'The regret of your absence indicated by Madame Du Tertre I fully share,' he said, with a polite smile. 'It is my great loss that I have not met you before in this charming society. At this dull season of the year, when every one is out of town, I need scarcely say what a godsend it has been to me to have been permitted to pass an evening occasionally with two such ladies; and the knowledge that I might have had the chance of an introduction to Mr. Humphrey Statham would have been, had it been needed, an additional inducement to drag me from my dreary solitude.'
That was an uncomfortable evening for all persons present. Even to Alice--dull, distrait, and occupied with her own sorrow--there was an evident incongruity in the meeting of the two men. Pauline was furious, partly at Wetter's cool treatment of her, partly at the idea that Statham had cross-questioned her as to why she had permitted the intimacy with Wetter to arise. Wetter himself was annoyed at Statham's presence on the scene, while Humphrey Statham went away sorry and sick at heart at all he had seen and heard. The old stories concerning Wetter which floated about society had reached his ears, and the recollection of them rushed upon him as he sat in the cab on his homeward drive. 'How had this man managed to get a footing in Alice's house; a footing he had evidently obtained, for he spoke of frequent visits there, and his manner was that of an habitué of the house? He was introduced as Madame Du Tertre's cousin; but if that were so, that fact, instead of inspiring confidence in him, was simply sufficient to create distrust of Madame Du Tertre. He was the last man with whom any woman, young and inexperienced, more especially any woman in Alice Claxton's position, should be brought in contact.'
What was best to be done? For an answer to this question Humphrey Statham racked his brain that night. In any case he must write a full account of what he had seen, and of the inference he had drawn therefrom to Martin Gurwood. Martin may not be able to give him any advice, but it was due to him to let him know what had occurred. He, in his simplicity, may see nothing in it; but at all events he must never be able to plead that he was unadvised and unwarned. So before retiring to his rest that night, Humphrey Statham sat down and wrote to his friend a full account of his visit, with a candid statement of the fears and reflections which the presence of such a man as Mr. Wetter in Alice Claxton's household had aroused in him.
'To you,' he said--'to you who have nothing in your life to repair, all this may seem very strained; but I, who have passé par-là, and have failed to save one whom I might have saved, know what a sting a failure may come to mean for all the days of a man's life.'
'Nothing in my life to repair!' cried Martin Gurwood, after he had read the letter, clasping his hands above his head. 'My God, if there were but any place for repentance, any possibility of reparation!'
[CHAPTER V.]
MARTIN GURWOOD'S RECKONING WITH HIMSELF.
It was full time that Martin Gurwood returned to Lullington, for his parishioners had begun to grow impatient at his absence. Although, as we have already shown, the Vicar could not be called popular amongst them, having no tastes in common with theirs and rather aweing them with his dignified reserve, the good people of Lullington had become accustomed to their parson's ways, and were disposed t-o overlook what they thought the oddity of his manners in consideration of his bountiful kindness and the strict fidelity with which he discharged the duties of his office. He was not one of their own sort; he was not a 'good fellow;' there was nothing at all free-and-easy about him; no jokes were cracked before him; no harvest-home suppers, no Christmas merry-makings found him among the assembled company. But the farmers, if they did not like their Vicar, respected him most thoroughly, and thought it something to have amongst them a man on whose advice on all spiritual matters (and in all worldly matters, few indeed though they be, in which honour and honesty are alone concerned) they could fully and firmly rely. So that when Martin Gurwood, on his mother's invitation, went up to London in the autumn of the year, intending to stop there but a very few weeks, the churchwardens and such others of his parishioners as he deigned to take so far into his confidence, were sincere in expressing their wishes for his speedy return.
But if the inhabitants of Lullington were sorry for their pastor's departure at the time of his leaving them, much more bitterly did they regret it after they had had a little experience of his locum tenens. The gentleman who had temporarily undertaken the spiritual care of the Lullingtonians was a man of birth and ability, an old college friend of Martin Gurwood, and emphatically a scholar and a gentleman. He had married when very young, and had a large family; he was miserably poor, and it was principally with the view of helping him that Martin had requested him to fill his place during his absence. Mr. Dill was only too glad to find some place which he could occupy rent-free, and where he had a better chance of being able to work undisturbed by the racket of his children than in the noisy lodging in town. So he moved all his family by the third-class train, and in less than an hour after their arrival the boys were playing hockey on the lawn, the girls were swinging in the orchard, Mrs. Dill was in her usual state of uncertainty as to where she had packed away any of the 'things,' and Mr. Dill, inked up to the eyebrows and attired in a ragged grey duffel dressing-gown, was seated in Martin Gurwood's arm-chair hard at work at his Greek play.
Although not much given to cultivating politeness, the Lullington farmers, out of respect for Martin Gurwood, thought it advisable to tender a welcome to their Vicar's representative, and appointed two of their number to carry out the determination. The deputation did not succeed in obtaining admittance; Mr. Dill's old servant, a kind of female Caleb Balderstone, meeting them in the hall and declaring her master to be 'at work'--a condition in which e was never to be interrupted. The deputation retired in dudgeon, and that evening at the Dun Cow described their reception amidst the sympathising groans of their assembled friends. It was unanimously decided that when Mr. Dill called upon any of them he should be accommodated with that species of outspoken candour which was known in those parts as 'a piece of their mind.' It is impossible to say what effect this intended frankness would have had upon the temporary occupant of the Lullington pulpit, inasmuch as that during his whole time of residence Mr. Dill never called on one of the parishioners. Many of them never saw him except on Sundays; others caught glimpses of him, a small homely-looking man, striding about the garden dressed in the before-mentioned ragged morning-gown, very short pepper-and-salt trousers, white socks not too clean, and low shoes, gazing now on to the ground, now into the skies, muttering to himself; and apparently enforcing his arguments with extended forefinger, but so entranced and enrapt in his cogitation as to be conscious of nothing passing around him, or to gaze placidly into the broad countenances of Hodge or Giles staring at him over the hedge, without the least notion that they were there. On Sundays, however, it was a very different matter. Then Mr. Dill was anything but preoccupied. He gave himself up entirely and earnestly to the duty of addressing his congregation; but he addressed them with such ferocity, and the doctrine which he preached was so stern and uncompromising--so different from anything that they had been accustomed to hear from the gentle lips of Martin Gurwood--that the congregation, for the time struck rigid with awe and dismay, no sooner found themselves outside the porch than they gathered into a knot in the churchyard and determined on writing off at once to their Vicar to request him to remove his substitute.