The Youngest Girl in the Fifth Part 22

"Might have known it would be Gwen Gascoyne who would bring herself into such a mess!" said Charlotte Perry.

"Um--I've a notion Netta set the ball rolling," returned Elspeth Frazer.

CHAPTER XV

Storm Clouds

It was only a few days after this that a letter arrived for Mr.

Gascoyne which almost turned the little Parsonage upside down. Gwen could tell from Father's manner that something had happened, he seemed so unusually agitated, so perplexed, and sometimes so absent-minded that he forgot all that was going on around him. Something was wrong, argued Gwen, and as she did not like to question Father himself, she plucked up her courage and asked Beatrice.

"Well, I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't know, so long as you don't chatter about it," said the latter. "I think you can be trusted to keep a secret?"

"If it's Dad's secret," returned Gwen.

"Well, the fact is, Dad's had a living offered to him. You needn't jump and clap your hands, for it's nothing at all out of the way--indeed he hardly knows whether to accept it or not. It's a good deal better from a money point of view than this curacy, but there are objections."

"Where is it?"

"That's one of the chief objections. It's in a very poor part of a crowded manufacturing town, a place black with huge chimneys that send out clouds of smoke, where there's hardly a blade of gra.s.s, and the very trees are all blighted with the chemicals in the air. Father knows the place well; he was curate there for a short time just after his ordination. He called it Sodom-and-Gomorrah-mixed then, and it's probably worse instead of improved, for they've built more chemical works, he hears."

"Oh!" said Gwen, her enthusiasm very much damped. "But he's surely not going to accept it?"

"I don't know. There are many things to be considered. We're a big family, and the boys have got to be educated somehow. I don't know how it's to be done here."

"There's the Stedburgh Grammar School."

"Yes, but how are we to manage the fees? Winnie can't go and teach there to equalize their school bills! If we went to Rawtenbeck, they could all three be sent to King Edward's College. It's certainly an inducement."

"And we should have to leave the Parsonage, and the garden, and everything at Skelwick!"

"Yes; that's the terrible part. Father's simply torn in two. He's done so much for Skelwick. Think what it was when he came! And now there's the Mission Room at Basingwold, and the Lads' Club, and the Library, and the Men's Cla.s.s, and the Temperance Union, and all the Guilds.

Perhaps, if he went, another curate might come who took no interest in them, and they would all go to pieces."

"Dad would be fearfully missed if he went."

"Yes; but there's another side even to that. He's only curate here, and if Mr. Sutton were to die, and a new rector came to North Ditton, Dad would be expected to resign. Curates always do when there's a change of inc.u.mbent; it's clerical etiquette. Mr. Sutton is such an old man that, you see, this may happen any time, so Dad can't feel really settled here."

"I wish he were rector instead of only curate!" sighed Gwen.

"Ah, so do I! But Skelwick isn't a parish by itself, it's only a part of North Ditton. If Dad accepts the living of Rawtenbeck he'll be a vicar then, and he says there's any amount of work to be done in the place. The church has been fearfully slack! He hardly knows which needs him most, Skelwick or Rawtenbeck."

"When must he make up his mind?"

"Fortunately, not immediately. The Bishop has given him six weeks to think it over before he need decide."

"Then we've six weeks' reprieve," said Gwen.

She was extremely agitated at the news. She had often thought in a vague way how nice it would be if her father were appointed to a living, but she had never antic.i.p.ated such a change as this. To remove to a smoky, dirty manufacturing town, where even the trees were blighted with chemicals! The proposition seemed intolerable. Gwen hurried out of the garden and climbed a little way up the headland at the back of the house. It was Sat.u.r.day morning, and there were plenty of tasks to be done at home, but at the present she felt she must be alone with her thoughts. To leave Skelwick--to go away from all this and perhaps never see it again! She sat down on a rock, and took a long comprehensive look over the whole landscape.

There were the cliffs, and the headland, and the great wide stretch of rolling, shimmering sea, and the little red sails of the fishing smacks far out on the blue horizon; below her stretched the village, with its irregular red roofs and gay patches of flower gardens, and the shingly cove where some of the boats lay beached. She could just see the chimneys of the Parsonage, and the corner of the tennis lawn where Martin was playing with Jingles, and a sc.r.a.p of the common where Winnie's hens were pecking in the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. Above the village, a conspicuous object against the sky, rose their little church of St.

John the Baptist, standing on the high headland at the very edge of the bare wold, as Father often said, like a voice crying in the wilderness. Who would come there, she wondered, if Dad went? Skelwick was only a chapel-of-ease to North Ditton, and before Mr. Gascoyne's time the place had been much neglected. No resident clergyman had lived there, and though a curate had come from the Parish Church at North Ditton to take Sunday services, no attempt had been made to get hold of the rough fisher folk in the district. It had been uphill work, and with very little a.s.sistance or encouragement, for Mr.

Sutton, the rector, was old and in delicate health, and quite unable to take any active part; indeed, for many years he had never visited Skelwick or the neighbouring hamlets.

"Everything worth having here is owing to Dad," thought Gwen. "I don't know how he'd ever bear to leave it."

She could not contemplate the idea of the smoky Vicarage at Rawtenbeck. Though she sometimes dreamt of how she would go out into the world and do things when she grew up, she had always imagined the Parsonage as a place that would still be there for her to come home to whenever she wished, even from the wilds of Canada. She loved every inch of the dear little house, and every clump of flowers in the garden was like a friend.

"As far as homes and houses go I'm a rank old Conservative. I hate being uprooted," said Gwen to herself.

She felt so unsettled she could not go back at present. Her preparation must wait, and she would take a walk higher up on the wold to try and recover her equanimity. The fresher air of the headland always calmed her when she was annoyed or irritable.

For some time she strolled on rather aimlessly among the heather and the gorse bushes, watching the birds or the gra.s.shoppers, and sitting down every now and then to drink in a fuller enjoyment of the scene.

She was quite alone, and to-day at any rate Gwen loved solitude.

No--after all she had not the moor entirely to herself. Over a ridge of bracken loomed a funny little black figure, which seemed to be moving in her direction. As it came nearer she could make out that it was a little old gentleman, very small and thin and wizened, with a face as yellow as parchment, and a long, hooked nose, and eyes set in a ma.s.s of wrinkles. His clothes did not fit him particularly well, and were ill cut, and his hat was decidedly shabby. He walked along peering through his gla.s.ses as if he were shortsighted, and occasionally even feeling his way with a cane which he carried. When he saw Gwen he hastened towards her with an appearance of relief.

"I'm so glad to find somebody in this wild place," he began, in a funny little cracked voice that matched his face and figure. "Can you tell me if I am very far away from the village of Skelwick?"

"About two miles," replied Gwen, wondering who the stranger could be.

"Indeed! And in which direction may the place lie? I'm afraid I am rather out of my reckoning;" and he pulled a road map from his pocket and held it within two inches of his eyes.

"It's down there to the left, but the path's a little hard to find.

You have to be careful you don't go through the wrong gap and walk over the edge of the cliff."

"Tut-tut-tut! Such spots ought to be marked 'Dangerous' on the maps. I shall write to the publishers and tell them so. As far as I understand now I am standing exactly here?" and he handed the rather dilapidated sheet to Gwen for verification.

"What a queer old crank!" she thought; but she answered civilly, and tried to identify the particular spot, as he seemed so anxious about it.

"Thank you! If you will put a cross at the point where you consider there is a dangerous gap I shall be obliged, and will endeavour to avoid the place," he remarked.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "YES, YOU CAN EASILY GO MILES OUT OF YOUR WAY"]

"I am going back to Skelwick myself, and I could show you the way if you like," returned Gwen, moved with a sudden compa.s.sion for the frail little figure, a whole head shorter than her stalwart self.

"If it will not be incommoding you, I shall be glad to avail myself of your offer. I am a trifle shortsighted, and these moorland paths are confusing."

"Yes, you can easily go miles out of your way," agreed Gwen, wondering again who the stranger could be.

He did not look like an ordinary tourist, and as they walked together over the wold he began to make a number of enquiries about Skelwick and the people who lived there. He was an artful questioner, and Gwen, almost before she realized what she was doing, gave him a full and detailed history of the neighbourhood, including what it had been before Father came, and what it was now.

"Of course some of them still drink, but they're better than they were," she said. "Six years ago most of the fishermen wouldn't go near a service, and spent all Sunday with bottles of whisky in that little cabin on the sh.o.r.e, the very one Dad's made into a newsroom now. I don't know what the place would do without him if he really--" but here she stopped in great distress, remembering she was letting out the secret which Beatrice had strictly enjoined her to keep.

The blinking, shortsighted eyes did not seem to take any notice of her confusion. The old gentleman twitched his mouth hard, and then merely remarked:

"It's well to be a favourite in one's parish."