CHAPTER XXXI
Jimmy did not attempt to go back to the cottage. Instead, he walked very slowly up the street towards the hotel, the door of which he was just entering when the Grimmer motor-car dashed past with the Canon sitting very erect in the tonneau. As a matter of fact, that grave personage had eventually entered the refreshment-room, feeling he needed something to steady his nerves after such a trying interview. True, the brandy did restore him a little, but the memory of Jimmy's words remained. He never forgot them, and, as his wrath subsided, they began to affect him in another way, making him ask himself whether, after all, he had read some of his Master's words aright. As time went by, the matter troubled him more and more—it is always a serious thing when a man past middle age, and a dignitary of the Church at that, begins to think—and when, a year later, Vera became engaged to the son of one of his own church-wardens, a young City man of exemplary life and undoubted wealth, he was conscious of a distinct sense of disappointment. He would have liked a son-in-law who would have understood his new point of view. He married them himself, in the blatantly new church with the sprawling texts round the chancel arch; and the world, his world, congratulated him. But on the following Sunday he preached a sermon which shocked his congregation beyond measure, and really cost him that bishopric; for he took Jimmy's suggested text, and argued, with an eloquent fire, quite alien to his nature, that if the Master was ready to forgive, His followers must do the same.
Ida voiced the opinion of a good part of the congregation, when she said, on the way home after the service, "Poor Canon Farlow! It is too terrible. The excitement of the wedding must have unhinged his mind."
But her new husband, Mr. Tugnell, himself a candidate for orders, the owner of the living having promised that he should succeed the canon, expressed the more general view, when he said sharply, "Nonsense, my dear, the man had been drinking. Anyone could see that."
And Ida agreed, as she did to everything Mr. Tugnell said. Even when he had suggested that she should settle half of Joseph Fenton's hard-earned money on himself she had consented, knowing that he was a philanthropist, and therefore would use it well.
May Farlow, on the other hand, grieved honestly for the canon, and still retained sittings in the parish church, though she usually took the children to the chapel-of-ease, "where is an old friend of ours," she said, "and I'm not going to turn my back on him. There are always two sides to a question after all, and I want to hear both. Perhaps we've been wrong in some things, Ida. At any rate, now that my children are growing up, I want more than ever to be right, so that I can guide them, and prevent them from making mistakes. Sometimes I think we were too severe in the past."
* * * * *
Jimmy hardly noticed the canon passing him. His mind was too full of other things. Vera was lost to him, he knew that, and, somehow, the fact troubled him little. With her, also, he had lost all present chance of going back to the Grierson world, of becoming a true and complete Grierson again, and curiously enough, that troubled him equally little. He had ceased to have the slightest desire for such a thing. A black sheep himself, he preferred to herd with his kind.