Mrs Chadwick's departure was as abrupt, and therefore as disconcerting
to Mr Musgrave, as her arrival had been. She announced her intention
of going one morning, and on the following morning she left. This
rapidity of movement, and extraordinary energy, reduced Mr Musgrave to
a condition of bewildered breathlessness. He fetched Bradshaw's Guide
for the purpose of looking up her train; but she had learnt all about
the train service beforehand, and knew to the minute the time of her
departure. There was nothing left for Mr Musgrave to do save order his
car for a certain hour to take the ladies into Rushleigh.
Most people would have been relieved to be spared further trouble; but
John Musgrave was old-fashioned. He felt that in these matters it was
fitting that the woman should depend on the man; just as he would prefer
that a woman confronted with a burglar should scream for assistance
rather than attempt an encounter with the intruder, physical courage
being no more a womanly attribute than independence. But Mrs Chadwick
belonged to a type of womanhood he had not met with before. She had
made herself independent of the sterner sex. She would in all
probability, if she encountered a burglar, tackle him; it was
inconceivable that she would stop to scream. He supposed that residence
abroad accounted possibly for these peculiarities. Women who lived in
semi-civilised lands acquired characteristics unbecoming to their sex.
Mr Musgrave would have been surprised could he have penetrated Mrs
Chadwick's opinion of himself. Mrs Chadwick had formed an opinion
early in their intercourse; she saw no reason to modify it later; and
she was confirmed in it when she read some of his sonnets in the
carefully preserved back numbers of the _Parish Magazine_. There were
sonnets to the different seasons; sonnets to childhood, to youth, to
flowers, to a cloud effect in a windswept sky, and to the autumnal
tints. There was not, in the whole, she observed without surprise, a
single reference to love. Verse-making without that essential quality
must be a difficult process, she reflected. Had Byron possessed John
Musgrave's temperament, it is doubtful that he would have attained to
immortality. John Musgrave with a touch of the Byronic weakness might
have been interesting, and would certainly have been lovable. Coldness
of itself is scarcely a virtue, nor is it an endearing characteristic.
The man possessed of a big heart and a quite legitimate inclination
towards the opposite sex is human; and Mrs Chadwick loved humanity.
The most human types she had as yet discovered in Moresby were those of
the vicar and his wife, and Robert. Robert and the new mistress of the
Hall were allies. Robert held the sex, as a sex, in contempt; that was
the code of his class; and a very pronounced dread of the length of
Hannah's tongue, added to a proper recognition of Hannah's muscular
development, had accomplished little towards mitigating this sense of
masculine superiority. He considered the utterance of Saint Paul, that
it is better to marry than to burn, the most supreme wisdom that a man
has ever given expression to. On Occasions he was a little doubtful
whether it were not better to burn. He had tried marriage, but he had
not tried burning, and so could not give a definite opinion. But for
Mrs Chadwick he entertained an unbounded respect. Robert perhaps had a
touch of the Byronic temperament; and Mrs Chadwick on coming out of
church had given him one of her radiant smiles. Subsequently she
stopped him in the road and chatted with him in an easy, intimate way
that Robert described as "haffable." She began by asking him if he had
a wife. Robert admitted this possession reluctantly; and, upon further
inquiries, owned with even less enthusiasm to a son.
"Only one?" she said.
"One's more'n enough for me," Robert answered sourly. "Brought up
respectable, 'e was, and confirmed under Mr Errol; and then," Robert
jerked his thumb over his shoulder as though in indication of the
direction the errant youth had followed, "'e takes up with a young
woman, and turns Plymouth Brother to please 'er. Preaches, 'e does...
they mostly do. Dresses 'isself up, and tramps five miles, and 'ollers
to a lot more of 'em about their sins. Disgraceful, that's wot I calls
it."
"Perhaps he thinks he is doing good," she suggested.
Robert smiled grimly.
"Precious little good 'e ever done, or ever will do, mum. And 'is
preaching! You should 'ear 'im."
"Do you tramp five miles to hear him preach?" she asked.
"Wot, me? And wot would the vicar do without me, do you suppose? I
'ear quite enough without going to 'is old meeting-place. 'E practises
'is old sarmons night-times, after me and the missis is a-bed. You'd
reckon it was a nuisance if 'e waked you up, as he wakes me and Hannah
in the dead o' night sometimes, screeching an' 'ollering. `Is your Lord
deaf?' I asks en; `because if 'E be, us bain't,' I says, `and us can't
sleep for your noise.' 'E's gone away now. Got a job at a farm near
'is young woman; an' I 'opes 'e stops there. I don't 'old wi' religion
outside o' church, and then I likes it shortened like. Our vicar is the
best vicar Moresby's ever 'ad, but 'e do make 'is sarmons long. Seems I
could say as much as 'e do in 'alf the time."
Mrs Chadwick laughed. Robert's garrulity would seem to discredit this
conceit.
"I like his sermons, Robert," she said. "I'm glad I am going to live at
Moresby. Later I shall visit Mrs Robert, if you think she won't mind."
"She won't mind, mum," Robert answered. "She'll be proud. I'm not sure
it won't make 'er over proud," he added reflectively. "Hannah gets
obstroperous when she's took notice of. Better let 'er think you come
to see me, I reckon."
She nodded brightly, and left him standing in the roadway looking after
her retreating figure, and from it to the shining coins lying in the
horny hollow of his palm. Perhaps it was due less to the Byronic
temperament than to the natural love of every loyal subject for the
King's portrait set in silver that Mrs Chadwick won from thenceforth
Robert's unshakable respect. Being a man actuated by occasional
chivalrous promptings, he drank to her good health conscientiously
during the following days. But from a fear of making Hannah
"obstroperous" he refrained from mentioning that interview with Mrs
Chadwick and its amicable finish; and, in case Hannah went through his
pockets while he slept, which experience taught him was the way of
wives, he put temptation out of her way by concealing the coins beneath
the altar cloth in the church. Familiarity with holy things had bred an
undesirable freedom in Robert's views.
The vicar and his wife stood at the vicarage gate and waved farewell to
Mr Musgrave's guests as the car drove past. Mr Musgrave on this
occasion accompanied the ladies, speeding, as Mrs Errol remarked, the
departure, if he had not obeyed strictly the prescribed rules of
hospitality by welcoming the coming guest.
"Well, that's over," she said, as the car turned the bend and
disappeared from sight. She tucked her hand within her husband's arm,
and walked with him a few yards down the road. "I shall be glad when
they are settled at the Hall. It will make things gayer."
"It will certainly do that," he agreed. "Gaiety and Mrs Chadwick are
synonymous terms."
"There is no especial virtue in gravity," Mrs Errol returned.
"There is not," he answered readily. "I prefer a cheerful countenance
myself."
The vicar's road that morning taking him past Robert's cottage, he
looked in to inquire for Mrs Robert, who had been much troubled of late
with mysterious pains which attacked equally mysterious parts of her
anatomy. To listen to Hannah's diagnosis of her complaints was to
wonder how anyone who suffered so distressingly could continue to live,
and to remain on the whole fairly active. The vicar, being accustomed
to this exaggerated description of the minor ills of the flesh, was able
to be sympathetic, and not unduly pessimistic in regard to the patient's
ultimate recovery. But this morning Hannah, having received a letter
from her son, was less concerned with her ailments than with the epistle
of Robert the younger, who, after two pages devoted to personal and
intimate matters, had sent a filial exhortation to his father, in which
he recommended for the latter's careful study the sixteenth verse of the
sixteenth chapter according to Saint Mark.
Robert the elder had insisted upon Hannah hunting up that particular
verse in the Bible which stood in the front window, where the vicar's
eye, and the eye of the district visitor, could not fail to light upon
it. The vicar's eye had become so familiarised with this object, which
looked as though it had never been displaced since first it had been put
there, that he had formed a very fair estimate of its accepted value in
the household. Mr Errol held no illusions concerning the piety of
Robert and his wife.
Hannah, nothing loth, had found the text, and read it aloud to Robert,
whose wrathful disgust had caused her quite pleasantly to forget her
pains for the time. There stood the words in relentless black and
white: "He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that
believeth not shall be damned."
Hannah performed the supererogatory task of reading the text aloud to
the vicar, who endeavoured while he listened to conceal the smile that
found its way to his lips.
"And what has Robert to say to that?" he asked.
Robert had had a good deal to say, but his wife did not feel it
necessary to quote him verbatim.
"Robert's mad," she answered. "He says he'll learn 'im. But Bob's a
good boy, sir, and terrible clever."
"He certainly possesses a strong sense of responsibility," the vicar
allowed.
When later Mr Errol saw Robert, he was reminded of young Robert's
message by the dour look on his old sexton's face. His expression of
wrathful indignation did not convey the suggestion that the seed of his
son's counsel had fallen upon fruitful ground. Robert not only looked
upset, he was most unusually taciturn. When he heard that the vicar had
been to his cottage that morning he merely grunted. The grunt was
expressive of many emotions, the most eloquent of which was unspeakable
disgust. At the same time the consciousness of certain coins concealed
beneath the altar cloth in the church caused Robert to lower his gaze
before his vicar's eyes.
"So Hannah has heard from Bob," the vicar observed pleasantly. "Bob
seems to fear you are in considerable danger, Robert."
"'E'll be in considerable danger if 'e comes 'ome before I've 'ad time
to cool," answered Robert grimly. He eyed his horny hand and the wrist
muscles, developed like taut leather through long usage with the spade,
and smiled darkly. "Reckon I didn' let in to en enough when 'e were a
youngster," he remarked regretfully. "I only wish 'e were young enough
for me to start in again. But I'm more'n 'is match now. Learn 'is
father, will 'e? Us'll see. Thinks 'e knows a sight more'n I do,
because 'e's got a few textes in 'is 'ead. 'Tis about all 'e 'as got
there. Proud, 'e is, because 'e reads 'is Bible, which 'e 'lows other
folk don't. Neither they does; but no more didn't 'e before 'e took up
wi' preaching."
"Oh, come, Robert," remonstrated the vicar, smiling. "Plenty of people
read their Bibles, even in Moresby."
"Plenty of people 'as Bibles," Robert replied darkly. "Keeps 'em for
show, they do. I knows. Folks don't read their Bibles nowadays."
Robert spoke of the Bible as though it were a relic of prehistoric times
which, being a respectable relic, and one the possession of which
brought the owner occasional benefits from those in spiritual authority,
was therefore worthy of a place even in the front window; but as a book
for practical use, the idea was simply a pose.
"Indeed," the vicar insisted, "I know one or two in the parish who read
their Bibles consistently. I have gone in at times and found them
reading it."
Robert eyed the speaker with a gleam in his eyes that suggested
affectionate patronage, and a half-contemptuous commiseration for such
blind credulity.
"They seed you coming, sir," he said, with a shake of the head at the
depths to which human duplicity will go.
The vicar gazed seriously into the quaint, sincere face of his sexton.
"Don't you ever read your Bible, Robert?" he asked gravely.
"No, sir. Never 'ear aught of it 'cept wot you reads out in church,"
Robert replied with disconcerting candour.
The Rev Walter Errol turned away abruptly to conceal from the
observant eyes regarding him whatever emotion moved him at the outspoken
sincerity of this man, who had worked under him for many years in the
service of the church. An honest heart is a worthy possession, and
truth, no matter what laxity it reveals, is preferable to deceit.