At the next Committee meeting, which the Colonel attended, there was heavy fighting between the Army and the Church; and after it even graver trouble between Alf and the Reverend Spink.
"It's not only my reputation," cried the indignant curate. "It's the credit of the Church you've shaken."
"I know nothing only the facts," retorted Alf doggedly—"if they're any good to you. I drove them there meself—14th September, 1906, four o'clock of a Saturday afternoon and a bit foggy like. You can see it in the entry-book for yourself. They went into the Registrar's office single, and they walked out double, half-an-hour later. I see em myself, and you can't get away from the facts of your eyes, not even a clergyman can't."
Alf was additionally embittered because he felt that the curate had left him disgracefully in the lurch in the incident of the Moot. The Reverend Spink on his side—somewhat dubious in his heart of the part he had played on the fringe of that affair—felt that by taking the strong and righteous line now he was vindicating himself in his own eyes at least for any short-comings then.
"I shall report the whole thing to the Archdeacon," he said. "It's a scandal. He'll deal with you."
"Report it then!" snapped Alf. "If the Church don't want me, neether don't I want the Church."
The war was killing the Archdeacon, as Mr. Trupp had said it must.
The flames of his indomitable energy were devouring the old gentleman for all the world to see. He was going down to his grave, as he would have wished, to the roll of drums and roar of artillery.
Thus when the Reverend Spink went up to the Rectory to report on the delinquencies of the sidesman, he found his chief in bed and obviously spent.
The old gentleman made a pathetic figure attempting to maintain his dignity in a night-gown obviously too small for him, which served to emphasize his failing mortality.