VII
The vicar remembered his sermon and looked at his watch. It was within twenty minutes of luncheon; the most valuable morning of the week was gone. The spirit of vexation rose in him again. It was all the fault of this miserable fellow, John Smith. Two priceless hours had been lavished on this wastrel, this dead charge on the community. Moreover he would not be able to make up for lost time in the course of the afternoon. At three o’clock he was due at Brombridge to attend the War Economy Committee; at seven he had to take the chair at a recruiting meeting at Grayfield, and dine afterward with his old Magdalen friend, Whymper.
It cut him to the heart to forego the morrow’s sermon. He was the soul of conscientiousness, and not since his attack of rheumatoid arthritis nine years ago had he failed to come up to time on Sunday evening with a brand new discourse. And if ever one was needed it was now. The time cried aloud for pulpit direction. The government was conducting the war in half-hearted fashion. It had not yet dared to bring in a Conscription Bill, yet in Mr. Perry-Hennington’s opinion every man and every woman in the country up to the age of sixty-five ought to have been forcibly enlisted months ago. Several times already he had made that proposal in the newspapers over his own signature, and it had been greatly applauded by the only sort of people who counted in war time.
The hour was certainly ripe for a rasper in the way of a sermon. The nation wanted “gingering up.” He must find time somehow to put his ideas together against Sunday evening. As he strode with his long legs down the glorious avenue of Hart’s Ghyll he felt braced and reënforced with energy. Once more his thought began to flow. He had his text at any rate, and it ought not to be difficult to strike something compelling out of it. By the time the porter’s lodge was reached, he had grown quite hopeful. Phrases, ideas, were filling his mind; perhaps his morning had not been wholly wasted after all; it seemed to have stirred him to something. “Let us put on the armor of light.” For the vicar those words were a bugle call to the old Adam within. The spirit of conflict, like a sleeping giant, sprang to new life.
Hardly had Mr. Perry-Hennington passed beyond the iron gates into the village street, when a rather perspiring, decidedly genial-looking man on a bicycle immediately recalled his pastoral duty to his mind. Nay, it was more than that. The matter of John Smith had as much to do with the state as the recruiting question, the economy question, the supineness of the government, and the morrow’s sermon.
“Good-morning, Joliffe,” said the vicar in a hearty, detaining voice. “The very man I want to see.”
“Nothing wrong at home I hope,” said the man on the bicycle, who was the village doctor. He spoke in a simple, direct, unaffectedly practical way, which all the same was not without a faint note of deference, ever grateful to Mr. Perry-Hennington’s ear.
Dr. Joliffe slowed up and hopped from his bicycle.
“No, nothing of that kind I’m glad to say.” The vicar’s reply was equally precise and to the point. “But I want to have a little talk with you privately about a matter that is worrying me a good deal.”
“Very glad any time.” Dr. Joliffe looked at his watch. “Why not come and take potluck with me now—if you are not afraid of Mrs. Small in war time. She’s not up to your form at any time, but you are very welcome to what we have.”