“Oh, but you mustn’t neglect your duties, Deodatus,” said Miss Dorcas, still backing away. “Won’t you go in, just to please me?”
“Certainly, my love, if you wish it,” replied Jawley, with an amorous leer. “I’ll go at once—but I must have just one more,” and again the village street rang with a sound as of the popping of a ginger-beer cork.
As he approached the school, Mr. Jawley became aware of the familiar and distasteful roar of many voices. Standing in the doorway, he heard Mr. Bodley declare with angry emphasis that he “would not have this disgraceful noise,” and saw him slap the desk with his open hand; whereupon nothing in particular happened excepting an apparently preconcerted chorus as of many goats. Then Mr. Jawley entered and looked round; and in a moment the place was wrapped in a silence like that of an Egyptian tomb.
Space does not allow of our recording in detail the history of the next few days. We may, however, say in general terms that there grew up in the village of Bobham a feeling of universal respect for the diminutive curate, not entirely unmixed with superstitious awe. Rustics, hitherto lax in their manners, pulled off their hats like clockwork at his approach; Mr. Pegg, abandoning the village street, cultivated a taste for footpaths, preferably remote and unobstructed by trees; the butcher fell into the habit of sending gratuitous sweetbreads to the Rectory, addressed to Mr. Jawley; and even the blacksmith, when he had recovered from his black eye, adopted a suave and conciliatory demeanour.
The rector’s wife alone cherished a secret resentment (though outwardly attentive in the matter of devilled kidneys and streaky bacon), and urged the rector to get rid of his fire-eating subordinate; but her plans failed miserably. It is true that the rector did venture tentatively to open the subject to the curate, who listened with a lowering brow and sharpened a lead pencil with a colossal pocket-knife that he had bought at a ship-chandler’s in Dilbury. But the conclusion was never reached. Distracted, perhaps, by Mr. Jawley’s inscrutable manner, the rector became confused, and, to his own surprise, found himself urging the curate to accept an additional twenty pounds a year—an offer which Mr. Jawley immediately insisted on having in writing.
The only person who did not share the universal awe was Miss Dorcas; for she, like the sundial, “numbered only the sunny hours.” But she respected him more than any, and, though dimly surprised at the rumours of his doings, gloried in secret over his prowess.
Thus the days rolled on, and Mr. Jawley put on flesh visibly. Then came the eventful morning when, on scanning the rector’s Times, his eye lighted on an advertisement in the Personal Column:
“Ten Pounds Reward.—Lost: a small bronze effigy of a parrot on a square pedestal; the whole two and a half inches high. The above Reward will be paid on behalf of the owner by the Curator of the Ethnographical Department of the British Museum, who has a photograph and description of the object.”
Now Mr. Jawley had become deeply attached to the parrot. But after all, it was only a pretty trifle, and ten pounds was ten pounds. That very afternoon, the Curator found himself confronted by a diminutive clergyman of ferocious aspect, and hurriedly disgorged ten sovereigns after verifying the description; and to this day he is wont to recount, as an instance of the power of money, the remarkable change for the better in the clergyman’s manners when the transaction was completed.
It was late in the afternoon when Mr. Jawley reappeared in the village of Bobham. He carried a gigantic paper parcel under one arm, and his pockets bulged so that he appeared to suffer from some unclassified deformity. At the stile, he suddenly encountered Mr. Pegg, who prepared for instant flight and was literally stupefied when the curate lifted his hat and graciously wished him “good evening.” But Mr. Pegg was even more stupefied when, a few minutes later, he saw the curate seated on a doorstep, with the open parcel on his knees, and a mob of children gathered around him. For Mr. Jawley, with the sunniest of smiles, was engaged in distributing dolls, peg-tops, skipping-ropes, and little wooden horses to a running accompaniment of bull’s-eyes, brandy-balls, and other delicacies, which he produced from inexhaustible pockets. He even offered Mr. Pegg himself a sugar-stick, which the philosophic cordwainer accepted with a polite bow and presently threw over a wall. But he pondered deeply on this wonder, and is probably pondering still, in common with the other inhabitants of Bobham.