Canon Alington had never, in all the course of his useful life, been spoken to like this, and he was astonished into silence. It seemed incredible that this could happen, and yet it was happening. And Hugh had not finished yet.
“You asked me just now,” he went on, “whether I thought it right for my wife to read this paper of hers in Mannington, and you may be surprised to hear that I agree with you; I think it most undesirable that she should. But my reason will probably surprise you just as much, and it’s because if we are to judge of Mannington or the members of the Literific by you, the people here must have the most disgusting minds. I never heard of anything so narrow and Puritanical and—and prurient. You were just the same about ‘Tristan’; you couldn’t see the beauty of it because you couldn’t keep your mind off the moral question. I tell you that Edith and I haven’t horrid minds like that; we don’t even need to make an effort not to think about that. We don’t want to; it doesn’t occur to us. Another thing, too—I bet you that you and that woman came to call this afternoon in order that you should talk to me about it, and she should talk to Edith. That’s not a very nice thing to do. You should have told me to have told Edith. Instead, you trapped me into walking with you, in order that that woman should talk to my wife. Besides, I thought you didn’t approve of going out on Sundays?”
Hugh paused a moment.
“So don’t be under any misapprehension,” he said. “I am entirely on your side, you see, about the reading of this paper, though for rather different reasons, and I shall do my best to induce Edith not to read it or any other ever. I don’t know if I shall succeed, because she has got the soul and mind of an angel, and is perfectly incapable, I honestly believe, of doing anything that would be unpleasant for anybody. Good Lord! how I shall enjoy telling Peggy about it. She will roar, if I can make her believe it’s true. By-the-way, also, you said up at the house that you must go because it was church time. You looked at your watch, too, and must have known it wasn’t, because there are the bells just beginning. That’s all I’ve got to say, I think.”
Hugh stepped down from the stile and held out his hand.
“There,” he said, “I’ll apologise for anything I have said that isn’t true. I’ve got more to forgive than you, you know, Dick, because I’ve said everything straight to you, whereas you talked us over with Mrs. Owen and Agnes, and you attributed to Edith the nastiness of your own mind. That’s what it comes to. Now I propose that we ‘make up,’ as boys say.”
Canon Alington looked at him icily.
“I never bear malice against anyone,” he said; “but as to ‘making up,’ in the sense in which I understand the word, namely, to resume cordial relations with you, I will do so when you express regret for every word you have said.”
Hugh stared at him for a moment.
“I will express it when I feel it,” he said, and walked straight back toward Chalkpits.