Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave.
By the time he had reached the middle of the lane, it came to him that he was obeying his wife’s voice.
Turning in at the vicarage gate he called across the privet to the ancient Hobson to leave his roots, and go and put the harness on old Alice.
XLIV
Via Grayfield, Easing and Chettleford the distance to Wellwood was nearly twenty miles. He might train from Brombridge, but the service was bad and there would be three miles to walk at the end. So he decided that old Alice should take him to Grayfield, and then he would ask Whymper to lend him his car.
But long before he came to Grayfield he felt that this could not be. At that moment his old Magdalen friend was the last person in the universe he desired to meet. If he had now to face his kind it must be some other. Thus, as the stately chimneys and fine gables of the Manor house, rising proudly behind an enchanted copse of fern and Canterbury bells, came into view, he urged old Alice past them at her best pace and on to the Chequers, Grayfield’s model public house. Its landlord, Hickman, a civil, obliging fellow, was known to the vicar, who in this dilemma was very glad of his help. It was not fair to ask the full journey of poor old Alice.
He was able to exchange her temporarily for the landlord’s young mare. But in the process he had to submit to an ordeal that he would have given much to be spared.
“I see, sir, in the Advertiser,” said Hickman, as he gave the ostler a hand in the inn yard, “that the Captain’s gone. My boy went the same day. He was not in the Captain’s lot, but I happen to know that he thought there was no one like him. He was such a gentleman, and he had a way with him that had a rare power over young chaps.”
The vicar could not answer the honest fellow, whose voice failed suddenly and whose eyes were full of tears. But he held out his hand very simply, and Hickman, his tears now falling softly, like those of a child, took it.