Part 6 (1/2)
”If you will kindly tell me where I can find them,” continued the stranger, very politely, ”I will go and get them.”
”I am afraid you can't do that,” said Vera, with just the vestige of a smile playing upon her face, ”because they are at present in my pocket.”
”Oh, I beg your pardon;” and the stranger smiled outright.
”But I will let you into the church, if you like; if that is what you wish?” she said, quite simply.
”Yes, if you please.” Vera moved up the path to the porch, the gentleman following her. She turned the key in the heavy door and held it open. ”If you will go in, please, I will take the keys; I must not leave them in the door.” The gentleman went in, and Vera looked at him as he pa.s.sed by.
Most uninteresting! was her verdict as he pa.s.sed her; forty at the very least! What a beautiful situation for an adventure! What a romantic incident! And how excessively tame is the _denouement_! A middle-aged gentleman, tall and slightly bald, with close-cropped whiskers and grave, set features; who on earth could he be? A stranger, evidently; perhaps he was staying at some neighbouring country house, and had walked over to Sutton for the sake of exercise; but what on earth could he want to see the church for!
The stranger stood just inside the door with his hat off, looking at her.
”Won't you come in and show it to me?” he asked, rather hesitatingly.
”The church? oh, certainly, if you like, but there is nothing to see in it.” She came in, closing the door behind her, and stood beside him. It did not strike her as unusual or interesting, or as anything, in fact, but the most common-place and unexciting proceeding, that she should do the honours of the church to this middle-aged stranger.
They stood side by side in the centre of the small nave with all the ugly, high, red-cus.h.i.+oned pews around them. Vera looked up and down the familiar place as though she and not he were seeing it for the first time; from the row of whitewashed pillars to the staring white windows; from the hatchment on the plastered walls to the disfiguring gallery along the west end.
”It is very hideous,” she said, almost apologetically, ”especially the chancel; Mr. Daintree wants to have it restored, but I suppose that can't be done at all now.”
”Why can't it be done?”
”Oh, because nothing can be done unless the chancel is pulled down; that belongs to the lay rector, and he has refused to restore it.”
”Sir John Kynaston is the lay rector.”
”Yes!” Vera looked a little startled; ”do you know him?”
The gentleman pa.s.sed his hand over his chin.
”Slightly,” he answered, not looking at her.
”It is a pity he cannot be brought to see how necessary it is, for he certainly ought to do it,” continued Vera. ”You see I cannot help being interested in it because Mr. Daintree is such a good man, and has worked so hard to get up money to begin the rest of the church. He had quite counted upon the chancel being done, and now he is so much disappointed; but, I beg your pardon, this cannot interest you.”
”But it interests me very much. Why does not somebody put it in this light to Sir John; he would not surely refuse?”
”My brother-in-law, Mr. Daintree, I mean, did ask him last night, and he would not promise to do anything.”
The stranger suddenly left her side and walked up the church by himself into the chancel. He went straight up to the east end and made a minute examination apparently of the wall; after that, he came slowly down again, looking carefully into every corner and cranny from the whitewashed ceiling down to the damp and uneven stone paving at his feet; Vera thought him a very odd person, and wondered what he was thinking about.
He came back to her and stood before her looking at her for a minute. And then he made this most remarkable speech:
”If _you_ were to ask Sir John Kynaston this he would restore the chancel!” he said.
For half-a-second Vera stared at him in blank amazement. Then she turned haughtily round, and flushed hotly with angry indignation.
”There is nothing more to see in the church,” she said, shortly, and walked straight out of it.
The stranger had followed her; when they reached the churchyard he said to her, quite humbly,
”I beg your pardon; Miss Nevill; how unlucky I am to have made you angry, to begin with.”