The Graftons: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

The Vicar and Mrs. Mercer received them according as their different temperaments dictated. The Vicar was important and patronising with Prescott, and his wife sympathetic with Viola.

"I'm sure you will like the house," she said. "We have had some very happy times here, and are sorry to be giving it up, although we have a very nice one to go to. We will do all we can to make it easy for you to come in."

Caroline put her arm into hers. She felt very sorry for this poor little lady, who had made such a brave show in a situation that to her must have been full of distress. Caroline did not know that her father had actually asked the Vicar to leave, but it had been made so plain all around that there was nothing but satisfaction felt at his departure. People liked Mrs. Mercer, whenever they had a chance of judging of her apart from her husband, but she had suffered from her very loyalty to him, and must have been saddened at leaving her home of many years with few to regret her.

She responded to Caroline's' touch with a little pressure of her arm, and smiled up at her. "It's horrid going away from you, dear," she said. "I shall be quite jealous thinking of Mrs. Prescott in my place here."

They went over the house and garden and outbuildings together, the Vicar talking most of the time, and Prescott's face gradually lengthening as he did so. For his talk was mostly of 'fixtures' and of 'taking over,' and apparently it had not hitherto struck the Vicar-elect that to be presented to a living involved details of this sort. He did not, however, say anything as to any difficulty he might find in providing money that had mounted up to a considerable sum when the Vicar had indicated all the expensive articles that he had put in, and all the other expensive articles that it wouldn't be worth while to take out. He looked a little less frightened when they had come back to the drawing-room and his wife said boldly: "I don't think we shall want anything that we're not obliged to take, Mr. Mercer. We shan't be able to live in more than a few rooms for some time, because we haven't got any money for furnishing."

The Vicar blinked. It seemed almost indecent to acknowledge a lack of money in this fashion, especially to a man who had 'private means.' He turned to Prescott. "I don't think you will find it practicable to live in a few rooms here," he said. "Your parishioners expect more of you in the country than they do in a town. You have to keep up your position before them."

Viola's interposition had lifted a weight from her husband's mind. Of course she would undertake all that sort of thing. It wasn't for him to bother himself about it. They would be quite happy living in two rooms together, with the furniture that they already had; and, with the enormous income of £500 a year that would now be at their disposal, they would be able to get whatever they wanted to furnish the rest. Nor was he at all subdued by the Vicar's speech.

"Oh, we are not going to be bothered about keeping up a position," he said. "I expect I shall have plenty of parishioners a good deal poorer than I am."

With the casting off of the burden which had begun to oppress him, he emerged into a condition of extremely high spirits again. He drew comparisons between the state in which he would live and that in which the Mercers had lived. He chaffed the Vicar, and treated him generally as if he were rather a comic character. He showed himself extremely irresponsible with regard to all questions of management, both domestic and official, and told Mrs. Mercer that if she hadn't taken all that sort of thing off her husband's hands it must have been because she was not fit to be a clergyman's wife. He received in a spirit of levity a list of fixtures which the Vicar had typed out for him, services in the church, meetings for this and that in the schoolroom and elsewhere, an itinerary of visiting for three afternoons in the week.

"You have been a busy little bee," he said. "I expect you've kept them all in order too. I'm afraid I shan't be able to do that. But it all looks splendid on paper. I wish I could afford a typewriter. But what's this word 'agout'? Oh, I see, it's meant for 'about.' Thanks very much. I'll put it in my pocket."