a school-treat without Miss Barnet. She’s the one to make the wheels go round.” And the remark had become one of poor Miss Barnet’s most cherished memories. That anyone could have said such a thing as that of her, and have meant it too. For the Vicar always meant what he said. No one ever disputed that. Such a wonderful personality—and so human! He never stood on his dignity, never seemed to realize how deeply they all revered him. Nor did he ever despise anyone, however humble or foolish they might be. He was in fact Ellen Barnet’s beau idéal of all that a pastor should be, and if any found fault with him—called him lax or free and easy—her meek spirit was as near to fury as it was possible to be. He had said that she was the one to make the wheels go round at school-treats. Her loyalty could never waver after that. If he had conducted a whole service backwards, the utmost criticism that she would have permitted even her own private soul would have been that ‘the dear Vicar was a little absent-minded this morning.’

Mrs. Winch was different. Mrs. Winch had the courage of her opinions which were many and various. She was wont to tackle the Vicar, as she expressed it, upon all matters, whether personal or parochial, upon which she found herself in disagreement with him. She liked him thoroughly and believed the sentiment to be mutual, but she did not scruple to find fault when the occasion seemed to her to demand it. She did not actually run the parish, but she assisted very materially in the general management thereof, and perhaps she had some justification for feeling that on most points the Vicar must be held answerable to her. He certainly did not hesitate to accept her services, and he never permitted himself to quarrel with her, which fact seemed to warrant the assumption that he valued them.

She did not go so far as poor silly Miss Barnet and believe him to be entirely incapable of subterfuge. He was, after all, a man, and Mrs. Winch had had some experience of the species. But there was at least no priestly superiority about him, and he did not give her the impression of double-dealing. He was—quite possibly—not incapable of a certain amount of craft, but she had never yet detected him in any act of disloyalty and she flattered herself that she was far too shrewd to be deceived by anyone for long. She regarded him to a large extent—just as she regarded the parish—as her own personal property, and she kept a possessive eye upon him, a species of kindly, despotic vigilance that was by no means blind to shortcomings.

As the widow of a former late Vicar, she had a good deal of reason for her attitude, being generally looked upon as the mother of the village. The Female Friendly Society was entirely under her control and had been for the past forty years, for longer indeed than the present Vicar had sojourned on this planet. He had never attempted to interfere with her dictatorship in this respect and always refused firmly to listen to any complaints with regard to it. For this abstention Mrs. Winch honoured him, albeit she fully recognized that it was not a man’s province and it would have been rank presumption on his part had he dared to take any other course.

They really agreed very well on the whole, Mrs. Winch and the Vicar, and none could say that the parish of Rickaby did not prosper under their joint rule. Old General Farjeon was wont to declare that it was the happiest corner in the whole county, and Bill Quentin’s administration was the finest argument in favour of clerical influence that he had ever come across.

“If there were only a few more like you, my boy!” he was wont to say. “But—damn it—you ought to have been in the Service. Here! Help yourself to port!”

And the Reverend Bill, as he was affectionately dubbed by his parishioners, would comply with a smile that closed the discussion before it was well started.

It was generally believed that he had entered the Church originally for the sake of his invalid mother. He had certainly come to Rickaby on her account; but it was five years now since she had been laid to rest under the old yew-tree in the churchyard, and he was still pursuing his quiet way, unhurried by stress of life, very ready to help those in need but never intruding where his presence was unwelcome. He was a man of practically boundless sympathies, and he recognized no religious barriers, a fact which caused him to be looked upon somewhat coldly by his colleagues in the neighbouring town of Hatchstead where he was as friendly with Father Gregory of the Roman Church as he was with the Baptist minister, Mr. Banner. The Rector of Hatchstead had no dealings with either, and when he once encountered the Reverend Bill coming out of the Salvation Army Hall with the captain, he was so scandalized that he at once crossed the road, and was extremely restrained and conventional when next they met.

It did not affect Bill Quentin in any way. He merely smiled, just as he smiled at General Farjeon’s table, and just as he smiled when Mrs. Winch was compelled by her rigid sense of duty to bring him to book. He never argued. His sermons were always of the briefest—just a straight talk, no more, in which no word of condemnation was ever uttered. Many people considered him too free and easy, but very few criticised him to his face. He was a man who knew how to hold his own without argument; which was partly the reason for his lack of popularity with his fellow-clergy. He was also a man who would stand no nonsense from the insincere, and the black sheep of his flock seldom tried conclusions with him more than once. There was in fact a touch of formidableness about the Reverend Bill upon occasion which evil doers found embarrassing. They said he had a nasty temper when roused and avoided coming into contact with it as they would have avoided a live wire.

But no woman had ever seen it. His housekeeper, Mrs. Henderson, maintained that he was the easiest of men and never found fault with anything. She was too good-natured herself to object to Mrs. Winch’s tuition in the matter of the snow-flake pudding, but she regarded it as a waste of time notwithstanding.

“Lor’ bless you, ma’am, he never takes no notice of anything he eats,” she assured her, the while Mrs. Winch mixed and added and stirred. “It’s pearls before swine, as you might say, though that isn’t my real meaning as I’m sure you know. For I’ve never seen a man with less greed to him. I often says as he doesn’t know herring from tripe, he’s that easy-going.”

“But it’s for you to make him know,” said Mrs. Winch. “You ought to think out little dishes to tempt his appetite. For instance——”

“Oh, bless you, ma’am, his appetite’s good enough,” Mrs. Henderson hastened to assure her. “There’s no nonsense about him of that sort. But meals are just a business with him, and not a pleasure. I often think as he wants someone to make ’em more sociable like. It isn’t good for a man to live alone. The Bible says so.”

Mrs. Winch looked up somewhat suddenly from her pudding-making. “If you are referring to marriage, Mrs. Henderson,” she said, “I do not think either you or I are in a position to discuss it so far as the Vicar is concerned. I personally consider it would be a very great pity if he were to contemplate such a step. He is far better off as he is.”

“Better off—oh, yes!” said Mrs. Henderson. “Getting married is an expense to everybody, we all know. But it has its compensations, ma’am. I sometimes think we could do with a mistress here.”

“I doubt if you would appreciate it,” said Mrs. Winch, with some significance.

“I’d like to see him happy,” said Mrs. Henderson sentimentally. “Some bright pretty girl is what he wants.”

“Well, he won’t find that in this place,” said Mrs. Winch somewhat tartly.

“There are plenty at Hatchstead,” declared Mrs. Henderson. “As ripe and ready as plums on a tree. Why, there are five of them at the Rectory alone.”

“All most unsuitable,” said Mrs. Winch sweepingly. “Thoroughly unsuitable. The only one with any pretence at good looks is the youngest, Molly, and she is so flighty that I am sure no decent man would want to have anything to do with her.”

“There’s the second one, Miss Lottie,” said Mrs. Henderson, in a tolerant tone. “She’s a very nice young lady and very useful in the parish, they say.”

Mrs. Winch sniffed a little. “I do not think extra help is required in this parish,” she said, “nor can I imagine anybody wishing to import Lottie Morton if it were. Now, Mrs. Henderson, I am going to leave the rest to you, so will you kindly attend to my directions? On no account must the oven door be shut, and as soon as it begins to simmer—Are you listening, Mrs. Henderson?”

Mrs. Henderson was very obviously not listening. Something more interesting had attracted her attention, and she was craning her neck to see out of the scullery-window.

“Just look-a-there!” she whispered. “That’s that there young widow from Beech Mount—Mrs. Rivers they calls her. French she is, or partly French, so they say. As for that boy of hers, he looks so foreign that you’d think he was nearly daft. Lor’ sakes, and the Vicar’s a-bringing her in! Do you think as she’ll stay to lunch, ma’am? If so, that there snow-flake pudding will just come in handy.”

“Of course not!” Mrs. Winch spoke with some sharpness. The snow-flake pudding had not been prepared for the widow from Beech Mount. Also, it was a trifle undignified to be surprised in the Vicar’s kitchen. She was for the moment disconcerted. If it had not been for Mrs. Henderson she would have kept out of sight, but for the sake of her prestige she could not well do this. And yet to walk out and announce herself was equally difficult.

She stood in some uncertainty, the pudding forgotten on the table, while the Vicar and his unexpected visitor strolled up the garden.

They were laughing as they came and there was a flute-like sweetness about the woman’s voice that made honest Mrs. Henderson gape with surprise and pleasure.

“What a charming lady, to be sure!” she said.

Mrs. Winch did not hear her. She had decided to discover herself and was already on her way to do so. Summoning all the dignity of her sixty-five years, she walked through the hall and so out into the spring sunshine in which the Reverend Bill Quentin and Mrs. Rivers were sauntering.

The former spied her immediately, and gave her a cheery hail. “Hullo, Mrs. Winch! Good Morning! Are you looking for me by any chance? If so, I am quite at your service.”

There were a hundred and one excuses to account for her presence that Mrs. Winch might have cited, but her rectitude was of too unyielding a character to permit her to make use of them. But the fact that the truth was uncongenial did not tend to make her manner over-cordial in the telling of it.

“Good morning!” She shook hands with the Vicar with grim conventionality. “As a matter of fact, I was not looking for you this morning. I merely came over to bring Mrs. Henderson a recipe for a pudding which we thought you might like, and I have been showing her how to make it.”

“I say, how jolly decent of you!” said the Vicar boyishly. “I’m sure I shall love it. Can’t we all come in and have some?”

“It is not cooked yet,” said Mrs. Winch. “It was designed to be in time for your luncheon, and I hope you will enjoy it when the time comes.”

“Rather!” said the Vicar. “Of course I shall. Thank you a thousand times. Now let me introduce Mrs. Rivers to you. I don’t think you have met yet.”

The visitor stood in the background, a slender, graceful woman with a perfectly colourless face that was wholly unremarkable in repose, and hair that shone like burnished copper in the sunshine.

She made a slight gesture towards Mrs. Winch and smiled, and her smile amazingly transformed her, giving youth and charm to a countenance that a moment before had displayed neither. In some curious fashion it made Mrs. Winch suspicious. She did not like sudden changes.

Her own acknowledgment was extremely stiff. She did not offer her hand.

“I have been promising myself the pleasure of calling upon you,” she said, with considerable ceremony.

“How kind!” said Mrs. Rivers.

Her voice had a soft, melodious note like her laughter. Her eyes were soft also,—but what colour were her eyes? Mrs. Winch could not decide and disapproved of her the more in consequence.

“She is like a cat,” she said to herself, and a moment later, “or is it a tigress? Emphatically not a woman to trust.”

The Vicar here interposed. “Mrs. Rivers is musical,” he said. “She has promised to play the accompaniments at the next smoking-concert, and I am hoping to persuade her to sing in the choir.”

Mrs. Winch stiffened visibly at the latter suggestion, and Mrs. Rivers uttered a faint ripple of laughter.

“He will not succeed,” she said reassuringly. “I am far too busy to commit myself to anything like that. I have my boy—Gaspard—to think of. He is too delicate for college, so we study together, and I have to be his companion too. Some day—when he is stronger—we are hoping to go to Paris so that he may study art in earnest. But I am afraid it will not be yet.”

She ended on what Mrs. Winch inwardly described as “a minor note”: and the Vicar looked sympathetic.

“He ought to get strong here,” he said. “You are practically living on the seashore at Beech Mount.”

“Yes, that ought to make a difference. I am counting on that.” Mrs. Rivers gave him a grateful glance. “But I have to take great care of him at present. Ah, that is the aloe you were telling me about! The thing that flowers but once in fifty years—for luck! And is it really going to flower this year? Then something very great must be going to happen.”

She turned to the curious plant in question which was one of considerable age, which had been placed by some vicar long deceased in full view of the study-window.

“It’s a discouraging sort of vegetable,” said the Reverend Bill. “There’s something very pessimistic about a thing that only flowers once in a lifetime. If I possessed sufficient moral courage, I would dig it up and throw it away.”

“But a thing that comes but once in a lifetime is surely worth living for!” said Mrs. Rivers. “At least let it flower first before you throw it away!”

Mrs. Winch here asserted herself. It was high time in her opinion that the interloper took her departure.

“It is a sin,” she said very emphatically, “even to talk of removing anything so ancient. It is practically a landmark here, and nothing could ever replace it.”

“ ‘According to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not,’ ” observed Bill Quentin flippantly. “We are all like that at Rickaby, aren’t we, Mrs. Winch? Our very sins become precious customs after a few years. That’s a joke,” he added, in a propitiatory tone as Mrs. Winch failed signally to concede a smile. “Of course I wouldn’t touch the old aloe for the world. The rotten thing would probably bring a curse on me if I did.”

“But if you leave it to flower, it will bring you luck,” said Mrs. Rivers. “That follows, doesn’t it?”

“It may,” said the Vicar somewhat sceptically. “We’ll hope so at any rate. And if it doesn’t we’ll give it the sack, eh, Mrs. Winch?”

“I must be thinking of getting back,” said Mrs. Winch significantly.

“Oh, not yet! You must stay to lunch. Mrs. Rivers is going to.”

Casually he made the announcement, but its effect upon Mrs. Winch at least was the reverse of casual. She uttered a gasp of astonishment. But Mrs. Rivers’s soft laugh again had a reassuring note.

“Oh, indeed she isn’t!” she declared. “With many thanks for the suggestion! I only came in to see the lucky aloe. My boy is expecting me, and I must go to him.”

“I should like to come round and see that boy of yours,” said the Vicar. “Some evening, may I?”

There was a moment’s pause, and Mrs. Winch gave her a sharp glance. What was the matter with the woman? Was there an atmosphere of secrecy about her, or was it merely mannerism?

While she was wondering, Mrs. Rivers made quiet reply. “He is not very fit at present, but I should be very pleased for you to see him. May I let you know?”

“Oh, don’t bother to do that! I’ll drop in one day and take my chance,” said the Vicar.

“How kind!” said Mrs. Rivers.

It was plainly a phrase of hers, and Mrs. Winch condemned it from that moment as insincere. She turned rather pointedly to the Vicar.

“Now I am here, Mr. Quentin, there is a small point I want to discuss with you regarding the Church Workers. It will not take me more than a few moments, if you have them to spare.”

“Oh, yes,” said the Vicar, with resignation.

“Good-bye—and thank you,” said Mrs. Rivers.

She gave him a bow and smile and went her way lightly over the grass to the gate.

But as she reached it, the Vicar overtook her just in time to open it for her.

He did it with a certain amount of ceremony; but his face was flushed.

“You shouldn’t have gone like that,” he said.

She smiled again——that wonderful smile of hers. “Like what?” she said, and passed by him with another bow, not waiting for his reply.