A Little World

by George Manville Fenn

Jared thought he was, and said so. But all the same, he had not expected him, only a cheque for his last quarter’s salary—money always heretofore paid to the day, though it was not likely that upon this occasion the vicar would follow out his old pleasant custom and bring the cheque himself. But Jared tried to persuade himself that even that was possible, for drowning men are said to clutch at straws, and Jared was drowning fast. He had kept his head above water a long time, but now all seemed at an end, and the waters of tribulation appeared about to close over him.

Mrs Pellet and her daughter continued to be occupied in domestic affairs, while now, as if Jared’s misery were not great enough, the straw seemed to be snatched from the drowning man as there came the terrible thought—Suppose that the vicar should not send at all? suppose that, taking into consideration how he had refrained from prosecuting, he should consider the quarter’s salary as forfeited?

Not a heavy sum certainly, but to Jared the want of it would be ruin piled upon ruin, a cruel heel crushing the head already in the dust.

“They told me to clear myself, to prove that they were wrong—and what have I done? But, there! absurd! They could not keep back the money; it would not be legal.”

But suppose that, legal or illegal, they kept it back to make up for the missing money, how then? The vicar would not do such a thing, he was too kind-hearted; but Timson might prompt him—Timson, who had always been so ready with his suspicions. He would go and tell him to his face of his cruelty to a wronged man. He dared meet him, though he now shrank from encountering the vicar. But no; he was too hasty; the money was not legally due until he had formally given up the organ-key. But if they did keep it back—that twelve pounds ten—could he not take legal proceedings for its recovery? How, when they had been so lenient to him?

“Lenient!” his brow grew wrinkled as the word flashed over his mind. Was he not innocent, unless indeed he had committed the theft in his sleep—walked to the church from sheer habit? But absurd! he was innocent. “Prove it, sir—prove it,” rang in his ears, and he seemed to see before him the stiff figure of the little churchwarden, with his hands stuck beneath the tails of his coat. “Prove it, sir—prove it,” and how was he to prove it?

Jared Pellet was a good actor, schooled in adversity; but on that day he was about worn out, and a less shrewd person than his wife would have seen that something was wrong. She noted it before he had been in long, and attributed it to the fact that they had not a penny in hand. He tried to laugh and be cheery, but his attempts were of so sorry a nature that Mrs Jared looked hard at him, when he seemed so guilty of aspect, that he was glad to call in the aid of a pocket-handkerchief, and make a feeble attempt at a sneeze.

“You won’t mind a makeshift dinner to-day?” said Patty, intent upon her task of preparing the repast.

Needless question to one who had practised the art of making shift for so many years, and to whom a good dinner was an exception to the rule.

“Been wanted while I was out?” said Jared, after declaring that he should enjoy the makeshift above all things. “Been wanted?” for it was a pleasant fiction with Jared that he did a large business in the musical instrument line, and that it was not safe for him to be away for a minute, though it was not once in a hundred absences that he was required; but the question sounded business-like, and he asked it regularly.