– no – yes; well, there, I’ll try.”
“Don’t you think, then, that had better come off soon?”
“That! What?”
“Your marriage.”
“No, indeed I don’t, so I tell you. I don’t mean to be tied up to any woman’s apron-string till I have had my fling. There, good night; I’m going to bed.”
Mrs Glaire made an effort to stay him, but he brushed by her, turned at the door, said, “Good night,” and was gone.
As the door closed, Mrs Glaire sank into the chair her son had so lately occupied, and sat thinking over their conversation.
Would he keep his word? Would he keep his word? That was the question that repeated itself again and again, and the poor woman brought forward all her faith to force herself to believe in her son’s sense of honour and truth, smiling at last with a kind of pride at the victory she had won.
But as she smiled, lighting her candle the while, and then extinguishing the lamp, a shiver of dread passed through her at the recollection of the events of the day; and at last, when she passed from the room a heavy shadow seemed to follow her. It was the shadow of herself cast by the light she carried, but it seemed to her like the shadow of some coming evil, and as she went upstairs and passed her son’s door, from beneath which came the odour of tobacco, she sighed bitterly, and went on wondering how it would end, for she had not much faith in his promise.
Volume One – Chapter Twelve.
More Trouble at the Works
“I shall have to do something about these people,” said the vicar, as he descended, after making a hasty toilet.
His way out lay through the room appropriated by the objects of his thoughts, and on opening the door it was to find Mr Simeon Slee’s toilet still in progress. In fact, that gentleman was seated in a chair, holding a tin bowl of water, and his wife was washing his face for him, as if he were a child.
They took no notice of the interruption, and the vicar passed through, intending to take a long walk, but he checked his steps at the gate, where he stood looking down the long street, that seemed a little brighter in the early morning.
He had not been there five minutes before he saw a sodden-looking man come out of the large inn – the Bull and Cucumber – and as the pale, sodden-looking man involuntarily wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the vicar nodded.
“Morning drain, eh? I’m afraid yours is not a very comfortable home, my friend.”
The man was going slowly down the street when his eye caught the figure of the vicar, and he immediately turned and came towards him, and touched his hat.
“Mr Selwood, sir?”
“That is my name, my man.”
“I’m Budd, sir – J. Budd – the clerk, sir. Thowt I’d come and ask if you’d like the garden done, sir. I’m the gardener here, sir. Four days a week at Mr Glaire’s. Your garden, sir – ”
“Would have looked better, Budd, if, out of respect to the church and the new vicar, you had kept it in order.”
“Yes, sir; exackly, sir; but I was too busy, sir. Shall I come, sir?”
“Yes, you may come, Budd. By the way, do you always have a glass before breakfast?”
“Beg pardon, sir – a glass?”
“Yes, at the Bull?”
“Never, sir,” said Budd, with an injured air. “I went in to take Mr Robinson’s peck.”
“Peck of what? pease?”
“Peck, sir – peck-axe – maddick.”
“Oh, I see,” said the vicar, looking at the man so that he winced. “Well, Budd, come and see to the garden after breakfast.”
“That I will, sir.”
“And, by the way, Budd.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t wipe your mouth when you have been to return picks or mattocks. I’m rather a hard, matter-of-fact person, and it makes me think a man has been drinking.”
Jacky Budd touched his hat without a word, stuck one thumb into his arm-hole, and went off to inform the next person he met that “new parson” was a tartar and a teetotaler.
By this time Simeon Slee had gone off in another direction, and as the vicar was busy with his pocket-knife, pruning some trailing branches from the front windows, Mrs Slee came to announce that his breakfast was ready, and soon after relieved him of a difficulty.
“Going, eh, Mrs Slee? When?”
“I thowt we’d flit to-day, sir. We only came in to take charge of the house.”
“Have you a place to go to?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Humph! Well, it’s best, perhaps, Mrs Slee, for I am a frank man, and I don’t think your husband and I would agree. You couldn’t come and keep me right till I’ve got a housekeeper, I suppose?”
Mrs Slee could, and said she would; and that morning Jacky Budd helped the poor woman to “flit” her things to a neighbouring cottage, Simeon vowing that he’d “never set foot in the brutal priest’s house again.”
“You’re well shut of a bad lot, sir,” said Jacky Budd, turning to Mr Selwood, after the last items of the Slee impedimenta were off the premises, and he had looked round the wilderness of a garden, sighed, and wondered how he should ever get it in order.
“Think so, Budd?” said the vicar, drily.
“Yes, sir, I do,” said Jacky, resting on the spade he had not yet begun to use; “he’s a Ranter, is Slee, a Primity Methody, sir – a fellow as sets up against our Church – helps keep the opposition shop, and supplies small-beer instead of our sacrymental wine.”
Jacky involuntarily smacked his lips as he spoke, and the vicar turned sharply upon him with knit and angry brows.
But Jacky Budd was obtuse, and saw it not, but went on, wiping his forehead the while, as if he were panting and hot with his exertions.
“They had him down on the plan, sir; they did, ’pon my word of honour, sir – him, a regular shack, as never does a day’s work if he can help it. He was a local preacher, and put on a white ’ankercher o’ Sundays, and went over to Churley, and Raiby, and Beddlethorpe, and Mardby, and the rest of ’em, he did. It’s as good as a play, sir, to hear him ’preach. But they’ve ’bout fun’ him out now.”
“You have been to hear him, then, Budd?” said the vicar, drily.
“Me? Been to hear he? Me, sir – the clerk of the parish? No, sir; I never be-meaned myself by going into one of their chapels, I can assure you,” said Jacky, indignantly; and raising his spade, he chopped down a couple of unorthodox weeds growing up within the sacred borders of the vicarage garden.
“I’m
