Notwithstanding Part 10

She had just decided, without emotion but with distinct regret, that she must do without tea this afternoon, when a firm step came along the lane behind her, and Mr. Black overtook her. For once he had taken that short cut to some purpose, though his face, fixed in a dignified preoccupation, gave no hint that he felt Fortune had favoured him at last.

The Miss Blinketts had heard it affirmed "by one who knew a wide sweep of clergy and was therefore competent to form an opinion," that Mr.

Black was the handsomest vicar in the diocese. But possibly that was not high praise, for the clergy had evidently deteriorated in appearance since the ancient Blinkett, that type of aristocratic beauty, had been laid to rest under the twisted yew in the Riff churchyard.

But, anyhow, Mr. Black was sufficiently good-looking to be called handsome in a countryside where young unmarried men were rare as water ousels. He was tall and erect, and being rather clumsily built, showed to great advantage in a surplice. In a procession of clergy you would probably have picked out Mr. Black at once as its most impressive figure. He was what the Miss Blinketts called "stately." When you looked closely at him you saw that his nose was a size too large, that his head and ears and hands and feet were all a size too large for him. But the general impression was pleasant, partly because he always looked as if he had that moment emerged as speckless as his surplices from Mrs.

Nicholls' washtub.

It was an open secret that Mrs. Nicholls thought but little of Miss Black, "who wasn't so to call a lady, and washed her flannels at home."

But she had a profound admiration for the Vicar, though I fear if the truth were known it was partly because he "set off a surplice so as never was."

Mr. Black allowed his thoughtful expression to lighten to a grave smile as he walked on beside Annette, determined that on this occasion he would not be commonplace or didactic, as he feared he had been after the boot and shoe club. He was under the illusion, because he had so often said so, that he seldom took the trouble to do himself justice socially.

It might be as well to begin now.

"Are you on your way to choir practice?"

"What a question! Of course I am."

"Have you had tea?"

"No."

"Neither have I. Do come to the Vicarage first, and Angela will give us some." "Angela" was Miss Black.

Annette could not find any reason for refusing.

"Thank you. I will come with pleasure."

"I would rather go without any meal than tea."

Mr. Black felt as he said it that this sentiment was _for him_ inadequate, but he was relieved that Annette did not appear to find it so. She smiled and said--

"It certainly is the pleasantest meal in the day."

At this moment, the Miss Blinketts and I saw, as I have already told you, the legs of the Vicar pa.s.s up the lane outlined against a lilac skirt. We watched them pa.s.s in silence, and then Miss Blinkett said solemnly--

"If anything should come of that, if he should eventually make up his mind to marry, I consider Annette would be in every way a worthy choice."

"Papa was always against a celibate clergy," said Miss Amy, as if that settled the question.

Annette and her possible future had nearly reached the Vicarage when a dogcart pa.s.sed them which she recognized as the one she had seen at Red Riff. The man in it waved his hand to Mr. Black.

"That was Mr. Reginald Stirling, the novelist," Mr. Black volunteered.

"The man who wrote _The Magnet_?"

"Yes. He has rented Noyes Court from Lady Louisa. I hear he never attends divine service at Noyes, but I am glad to say he has been to Riff several times lately. I am afraid Bartlett's sermons are not calculated to attract an educated man."

Mr. Black was human, and he was aware that he was a good preacher.

"I have often heard of him from Mrs. Stoddart," said Annette, with evident interest. "I supposed he lived in Lowshire because some of the scenes in _The Magnet_ are laid in this country."

"Are they? I had not noticed it," said Mr. Black frigidly.

He had often wished he could interest Annette in conversation, often wondered why he seemed unable to do so. Was it really because he did not take enough trouble, as he sometimes accused himself? But now that she was momentarily interested he stopped short at once, as at the entrance of a blind alley. What he really wanted was to talk, not about Mr.

Stirling but about himself, to tell her how he found good in every one, how attracted he was to the ignorant and the simple. No. He did not exactly desire to tell her these things, but to coerce the conversation into channels which would show indubitably that he was the kind of man who could discover the good latent in every one, the kind of man who fostered the feeble aspirations of the young and the ignorant, who entered with wide-minded sympathy into the difficulties of stupid people, who was better read and more humorous than any of his clerical brethren in Lowshire, to whom little children and dogs turned intuitively as to a friend.

Now, it is not an easy thing to enter lightly into conversation if you bring with you into it so many impedimenta. There was obviously no place for all this heavy baggage in the discussion of Mr. Stirling's novels.

So that eminent writer was dismissed at once, and the subject was. .h.i.tched, not without a jolt, on to the effect of the Lowshire scenery on Mr. Black. It transpired that Mr. Black was the kind of man who went for inspiration to the heathery moor, and who found that the problems of life are apt to unravel themselves under a wide expanse of sky.

Annette listened dutifully and politely till the Vicarage door was reached.

It seemed doubtful afterwards, when he reviewed what he had said, whether he had attained to any really prominent conversational peaks during that circ.u.mscribed parley.

He felt with sudden exasperation that he needed time, scope, opportunity, lots of opportunity, so that if he missed one there would be plenty more, and above all absence of interruption. He never got a chance of _really_ talking to her.

CHAPTER XI

"It ain't the pews and free seats as knows what music is, nor it ain't the organist. It is the _choir_. There's more in music than just ketching a tune and singing it fort here and pianner there.

But Lor! Miss, what do the pews and the free seats know of the dangers? When the Vicar gives them a verse to sing by themselves it do make me swaller with embarra.s.sment to hear 'em beller. They knows nothing, and they fears nothing."--MRS. NICHOLLS.

On this particular evening Annette was the first to take her seat in the chancel beyond the screen, where the choir practices always took place.

Mrs. Nicholls presently joined her there with her battered part-book, and she and Annette went over the opening bars of the new anthem, which like the Riff bull was "orkard" in places.

Mr. Black was lighting the candles on long iron sticks, while Miss Black adjusted herself to the harmonium, which did the organ's drudgery for it, and then settled herself, notebook in hand, to watch which of the choir made an attendance.

Miss Black was constantly urging her brother to do away with the mixed choir and have a surpliced one. She became even more urgent on that head after Annette had joined it. Mr. Black was nothing loth, but his bishop, who had but recently inst.i.tuted him, had implored him not to make a clean sweep of _every_ arrangement of his predecessor, Mr. Jones, that ardent reformer, whose princ.i.p.al reforms now needed reforming. So, with laudable obedience and zeal, Mr. Black possessed his soul in patience and sought to instil new life into the mixed choir. Annette was part of that new life, and her presence helped to reconcile him to its continued existence, and to increase Miss Black's desire for its extinction.

Miss Black was older than her brother, and had already acquired that acerb precision which lies in wait with such frequent success for middle-aged spinsters and bachelors.

She somehow gave the comfortless impression of being "ready-made" and "greatly reduced," as if there were quant.i.ties more exactly like her put away somewhere, the supply having hopelessly exceeded the demand. She looked as if she herself, as well as her fatigued elaborate clothes, had been picked up half-price but somewhat crumpled in the sales.

She glanced with disapproval at Annette whispering amicably with Mrs.

Nicholls, and Annette desisted instantly.

The five little boys shuffled in in a bunch, as if roped together, and slipped into their seats under Mr. Black's eye. Mr. Chipps the grocer and princ.i.p.al ba.s.s followed, bringing with him an aroma of cheese. The two altoes, Miss Pontifex and Miss Spriggs, from the Infants' School, were already in position. A few latecomers seemed to have dropped noiselessly into their seats from the roof, and to become visible by clearings of throats.

Mr. Black, who was chagrined by the very frigid reception and the stale tea which his sister had accorded to Annette, said with his customary benignity, "Are we all here? I think we may as well begin."

Miss Black remarked that the choirmaster, Mr. Spillc.o.c.k, was "late again," just as that gentleman was seen advancing like a ramrod up the aisle.

A certain mystery enveloped Mr. Spillc.o.c.k. He was not a Riff man, nor did he hail from Noyes, or Heyke, or Swale, or even Riebenbridge. What had brought him to live at Riebenbridge no one rightly knew, not even Mrs. Nicholls. It was whispered that he had "bugled" before Royalty in outlandish parts, and when Foreign Missions were being practised he had been understood to aver that the lines,

"Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand,"