Part 15 (1/2)
”That is,” said the vicar solemnly, ”the laudable object of the sewing club.”
”But I don't suppose,” Mrs Grantly remarked briskly, still standing draped in the obnoxious material, ”that there is any bye-law to the effect that the garments should be of an odious and humiliating description.”
”Of course not,” the ladies chorussed, smiling. They were beginning, all but Miss Tibbits, who was furious, to enjoy Mrs Grantly.
”Then let us,” Mrs Grantly's voice suddenly became soft and seductive, and she flung the folds of material from her, ”give them something pretty. They don't have much, poor things, and it's just as easy to make them pretty as ugly. Ladies, I've been to a good many sewing meetings in my life, and I always fight for the same thing, a present should be just a little bit different--don't you think--not hard and hideous and ordinary. . . .”
”That material is bought and paid for,” Miss Tibbits interrupted, ”it must be used.”
”It shall be used,” cried Mrs Grantly, ”I'll buy it, and I'll make it into dusters for which purpose it was obviously intended, and every woman in Redmarley shall have two for Christmas as an extra. A good strong duster never comes amiss.”
”Perhaps,” Miss Tibbits said coldly, ”you will undertake to procure the material.”
”Certainly,” said Mrs Grantly, ”but I'll buy it in blouse lengths, and every one different. Why should a whole village wear the same thing as though it was a reformatory?”
It appeared that the vicar had called with his list of the ”deserving poor.” In five minutes Mrs Grantly had detached each person, and made a note of her age and circ.u.mstances. She had only been in the village a week, and she already knew every soul in it.
She whirled off the vicar in a gale of enthusiasm, n.o.body else got a word in edgewise. Finally she departed with him into the hall, and saw him out at the front door, and her last whispered words were characteristic:
”You've let that Tibbits woman bully you for twenty years, now I'm going to bully you for a bit instead, and between us we'll give those poor dears a bit of cheer this Christmas.”
From that moment the vicar was Mrs Grantly's slave.
n.o.body knew how the affair leaked out, but the whole thing was known in the village before a week had pa.s.sed, with the result that fifteen women visited the vicar, one after the other, and after much circ.u.mlocution intimated that ”If so be as 'e would be so kind, they'd be glad if 'e'd 'int to the ladies as they 'adn't nearly wore out last Christmas petticoat, and, if it were true wot they'd 'eard as they was talkin' of givin' summat different, might Mrs Mustoe, Gegg, Uzzel, or Radway, etc., have anything they did choose to make as warn't a petticoat.”
There was a slump in petticoats.
In despair he went to Mrs Grantly, and she undertook to see the matter through.
”It's absurd,” Mrs Grantly remarked to her daughter, ”in a little place like this where one knows all the people, and exactly what they're like, to make things all the same size. Fancy me trying to get into a blouse that would fit that skinny Miss Tibbits! A little common sense is what's needed in this sewing society, and, Marjory, my dear, I'm going to do my best to supply it.”
Throughout the years that followed, Mrs Grantly continued to supply common sense to the inhabitants of Redmarley. She found places for young servants, both in her own household and those of her friends, till gradually there were many links between the village and ”'Orse and Field and Garrison.”
More than one Redmarley damsel married a gunner ”on the strength.” Had the intending bridegroom been anything else, Mrs Grantly would herself have forbidden the banns!
CHAPTER XI
CHRISTMAS AT REDMARLEY
That year Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, and on the Sat.u.r.day afternoon Eloquent drove out from Marlehouse to Redmarley to spend the week-end with his aunt. She was out when he arrived, and he went straight to the vicarage, asked for the vicar, and was shown into the study, where Mr Molyneaux sat smoking by the fire in a deep-seated high-backed chair.
Even as he entered the room, Eloquent was conscious of the pleasurable thrill that things beautiful and harmonious never failed to evoke. The windows faced west; the red sun, just sinking behind Redmarley Woods, shone in on and was reflected from walls covered from floor to ceiling with books; books bound for the most part in mellow brown and yellow calf, that seemed to give forth an amber light as from sun-warmed turning beeches.
The vicar had discarded his clerical coat, and wore a shabby grey-green Norfolk jacket frayed at the cuffs; nevertheless, Eloquent sincerely admired him as he rose to give courteous greeting to his guest.
The old vicar was stout and bald, and the grey hair that fringed his head was decidedly rumpled. A long face, with high, narrow forehead and pointed beard, cheeks heavy and creased, straight nose, with strongly marked, sensitive nostrils. The mouth, full-lipped and shutting firmly under the grey moustache, cut straight across the upper lip; the eyes, rather prominent blue eyes, had once been bold and merry, and were still keen. A fine old face, deeply lined and sorrowful, bearing upon it the impress of great possibilities that had remained--possibilities. He was somehow in keeping with his room, this warm, untidy, comfortable room that smelt of tobacco and old leather, where there was such a curious jumble of things artistic and sporting: a few pictures and bas-reliefs, nearly all of the pre-Renaissance Italian School, a big stuffed trout in a gla.s.s case, a fox's brush and mask, an old faded cricket cap; and over the carved mantelshelf, the portrait of a Georgian beauty in powder and patches, whose oval face, heavy-lidded eyes, and straight features were not unlike the vicar's own.
There was in the vicar's manner the welcoming quality that puts the shyest person at his ease. He was secretly much surprised that young Gallup should call upon him; but no hint of this appeared in his manner, and Eloquent found no difficulty in stating the object of his visit with business-like directness.
”I came to ask you,” he remarked with his usual stiff solemnity, ”if you would care for me to read the lessons at morning service to-morrow. . . . I do not read badly. . . . I have studied elocution.”