“You’re all very devoted to that child,” she said, meaning, “There is something mysterious in that quarter which sooner or later is bound to come out.” And the meaning was so clear that Edwin was intimidated. What did she guess? Did she know anything? To-night Auntie Hamps was displaying her gift at its highest.
“I don’t know that Maggie’s so desperately keen on the infant!” he said.
“She’s not like you about him, that’s sure!” Mrs Hamps admitted. And she went on, in a tone that was only superficially casual, “I wonder the mother doesn’t come down to him!”
Not ‘his’ mother—‘the’ mother. Odd, the effect of that trifle! Mrs Hamps was a great artist in phrasing.
“Oh!” said Edwin. “It’s not serious enough for that.”
“Well, I’m not so sure,” Auntie Hamps gravely replied. “The Vicar is dead.”
The emphasis which she put on these words was tremendous.
“Is he,” Edwin stammered. “But what’s that got to do with it?”
He tried to be condescending towards her absurdly superstitious assumption that the death of the Vicar of Saint Peter’s could increase the seriousness of George’s case. And he feebly succeeded in being condescending. Nevertheless he could not meet his auntie’s gaze without self-consciousness. For her emphasis had been double, and he knew it. It had implied, secondly, that the death of the Vicar was an event specially affecting Edwin’s household. The rough sketch of a romance between the Vicar and Maggie had never been completed into a picture, but on the other hand it had never been destroyed. The Vicar and Maggie had been supposed to be still interested in each other, despite the Vicar’s priestliness, which latterly had perhaps grown more marked, just as his church had grown more ritualistic. It was a strange affair, thin, elusive; but an affair it was. The Vicar and Maggie had seldom met of recent years, they had never—so far as anyone knew—met alone; and yet, upon the news of the Vicar’s death, the first thought of nearly everybody was for Maggie Clayhanger.
Mrs Hamps’s eyes, swimming in the satisfaction of several simultaneous woes, said plainly, “What about poor Maggie?”