A Lost Cause Part 9

As she finally turned into the vicarage, she cast one look back at the church. It rose among the houses high into the air. The sunset fired the wet tiles of the roof and gilded the cross upon the lantern. She thought of That which was within.

CHAPTER V

WEALTHY MISS PRITCHETT AND POOR GUSSIE DAVIES ENTER THE VICARAGE GARDEN

"Todgers," Mr. Stephens remarked to Lucy, as they went down into the garden after lunch on Sat.u.r.day, "could do it when it chose."

The last preparations for the garden party were being made. The big marquee was erected, the tennis lawns were newly marked, there was a small stand for the string band.

Waiters, looking oddly out of their element in the brilliant sunshine, which showed dress-coats, serviceable enough at night, tinged with a metallic green like a magpie's wing, were moving about with baskets of strawberries and zinc boxes of ice.

The old-fashioned garden, an oasis in the wilderness of brick all around, was brilliant with sunflowers, stocks, and geraniums; the lawns were fresh and green. The curate was in tennis flannels and an Oxford blazer, and Lucy meditated upon the influence of clothes, as her betters had done before her. Stephens seemed to have put off his priesthood with his tippet and ca.s.sock, and the jaunty cap covered a head which seemed as if it had never worn a berretta. Lucy found, to her own surprise, that she liked the man less so. It was a total inversion of her ordinary ideas. She began to think that a priest should be robed always.

Miss Ca.s.s, the housekeeper, in a new cap, came up to them. Lucy had talked to the woman for more than an hour on Friday afternoon, and the prejudice caused by her appearance was removed.

"I hope everything is satisfactory, Miss," she said. "It all seems to be going on well. The men from Whiteley's know their business."

"It all seems splendid, Miss Ca.s.s," Lucy said. "I'm sure it couldn't be better. Have the band people come?"

"Yes, Miss, and the piano-entertainer too. They're having some refreshment in the library. His Reverence is telling them funny stories, Miss."

She hurried away to superintend further arrangements.

"The vicar is always so fine," the young man said, with a delighted enthusiasm in his chief that was always pleasant for Lucy to hear. "He gets on with men so well; such a lot of parsons don't. There's nothing effeminate about the vicar. He's a man's man. I'll bet every one of those fellows in there will go away feeling they've made a friend, and that parsons aren't such scalawags after all."

A burst of laughter came from the door leading into the garden, as if to confirm his words, and Father Blantyre descended the steps with a little knot of men dressed in something between livery and uniform, carrying oddly shaped cases of black waterproof in their hands.

Laughing and joking, the men made their way towards the music stands.

The vicar came up to Lucy. "How will it do?" he said. "It seems all right. Just walk round with me, my dear, and I'll give ye a few tips how to play hostess in Hornham."

They strolled away together. "Now, ye'll be careful, won't ye, mavourneen?" he said rather anxiously. "The folk coming this afternoon require more management and tact than any I've ever met. They'll all have what they think is the high society manner--and ye mustn't laugh at um, poor dears. I love 'em all, and I won't have you making fun of them. I like them better in church than in society, I'm quite free to admit to you, and their souls are more interesting than their bodies!

Perhaps half a dozen people here this afternoon will be what you'd call gentlefolk--the doctor, Dr. Hibbert, and a few others. The rest of them will be fearfully genteel. The young gentlemen will be back early from the city, and they'll come in flannels and wear public-school ribbons round their hats, roses in their b.u.t.ton-holes and crimson silk c.u.mmerbunds!"

"Good heavens!" Lucy said.

"Yes, and they'll all want to flirt with ye, in a very superfine, polite sort of way, and mind ye let um! They'll ask if they might 'a.s.sist you to a little claret cup,' and say all sorts of strange things. But they're good enough at heart, only they will be so polite!"

"And the women?"

Father Blantyre shrugged his shoulders. "You'll find them rather difficult," he said. "You bet they see your name in the papers--they all read the 'Fashionable Intelligence'--confound um!--and the att.i.tude will be a little hostile. But be civil for my sake, dear. I hate all this just as much as you do. I can get in touch with them spiritually, but socially I find it hard. But I think it's the right thing to do, to entertain them all once or twice a year, and they do enjoy themselves!

And I owe them a deep, deep debt of grat.i.tude for their loyalty during this trying week. I have had dozens and dozens of letters and calls.

Every one has rallied to the church in a wonderful and touching way since the Sunday affair. G.o.d bless them all!"

Lucy squeezed his arm with sympathy. In an hour, the guests began to arrive.

Lucy and her brother met them by the garden door of the house. It was a gay scene enough. A brilliant flood of afternoon sunshine irradiated everything; the women were well and fashionably dressed, the band played, and every one seemed happy.

Lucy found it much easier than she expected. The guests were suburban, of course, and not of the "cla.s.sic suburbs" at that. But, she reflected, there was hardly a man there who had not better manners than Lord Rollington or General Pompe. And if they wore Carthusian or Zingari ribbons, that meant no more than that they were blessed with a colour-sense; while a slight admixture of "i" in the p.r.o.nunciation of the first vowel was certainly preferable to the admixture of looseness and innuendo that she was sometimes forced to hear in much more exalted circles. So she received tea and strawberries at the hands of gallant and debonair young gentlemen engaged in the minor walks of commerce; she chatted merrily with fluffy young ladies who, when they had gotten over their first distrust of a girl who went to the drawing-room and stayed with lords, finding that she wasn't the "nasty, stuck-up thing" they expected, were somewhat effusively affectionate. She talked gravely about the "dear vicar and those dreadful men" to ample matrons who for a moment had forgotten the cares of a small suburban villa and a smaller income, in the luxury of fashion, the latest waltz tunes, the champagne cup, and a real social event. Indeed, everything went "with a snap," as one young gentleman remarked to Lucy. She became popular almost at once, and was surrounded by a.s.siduous young bloods of the city "meccas."

Father Blantyre, as he went about from group to group, was in a state of extreme happiness, despite his somewhat gloomy antic.i.p.ations. It was an hour of triumph for him. His people, for whom he prayed and laboured and gave his life and fortune, were one and all engaged to show him how they would stand by him in the antic.i.p.ated trouble. Everywhere he was greeted with real warmth and affection, and before long the quick Celtic temperament was bringing a mist before the merry grey eyes and a riot and tumult of thankfulness within.

On all sides, he heard praises of his sister. "The pretty dear," one good lady, the wife of a cashier in a small Mincing Lane firm, said to him. "I had quite a long talk with her, Father Blantyre. And a sweet girl she is. We're not in the way of meeting with society folk, though we read of all the gay goings-on in the _Mail_; but I said to Pa, 'Pa,'

I said, 'if all the society girls are like that, then there's nothing much the matter with the aristocracy, and _Modern Society_ is a catchpenny rag.' And Pa quite agreed. He was as much struck by her as I was."

And so on. Every one seemed pleased with Lucy. The guests began to arrive less and less frequently, until at length the gardens were crowded and no one else appeared to be coming. All the various games and entertainments were in full swing, and Lucy was about to accept the invitation of a tall boy in a frock coat and a silk hat to sit down and watch a set of tennis with him, when there was a slight stir and commotion at the garden door of the house.

Miss Ca.s.s came hurriedly down the steps, as a sort of advance guard for two ladies who were ushered into the garden by a waiter. The housekeeper dived into the crowd and found the vicar, who turned and went with her at once to meet the late-comers.

"There's Miss Pritchett and Gussie Davies," said the young man to Lucy in rather an awed voice, and then, as if to banish some unwelcome impression, relieved his feelings by the enigmatic remark of "Pip, pip,"

which made Lucy stare at him, wondering what on earth he meant.

She noticed that nearly every one at this end of the garden was watching, more or less openly, the meeting between the vicar and his guests. She did not quite understand why, but guessed that some local magnate had arrived, and looked with the rest.

The elder of the two women was expensively dressed in mauve silk, and wore a small bonnet with a white aigrette over a coffee-coloured fringe of hair that suggested art. Her face was plump and pompous, a parrot-like nose curved over pursy lips that wore an expression of arrogant ill-temper, and the small eyes glanced rapidly hither and thither. In one white-gloved hand, the lady held a long-handled lorgnette of tortoise-sh.e.l.l and gold. Every now and then she raised these gla.s.ses and surveyed the scene before her, in exactly the manner in which countesses and d.u.c.h.esses do upon the stage.

Her companion was young, a large, blonde girl, not ill-looking, but without character or decision in her face or walk. She was dressed very simply.

Lucy turned to her companion. "Do you know them, then?" she said.

"Rather," he replied. "I should think I did. That's Miss Pritchett, old Joseph Pritchett's daughter, old Joseph, the brewer. He left her all his money, she's tons of stuff--awfully wealthy, I mean, Miss Blantyre."

"Does she live here, then?"

"Oh, yes. In spite of all her money she's always been an unappropriated blessing. She's part of Hornham, drives a pair in a landau. The girl is Gussie Davies, her companion. She's not half a bad sort. All the Hornham boys know Gussie. Nothing the matter with Gussie Davis! The old cat sits on her fearfully, though. She can't call her soul her own. It's bally awful, sometimes, Gussie says."

Lucy gasped. These revelations were startling indeed. She was moving in the queerest possible set of people. She hadn't realised that such folk existed. It took her breath away, like the first plunge into a bath of cold water.

The artless youth prattled on, and Lucy gathered that the lady with the false front was a sort of female _arbiter elegantarium_ to Hornham, indubitably the richest person there, a leading light.

She saw her brother talking to the woman in an eager way. He seemed afraid of her,--as, indeed, the poor man was, under the present circ.u.mstances,--and Lucy resented it. With a quick feminine eye, she saw that Miss Pritchett was a.s.suming an air of tolerance, of patronage even, to the vicar.

At last, Bernard caught sight of her. His face became relieved at once and he led the spinster to the place where she was sitting.

Every instinct of the girl rose up in dislike and rebellion as the woman drew near. She had felt nothing of the sort with the other people. In this case, it was quite different. She prepared to repel cavalry, to use the language of the military text-books.

On the surface, the incident was simple and commonplace enough. A well-bred girl felt a repulsion for an obviously unpleasant and patronising woman of inferior social rank. That was all. It is a trite and well-worn aphorism that no event is trivial, yet it is extraordinarily true. Who could have said that this casual meeting was to be fraught with storm and danger for the Church in England; that out of a hostile handshake between two women a mighty scandal and tumult was to rise?

Miss Pritchett came up to Lucy, and Father Blantyre introduced her.

Then, with an apologetic murmur, he hurried away to another part of the garden.

"Won't you sit down?" Lucy said, looking at the chair that had been left vacant by her late companion.

"Thank you, Miss Blantyre, but I've been sitting in my carriage. I should prefer to stand, if it's the same to you," said Miss Pritchett.