"The less wit a man has, the less he knows that he wants it."
Hester always took charge of the three elder children and Fräulein of
the baby during the six-o'clock service, so that the nurse might go to
church. On this particular Sunday afternoon Hester and the children were
waiting in the little hall till the bell stopped, before which moment
they were forbidden to leave the house. Mr. and Mrs. Gresley had just
started for the church, Mr. Gresley looking worn and harassed, for since
luncheon he had received what he called "a perfectly unaccountable
letter" from one of his principal parishioners, a Dissenter, who had
been present at the morning service, and who Mr. Gresley had confidently
hoped might have been struck by the sermon. This hope had been
justified, but not in the manner Mr. Gresley had expected. Mr. Walsh
opined, in a large round hand, that as worms (twice under-dashed) did
not usually pay voluntary church and school rates he no longer felt
himself under an obligation to do so, etc. The letter was a great, an
unexpected blow. Who could have foreseen such a result of the morning's
eloquence.
"The truth is," said Mr. Gresley, tremulously, "that they can't and
won't hear reason. They can't controvert what I say, so they take refuge
in petty spite like this. I must own I am disappointed in Walsh. He is a
man of some education, and liberal as regards money. I had thought he
was better than most of them, and now he turns on me like this."
"It's a way worms have," said Hester.
"Oh, don't run a simile to death, Hester," said Mr. Gresley,
impatiently. "If you had listened to what I tried to say this morning
you would have seen I only used the word _worm_ figuratively. I never
meant it literally, as any one could see who was not determined to
misunderstand me. Worms pay school-rates! Such folly is positively
sickening, if it were not malicious."
Hester had remained silent. She had been deeply vexed for her brother at
the incident.
As the church-bell stopped the swing-door opened, and Boulou hurried in,
like a great personage, conscious that others have waited, and bearing
with him an aroma of Irish stew and onions, which showed that he had
been exchanging affabilities with the cook. For the truth must be owned.
No spinster over forty could look unmoved on Boulou. Alas! for the
Vicarage cook, who "had kept herself _to_ herself" for nearly fifty
years, only to fall the victim of a "grande passion" for Boulou.
The little Lovelace bounded in, and the expedition started. It was
Regie's turn to choose where they should go, and he decided on the
"shrubbery," a little wood through which ran the private path to
Wilderleigh. Doll Loftus had given the Gresleys leave to take the
children there.
"Oh, Regie, we always go there," said Mary, plaintively, who invariably
chose the Pratts' park, with its rustic bridges and _châlets_, which Mr.
Pratt, in a gracious moment, had "thrown open" to the Gresleys on
Sundays, because, as he expressed it, "they must feel so cramped in
their little garden."
But Regie adhered to his determination, and to the "shrubberies" they
went. Hester was too tired to play with them, too tired even to tell
them a story; so she sat under a tree while they circled in the coppice
near at hand.
As we grow older we realize that in the new gardens where life leads us
we never learn the shrubs and trees by heart as we did as children in
our old Garden of Eden, round the little gabled house where we were
born. We were so thorough as children. We knew the underneath of every
laurel-bush, the shape of its bunches of darkling branches, the green
dust that our small restless bodies rubbed off from its under twigs. We
see now as strangers those little hanging horse-tails of pink, which
sad-faced elders call _ribes_; but once long ago, when the world was
young, we knew them eye to eye, and the compact little black insects on
them, and the quaint taste of them, and the clean, clean smell of them.
Everything had a taste in those days, and was submitted to that test,
just as until it had been licked the real color of any object of
interest was not ascertained. There was a certain scarlet berry, very
red without and very white within, which we were warned was deadly
poison. How well, after a quarter of a century, we remember the bitter
taste of it; how much better than many other forbidden fruits duly
essayed in later years. We ate those scarlet berries and lived, though
warned to the contrary.
Presently Boulou, who could do nothing simply, found a dead mouse, where
any one else could have found it, in the middle of the path, and made it
an occasion for a theatrical display of growlings and shakings. The
children decided to bury it, and after a becoming silence their voices
could be heard singing "Home, Sweet Home," as the body was being lowered
into the grave previously dug by Boulou, who had to be forcibly
restrained from going on digging it after the obsequies were over.
"He never knows when to stop," said Regie, wearily, as Boulou, with a
little plaster of earth on his nose, was carried coughing back to
Hester.
As she took him Rachel and Sybell came slowly down the path towards
them, and the latter greeted Hester with an effusion which suggested
that when two is not company three may be.
"A most vexing thing has happened," said Sybell, in a gratified tone,
sitting down under Hester's tree. "I really don't think I am to blame.
You know Mr. Tristram, the charming artist who has been staying with
us?"
"I know him," said Hester.
"Well, he was set on making a sketch of me for one of his large
pictures, and it was to have been finished to-day. I don't see any harm
myself in drawing on Sunday. I know the Gresleys do, and I love the
Gresleys, he has such a powerful mind; but one must think for one's
self, and it was only the upper lip, so I consented to sit for him at
four o'clock. I noticed he seemed a little--well rather--"
"Just so," said Hester.
"The last few days. But, of course, I took no notice of it. A married
woman often has to deal with such things without making a fuss about
them. Well, I overslept myself, and it was nearly half-past four before
I awoke. And when I went into my sitting-room a servant brought me a
note. It was from him, saying he had been obliged to leave Wilderleigh
suddenly on urgent business, and asking that his baggage might be sent
after him."
Hester raised her eyes slightly, as if words failed her. Sybell's
conversation always interested her.
"Perhaps the reason she is never told anything," she said to herself,
"is because the ground the confidence would cover is invariably built
over already by a fiction of her own which it would not please her to
see destroyed."
"Who would have thought," continued Sybell, "that he would have behaved
in that way because I was one little half-hour late. And of course the
pretext of urgent business is too transparent, because there is no
Sunday post, and the telegraph-boy had not been up. I asked that. And he
was so anxious to finish the sketch. He almost asked to stay over Sunday
on purpose."
Rachel and Hester looked on the ground.
"Rachel said he was all right in the garden just before, didn't you,
Rachel?"
"I said I thought he was a little nervous."
And what did he talk to you about?"
"He spoke about the low tone of the morals of the day, and about
marriage."
"Ah! I don't wonder he talked to you, Rachel, you are so sympathetic. I
expect lots of people confide in you about their troubles and love
affairs. Morals of the day! Marriage! Poor, poor Mr. Tristram! I shall
tell Doll quietly this evening. On the whole, it is just as well he is
gone."
"Just as well," said Rachel and Hester, with surprising unanimity.