THE WICKEDNESS OF MOLLY BIDDULPH
YOU perceive, therefore, that Chance had truly played the game well.
John--a radiant John--apologized within his soul for his one-time
doubt of the Sprite’s arrangement of affairs. The sun immediately
shone brighter, the sky was bluer, the earth an altogether fairer and
lovelier place.
He made his way swiftly back to the White Cottage. There, in the
parlour, he found what he sought, a pale grey envelope lying on the
table. Quickly he broke the seal, perused the opening words:
“My grandmother desires me....”
John’s heart thumped madly. It was exactly as he had hoped,--her
handwriting, her signature! The faintest scent of lavender was wafted
to him from the paper.
“We shall be lunching at Delancey Castle tomorrow,” said John, with
a fine air of casualness, to Mrs. Trimwell, who was setting out the
tea-things. Inwardly he was aware that an almost idiotic smile of
pleasure was wreathing itself about his lips.
Mrs. Trimwell beamed. You might have fancied, seeing her, that the
invitation had been extended to herself.
“I’m glad,” said she, heartily and concisely. “You need cheering up a
bit.”
“I do?” John was surprised.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Trimwell. “I’ve noticed well enough that you’ve
been down on your luck like these last three days, and no wonder with
not a soul to speak to except Mr. Elmore, and him everlasting on
ladders chiselling of the walls, which it isn’t the easiest way to be
talking at the same time, I’ll be bound. You’ve done nothing but wear
yourself out a-trapezing round the country in the heat, and come home
that tired you’ve no stomach for your food. I’ve eyes in my head.” Mrs.
Trimwell nodded emphatically.
“Oh, but really--” began John feebly, and with something like a queer
sense of guilt, “I haven’t----”
“You’ve been dull,” reiterated Mrs. Trimwell firmly, “and if you _say_
you haven’t you don’t deceive me, no more than my Tilda did when she
come into the house half an hour agone looking for all the world like
a choir boy a-singing of hymns. ‘Where ha’ you been, Tilda?’ says I.
Tilda, she glinted at me out of the corner of her eye. ‘Oh, round and
about, mother,’ says she. ‘And ’tis round and about with Molly Biddulph
you’ve been then,’ I says. And Tilda, she begins to snivel, knowing
I’ve told her times out of number I won’t have her going around with
Molly, who’s the worst young limb of mischief to the village. There’s
nothing that child won’t do, from getting unbeknownst into Jane Kelly’s
shop and changing the salt and sugar in the jars, to tampering with the
very books in the church itself. Did I ever tell you about her and the
banns of marriage, sir?”
“You did not,” replied John.
“It was her cousin from Dublin what helped her, I know,” announced Mrs.
Trimwell, “being a boy, and good at writing, and old enough to think of
the wickedness. But ’twas Molly stole the key, as Father Maloney got
her to own, and seeing she goes to his church, being Irish papists, I
wonder he don’t keep her in better order. Vicar, he was away for a
Sunday or two, and got another parson what he called a lokomtinum to
come down. Molly, she stole the key of the vestry from Henry Davies
what’s the verger, and used to keep the key in a china cat on his
parlour mantelpiece, but has carried it tied to his watch chain ever
since, and her and Patsie sneaked off down to the church when Vicar had
gone, and got the book of banns to be called. There wasn’t but one bann
to be called, Lily Morton’s, her that married the blacksmith over to
Bradbury three months agone. Patsie and Molly wrote down the rest. They
coupled off Mr. Healy and Miss Sweeting, and Mr. Porter and Miss Janet
Cray, and Mr. Lethbury and Miss Martha Bridges, what’s all over fifty
if they’re a day, and the respectablest spinsters for miles round, and
Mr. Healey he’s in his dotage, and Mr. Porter what’s afraid to look a
woman in the face, and Mr. Lethbury a married man with a wife a bit of
a termagent. They said afterwards--Molly and Patsie--they had to give
Miss Martha Bridges to somebody, and there wasn’t no unmarried men but
Mr. Healey and Mr. Porter, and they’d fixed them to Miss Sweeting and
Miss Janet Cray. Well, the lokomtinum he don’t know no more than Adam
who the people in the village are, and when it come to the banns, out
he reads the sinfulness them two have written down. Mrs. Morton, the
butcher’s wife, she was there, and she told me afterwards you might ha’
heard the gasp that went round the church up to the Castle. Mr. Porter
took and bolted, and hasn’t been seen outside his gates yet. Mr. Healey
wasn’t there, and Mr. Lethbury he sat with his jaw dropped and his eyes
a-sticking out of his head. Miss Martha Bridges had hysterics, and the
only ones that seemed a bit pleased and fluttery-like was Miss Sweeting
and Miss Janet Cray, specially Miss Janet. Suppose them two thought it
was a new kind o’ way of proposing, not having the courage to do it
otherways.” Mrs. Trimwell stopped.
“What happened?” asked John trying to keep his voice steady.
“Happened!” said Mrs. Trimwell. “There was talk enough in the village
that Sunday and a week after to last most people for a lifetime and
then them feel a bit of chatterboxes. Henry Davies he was mad, feeling
responsible like as verger. He guessed ’twas Molly at the bottom of it
as she’s at the bottom of all the mischievousness in the place and
her only eleven. But he couldn’t prove nothing finding the key in the
china cat Sunday morning same as it always was, Molly having put it
back. He ask her, and she up and lied straight. She’ll tell you a lie
and look you in the face as innocent as a dove. But I knows when she’s
lying for that she always turns her toes in when she lies. But I don’t
think other folk have noticed that, and for all she’s a bad child I’ll
not give her away that much. Henry Davies he went up to Father Maloney,
and he sent for Molly and Patsie, being a knowing man like, and the
sinfulness a bit beyond Molly’s years. They told him the truth fast
enough. I’ll say that for Molly, she don’t never lie to Father Maloney,
that I knows. And then all they’d say, as brazen as you please, was
that they were sorry they couldn’t have heard the banns read, because
’twould be a sin in them to go to a Protestant church. Henry Davies
said Father Maloney was that angry with them for such a speech he just
turned his back straight on them and walked over to the window. And
presently he said in a queer sort of voice that if Henry Davies would
go away for a bit he’d talk to Patsie and Molly. Henry Davies was
sure he was so upset at the wickedness of them being responsible for
their souls like that he couldn’t abide to have any one see what he was
feeling.”
“It would be a grief to him,” announced John gravely. “Did--did his
lecture have any effect?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Trimwell, “in a manner of speaking you might say
it had. Father Maloney went with Molly and Patsie to them six they’d
insulted--Father Maloney said ’twas an insult--and to Henry Davies and
the lokomtinum, and they apologized. Though Molly said afterwards that
Miss Janet and the lokomtinum were the only ones it had been worth
while apologizing to. She said it in Henry Davies’s hearing, which it
wasn’t pleasant for him to hear, and he’d have gone to Father Maloney
again but that Mrs. Davies persuaded him to let well alone seeing he
might ha’ been a bit to blame for not keeping the key safer. Father
Maloney made them own up to Vicar too, and say they were sorry. But
sorriness with Molly is water on a duck’s back and no more and no less.
And I’ve told my Tilda fifty times if I’ve told her once, that I’ll not
have her go with Molly. But it’s awful the way Molly gets a hold on
children with her coaxing ways.”
John shook his head in commiseration. Words, it would appear, failed
him at the moment.
Two minutes later, Mrs. Trimwell having departed, he betook himself to
a careful re-perusal of that pale grey letter.