“Not so puritanically fatuous.”
“Hardly.”
“Matters often sift themselves,” he said; “gentlemen of that class usually unbuckle the strap with their own fingers sooner or later. All the better for society, you know. Indiscretions brought to light, judicial interference, a decree nisi, etc. Oh yes, these things can be managed.”
XXIII
MRS. MINCE was in possession of her husband’s study, a melancholy room whose single window looked forth upon a red-brick wall and a corner of Mr. Mince’s vegetable garden. The room was carpeted with red drugget and curtained with dingy green plush. A forcible aroma of stale tobacco-smoke pervaded the air. Ranged along one wall were a number of dilapidated leather chairs like needy pensioners, the seats of the uninitiated who came on certain occasions to receive wisdom from Mr. Mince’s lips. A deal bookcase stood with warped shelves beneath a ponderous infliction of theological literature. The very books appeared dreary monuments of a dogmatism that had outlived its age. As for the room, it seemed to smell of Calvin and to echo the barbaric incongruities of the Athanasian Creed. It suggested a geological museum in its atmosphere, save that geology stands in peril of being dubbed heretical, and Mr. Mince’s sacerdotal fossils were orthodox to the last letter.
Mrs. Mince was in possession of her husband’s desk-chair, that solemn pedestal whence the sage gave to Saltire those luminous moments of spiritual exaltation begot of brandy and tobacco. Opposite the vicaress, on one of the sedilia bankrupt of horse-hair, sat that estimable person Mrs. Primmer, who had dwelt as cook for seven years under the parsonic roof and had earned a reputation for sober saintliness and extreme economy. Mrs. Primmer was garbed in her best for the occasion, a lavish outlay of crape and jet beads testifying to the woe that had once made of her a widow. She was one of Mrs. Mince’s “props of honesty,” an estimable errant angel in cloth boots and crape.
The reason of Mrs. Primmer’s expedition that day was a certain matter that lay heavy on what she was pleased to call her conscience. Hers was a pilgrimage undertaken from honest motives, a most disinterested excursion. The vicaress and the ex-cook were keenly in sympathy on such a subject. With admirable ingenuity they veiled their too feminine propensities under the cassocks of duty and moral obligation.
“I think you were quite right, Eliza,” Mrs. Mince was saying, “to come to me in this matter. It most certainly needs careful consideration, and you have acted like a conscientious Christian woman. You are quite sure—now—as to the gentleman’s identity?”
“Certain,” replied the conscientious person, with a tense closure of the lips; “I have one of his handkerchiefs here, ma’am, marked with his name.”
“Dear, dear,” said the vicaress, “how very scandalous! They are always out together, you say? Dear, dear. I suppose all the offence is on his side, Mrs. Primmer?”