THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ETHEL LINA WHITE. Ethel Lina White
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that he was only in the process of rekindling fires which had blazed too fiercely, and died. It was the last back-kick of nervous tension which made him such a restless planet of a fellow. He had worked himself out in a Dockside parish, sticking to his job long after he was beaten. Not until he had crashed, both mentally and physically, had he consented to accept this living in the country.
"Sit down, man," urged the doctor. "You're like the spirit of atomic energy."
The Rector obediently dropped down on his protesting chair, with the force of machinery, only to spring up again.
"This place, doctor," he said, "is perfect. I pray I may end my days here. Look at it, now."
He waved his pipe towards the village street, which staged the usual sunset pageant. Children skipped and played on the cobbles, exactly like golden girls and boys and little chimney-sweepers, long passed to dust. Women gossiped over their garden gates, just as they had gossiped in Tudor times, and they talked of much the same things. At a quarter-to-eight, Mr. and Mrs. Scudamore emerged from the gates of the Clock House for their evening stroll. The lady wore a feathered hat and a fichu of real lace, and all the village did homage to the Honiton point.
The doctor studied the Rector, and he—in his turn—watched the stately advance of the pair. The clergyman noticed how the lawyer's frost-bitten face thawed whenever he spoke to his wife, and he was delighted by her responsive smile. Yet they were not too engrossed in each other to pass a couple of sunburnt children, in old-fashioned lilac sunbonnets. The little girl took a sugar almond out of her mouth, to prove that its colour had turned from pink to white, and the Scudamores rather overdid their pantomimic surprise at the miracle.
The doctor's lip curled slightly, but the Rector beamed.
"Lovers still," he said. "That's a perfect marriage."
"In the sight of God and the neighbours," murmured the doctor. He added with a bleak smile, "There is only one danger in this 'God save the Squire and his relations' attitude. The villagers would be too sunken in tradition to complain, in case of abuse. They know they wouldn't be believed."
"Abuse?" echoed the Rector. "Here? Are you mad?"
"Probably. Most of us are, if we're normal. By the way, when I get a free Sunday I'm coming to hear you preach, padre. You're the one man who can keep me awake."
The Rector grinned in a boyish, half-bashful manner.
"I know I'm a noisy fellow," he confessed, "but oratory is my talent. It's out of place here, but I dare not let it rust. Besides, it may do secret good. Who knows?"
He knew that his red-hot Gospel, with which he had blasted his old Parish to attention, was like a series of bombs exploding under the arches of the Norman church. But habit persisted, and he exhorted his hearers, every Sunday, to search their hearts for hidden sin. The congregation remained tranquil, while he liked the sound of his own organ-voice.
The Scudamores had disappeared round the bend when the delicately-wrought iron gates of 'The Spout' were opened to let out a girl. In the distance she looked like Joan Brook; and the doctor, who was also misled, watched the sudden flicker of interest in the Rector's face. When she drew nearer, however, it was evident that Joan was only her model, for she was far more beautiful than Lady d'Arcy's companion.
Her hair was red-gold, her eyes blue-green, and her complexion a compound of cherries and cream, while her features and her unwashed milky teeth were perfect. She wore a sleeveless white frock of cheap crêpe-de-Chine, silk stockings of the shade known as 'muddy water', and silver slave-bangles on her shapely arms. Only her red hands betrayed her dedication to the tasks of domestic service.
It was Ada—Miss Asprey's famous housemaid, and the acknowledged beauty of the district. She crossed the green, and then lingered under the wall of the raised Rectory garden, in order to consult her wrist-watch, which, outwardly, was exactly like Joan Brook's. Directly she saw the two men smoking above her, she dropped as simple a curtsy as any of the village children.
"Good evening, Ada," beamed the Rector. "Finished with work?"
"Yes, sir," smiled Ada.
"What do you find to do on your evenings out?" asked the Rector.
"Plenty, sir."
"And you never get bored, or miss the Pictures?"
"Oh, no, sir." Ada's violet eyes were filled with reproach. "I'm going home, to see our mother's new baby."
"A new baby? Fine. What is it?"
"A boy, sir."
Glancing again at her watch, she dropped a second curtsy, and hurried in the direction of the Quakers' Walk.
"Now, isn't that refreshing?" demanded the Rector. "Compare it with stuffy cinemas, with their crime and sex pictures...By the way, I didn't know Mrs. Lee had a baby. How old is he?"
"About twenty-six," replied the doctor. "He's the Squire's new chauffeur."
The Rector laughed heartily at himself.
"Fell for it, didn't I? She took me up the garden. But after all, she's got the real thing, and that's better than watching canned love on a screen."
"Hum, in the one case, fourpence may be the extent of the damage. In my profession I've learned that tinned goods may be less harmful than in their original state."
"No." The Rector's eyes blazed. "Not here. There's no immorality in the village. And no class-hatred or modern unrest. They reflect the general tone of kindness and good breeding. I've never known a place with so little scandal. And the charity almost overlaps. No wretched slums, no leaky roofs or insanitary conditions."
"I agree," said the doctor in his tired voice. "But this fact remains. None of the local ladies use makeup, not even my own civilised wife, because Mrs. Scudamore has decreed that paint is an outrage on good taste. Yet, do you ever see cracked lips, or damaged skins?"
"What are you driving at?" asked the Rector.
"Merely that they must use vanishing-cream and colourless lip-salve...The moral is, padre, that human nature remains the same, everywhere, and dark places exist in every mind."
"Well, you probably know more about that than I do." The Rector's voice was regretful. "People no longer confide their difficulties and doubts to their parson. But, as a doctor, you must catch them off guard."
"Do I?" The doctor smiled as he tried, in vain, to catch a small white moth. "No, padre, they always put on clean pillow-slips for the doctor's visit."
The Rector made no comment; at last, even he was drugged to silence by the combined spell of twilight and tobacco. The purple and gold bars of sunset had faded from the sky—the voices of the gossiping women were stilled. People went indoors, to eat dinner or to prepare supper. The Scudamores made their stately re-entry of the Clock House—arm-in-arm, to the very last cobble-stone. In the gloom of the Quakers' Walk, Miss Asprey's beautiful Ada kissed and cuddled her mother's new baby, who had grown a Ronald Colman moustache.
Lights began to prick the gloom, while the first star trembled in the faint green sky. Across the green, little golden diamonds, like clustering bees, glowed through the lattice-panes of Miss Asprey's Elizabethan mansion.
The Rector was stirred, by the sight of them, to a revival of enthusiasm.
"As you say," he remarked, "no one can be perfect. Yet Miss Asprey is as nearly a saint as any woman can be. She has an influence on me which is almost spiritual. I go to see her whenever I'm worked-up and jumpy, and I come away with my prickles all smoothed down."
The doctor studied him, through his glasses, as though he were something on a microscope-slide.
"Do you? Interesting. As a matter-of-fact, I've also noticed that that good lady seems to possess some soothing quality. But it's disastrous to a man of my lethargic nature. After I've been at 'The Spout', I feel about as torpid as though I'd taken veronal. I used not to notice it, so I suppose I'm growing old, or extra slack."
Both men spoke