She came to have tea with us one evening soon after that, and through our talking about her daughter and the fright in Mr. Lloyd’s room, it led to her telling me many things about our clergyman that I didn’t know. I knew he was a dear, kind old gentleman, and, when his head wasn’t full of the Flood and old bones, just the clergyman for a village like ours. Kind to the old and gentle to the young, treating rich and poor alike, he was always ready with a good, comforting word of wholesome Christianity for those who were in trouble.
He came to our place often after he got to know us, because he liked to come in of an evening now and then, and have a pipe with Harry in our own private sitting-room. He had never been in foreign countries, and he loved to hear about all the places Harry had seen, but he didn’t care much about the towns and the people. He always wanted to know more about the soil and the trees and the animals, and what the cliffs and rocks were like, and asked Harry all sorts of funny questions, which of course he couldn’t answer, as it wouldn’t do for the mate of a merchantman to go about the world with his head full of Noah’s Ark and the Flood. He asked Harry if he hadn’t brought skulls from New Zealand, and other places he had been to, and I said, “No, indeed he hasn’t. Do you think I’d have married him if he’d carried dead men’s heads about with him?”
I was sorry directly I’d said it, and coloured up terribly—which is a horrible failing I have. I believe I shall go red when I’m an old woman; it isn’t blushing—that’s rather pretty, and I shouldn’t mind it—it’s going fiery red, which is not becoming.
Mr. Lloyd noticed how hot I’d gone, and he smiled and said, “Don’t mind me, Mrs. Beckett. I know you didn’t mean anything.” But there was a look in his face presently that told me I had touched a sore place. It was only a shadow that crept across his face, and a look that came into his eyes, but it told me a good deal, and after he’d gone I said to my husband—
“Harry, Mr. Lloyd’s been in love at some time and has had a disappointment.”
“Old Tommy in love!” said Harry; “then it must have been with a young woman who lived before the Flood. Nothing after that date would have any attraction for him.”
“Don’t be so absurd, Harry,” I said. “Women know more about these things than men do, and I’m as certain as that I sit here that Mr. Lloyd has been crossed in love, and that it’s through skulls.”
Something happened to stop our conversation—a gentleman and lady, I think it was, who wanted apartments—and Mr. Lloyd and his skulls went out of my head, till his landlady came to tea, and I got talking about him.
Then I told her what had been my idea, and I asked her if she knew anything.
“Know anything about the Reverend Tommy being in love, my dear?” she said. “Why, that’s the story of his life!”