On their way thither, this February afternoon, they talked in a desultory way about some new War-Office reforms, which, as usual, the entire Army believed to be merely intended--wilfully and deliberately--for its destruction; about a recent gambling scandal in the regiment, or the peculiarities of Hugh's commanding officer. Meanwhile he held his peace on the subject of some letters he had received that morning. There was to be an expedition in Nigeria. Officers were wanted; and he had volunteered. The result of his application was not yet known. He had no intention whatever of upsetting his parents till it was known.
"I wonder how Miss Mallory liked Tallyn," said Mrs. Roughsedge, briskly.
She had already expressed the same wonder once or twice. But as neither she nor her son had any materials for deciding the point the remark hardly promoted conversation. She added to it another of more effect.
"The Miss Bertrams have already made up their minds that she is to marry Oliver Marsham."
"The deuce!" cried the startled Roughsedge. "Beg your pardon, mother, but how can those old cats possibly know?"
"They can't know," said Mrs. Roughsedge, placidly. "But as soon as you get a young woman like that into the neighborhood, of course everybody begins to speculate."
"They mumble any fresh person, like a dog with a bone," said Roughsedge, indignantly.
They were passing across the broad village street. On either hand were old timbered cottages, sun-mellowed and rain-beaten; a thatched roof showing here and there; or a bit of mean new building, breaking the time-worn line. To their left, keeping watch over the graves which encircled it, rose the fourteenth-century church; amid the trees around it rooks were cawing and wheeling; and close beneath it huddled other cottages, ivy-grown, about the village well. Afternoon school was just over, and the children were skipping and running about the streets. Through the cottage doors could be seen occasionally the gleam of a fire or a white cloth spread for tea. For the womenfolk, at least, tea was the great meal of the day in Beechcote. So that what with the flickering of the fires, and the sunset light on the windows, the skipping children, the dogs, the tea-tables, and the rooks, Beechcote wore a cheerful and idyllic air. But Mrs. Roughsedge knew too much about these cottages. In this one to the left a girl had just borne her second illegitimate child; in that one farther on were two mentally deficient children, the offspring of feeble-minded parents; in the next, an old woman, the victim of pernicious anæmia, was moaning her life away; in the last to the right the mother of five small children had just died in her sixth confinement. Mrs. Roughsedge gave a long sigh as she looked at it. The tragedy was but forty-eight hours old; she had sat up with the mother through her dying hours.
"Oh, my dear!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, suddenly--"here comes the Vicar. Do you know, it's so unlucky--and so strange!--but he has certainly taken a dislike to Miss Mallory--I believe it was because he had hoped some Christian Socialist friends of his would have taken Beechcote, and he was disappointed to find it let to some one with what he calls 'silly Tory notions' and no particular ideas about Church matters. Now there's a regular fuss--something about the Book Club. I don't understand--"
The Vicar advanced toward them. He came along at a great pace, his lean figure closely sheathed in his long clerical coat, his face a little frowning and set.