“Oh,” said George.
“Poor old soul,” said Luce—“I hope the chair won’t give way—they sometimes do.”
He genuflected again, and this time the decision went in favour of the Bishop of Exeter, and George bowed as to an empty throne. On their way out his stick caught in the daisy-chain which the Mother of God was wearing, and pulled it off.
§ 16
He and Luce walked out of the church together and through the farmyard without speaking a word. The silence oppressed George and he made a remark about the weather.
“Oh, yes, I expect it will,” said Luce vaguely.
He was a tall, white-faced, red-headed young man, who spoke with a slight stutter, and altogether, in his seedy cassock which the unkind sun showed less black than green, seemed to George an uninspiring figure, whose power it was difficult to account for. How was it that Luce could make his church a house of prayer and George could not? How was it that people thought and talked of Luce as a priest, consulted him in the affairs of their souls and resorted to him for the sacraments—whereas they thought of George only as a parson, paid him subscriptions and asked him to tea?
He was still wondering when they came to the cottage where the Rector lived—instead of in the twenty-five-roomed Rectory which the Parish provided, with an endowment of a hundred and fifty pounds a year. They paused awkwardly at the door, and the awkwardness was increased rather than diminished by Luce inviting him to come in. George’s first impulse was to decline—he felt he would rather not have any more of the other’s constraining company—but the next minute he realised that he now had the chance of a rest and tea without the preliminary endurance of a long and dusty walk. So he followed him in at the door, which opened disconcertingly into the kitchen, and through the kitchen into the little study-living-room beyond it.
It was not at all like George’s study at Leasan—the floor had many more books on it than the wall, the little leaded window looked out into a kitchen garden, and the two armchairs both appeared so doubtful as possible supports for George’s substantial figure that he preferred, in spite of his fatigue, to sit down on the kitchen chair that stood by the writing-table. He realised for the first time what he had always known—that Luce was desperately poor, having nothing but what he could get out of the living. Probably the whole did not amount to two hundred pounds ... and with post-war prices ... George decided to double his subscription to the Diocesan Fund.
Meantime he accepted a cigarette which was only just not a Woodbine, and tried to look as if he saw nothing extraordinary in the poverty-stricken room. He thought it would be only charitable to put the other at his ease.