Part 8 (1/2)
”He has been awfully good about it,” Blantyre said. ”He was down here on Tuesday morning going into the matter. A man named Hamlyn, the editor of a little local paper, threw the church into a miserable state of confusion during Ma.s.s last Sunday, just after I had said the Prayer of Consecration. He read a doc.u.ment protesting against the Blessed Sacrament. We had him ejected, and yesterday he was fined ten s.h.i.+llings in the local police court. The magistrate, who is a p.r.o.nounced Protestant in his sympathies, said that though the defendant had doubtless acted with the best intentions, one must not combat one illegality with another, and that the law provided methods for the regulation of wors.h.i.+p other than protests during its process!”
”Pompous old a.s.s!” said Stephens.
”Well, I'm glad they fined him,” Lucy said.
”'All's well that ends well!' You won't have the services disturbed again.”
”On the contrary, dear, we are all very much afraid that this is the first spark of a big fire. We hear rumours of an organised movement which may be widely taken up by the enemies of the Church. All through the ranks there's a feeling of uneasiness. Lord Huddersfield is working night and day to warn the clergy and prepare them. We cannot say how it will end.”
He spoke with gravity and seriousness. Lucy, who privately thought the whole thing a ridiculous storm in a teacup, and was utterly ignorant of the points at issue, looked sympathetic, but said nothing. She was not in a flippant mood; she realised she was quite an outsider in the matter, which seemed so momentous to the three intelligent men she was with, and, unwilling to betray her lack of comprehension or to say anything that would jar, she kept a discreet silence.
”We all get shouted after already, when we go into the worst parts of the parish,” said Stephens cheerfully. ”They've been rousing the hooligan element. It's an old trick. Lazy bounders, who don't know a Christian from a Jew and have never been in a church in their lives, shout 'papist' after us as we go into the houses. Just before I came in, I was walking up the street when a small and very filthy urchin put his head round the corner of a house and squeaked out, 'Oo kissed ve Pope's toe?' Then he turned and ran for dear life. As yet, I haven't been a.s.saulted, but King has! Haven't you, King?”
Mr. King looked rather like a bashful bulldog, and endeavoured to change the subject.
”Do you mean any one actually struck you, Mr. King?” Lucy said, absolutely bewildered. ”How awful! But why should any one want to do that?”
The vicar broke in with a broad grin that made his likeness to a comedian more apparent than ever.
”Oh, King was splendid!” he said with a chuckle. ”That ended very well.
A big navvy chap was coming out of a public-house just as King was pa.s.sing. He looked round at his friends and called out something to the effect that here was another monkey in petticoats--we wear our ca.s.socks in the streets--and see how he'd do for um! So he gave poor King a clout on the side of the head.”
”Oh, I _am_ sorry,” Lucy said, looking with interest upon the priest, and realising dimly that to be a clergyman in Hornham apparently ranked as one of the dangerous trades. ”What did you do, Mr. King?”
King flushed a little and looked singularly foolish. He was a bashful man with ladies,--they did not come much into his pastoral way.
Lucy thought that the poor fellow had probably run away and wished that she had not asked such an awkward question.
”Oh, he won't tell ye, my dear!” Blantyre said, ”but I will. When the gentleman smacked um on the cheek, he turned the other to him and kept's hands behind's back. Then the hero smacked that cheek too. 'Hurroo!'
says King, or words to that effect, 'now I've fulfilled me duty to me religion and kept to the words of Scripture. And now, me friend, I'm going to do me duty to me neighbour and thrash ye till ye can't see out of your eyes.' With that he stepped up to um and knocked um down, and when he got up, he knocked um down again!”
Mr. King fidgeted uneasily in his seat. ”I thought it was the wisest thing to do,” he said, apologetically. ”You see, it would stop anything of the sort for the future!”
”And the fun of the whole thing, Miss Blantyre,” Stephens broke in, ”was that I came along soon after and found the poor wretch senseless--King's got a fist like a hammer. So we got him up and refused to charge him to the policeman who turned up after it was all over, and we brought him here. We sponged him and mended him and fed him, and he turned out no end of a good sort when the drink was out of him. Poor chap gets work when he can, hasn't a friend in the world; hadn't any clothes or possessions but what he stood up in, and was utterly a waster and uncared for. We asked him if he knew what a papist was, and found he hadn't an idea, only he thought that they made love to workingmen's wives when their husbands were at work! He'd been listening to our friend, Mr. Hamlyn, who called a ma.s.s-meeting after the police-court proceedings and lectured on the three men of sin at the vicarage!”
A flood of strange and startling ideas poured into the girl's brain. A new side of life, a fourth dimension, was beginning to be revealed to her. She looked wonderingly at the three men in their long ca.s.socks; she felt she was in the presence of power. She had felt that when James Poyntz was talking to her in the train, in the fresh, sunlit morning, which seemed a thing of the remotest past now. Yet this afternoon she felt it more poignantly than before. Things were going on down here, in this odd corner of London, that were startling in their newness.
”And what happened to the poor man?” she said at length.
”Oh,” answered the vicar, ”very fortunately we are without a man of all work just now, so we took him on. He carried your trunk up-stairs. He's wearing Stephen's trousers, which are much too tight for um! and an old flannel tennis coat of King's--till we can get his new clothes made. He was in rags!”
”But surely that's rather risky,” Lucy said in some alarm. ”And what about the other servants? I shouldn't think Miss Ca.s.s liked it much!”
Miss Ca.s.s was the housekeeper, the woman with the face like a horse. She always repelled Lucy, who, for no reason than the old, stupid ”Dr. Fell”
reason, disliked her heartily.
To her great surprise, she saw three faces turned towards her suddenly.
On each was an expression of blank surprise, exactly the same expression. Lucy wanted to laugh; the three men were as alike as children are when a conjuror has just made the pudding in the hat or triumphantly demonstrated the disappearing egg.