“I’ll tell my mother,” she added aloud, moving to the door. Mrs. Cantacute was a widow and an invalid, which was counted by some as Verity’s sole excuse.
The young parson, however, sprang to his feet, putting out a protesting hand, his dark eyes very bright and eager.
“No, no, please don’t!—that is, not just yet. There is something I want to say to you alone, Miss Cantacute, if you will be kind enough to spare me a few minutes.”
“Of course!” Verity shifted Ibsen from his chair, and sat down with him in her lap, the title invitingly uppermost; and Mr. Grant looked at the little figure in blue with its shining head and downcast eyes, and thought of Raphael and Correggio and Fra Angelico and ladders of angels and Rebekah at the well.
“I want to ask you a favour,” he began, picking up a Mormon, and crackling it nervously without looking at it. “You’ll think I’m very interfering, I expect, and perhaps very impertinent, but I don’t doubt that you will see my point of view in the end. One has only to look at you, Miss Cantacute, to know that you are incapable of any but the very highest and noblest instincts concerning any subject of spiritual importance.”
Verity looked up deprecatingly without saying anything; then refixed her gaze on the buckle of her left shoe. The Mormon crackled harder than ever.
“I hear that you are arranging an elaborate Pierrot entertainment,” he went on, “the work for which is to occupy a large portion of the winter. I don’t want to discount your kindness, Miss Cantacute, in organising displays of this sort for the amusement of an isolated little village, but I do ask you to consider one particular point. As you know, I found, when I came, that many of the usual church efforts for promoting spiritual growth had fallen into neglect. There was no mission-work, for instance, no special service for men, no Girls’ Friendly or Temperance League; no sewing-parties, night-classes or lectures. I have worked hard to alter that state of things, and at last I earnestly believe I am beginning to succeed. Most of the young men and women of the parish are at present pleasantly and profitably employed during each evening of the week, striving to become worthy helpers in the great Cause. Now you, Miss Cantacute, propose to distract their minds by musical and dramatic rehearsals held almost daily; and I ask you, very humbly, and with real anxiety, whether you think yourself justified in interfering thus arbitrarily with the work of the Church? I love my task, as you scarcely need telling, but at the same time it has its disagreeable side. I have had my battle to fight, like every one else, and it has not been a small one, by any means—far from it! But at least I was beginning to trust it was won. Now—I don’t know. I don’t know!”
He rose sharply, and began to pace up and down the room, his hands behind him, passing Anne and Oscar without so much as a glance. Verity still said nothing.
“I had heard so much about you before I came, Miss Cantacute. I was told how clever you were, how charming, how heart to heart with the villagers, how affectionately regarded on all sides! I had it said to me that, with Verity Cantacute under my banner, I need never know an hour’s uneasiness. I have tried very hard to enlist you; you will admit that. I have asked you to work for me—the very highest compliment in the world! I have offered you posts second only in importance to my own. I have done all in my power to demonstrate to you that, after myself, I regard you as the greatest influence in the parish. And yet, despite all this, you have met me, time after time, with rebuff on rebuff, refusal on refusal—rejection, discouragement, almost contempt!”
He looked again at his silent hostess—at the prayerful hands, lightly clasped, the Madonna-like parting of the hair, the subdued, gentle bend of the neck, and his hopes rose. Surely, surely she was touched! He sat down thoughtlessly upon Woman Enthroned, and leaned anxiously towards her.