CHAPTER IX
A CHANGE OF SCENE
The Reverend Hugh Woodgate, Vicar of Marley-in-Delverton--a benefice forgenerations in the gift of the Dukes of Normanthorpe, but latterly inthat of one John Buchanan Steel--was writing his sermon on a Fridayafternoon just six months after the foregoing events. The month wastherefore May, and, at either end of the long, low room in which Mr.Woodgate sat at work, the windows were filled with a flutter of summercurtains against a brilliant background of waving greenery. But a fireburned in one of the two fireplaces in the old-fashioned funnel of aroom, for a treacherous east wind skimmed the sunlit earth outside, andwhistled and sang through one window as the birds did through the other.
Mr. Woodgate was a tall, broad-shouldered, mild-eyed man, with a blot ofwhisker under each ear, and the cleanest of clerical collarsencompassing his throat. It was a kindly face that pored over theunpretentious periods, as they grew by degrees upon the blue-linedpaper, in the peculiar but not uncommon hand which is the hall-mark ofa certain sort of education upon a certain order of mind. The presentspecimen was perhaps more methodical than most; therein it wascharacteristic of the man. From May to September, Mr. Woodgate neverfailed to finish his sermon on the Friday, that on the Saturday he mightbe free to play cricket with his men and lads. He was a poor preacherand no cricketer at all; but in both branches he did his best, with thesimple zeal and the unconscious sincerity which redeemed not a few ofhis deficiencies.
So intent was the vicar upon his task, so engrossed in the expression ofthat which had already been expressed many a million times, that he didnot hear wheels in his drive, on the side where the wind sang loudest;he heard nothing until the door opened, and a girl in her twenties,trim, slim, and brown with health, came hurriedly in.
"I'm sorry to disturb you, dear, but who do you think is here?"
Hugh Woodgate turned round in his chair, and his honest ox-eyes filledwith open admiration of the wife who was so many years younger thanhimself, and who had seen in him Heaven knew what! He never could lookat her without that look first; and only now, after some years ofmarriage, was he beginning sometimes to do so without this thoughtnext. But he had not the gift of expression, even in the perpetualmatter of his devotion; and perhaps its perpetuity owed something tothat very want; at least there was none of the verbal evaporation whichcomes of too much lovers' talk.
"Who is it?" he asked.
"Mrs. Venables!"
Woodgate groaned. Was he obliged to appear? His jaw fell, and his wife'seyes sparkled.
"Dear, I wouldn't even have let you know she was here--you shouldn'thave been interrupted for a single instant--if Mrs. Venables wasn'tclamoring to see you. And really I begin to clamor too; for she is fullof some mysterious news, which she won't tell me till you are there tohear it also. Be an angel, for five minutes!"
Woodgate wiped his pen in his deliberate way.
"Probably one of the girls is engaged," said he; "if so I hope it'sSybil."
"No, Sybil is here too; she doesn't look a bit engaged, but ratherbored, as though she had heard the story several times already, whateverit may be. They have certainly paid several calls. Now you look quitenice, so in you come."
Mrs. Venables, a stout but comely lady, with a bright brown eye, and aface full of character and ability, opened fire upon the vicar as soonas they had shaken hands, while her daughter looked wistfully at thenearest books.
"He is married!" cried Mrs. Venables, beginning in the middle like amodern novelist.
"Indeed?" returned the matter-of-fact clergyman, with equaldirectness--"and who is he?"
"Your neighbor and your patron--Mr. Steel!"
"Married?" repeated Mrs. Woodgate, with tremendous emphasis. "Mr.Steel?"
"This is news!" declared her husband, as though he had expected noneworthy of the name. And they both demanded further particulars, at whichMrs. Venables shook her expensive bonnet with great relish.
"Do you know Mr. Steel so well--so much better than we do--and can youask for particulars about anything he ever does? His marriage,"continued Mrs. Venables, "like everything else about him, is 'wrop inmystery,' as one of those vulgar creatures says in Dickens, but I reallyforget which. It was never announced in the _Times_; for that I canvouch myself. Was ever anything more like him, or less like anybodyelse? To disappear for six months, and then turn up with a wife!"
"But has he turned up?" cried the vicar's young wife, forgetting for amoment a certain preoccupation caused by the arrival of the tea-tray,and by a rapid resignation to the thickness of the bread and butter andthe distressing absence of such hot things as would have been inreadiness if Mrs. Venables had been expected for a single moment. Itshowed the youth of Morna Woodgate that she should harbor a wish tocompete with the wealthiest woman in the neighborhood, even in thematter of afternoon tea, and her breeding that no such thought waslegible in her clear-cut open-air face.
"I have heard nothing about it," said the vicar, in a tone indicative ofmuch honest doubt in the matter.
"Nor is it the case, to my knowledge," rejoined Mrs. Venables; "but fromall we hear it may become the case any moment. They were married inItaly last autumn--so he says--and are on their way home at thisminute."
"If he says so," observed the vicar, with mild humor, "it is probablytrue. He ought to know."
"And who was she?" his young wife asked with immense interest, the cupshaving gone round, and the bread and butter been accepted in spite ofits proportions.
"My dear Mrs. Woodgate," said Mrs. Venables, cordially, "you may wellask! Who was she, indeed! It was the first question I asked my owninformant, who, by the way, was your friend, Mr. Langholm; but he knewno more than the man in the moon."
"And who told Mr. Langholm, of all people?" pursued Morna Woodgate. "Itis not often that we get news of the real world from him!"
"Birds of a feather," remarked her caller: "it was Mr. Steel himself whowrote to your other eccentric friend, and told him neither more nor lessthan I have told you. He was married in Italy last autumn; not even thetown--not even the month--let alone the lady's name--if, indeed--"
And Mrs. Venables concluded with a sufficiently eloquent hiatus.
"I imagine she is a lady," said the vicar to his tea.
"You are so charitable, dear Mr. Woodgate!"
"I hope I am," he said simply. "In this case I see no reason to beanything else."
"What--when you know really nothing about Mr. Steel himself?"
And the bright brown eyes of Mrs. Venables grew smaller and harder asthey pinned Hugh Woodgate to his chair.
"I beg your pardon," said that downright person; "I know a great dealabout Mr. Steel. He has done an immense amount for the parish; thereare our new schoolrooms to speak for themselves. There are very few whowould do the half of what Mr. Steel has done for us during the shorttime he has been at Normanthorpe."
"That may be," said the lady, with the ample smile of consciouscondescension; "for he has certainly not omitted to let his light shinebefore men. But that is not telling us who or what he was before he camehere, or how he made his money."
Then Hugh Woodgate gave the half boyish, half bashful laugh with whichhe was wont to preface his most candid sayings.
"And I don't think it's any business of ours," he said.
Morna went a trifle browner than she naturally was; her husband said solittle that what he did say was often almost painfully to the point; andnow Mrs. Venables had turned from him to her, with a smile which theyoung wife disliked, for it called attention to the vicar's discourtesywhile it appealed to herself for prettier manners and better sense. Itwas a moment requiring some little tact, but Mrs. Woodgate was justequal to it.
"Hugh, how rude of you!" she exclaimed, with only the suspicion of asmile. "You forget that it's your duty to be friendly with everybody;there's no such obligation on anybody else."
"I should be friendly with Mr. Steel," said Hugh, "duty or no duty,after what he has done for the parish."
And h
is pleasant honest face and smile did away with the necessity for aset apology.
"I must say," added his wife to her visitor, "that it's the same withme, you know."
There was a pause.
"Then you intend to call upon her?" said Mrs. Venables, coming withdirectness to an obviously premeditated point.
"I do--I must--it is so different with us," said the vicar's young wife,with her pretty brown blush.
"Certainly," added the vicar himself, with dogmatic emphasis.
Mrs. Venables did not look at him, but she looked the harder at Mornainstead.
"Well," said she, "I suppose you are right. In your position--yes--yourposition is quite different!" And the sudden, half accidental turn ofher sentence put Mrs. Venables on good terms with herself once more; andso she rose all smiles and velvet. "No, not even half a cup; but it wasreally quite delicious; and I hope you'll come and see me soon, and tellme all about her. At his age!" she whispered as she went. "Atsixty-five--if he's a day!"
A stranger would have imagined that this lady had quite decided not tocall upon the newcomer herself; even Mrs. Woodgate was uncertain of herneighbor's intention as the latter's wheels ground the Vicarage driveonce more, and she and her husband were left alone.
"It will depend upon the county," said she; "and Mrs. Venables is notthe county pure and simple, she's half Northborough still, and she'lltake her cue from the Invernesses and the Uniackes. But I do believeshe's been round the whole country-side, getting people to say theywon't call; as if it mattered to a man like Mr. Steel, or any woman heis likely to have chosen. Still, it is mysterious, isn't it? But whatbusiness of ours, as you say? Only, dear, you needn't have said it quiteso pointedly. Of course I'll call as soon as I can in decency; she maylet me be of use to her. Oh, bother Mrs. Venables! If she doesn't call,no doubt many others won't; you must remember that he has neverentertained as yet. Oh, what a dance they could give! And did you hearwhat she said about his age? He is sixty-five, now!"
The vicar laughed. It was his habit to let his young wife rattle on whenthey were alone, and even lay down the law for him to her heart'scontent; but, though fifteen years her senior, and never a vivaciousman himself, there was much in their life that he saw in the same lightas she did, though never quite so soon.
"Sixty-five!" he suddenly repeated, with a fresh chuckle; "and lastyear, when Sybil was thought to be in the running--poor Sybil, how wellshe took it!--last year her mother told me she knew for a fact he wasnot a day more than five-and-forty! Poor Steel, too! He has done forthem both in that quarter, I am afraid. And now," added Hugh, in hismatter-of-fact way, as though they had been discussing theology all thistime, "I must go back to my sermon if I am to get it done to-night."
The Shadow of the Rope Page 9