“I’m wet through, Azalea, — let me run upstairs and change, and I’ll tell you all about it. Kiernan will do no more harm to-night, I think.”
“That’s a comfort, I’m sure!” and Azalea gave a decisive nod of her dainty head— “You poor dear Dick! You are in an awful state! Simply soaked! Go and change everything at once! There’s a nice fire in your study — we’ll have tea there, and we can talk!”
And in less than quarter of an hour husband and wife were seated opposite each other — a daintily spread tea-table between them, glistening with wedding-gift silver and wedding-gift china, on which the firelight shed a rosy sparkling glow, in pleasant contrast to the deepening gloom of the outside garden view and the miserable weather.
“I met Jacynth Miller in the village,” — said Everton, then, stretching out his weary feet to rest on the fender in the warmth of the fire— “She told me she would see that Kiernan got no more drink to-day. And, Azalea, I really think the girl has some heart after all, — she has promised me to go and visit poor Bob Hadley.”
Azalea, busy with the teapot, gave him a quick glance, — then her face lighted up with a dimpling smile.
“And you believe her, Dick? You actually believe her! Oh!”
The amount of meaning which the charming little woman managed to convey into that ‘Oh! ‘could not be expressed in words. Richard was conscious of a slight, very slight sense of irritation.
“Of course I believe her,” — he said, “Why should I not believe her? Even a bad girl may be sorry for her badness and may wish to be better, — don’t you think so?”
“Oh, of course!” and Azalea, poising a lump of sugar aloft in the sugar-tongs, looked at it critically as though it were something quite curious and new— “Of course, Dick, she may wish to be better — but I think — I really do think that in the case of Jacynth, it’s so unlikely!”
Everton was silent. He was annoyed by his wife’s expression of opinion — but he did not wish to betray his annoyance by any hasty word or look. Moreover, his vexation was twofold, — he not only considered that Azalea was unjust in her remark, but he knew within himself that Jacynth’s beauty had for the moment cast a glamour over him which would need to be shaken off before he could consider her generally questionable reputation in a properly dispassionate light.
“You will at any rate admit that it’s kind and plucky of her to look after Kiernan so that he doesn’t do any more mischief?” he asked— “It’s not a pleasant thing for a young girl to keep guard over a drunkard!”
Azalea poured out the tea carefully.
“No, dear, it isn’t!” she murmured— “But I thought you had managed all that.”
His brow clouded, and he sighed wearily.
“I? I can manage nothing!” he said, sorrowfully— “I sat with Kiernan till he woke — and then — then — well! — it’s hard to say it, but I may as well tell you — then he ordered me out of his house. And, of course, I had to g°.
Azalea’s blue eyes opened wide.
“You — had — to — go!” she echoed— “Oh, Dick! How could you?”
“How could I stay?” he retorted— “My dear child, no man has a right to stay in another man’s house against that other man’s will. Unless he’s a ‘man in possession’” — and he laughed a little— “As long as Kiernan pays his rent, he’s master of his own roof-tree, and he is not called upon to either welcome or entertain an uninvited guest—”
“But — a clergyman — the Vicar of the parish— “she exclaimed distressfully.
“Not even a clergyman has the right to stay in a parishioner’s house if he is told to go,” — he said quietly— “There’s a great deal of harm done by district visiting, and by the thrusting of religious tracts on people who don’t want to read them. When you come to think of it, Azalea, it’s the height of impertinence for any man, or woman either, to walk into a house and offer advice to persons who haven’t asked you for it.”
Azalea’s pretty eyebrows went up in perplexity.
“I can’t understand you, Dick!” she said— “Isn’t it just what you’ve done to-day? Haven’t you been all this time with Kiernan — and gone without your lunch and got wet through, and made everything quite uncomfortable, — and now you say you oughtn’t to have done it!”
He smiled, amused at the muddle she chose to make of the position.
“No, Azalea, I don’t say I ought not to have done it in this case”; — he said— “Kiernan was infuriated with drink — and I feared that he might attack his poor wife a second time. Had he shown signs of doing so, I should have been there to prevent it. But he woke partially sobered, and I think sorry for his violence — at any rate he treated his wife very gently when he saw how ill she was. That being the case, I was not wanted. I should have liked to talk to him a little — but he was not in the humor. I did ask him to promise me not to take any more drink to-day — and he promised—”
“And told you to go!” finished Azalea indignantly— “The horrid brute! And you went! Oh, Dick! What a dreadful loss of dignity for you!”
Everton’s gravity gave way at this, and he laughed joyously with all the heartiness of a boy.
“Dreadful!” he agreed— “Positively awful! I was like a beaten hound — or rather more like a drowned rat — when I met Jacynth Miller.”
Azalea pursed her pretty red lips together.
“Where did you meet her?” she asked.
Everton hesitated.
“Well,” — he said, at last— “I’m sorry to say she was just coming out of the ‘Ram’s Head.’”
His wife looked whole volumes at him.
“And yet you really think she may wish to be a better girl!” she ejaculated— “You really think so!”
His face grew suddenly serious.
“I will not say I really think so,” — he answered— “But I really hope so!”
A silence followed. Azalea glanced at him now and then in a somewhat perturbed way — and once or twice her lips moved as though she wished to say something — but she checked herself with an effort. He was quietly enjoying his tea — and if she knew any item of parish news that might have worried him, she was not going to trouble him with it just then. She took out a dainty-looking piece of silk embroidery and began to work at it with swift noiseless stitches. She made a very pretty picture seated in her low easy chair by the fire, and her husband’s eyes rested upon her with fond admiration. The glowing beauty of Jacynth Miller faded from his memory like the brief blaze of a showy firework fading in mid-air, and a sense of deep tranquillity soothed his mind. After all, he thought, why should he not be perfectly content with his life at Shadbrook? Why should he dream of wider fields of labor? If his power was insufficient to persuade one drunkard to abandon his drunkenness, why should he imagine himself capable of influencing a larger and more intelligent audience? To reform one man thoroughly would be a better piece of work than to try to reform hundreds — and if he failed in the smaller task, he was bound to fail equally in the larger. He ought, so he assured himself, to be perfectly satisfied with the position he occupied, — he had a comfortable living, — a delightful home, and a pretty wife and child, — his domestic bliss was perfect, and he was sole monarch of his little kingdom with just such limitations and oppositions, on a lesser scale, as all monarchs, whether spiritual or temporal, have to contend with. There was, in strict reason, nothing that should make him either restless or dissatisfied. Shadbrook was his God-appointed place in the world, “and I must not,” he said to himself— “regard it as too narrow a field of labor. There is plenty to be done — and I am bound to try and do it.”
At that moment his wife spoke.
“How was Jacynth Miller looking?” she asked suddenly. He started out of his reverie.
“Jacynth? — How was she looking? Just the same as usual; very beautiful.”
Azalea’s needle flew swiftly again like a gleam of light over her embroidery, and she asked no more questions.
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CHAPTER IV
THE next day the clouds had somewhat cleared, and a pale tearful-looking sun struggled to shine through fleecy trails of mist which, rising from the oozy lowlands, spread themselves in thin gray filaments through the valleys and hung doubtfully in air as they reached the summit of the hills. There was a latent possibility of fine weather, according to some sagacious remarks proffered by the oldest inhabitants of Shadbrook — a venerable gentleman who, like the wooden mannikin in a certain make of Swiss clock, only hopped outside his door when the barometer rose, and promptly hopped back again when it fell. Old ‘Mortar’ Pike—’ Bricks and Mortar’ as he was sometimes good-humoredly but irreverently called by a few of his acquaintances — was allowed considerable license in the utterance of his opinions on all matters good, bad or indifferent, not only because nobody minded what he said, but also because he was in his ninety-second year, and as he himself was wont to remark: “If a man ain’t to jabber a bit when he’s nigh on a ‘undred, when is he to jabber at all anyway?” This argument was held to be wholly unanswerable; he therefore ‘jabbered’ to his heart’s content, and he had almost, if not quite forgotten the long-long-long ago, when as stalwart Mortimer Pike, he had been a celebrated wrestler and football player — renowned for his feats of strength through the whole Cotswold district. Sometimes, if any one ventured to remind him of those bygone days, the flicker of a smile would pass over his brown and deeply wrinkled visage and he would wave away the reminiscence as though it were a midge buzzing in his ear.
“Ay, ay!” he would murmur— “Mebbe I was a sharp youngster — mebbe I worn’t. Them as knows can tell one from t’other!”
This was an oracular utterance, not always comprehensible to the untutored rustic min’d — but it was ‘Mortar’s way’ — so his neighbors said — Mortar’s way of dismissing any subject he did not care to talk about. As a rule, however, he was very fond of talking — so much so that if he had no one else to talk to, he talked to himself. Clad in a neatly stitched gray linen smock-frock, with a straw hat which he had made with his own hands, pressed well down over his rather long straggling white hair, and leaning on a stout stick with a shepherd’s crook handle, his figure was a picturesque and familiar part of the life of Shadbrook, and to see him ‘jabbering’ at the threshold of his cottage, was like the sign of the wooden mannikin in the Swiss clock, an augury of what the villagers called ‘a spell o’ sunshine.’ And, in accordance with the Swiss clock theory, he had, on this particular morning, just popped out, and now stood peering up and down the village street with a kind of half-cunning, half-childish curiosity, the while he murmured under his breath —
“Marnin’ gray, fine day! Ay, ay! The wet’ll keep aff — it’ll keep aff a bit — an’ mebbe at dinner-time we’ll have a bit o’ blue sky. A bit o’ blue sky!” Here he smiled and chuckled. “It’ll do a power o’ good — a power o’ good it will! Nothin’ like a bit o’ blue!”
At that moment a woman came out of the neighboring cottage to shake a small much worn hearth-rug. It was Mrs. Moddley, the same lady with whom the Vicar had held such serious converse respecting the irreligious tendencies of her son.
“Mornin’, Mr. Pike!” she said cheerily— “Out early y’are. Wonderful active for your time o’ life! How’s you feelin’?”
“Fine!” responded the veteran— “Never better! I thinks I’m a-gittin’ younger as I gits older. If it worn’t for my legs—”
“Ah, it’s the legs as gives!” and Mrs. Moddley with a resigned sigh shook a volume of dust out of her hearth-rug which, blowing towards poor old ‘Bricks and Mortar’ got into his nose and eyes and caused him to sneeze violently. “And why the Lord made us with legs which is ever bound to give, I don’t know! A little extra muscle an’ strength put in to make ’em last longer wouldn’t ‘ave upset no one in the ‘eavenly ‘ost I’m sure! When my second boy Teddy, as is gone but seven, kicks out ’is legs in ’is bath an’ sez ’e don’t want no washin’, I sez to myself, bless ’im, let ’im kick while ’e can an’ upset all the water, for the days is comin’ when ‘e’ll be that stiff an’ roomaticky as ’e can’t kick no more, so don’t be ‘ard on ’im now!” Here she shook the hearth-rug again. “Is your gran’-darter lookin’ arter ye? — or will I bring ye in something for breakfast?”
The old man raised a trembling hand to his straw hat, and taking it off waved it with an air of speechless courtesy.
“Thank-ye, thank-ye kindly! — my gran’-darter does all I want,” he answered. “She’s a good gel — she don’t let me miss nothin’ — thank-ye all the same—”
Here he broke off — a little startled at the sudden sight of Jacynth Miller, who came sauntering round a corner and strolled up to him in a casual way, nodding and smiling.
“Hello, Bricks and Mortar, how are you?” she said.
He looked at her, but did not answer.
“I’ve been up all night,” she went on, addressing herself more to the air than to either of her listeners— “Taking care of Mrs. Kiernan.”
“Oh, indeed!” and Mrs. Moddley gave a kind of sniff— “Did she know who it was bein’ so suddint kind to ‘er?”
Jacynth laughed, and yawned.
“No — I don’t think she did!”
Mrs. Moddley turned round and went into her cottage, giving her door a slight bang as she closed it. Jacynth laughed more loudly.
“She’s shut me out!” she said, stretching her arms indolently and yawning again— “As if I wanted to go in! You wouldn’t shut me out, would you, Mortar dear?”
The old man held up his hand in a kind of feeble expostulation.
“Shut ye out — shut ye out!” he mumbled— “My gel, if ye go on as ye’re goin’ ye’ll be shut out altogether, not onny on the yerth, but in ‘Eaven! Ye be doin’ those things which ye oughtn’t to do an’ ye knows it. Ye poor mis’able gel, go an’ tell parson what ye’re at! — make a clean breast of it — an’ God ‘elp ye!”
Jacynth rested her two hands on her hips and looked at him with an indulgent scorn.
“You old fool!” she said, “You’re behind your time, Mortar! God helps those that help themselves!”
With a smile that parted her red lips in a line of incomparable sweetness, she moved away. The old man thrust out a shaking hand and caught her by her sleeve.
“Where’s — where’s Dan Kiernan?” he stammered.
She flashed her dark laughing eyes over him compassionately.
“Where’s Dan? With his wife, of course! Where should he be?”
Humming a tune she sauntered on, and as she went, the sun came out with a flare of gold, shedding a radiance across her path as though she were some favored goddess of the morn. The old man shaded his eyes from the sudden brilliancy.
“A bit o’ blue!” he muttered— “I said there’d be a bit o’ blue! But, there’s more clouds comin’ by-an-bye — more dark clouds comin’!” —
A woman’s voice called him from his cottage just then, and, turning away from the street, he tottered indoors.
The ‘bit o’ blue’ widened in the sky, and the hanging vapors began to roll up and disappear, — a thrush warbled a hopeful strain among the leafless boughs of an ancient elm tree which occupied a prominent position near the middle of the village street, and a genial sense of brightness began to warm and illumine the atmosphere. Up at the Vicarage this cheering gleam of sunshine was sufficient to put the Vicar’s light-hearted wife in the best of spirits — she laughed, she chattered, she sang — she played with baby Laurence like a baby herself, and succeeded for more than the thousandth time in creating around her that particular bedazzlement of gayety and charm which not only delighted her husband, but also in a sense ‘muddled’ him, — though he would have been the last man in the world to admit such an expression as in any way befitting the situation. Nevertheless, it was a fact that sometimes when he heard Azalea’s rippling laugh and her oft-repeated cry of “Oh, Baby dear!” to her infant son, — and also when he c
aught echoes of her voice singing those ‘coon’ songs, which, as base imitations of genuine nigger melodies, are so much in vogue with an age whose very sentiment is only part of its sham, he was apt to put his hand to his head in rather a perplexed way, and make an effort to collect his thoughts lest they should become scattered too far for logical and reasonable concentration on any given subject.
It was sweet to hear Azalea laugh, — sweet, too, was her little caressing exclamation of “Oh, Baby dear!” — even the imitation ‘coon’ songs had their fascination — but — and the big ‘but’ that came in here could not be got over easily. It was a But that impeded action, like a stone wall in the way of a chariot race. And yet he could not have put into exact words why the ‘But’ should so obtrude itself. Surely he did not want Azalea — bright, brilliant, pretty Azalea, — to be serious and puritanical? No, — most certainly not, — any such change in her he would have regarded with a real concern, as indicative of failing health. Yet, to be quite frank with himself, he owned to his inner consciousness that there was something he missed in his life, — but what it was he could not tell. And he set his feeling down to his own great selfishness and ingratitude, and blamed himself heartily for these two most unbecoming and unworthy sins.
“Hundreds of men would gladly change places with me,” — he thought— “Poor curates working in the East End of London — missionaries exiled from home and country, working among hostile peoples for the cause of Christ — even country parsons, many of them clever men, utterly cast away in villages more obscure than Shadbrook, — any or all of these would be glad if they could be as I am. I cannot understand my own restlessness — it is a foolish state of mind of which I am heartily ashamed.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 705