When later Mr Errol saw Robert, he was reminded of young Robert’s message by the dour look on his old sexton’s face. His expression of wrathful indignation did not convey the suggestion that the seed of his son’s counsel had fallen upon fruitful ground. Robert not only looked upset, he was most unusually taciturn. When he heard that the vicar had been to his cottage that morning he merely grunted. The grunt was expressive of many emotions, the most eloquent of which was unspeakable disgust. At the same time the consciousness of certain coins concealed beneath the altar cloth in the church caused Robert to lower his gaze before his vicar’s eyes.
“So Hannah has heard from Bob,” the vicar observed pleasantly. “Bob seems to fear you are in considerable danger, Robert.”
“’E’ll be in considerable danger if ’e comes ’ome before I’ve ’ad time to cool,” answered Robert grimly. He eyed his horny hand and the wrist muscles, developed like taut leather through long usage with the spade, and smiled darkly. “Reckon I didn’ let in to en enough when ’e were a youngster,” he remarked regretfully. “I only wish ’e were young enough for me to start in again. But I’m more’n ’is match now. Learn ’is father, will ’e? Us’ll see. Thinks ’e knows a sight more’n I do, because ’e’s got a few textes in ’is ’ead. ’Tis about all ’e ’as got there. Proud, ’e is, because ’e reads ’is Bible, which ’e ’lows other folk don’t. Neither they does; but no more didn’t ’e before ’e took up wi’ preaching.”
“Oh, come, Robert,” remonstrated the vicar, smiling. “Plenty of people read their Bibles, even in Moresby.”
“Plenty of people ’as Bibles,” Robert replied darkly. “Keeps ’em for show, they do. I knows. Folks don’t read their Bibles nowadays.”
Robert spoke of the Bible as though it were a relic of prehistoric times which, being a respectable relic, and one the possession of which brought the owner occasional benefits from those in spiritual authority, was therefore worthy of a place even in the front window; but as a book for practical use, the idea was simply a pose.
“Indeed,” the vicar insisted, “I know one or two in the parish who read their Bibles consistently. I have gone in at times and found them reading it.”
Robert eyed the speaker with a gleam in his eyes that suggested affectionate patronage, and a half-contemptuous commiseration for such blind credulity.
“They seed you coming, sir,” he said, with a shake of the head at the depths to which human duplicity will go.
The vicar gazed seriously into the quaint, sincere face of his sexton.