“Well, I must confess,” said the young man, blushing, “he—ah! mentioned a housekeeper—Mrs. Gaunt, I think—but——”
“No, of course not,” she interrupted him. “He had forgotten all about me.”
Mr. Prior gasped, and looked down. This was his first holiday exchange of livings—an unsophisticated venture, which he was already half repenting. A suburban cure; a desire for fresh pastures; a daring resolution; an advertisement in the “Church Times”; a prompt answer; as prompt an acceptance (after due reference to the Clergy List); a long railway journey; a tramp, relatively as long, to a remote parsonage on the road to a seaport; an arrival in the dark; an innocence of all expectation of, or preparation for him; an explanation; production of his written voucher, and—here he was, accepted, he could not but think, on sufferance. But there he thought wrong. Miss Robin was not near so upset by his appearance as he was.
“He comes and goes” (she said of Uncle Philip) “without reference to anybody or anything. We never know what he’ll do next, or who’ll introduce himself into the house as his friend. It may be a burglar or a pirate for all we know. All sorts of strange people come up from the port, and are shown into my uncle’s room, and out again by himself at the side door. At least, I suppose so. We never know what becomes of them, or what’s going on, any more than I doubt he does himself. I dare say they fleece him nicely; and—you may laugh—but when he’s in his absent moods, you might undress him without his knowing. Only he’d probably strike you to the ground when he found out—he’s such an awful temper.”
“Dear me!” murmured the young man; “how very curious. One hears of such cases.”
“Does one?” said Miss Robin. “I’d rather hear of, than live with them, anyhow; and in a desert, too. It wouldn’t so much matter if he didn’t always hold others to blame for his mistakes and mislayings. He kept me in bed a week once, because he’d read right through a treatise on explosives in the pulpit, before he discovered that it wasn’t his peace-thanksgiving sermon.”
“Astonishing!” said Mr. Prior; then added, with a faint smile, “Well, I can promise you, at least, that I’m not a pirate.”
“No,” she said, “I can see you’re not. Won’t you have some more tea?”
He was shown to his bedroom by Mrs. Gaunt, who was a stony, silent woman, bleak with mystery. All night the wind howled round the lonely building; and the unhappy man, who, in a phase of worldly revolt, egged on by a dare-devil parishioner, had once read “The House on the Marsh”, thought of Sarah and Mr. Rayner, and of a silent weaving of strings across the stairway in the dark to catch him tripping should he venture upon escape.
He arose, feverish, to a sense of hooting draughts in a grey house, and went to matins in the gaunt dull church, which stood as lonely as a shepherd’s hut on a slope hard by. There was nothing in sight but wind-torn pastures, and, all around, little graves, which seemed trying vainly to tuck themselves and their shivering epitaphs under the grass. There appeared nothing in the world to attract a congregation; but, as a matter of fact, there were a few old frosted spinsters present, of that amphibious order, a sort of landcrabs, which forgathers on the neutral wastes between sea and country.