“Don’t bother now—there’s a good fellow,” said Harry, considerably annoyed, as he shut the door in the face of his astonished subordinate, who was generally privileged to gossip as much as he pleased. He covered his embarrassment by showing his visitor at once to his room, and then sat down to complete his own preparations for the next day’s duties.
The rain was as busily falling in the morning as if it had only just begun, instead of having been at it all night. Harry had been more than usually scrupulous in his dress; but when they met at the breakfast-table, his guest’s clerical tout ensemble beat him hollow. After a rather silent meal, in which both, as if by tacit consent, avoided all allusion to subjects connected with the day and its duties, Bolton mustered his courage, as they rose from table, to say—“My service is at eleven, and I shall have rather a wet walk; you, perhaps, are not disposed to accompany me?”
“By all means,” said the stranger, bowing; “I am quite ready;—is it time to set out?” And in a few minutes they were picking their way, side by side, down the little miry lane.
The church, it must be confessed, was not a comely edifice. Its architectural pretensions must originally have been of the humblest order; and now, damp and dilapidated, it was one of the many which, in those days, were a disgrace to any Christian community. There was the hole in the roof, immediately over the curate’s head, imperfectly stopped by Sam’s extempore repairs; and very wretched and comfortless did the few who composed the congregation look, as they came dripping in, and dispersed themselves among the crumbling pews. The service proceeded, and none showed such reverent attention as the stranger; and being placed in the rectorial pew, immediately opposite the clerk, the distinct though subdued tone of his responses was so audible, and so disturbed that functionary (who had that part of the service usually pretty much to himself, and had come to consider it as in some sort his exclusive privilege), that he made some terrible blunders in the hard verses in the Psalms, and occasionally looked round upon his rival, on these latter occasions especially, with unmistakable indignation.
The service concluded, Bolton found his guest awaiting him in the porch; and some ten minutes’ sharp walking, with few remarks, except in admiration of the pertinacity of the rain, brought them home again to the cottage. A plain early dinner was discussed: there was no afternoon service; and the curate had just stepped into his kitchen to listen to some petition from a parishioner, when the stranger took the opportunity of retiring to his own apartment, and did not reappear until summoned to tea.
Bolton’s visit to the kitchen had interrupted a most animated debate. In that lower house of his little commonwealth the new arrival had been a fruitful topic of discussion. The speakers were three: Molly, Sam, and Binns the wheelwright, who had looked in, as he said, on a little business with the parson. Molly, as has been said, was a rigid churchwoman. Her notions of her duty in that capacity might not have been unexceptionable, but they were, so far as the Sunday went, as follows: Church in the morning and afternoon, if practicable; as much reading as her eyes—not quite what they used to be—could comfortably manage; pudding for dinner, and tea and gossip in the evening. If fine, a walk would have come among the day’s arrangements; but with the rain coming down as it did, and after having rather puzzled herself with a sermon upon the origin of evil, the sudden, and in a degree mysterious, visit of a strange gentleman—where visitors of any kind were so rare—became invaluable as a topic of interesting—for aught we know, of profitable—discourse. Sam Shears dined with her always on this day, and was allowed, not without scruples, to have his pipe in the chimney-corner; in consideration of which indulgence, he felt it his duty to make himself as agreeable as possible; and inasmuch as his stock-stories respecting enormous perch caught, or gifted starlings educated by him, Samuel Shears, had long ceased to interest—indeed had never much interested—his fair listener here, though they still went down, with variations, at the Crown and Thistle, he was reduced very often, in the absence of anything of modern interest stirring in the neighbouring town of S——, to keep up his credit as a “rare good companion,” by entering into politics—for which study, next to divinity, Molly had a decided taste—talking about reforms and revolutions in a manner that Molly declared made her “creep,” and varying this pleasurable excitement by gloomy forebodings with regard to “Rooshia and Prooshia.”
On this particular evening, however, the subject of debate was of a domestic nature, and Molly and the clerk had taken opposite sides: Binns arriving opportunely to be appealed to by both, and being a man of few words, who shook his head with great gravity, and usually gave a nod of encouragement to the last speaker. Molly, after her first indignation at the intrusion of a wet stranger, without notice, at ten o’clock of a Saturday night, had been so softened by the courteous address and bearing of the enemy, that she had gradually admitted him at least to a neutrality; and when Sam Shears had in confidence hinted that he “hadn’t quite made up his mind about un,” her woman’s kindness of heart, or her spirit of contradiction, rushed forth as to the rescue of a friend.
“I wonder at you, Sam,” said she; “you’ve had heddication enough to know a gentleman when you sees him; and you’d ought to have more respect for the cloth.”
“Cloth! There now,” replied Sam, “that’s just it; I an’t so sure about his cloth, as you call it.”