Mr. Wilkins rose and said, “Ladies and gentlemen”—(there were no ladies, so he looked hard at the door where I was trying to keep out of sight)—“this is the proudest moment of my life. I thank you, gentlemen, one and all. I—I had prepared a speech, but every word has gone out of my head. (‘Hear, hear,’ from Graves.) I cannot say what I feel. I have known the company here for many, many years; I have lived among you man and boy, and at one time I thought I should die among you. (‘Hear, hear,’ from Graves again.) But I am going away to a foreign country. I shall find, I hope, new friends there; but I shall never forget the old ones. I thank you one and all, high and low, rich and poor, for your great kindness to me this day. It’s more than I deserve. (‘Hear, hear,’ from Graves again.) This beautiful mug”—(I forgot to tell you that the doctor wound up his speech by presenting the piece of plate and the purse of gold)—“will be treasured by me to the last hour of my life. I shall hand it down to my children untarnished. For that, and the generous gift which you have also given me, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and, ladies and gentlemen, I can’t say any more, except to say, ‘Good-bye, and God bless you all.’”
Mr. Wilkins, when he came to that, broke down a little, and then everybody cheered, and he sat down. It wasn’t a bad speech—much better than what he had written out to say, which was nearly all taken from an old book of speeches, published at a shilling, as I found out afterwards, and which was what the Prince of Wales might have said at a State banquet, but was all nonsense for a parish clerk.
After Mr. Wilkins’s speech the doctor said, “You may all smoke.” And they did smoke! In five minutes you couldn’t see across the room. And then they had spirits and water, and there were more speeches, and the doctor’s health was proposed, and then Harry’s health coupled with mine, and they would make me come in and stand by Harry while he replied, and I tried to look as dignified as I could, though I felt awfully hot and flustered, till Harry gave me a dreadful slap on the back, which he meant to emphasize what he was saying about me, but which made me feel quite ill for a minute or two. And then they all began to talk at once, and sing songs; and when the banquet broke up, everybody insisted upon seeing Mr. Wilkins home. And it was just as well, for, what with the heat, and the excitement, and the smoke, and the champagne, and hot spirits on the top of that, poor dear Mr. Wilkins was glad of somebody’s arm to lean on.
But it all ended well, and was a great success, though the cleaning-up to get the coffee-room straight for the next morning was awful, especially as the strange people we had in to help, emptied all the bottles and all the glasses, and, the contents being rather mixed, some of them were a little excited, and made more noise about their work than they ought to have done.
The next day I sat down to write my report. Mr. Wilkins, who came round to say good-bye privately to me, as I couldn’t go up to the station with the others to see him off, asked me to put in the speech he had written out, instead of the one he delivered; but I couldn’t do that. I wrote a nice account, giving a few details of Mr. Wilkins’s life, and the names of the principal guests, and, of course, I said what I could about the banquet, and how much everybody enjoyed it, and I put in a nice little line about Harry, though it seemed so funny for me to have to call him “mine host of the ‘Stretford Arms’;” but I knew that was the right way to do it.
It took me nearly all day to write out the report; and then I made a nice clean copy of it, and sent it to our county paper.
And when the paper came out, we couldn’t find it for a long time, till right down in a corner we found three lines: “Mr. Wilkins, for many years parish clerk of ——, was entertained at a banquet by his fellow-parishioners on Thursday last, on the occasion of his departure for Australia.”
I could have cried my eyes out with vexation. The nasty, mean editor had not even said where the banquet was held.
Harry was in an awful rage. He had ordered and paid for a hundred copies—to send away. Thank goodness, poor Mr. Wilkins had sailed for Australia before the paper came out, and so he knew nothing of the cruel treatment which my first attempt at writing for the Press had met with.
That is how Mr. Wilkins left us. It was a pleasant way certainly; but I know he felt going very much indeed. He was an old man to begin life again in a new world. But he has his daughters with him, and if his eldest daughter is as well off as he says she is, perhaps in time he will get reconciled to the change.