Chapter III: Part 3

"Caroline Cushion?" Mrs. Robinson demanded, with that air of cross-questioning a witness which made small-talk so difficult. "If it's Caroline Cushion, she did live in our parish, and she certainly wasn't 'Mrs.' then, but a middle-aged single woman. She left soon after my husband got the living, but I remember her quite well--she came into a house, or something, and went away to live in it."

"It's a curious coincidence," said the vicar easily, "but it can't be our Mrs. Cushion, for not only is she married, but she has grown-up sons to whom she is absolutely devoted."

"It's unlikely," said Mrs. Robinson, "that there could be two Caroline Cushions both coming from the same village, and both inheriting property at a distance. The matter should be looked into, for certainly with us she passed always as a single woman, and to the best of my belief had spent almost her whole life in the village. Is she a fairish woman, stout, with red cheeks?"

"She is very pleasant and fresh-looking," said the vicar, looking at me for help. "But I am quite sure she can't be the one you mean."

"I'm not at all sure of anything of the kind," Mrs. Robinson snapped. "She may have been living a double life all these years. As I said before, the matter should be looked into. I'd know her again if I saw her. I never forget a face."

I don't know why it was, but I suddenly felt most uncomfortable, and was surprised at my own passionate determination that Mrs. Robinson should _not_ see Mrs. Cushion. We had reached the walnut stage, and I suggested to her that she and I might go and sit in the drawing-room and leave the gentlemen to smoke.

"My husband doesn't smoke," she said severely as we crossed the hall; "he doesn't think it becoming in a clergyman, and I must say I agree with him. But then _he_ is rector of the parish, and one of those--too few, alas! in these lax days--who acts up to his convictions.... Now, about this Mrs. Cushion...." Mrs. Robinson by this time was seated beside me on the vicar's chesterfield. "I feel quite anxious. What can be her reason for masquerading as a married woman here? Even if she _had_ married since she left her old home, it's most unlikely that her name would still be Cushion, and it's impossible that she should have grown-up sons. Have you seen them?"

"They are both abroad," I answered, "and isn't Cushion quite a common name in Gloucestershire?"

"Not at all; it's a very _un_common name, that's why I remember it so distinctly--and to think she always passed for a most respectable woman!"

"So she is," I interrupted with some heat. "A most kind and admirable woman in every possible way. Every one here has the greatest respect for her. She's probably a cousin of your one--who doubtless was quite excellent also. Would you care to go out and look at the dahlias? The vicar has quite a show."

Never did I spend a more trying half-hour than the one that followed. Mrs. Robinson kept returning to the subject of Mrs. Cushion with a persistency worthy of a better cause; and I, for no reason that I could formulate, kept heading her off and trying to turn her thoughts down other paths. It was Mrs. Cushion's sons that seemed to annoy her most, and I had the queer, wholly illogical feeling that Mrs. Robinson would, unless prevented, snatch them away from Mrs. Cushion, and that it was up to me to prevent anything of the kind. So nervous did I feel that I accompanied the party to see the church and the village, and only breathed freely again when Mr. Vernon's car had borne Mr. and Mrs. Robinson away in a direction wholly opposite to Snig's.

As his guests vanished over the bridge in the direction of Marlehouse, the vicar sighed deeply. "Now, why," he demanded, "should Vernon have brought those people to me? I suppose he was so bored himself he had to do something. She's his cousin, I believe, and what a trying lady!"

"Did you 'ave a nice party, miss?" asked Mrs. Cushion an hour or so later, as she brought in my tea.

"Curiously enough, there was a clergyman and his wife from your old home, Mrs. Cushion. I wonder if you remember them? A Mr. and Mrs. Robinson."

"I suppose you didn't happen to name me, miss?" Mrs. Cushion asked--I thought a trifle nervously.

"Well, I didn't, but the vicar did."

"Yes, miss, and did Mrs. Robinson seem to remember me?"

"She remembered some one of your name, Mrs. Cushion, but it couldn't have been you--perhaps you have relations in her parish?"

"May I make so bold, miss, as to ask exactly what she did say?"

"That it was a _Miss_ Cushion she knew, who left soon after her husband got the living."

"I dare say she did," said Mrs. Cushion grimly; "and there was many as would have gone, too, if they'd had the chanst. If it's not taking a liberty, miss, was you exactly _draw'd_ to Mrs. Robinson?"

"Certainly not," I replied. "I couldn't get on with her at all. Are they popular in the parish?"

"It's not for me to say, miss. I left two months after they did come. They was new brooms, you see, and swep' away a lot of old customs. They wasn't like the Reverend 'ere--he's all for 'live and let live'--but they was all for making every one live as they thought proper. I don't say they was wrong, and I don't say they was right, but whichever it was, it weren't peaceable.

"But," concluded Mrs. Cushion, "I've no business gossiping here, and you wanting your tea."

So she left me to my tea and the reflection that she had neither contradicted nor confirmed Mrs. Robinson's statement.

During the next couple of days I was conscious of a certain constraint in our, hitherto, completely cordial relationship. Mrs. Cushion was just as careful as ever for my comfort--everything was just as well done, and meals as punctual, and rooms spick and span as before; but I missed something. I missed the interest she used to take in me and the interest she allowed me to take in her. She was still the perfect landlady, but I grievously missed the frank and genial human being.

I had lunched with the vicar and his guests on Tuesday. On Friday afternoon Mrs. Cushion got a lift into "Ziren" to do some shopping, and I had to take my own letters to the post office. I met the vicar on his way to call on me, and he turned back and walked with me, and I speedily perceived that something worried him. The vicar is stout and gouty, and walks but slowly. We only just caught the post, and then he asked me to go with him to the vicarage to look at a black dahlia in his garden before the first frosts took it.

In the garden he stopped long before we came to the dahlias and exclaimed, "I've heard from that vexatious woman."

"Mrs. Robinson?"

"Yes; just read her letter."

"DEAR MR. MOLYNEUX," it ran, "I feel it is my duty to tell you that I have been making inquiries about Caroline Cushion, and there is no question whatever that she is the same person who was living here when my husband and I first came to the parish. It happens that Mrs. Bayley, widow of the former incumbent, is at present staying with Lady Moreland at the Manor, and I called upon her the day I returned from Mr. Vernon's, that I might make searching inquiries as to where Caroline Cushion had lived before she left for Redmarley, where I understand she was left a cottage by her uncle, her mother's brother. Mrs. Bayley remembered her perfectly well, and, I must say, spoke highly of her. But she was as astonished as I was to hear she was posing as a married woman with a family, for she had lived in this parish from her youth up. I grieve much that I should have to bring this life of duplicity to light; and I feel it is only right to let you know, that you may take steps to sift the matter and bring the woman to a proper sense of her wrong-doing. For if during the years she lived here she really possessed a husband and children, she shamefully neglected them; and if she is unmarried the case is infinitely worse. Please let me know the result of your investigations.

"Yours sincerely,
"ELAINE M. ROBINSON."

In silence I gave back the letter to the vicar and involuntarily I shivered, for the wind was very cold.

"Well?" he asked impatiently, "what do you make of it?"

"I can't make anything of it. The whole thing's a mystery."

Then I told him of my tea-time conversation with Mrs. Cushion, and of the curious constraint in her manner ever since: of how unhappy it made me, and how cordially I detested Mrs. Robinson and wished her far further than the Forest of Dean--though to the Redmarley folk the Forest of Dean is indeed as the ends of the earth.

"If I know anything of human nature," said the vicar, punctuating his remarks with vicious flicks of the finger upon Mrs. Robinson's envelope, "Mrs. Cushion is as honest and straightforward a woman as ever stepped, a _good_ woman, a kindly woman. Has she never said anything to _you_ about her husband?"

"Only once. I asked about him, and I saw it was a painful subject, so I never mentioned him again. I fear he was an unsatisfactory person."

"But what am I to say to this pestiferous woman? If I don't answer her, she's capable of coming over here and setting the whole village by the ears.... I should like," he added vindictively, "to throw a stone through her window." As he spoke I was reminded of Mrs. Cushion's remark, "There's something in men-folks as seems to stop growin' when they be about ten year old": for although the vicar is stout and bald, and his close-cropped beard and moustache quite white, yet there and then I seemed to see "a little boy in tore knickerbockers and a dirty face same as if 'e stood in front of me."

"Wait a day or two," I suggested; "she won't expect an answer by return because you've got to make your 'investigations,' you know."

He groaned. "How can I? If there's one thing I wholeheartedly abhor it's poking and prying into another person's affairs--it's so ... ungentlemanly. I wouldn't do it to my worst enemy, but when it's a decent, kindly body who has been my right hand in every good thing that's been done in this village ever since she came.... Look here, my dear. Perhaps you--without hurting her feelings--could find out something to satisfy Mrs. Robinson. It would come better from you."

I doubted this, but I promised the poor worried vicar to do my best. I walked back to Snig's as fast as I could, for I was chilled to the bone. It certainly was a very cold east wind.

Mrs. Cushion was back when I arrived. A bright fire blazed on my hearth and hot muffins awaited me for tea. She looked cold and depressed, and she had no news for me either of the fashions in the "Ziren" shop windows or of acquaintances she had met. Even references to her beloved boys failed to elicit more than monosyllables.

Next morning she began to cough. For a day and a half she struggled on doing her household work as usual. Through the night I heard her coughing so incessantly that I got up and went across to her room. It had turned very cold, and in spite of her protests, I lit a fire and did what I could to relieve her, in the shape of hot black-currant tea and rubbing her with embrocation. I also took her temperature, which was 104 deg.!

In the morning she was so ill that she consented to stay in bed, and I sent a note to the doctor by the boy that brought the milk.

When he came he declared Mrs. Cushion to be down with influenza, and that she must be very careful. He would send in the parish nurse that morning and a woman to do for me. If a trained nurse should be necessary, he'd get one, but he thought if I could stay for a day or two to superintend things we could manage. Warmth, rest, and quiet in bed till her temperature went down were all that was necessary.

Everything went smoothly. The parish nurse was a personal friend of Mrs. Cushion. The woman sent in "mornings" was most attentive and efficient, and the fact that she was no cook did not seem to matter, for so much more than Mrs. Cushion could eat was sent in by sympathetic neighbours that we lived on the fat of the land on the surplus. If there had ever been any question as to Mrs. Cushion's popularity in Redmarley, it was answered now, and in the most emphatic way.

Anxious inquirers came at all hours, and I spent most of my time watching the garden that I might open the door, front or back, before the visitor could rap--you rap with your knuckles in Redmarley, whether the door happens to be open or shut: the latter only occurs in cold weather or on washing-days.

One thing did strike me, and that was the number of young men and boys who came, not only to inquire, but to bring offerings of all sorts. It seemed to me that every male being under thirty that I had ever seen in Redmarley, man or boy, or hobbledehoy, came to get news of Mrs. Cushion--and I was always careful to ask their names and write them down, for I soon discovered that their solicitude gave her pleasure.

It was the only thing that did seem to give her pleasure just then. When the cough was easier and her temperature went down, she remained heartrendingly weak, and at the end of six days the doctor asked me if I thought "she had anything on her mind," for, if so, it must be got at and lifted; for she'd never get well at this rate.

Now that she was, of necessity, rather dependent on me in a good many small ways, Mrs. Cushion had become less reserved, more like her former self, in fact--but yet, I always felt that there was something between us. Her blue eyes, sometimes without the spectacles now, would follow me about with a wistful, weighing expression that was full of dumb pain and pathos; but naturally all exciting topics were taboo, and I had never again, since that first afternoon, referred to Mrs. Robinson and her disturbing revelations. One evening about nine o'clock, when Mrs. Cushion had been in bed eight whole days, when the nurse had gone for the night, and I was left in charge, when I had made up her fire, lit the night-light, and arranged the hand-bell and all her possible wants on a table by her bed--I was going back to mine, but she stopped me as I reached the door with a faintly whispered "Miss!"

I went back to the side of the bed and looked down at her. She was very pale, and had put on the spectacles as though to see me better in the dim light.

"Miss," she repeated, "I can't kip it to myself no longer; that there Mrs. Robinson was right--I wasn't never married an' I never 'ad no children."

Mrs. Cushion's hands were picking nervously at the sheet, though her eyes never left my face for a single minute. I seized one of the weak, cold hands, and held it in both mine--but I could not speak.

"You'd better sit down, miss, while I tell 'ee.... All my life long I've loved children--more especially boys. When I was a young 'ooman, I 'ad my chanst same as most. One was a school-teacher, most respectable 'e were--but I couldn't seem to fancy 'im: and t'other, 'e were a hundertaker, and I couldn't fancy 'is trade--so there it was. An' as time went on I did get thinkin' about the little boys as I should like to 'ave 'ad; and they did seem to get realler and realler--Arty and Bert did--till I sorter felt I _couldn't_ get along without 'em.... Do it seem very queer to you, miss?"

"Not a bit, dear Mrs. Cushion."

"Now, I ast you, miss--do I look like a hold maid, or do I look like a comfortable married woman with a family?"

"I think you look _very_ married," I exclaimed quite truthfully--"very motherly."

"Well, so do I think--and when I came 'ere where no one knowed anything about me excepting I was Uncle's niece, I says to myself, says I, 'You act up to your looks, Caroline Cushion--an' then you can talk about your children same as the rest.' I didn't trouble my 'ead about a 'usban'--I 'adn't never thought about 'im. So when folks asked me--like you yourself, miss--I just prims up my mouth and shakes my 'ead, and they sees as 'e weren't up to much, and they says no more. Sometimes I've thought as it were a bit onfair on 'im, pore chap, an' 'im never done me no 'arm--but--there.... I couldn't stop to think about 'im. 'Twere the boys as I wanted--an' they _did_ comfort me so, miss, an' I don't know _'ow_ as I can ever give 'em up."

"But I see no reason why you should."

"Ah, miss, you speaks so kind because you do think, 'She's ill, poor thing, and we must yumour 'er,' but what'd the Reverend say? You may depend as that there Mrs. Robinson 'll never let it alone. What'll 'e say? An' if 'e says as I've got to tell every one I ain't no married woman an' never 'ad no children, I'd rather not get well. I couldn't face it, miss. Because I _can't_ feel as the Lard's very angry with me--I can't."

"Mrs. Cushion, will you let me tell Mr. Molyneux, and see what he says?"

Mrs. Cushion sighed. "I suppose 'e'll 'ave to be told, an' you'd tell him more straight-forward nor I could. It's all so mixed up like. You see, them boys ain't never done no 'arm to any one--they so far off and all--an' I will say this, miss, they've give me a sort of 'old over young growin' chaps I wouldn't 'ave 'ad without 'em. Many's the young chap as 'ave listened to a word from me about drink and the like, because 'e's thought, 'There, she knows as it's only natural--she's got some of 'er own--she won't be too 'ard on me'--and they did like me, I knows they did--they did indeed, miss."

I thought of the hobbledehoys and the shy, furtive presents of eggs and honey and tight little bunches of flowers, and an occasional rabbit--how come by it were perhaps better not to inquire--and the inarticulate lingering, the waiting for intelligence they were too shy to ask for--I thought of these things, and I knew that Mrs. Cushion spoke the truth.

"Now, you, miss," the tired, whispering voice went on, "if I may say so, you _looks_ unmarried; and yet, I do believe as you understands."

"I do, I do, Mrs. Cushion."

"It seemed some'ow as if it _'ad_ to be, and yet there's no one 'ates lies and bedanglements more than me. An' there I've been and gone and done it myself. But I ain't going to own it!" Mrs. Cushion added almost fiercely. "Not if I 'ad to let Snig's an' leave these parts. I'd _far_ rather die."

By this time she was as flushed as she had been pale before, and I had to tell her she mustn't talk any more, but leave it all till the morning, when we'd consult the vicar.

For about an hour I sat by her bed, till her more regular breathing showed me she had dropped off into the sleep of sheer exhaustion.

In the morning I sent a note to the vicar by one of the solicitous young men, and by ten o'clock he was in my sitting-room, while the parish nurse was getting Mrs. Cushion's room ready upstairs.

I told the story very briefly, and as far as possible in her own words; and the vicar, who had been sitting at the table facing the light, suddenly got up and stood by the fireplace, his elbow on the mantel-shelf, shading his eyes with his hand and almost turning his back upon me.

"And if she can't keep her children, she won't get well," I concluded.

"Of course she must keep her children," he muttered hoarsely.

"But what about Mrs. Robinson?"

He blew his nose, with his handkerchief all over his face, and then turned on me triumphantly, handing me a letter.

"I was coming to you this morning in any case, to show you this. I suddenly decided what to say and thought you'd like to see it. I'm glad I wrote before you told me this. There's a decisive vagueness about it that will, I know, command your literary respect--if nothing else."

This is what he had written:

"DEAR MRS. ROBINSON,--Of course you are right. The Caroline Cushion you knew never was married nor had she any children; and she always was, as you charitably supposed, an entirely respectable woman. The confusion arose with Miss Legh and me, and I apologise for the trouble we have inadvertently caused you. Thanking you for so satisfactorily clearing up the matter, I am yours faithfully,

"G. W. MOLYNEUX."

The parish nurse knocked at the door. "I've put her quite straight, Miss Legh, and the doctor said yesterday she can have anything she fancies for her dinner."

Up the steep stairs the vicar climbed, pausing at the top to get his breath. Mrs. Cushion was sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows. She had on her best cap and the gold-rimmed spectacles sacred to Sundays.

"Peace be to this house, and all that dwell in it," said the vicar from the threshold.

I shut the bedroom door and left them.

When the vicar had creaked heavily downstairs again, I went and opened the front door for him.

"Poor soul!" he said, "poor, hungry-hearted, loving soul! Do you remember Elia?" And more to himself than to me he murmured, "And yet they are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. They are only what might have been."

*VII*

*SANCTUARY*

The Reverend Grantley Molyneux hobbled down to the church for the first time for some weeks. An attack of gout, unusually severe, had kept him veritably "tied by the leg" during the best of the June weather. Now that he was about again there were but gleams of watery sunshine to tempt him out of doors. However, the sunshine if watery was warm, and by the time the "old vicar"--for so he loved to be called--had reached the church he was glad to enter and rest in its cool grey shadows.

From sunrise to sunset Redmarley Church stood open. There were no week-day services--the worthy yeomen who formed the bulk of the congregation would have looked with great suspicion on any such innovation; but none the less would they have been indignant had the church been shut.

For nearly forty years the present incumbent had ministered to the people of Redmarley. He was, on the whole, decidedly popular--indeed, rumour had it that in his slim youth he had been over-popular--with the fair, being in the matter of susceptibility to their attractions something of a Burns. But, unlike Burns, he attempted no explanation, no vindication of his conduct, if such were needed, and it is surprising how short-lived are rumours when there is no one to contradict them.

The old vicar had ruled his life according to the maxim given by an exceedingly wise man to a young politician, "Never quarrel, never explain, never fear." He found it to answer wonderfully well on the whole, and for the last ten years had placidly increased in bulk, untroubled by any enemy other than the gout.

A courteous scholarly man, of a somewhat florid old-world politeness, he seemed strangely out of place in this remote Gloucestershire village, but he suited the people, and the people suited him. Gallio himself was not more careless of doctrine than is the average Cotswold peasant, whose highest praise of "passun" lies in the phrase, "'e don't never interfere with oi." The old vicar never interfered, not even in so far as to appoint a curate when disabled himself by gout.

Had he worn a ruff instead of the orthodox "choker," he might have passed for one of his own Elizabethan ancestors, as he rested in the squire's pew, his head leaning against the high oak back.

A long face, with high narrow forehead and pointed beard, cheeks heavy and creased, straight nose, with strongly marked sensitive nostrils. The mouth full-lipped and shutting firmly under the grey moustache cut straight across the upper lip. Truly a fine old face, deeply lined and sorrowful, bearing upon it the tragic impress of great possibilities, that had remained--possibilities.

The grey coolness of the little Norman church was restful. The vicar sighed and closed his eyes--those full blue eyes that had once been bold and winsome, that were still keen. The old live mostly in the past, they are not often dull or lonely. At will they can summon a whole pageantry of love, and friendship, and eager strife. The vicar of Redmarley was much given to warming his hands at the fires of recollection. His memory was excellent, and he had much to remember, for he had lived strenuously. Age had not dimmed his faculties, his hearing being particularly acute.

Presently his good dream was disturbed, and he began to be annoyed by a strange little scraping noise for which he could not account.

It was almost continuous.

He leant forward and listened, frowned, then looked interested, and finally rose from his seat.

The noise ceased.

He sat down again and waited. Sure enough the sound began, again, and it was for all the world like the scratch of a quill pen in the hand of a rapid writer. He decided that it came from a chapel on the right side of the altar--the chapel in which his wife was buried. A square sarcophagus stood in the centre, but there were no seats, as the chapel was quite small. Hobbling up the three steps that led to it from the body of the church, the vicar looked about him but could see nothing, and the silence was unbroken.

Suddenly it occurred to him to look over the tomb which filled the centre vacant space. What he discovered caused him to exclaim, more surprisedly than piously:

"God bless my soul!"

Seated on the floor, in the narrow space which separated the side of the tomb from the church wall, was a young man. A card blotting-book lay on his knees, a leather ink-bottle was stuck into the tracery of the tomb, and scattered round him were closely written sheets of manuscript. He looked up at the vicar's exclamation, but made no attempt to rise.

"Sir! What are you doing here?"

The vicar's voice was low, but in the "Sir!" there was infinite rebuke.

The intruder lifted his gaunt face the better to observe his questioner. Then he pointed to the scattered papers, saying:

"It is not difficult to see."

"But why do you write in my church?" persisted the vicar, peering over the side of the tomb at this strange sacrilegious person, with a curiosity that almost mastered his annoyance.

"Because there was nowhere else. I have done no harm to your church--besides, how is it more your church than mine?"

"Do you think you could come and converse with me in the porch upon this subject? I am old-fashioned, and your action strikes me as incongruous. Moreover, it tires me to stand."

The young man scrambled to his feet. Laying his hands upon the tomb's flat top he vaulted lightly over, and stood beside the vicar on the wider side of the tiny chapel.

The vicar frowned, demanding:

"Would you like me to jump over your wife's grave?"

A momentary gleam of amusement lighted up the stranger's tragic black eyes as he noted the vicar's cumbrous figure and swathed foot. Then his expression changed, and he said gently:

"I beg your pardon."

Often in these last days he had found himself wondering with a sort of tender curiosity about the Lady Cicely Molyneux, "aged twenty-one years," who had lain there so long.

When they reached the porch the vicar sat down, and, pointing to a place beside him, said:

"Sit down, and tell me what you mean when you say there is nowhere else?"

The young man obeyed, saying wearily:

"It is the simple truth. I am lodging at Eliza Heaven's, in the village, and you probably know that there is no living-room except the kitchen. I share a bedroom with three of the boys, and the rain comes down in torrents every day. I can't tramp about the country--I only get wet through and fall ill. My holiday lasts ten days--how could I spend it better? The church was quiet; I was under cover. No one has ever come in before."

The vicar stared silently at this strange youth clad in threadbare black, with flannel shirt open at his lean throat. He felt attracted to him in spite of his square grim jaw and Nihilistic-looking crop of thick black hair. His voice was not uncultivated and the vicar recognised, with a little thrill of pleasure, the soft guttural "r" which proclaimed the stranger to be Welsh. Lady Cicely was Welsh, and for her sake the vicar loved well that courteous fiery little people.

"I am sorry you should have had such a wet holiday. In fine weather the country round here is very beautiful, and you look as though long days out of doors would be better for you than literary work--anywhere."

The young man looked rather surprised at the urbanity of this speech but it is difficult for the Welsh to be other than courteous, even when they meet with churls. It was easy, therefore, to explain the position of affairs to this gouty but amiable old gentleman. The hunted look left the stranger's eyes, the tense lines round his mouth relaxed as he said, "I work at a cloth factory at Stroud. One of my mates told me his mother would lodge me for my holiday--I could not afford to go home--so I came here. I am a Socialist, but my father was a Wesleyan minister. I speak at Labour meetings in Stroud--that is my next speech I was writing--it is nearly finished."

The musical voice ceased; the vicar gave a little start; he had been gazing out on the sunlit grass in the churchyard. Then he turned and faced his new acquaintance: "Will you let me read your speech? It would interest me greatly. It is long since I took any active interest in politics. I am glad I found you instead of Daniel Long the clerk. He would, with the best intentions in life, have been rude. I can understand your seeking sanctuary in the church, and, as you say, She belongs to all of us; but--perhaps it is prejudice--I had rather you didn't write political speeches there. Will you come and write at the vicarage instead? You shall be quite undisturbed."

The young man cleared his throat, and when he spoke his voice was rather husky: "How do you know I should not steal your spoons?"

"My good friend," the vicar answered cheerfully, "though I know but little of politics, I know this much, that it is nothing less than my whole possessions you Socialists want. Spoons, indeed! that's but a small part of it; and you don't want to steal them either, but to take them, boldly and in the light of day, that every one may see and admire the redistribution.--I believe that is the word--of property."

As he spoke the vicar rose, and, leaning heavily on his stick, prepared to fare forth into the sunshine again. The little Welshman made no answer, so the vicar turned and put his hand on his shoulder, saying kindly: "But as you write, you probably read. I have plenty of books. You must come and see them. Come now!"

"May I collect my papers, sir? I won't be a minute." The voice was eager, with a deference in the tone which had been lacking at first. The vicar smiled--that pleasant smile, which had won him so much goodwill. "I like these Welshmen," he thought to himself, "always so much in earnest, always responsive." Then he sighed and frowned as his gouty foot gave a warning twinge.

He and his strange acquaintance walked through the churchyard together. At the vicarage door the old man stopped, and, rubbing his hands delightedly, exclaimed, "Now you are going to enjoy yourself."

"I am bewildered; Fortune is not usually kind to me," murmured the stranger, as he followed his host into a room walled round with books. The vicar sank wearily into an armchair, while his servant arranged his gouty foot upon the rest. As the door closed behind the man, the little Welshman clasped his hands, and, standing before the vicar with flushed cheeks and shining eyes, cried breathlessly: "Do you mean that I may take them down--handle them--read them?"

The vicar laughed. "Sesame," said he, and waved his hand towards the largest bookcase.

What "Sesame" meant the other knew not, nor cared. It was a permission, that was enough. He held out his work-worn hands, palms upwards, to the vicar, saying simply: "They are clean."

The vicar leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, quoting softly, as if to himself: "These are all at your choice; and life is short." But the stranger did not hear him, for he found himself amidst a company "wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty, of every place and time."

*VIII*

*A COTSWOLD BARMAID*

It seemed an odd name for an elderly woman, even when, as in this case, she happened to be a barmaid: but some one with an eye for likenesses christened her "Bobby" because of a really striking resemblance to the statesman at that time familiarly known as "Bobby Lowe." Anyway the name expressed her, and Bobby she remained to the end. Let it not be imagined that disrespect was so much as suggested by the title: she was the best respected woman in our town, and certainly one of the most influential.

There was a college, of a sort, near the town where Bobby lived, and generations of students and the whole hunting youth of the countryside passed through her kind hands, and every man amongst them will acknowledge that he was the better for having known Bobby.

It is to be supposed that at one time she was slim, instead of round-about, that her abundant white hair was once brown or golden, that she had a story of her own apart from the "Moonstone" and her "boys"; but we took her for granted none the less thankfully that we were apt to forget how unique she was, till we were far from Bobby and the Moonstone Bar.

Youthful new-comers were her especial care. She not infrequently confiscated their money if she thought they were going to "play the giddy," only restoring it when she considered they were capable of using it with some discretion. And how carefully she looked after the digestions of such as were inexperienced in the matter of drinks! "What?" she would exclaim, "green chartreuse, sir, and you just bin 'avin' beer! You really mustn't, sir, you'd be that bad" ... and the best of it was that nobody was ever foolish enough to resent her interference.

"If a holdish man likes to take too much," she would say sorrowfully, "it isn't me that can stop 'im, but with these young chaps just fresh from school, I must do my best according to my lights."

What becomes of the young chaps fresh from school where there is no Bobby to take care of them I wonder.

"As you know, sir," she continued, "I don't hold with drinkin' for drinkin's sake, but I do think that a gentleman should be able to take his glass sociable-like, and friendly. There don't seem no good fellowship in them there aereated waters, and I'm sure they ain't no good to a body's inside, by theirselves."

She had a healthy crop of prejudices this Bobby of ours. Any sort of blasphemy or loose talk she could not away with. "It's sort of natural for a man to swear if he's a bit taken to or astonished," she would say in lenient mood, "but when they goes breaking the third commandment like as if it was a hold chipped plate, it gives me cold shivers down my back--that it do."

She never expostulated, but her square, rosy face got less square and less rosy if, in her presence, the conversation waxed too forcible and free. At such times the offender would be warned by one of Bobby's old friends who respected what he probably called her "fads." If the new-comer profited by the warning all went well, but if he offended a second time he was forcibly ejected and found himself in the dark and draughty covered way leading to the Moonstone stables, with the explanation, "you can pile on the adjectives here, old chap, but she doesn't like it."

Bobby was a sincere believer in good works, and many were the "boxes" benefited by winnings at billiards or otherwise: and every Sunday saw her slowly taking her decorous way to church, seemly and satin-clad, bearing the very portliest of prayer books.

For man in the abstract, she had the greatest respect, but taken individually, she looked upon him as singularly gullible, and as requiring much maternal supervision, both digestively and morally. "Law! They may talk about their science and their chemistry and that, but bless you! Just let one of them minxes come along, and they're no better than imbeciles, that they're not."

The one human creature for whom Bobby's kind heart could find no toleration, was a "minx." And by "minx" she meant such pretty girls of the shop and dressmaker class, as she imagined cherished hopes of "marrying a gentleman." The idea that one of her boys (anybody under thirty was a "boy" to Bobby) should get entangled in the meshes of a minx, or more dreadful still, "marry beneath him" roused Bobby as did nothing else. How she got her information no one could ever imagine, but she always knew when anything of the kind was afoot, and Machiavellian were her methods of preventing such a catastrophe. More than one "county family" has Bobby to thank that no undesirable daughter-in-law has been added to its ranks. People under twenty she considered her especial charge. She gave them much homely and excellent advice, and only such drinks as she deemed suitable to their tender years.

When one of Bobby's old favourites came back from foreign parts the very first place he would hasten to was Bobby's bar. He would lounge in, after the fashion of a stranger, and ask, in a feigned voice, for what had been his favourite drink in the old days. But Bobby's ears were very quick, one sharp glance at the stranger, a little cry of recognition ... and over the counter he leaps and fast in his embrace is the old barmaid's stout, comfortable, little figure, and for a minute or two neither she nor the stranger can see each other very clearly. And then, what a talking over of old days there would be! What asking after old chums! At such times Bobby would even give us news of the minxes. Poor pretty minxes, did any of you ever marry gentlemen I wonder? They were really very nice those minxes! But we don't remember them as we remember Bobby--Bobby of the silver hair and little dumpy figure, who by sheer force of strong and kindly character held sway over several generations of hot-blooded young England. She was not beautiful; she was not, as the world accounts it, clever: but she was of the type of the eternal mother-woman. "Bless you," she would say with her broad, confident smile, "it's easy enough to manage 'em if only you lets 'em think as they're managin' you."

*IX*

*FUZZY WUZZY'S WATCH*

He was Billy's little brother, and we called him "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" because his abundant yellow hair stuck out straight and bushy all over his head. Moreover, at tennis parties he was sometimes allowed to "squeege" the soda water into the tall glasses held out for that purpose by thirsty friends; and they would say "Here's to you, Fuzzy Wuzzy!"

This, however, is not a story of Fuzzy Wuzzy, but of a man to whom Fortune had not been kind, whereas Fuzzy Wuzzy was.

"He is the rowdiest chap in the college, he goes on the drunk for days together; and yet he's a perfect gentleman, even when he's drunk."

We were all of us sitting on the lawn. Fuzzy's mother looked up as Mr. Calcraft spoke, asking, "Who is this unhappy person?"

"Oh, the 'Bookie' you know, that chap who's got Vereker's old rooms. Riddell is his name--the professor knows him."

Mr. Calcraft waited for the professor to give further information, but he said nothing. Then a small voice remarked: "_I_ know Mr. Riddell. He's got the beautifullest big dog, and he gave me a ride on its back--I like him."

Fuzzy was sitting on my knee--after a moment's silence his mother asked, "Do you like him, Hugh? Is it true that he is so wild?"

The professor took his pipe out of his mouth. He was not given to discussing the students, we all knew that--but this time he said, "I like Riddell. He's a very clever fellow, and most good-natured. I think his little weaknesses are much exaggerated. _I_ have seen no sign of rowdiness."

Mr. Calcraft laughed. "If you'd been at 'The Moonstone' the other evening, sir, you would have seen more than a sign. He broke every cue in the billiard room, and nearly threw the marker out of the window!"

"Did he frow a man out of the window?" exclaimed Fuzzy ecstatically. "Oh, Mr. Bookie _is_ strong."

There was a horror-stricken pause. They had forgotten Fuzzy. His mother looked reproachfully at Mr. Calcraft, and somebody murmured something about _virginibus puerisque_.

"If only the 'Bookie' could be kept sober," Mr. Calcraft remarked apologetically, "he would be a splendid chap. He is all right for weeks together, and is as hard as nails; then he goes off and makes an ass of himself down town, and it makes people cut him. He told me the other day that he doesn't know a lady in the place."

"He is going to know one!" said Fuzzy's mother, "he's going to know _me_. I think it is too bad. You all say he is foolish, yet not one of you has the courage to tell him so, I think it is a shame."

"He would be an awkward chap to tackle," murmured Mr. Calcraft. "He'd throw you out of the window as soon as look at you."

"He can't throw me out of the window," said Fuzzy's mother, "and I shall talk to him. You must ask him to lunch, Hugh!"

Then we all went to eat gooseberries in the kitchen garden and played at horses with Fuzzy.

The first day of the horse show Riddell was with Mrs. Ainger all the time. As usual he was untidy. His tie was over his collar, his collar frayed; he wore a terrible old cap, and the front of his coat was smothered in dust from Fuzzy's boots, for that gentleman spent the greater part of the afternoon perched on Riddell's shoulder.

"The Bookie" looked radiant, and carried off his lady to tea in the tent; I followed, sitting with friends at the next table. They looked a little surprised at Mrs. Ainger's cavalier, for that lady was known to be particular as to the men she admitted to intimacy.

Afterwards I heard all about it. It seems that the professor had asked Riddell to lunch, and that he had behaved beautifully. He was a cultivated man, and talked well, in the softest, most musical voice in the world. His knowledge of swear-words was the widest and most far-reaching; when with men his conversation was so garnished with oaths, that one had to pick one's steps, as it were, to discover what he was talking about. But with ladies, he was the most courtly and careful of men. At the horse show he had discovered Mrs. Ainger trying to lift Fuzzy to see over the heads of some yokels who obstructed the view. In a moment Riddell had relieved her of her burden, and devoted himself to her for the rest of the day. The professor was counting marks and could not come.

Then ensued a time of peace and quiet for the Bookie. He followed Mrs. Ainger like a big dog, constituted himself head nurse to Fuzzy, and he was sober, absolutely sober, for six months. When other ladies met him constantly at the Aingers', and found him to be not only harmless but charming, they also asked him to lunch and to dine. Thus "The Bookie" who had plenty of money, and was of unexceptional family, became something of a personage. He bought new clothes, and wore a clean straw hat. His linen was no longer frayed, and he shaved twice a day.

Mrs. Ainger sang his praises wherever she went, and openly declared that she believed all the stories of his rowdiness to be slanders; she had not seen his bill for billiard cues from the "Moonstone."

At the end of April came the "Point to Point" steeplechase, a day fatal to the Bookie, who was "well on" by five o'clock in the afternoon. Mrs. Ainger was not at the races, so she was spared the spectacle of her protege, swaying gracefully on the seat of his dogcart as he drove off the course. He had not brought his man, and as he was, his friends considered, quite capable of getting home in safety, they preferred not to be seen with him. He pressed them courteously to accompany him, offering to stand them a dinner at the "Moonstone." But they stood in awe of Mrs. Ainger, and not considering themselves in any way called upon to act as keeper for the Bookie, they let him alone.

Fuzzy's Nana was of a literary turn, spending a large proportion of the salary she received for her attentions to Fuzzy on the lighter kinds of fiction. On this particular afternoon, having wheeled him in his go-cart some distance along the high road, "she sat her down upon a green bank," and bidding him "Play about, there's a good boy, and pick some pretty flowers for mama!" she was soon immersed in a periodical, bearing a bloodcurdling device upon the cover.

Fuzzy gathered a bunch of celandines, and with them clasped tightly in his hot, fat hand, set off at a run down the road, giggling delightedly when he discovered that Nana neither called him nor yet started in pursuit.

Trotting gleefully along for some little distance he turned off into an inviting-looking lane. He kept close to the hedge for there was a sound of galloping hoofs, and Fuzzy was an extremely sensible small boy. Then there passed him a horse and dogcart, the horse going at a hand gallop, the dogcart empty. This struck Fuzzy as strange, but then strange things do happen when one sets forth to seek adventures. So he girded up his stocking which had become uncomfortably wrinkly and trudged on.

Presently he saw a man lying by the side of the road. Now Fuzzy had a large acquaintance among road men, and for tramps he felt a real affection. Had they not sometimes got white rats in their pockets? Nay, those of a superior sort even carried ferrets! He and his mother were wont to bestow pence on tramps, and on the road men, boots and the professor's old coats. In fact the professor was often heard to complain that he met his favourite coat by a heap of stones every time he went out. Fuzzy advanced fearlessly to inspect this weary man, who was lying on his face, with one arm doubled up under him in the strangest fashion. The man did not move as Fuzzy came up, and the little boy went and stood by the prostrate form, saying, with a comical imitation of his father:--"Thirsty weather, eh?" but the usual "It be that, Master!" did not follow.

The afternoon was very still. The sound of galloping hoofs and bumping wheels had died away in the distance. Suddenly Fuzzy gave a little cry--"Bookie! Bookie dear! are you hurted? Why do you lie in the road? gentlemens don't lie in the road--O Bookie! your foot is bad, it's all bleedy and dreadful!"

The Bookie did not answer, "he kind of snored" as Fuzzy afterwards described it. The child tried to turn him over on his back, but the Bookie being six foot two, and proportionately broad, and Fuzzy by no means tall for his age, this proved an impossible feat.

"I'm afraid he's hurted very bad, his face is so red and dirty," said Fuzzy to himself. Then, with Herculean efforts, he succeeded in inserting his own legs under the Bookie's head, so that it rested on his clean holland smock. He stroked the tumbled hair, and laid his soft little face upon the Bookie's hot, prickly cheek. They remained thus for what seemed to Fuzzy an interminable time. He began to grow sleepy himself. His head nodded, and finally he too fell over on to his back sound asleep.

When the Bookie came to himself he lay still for a few minutes collecting his thoughts. He discovered that his arm was certainly broken, that a wheel had gone over his ankle, that his face was resting on something soft, and that not ten inches from his face was a pair of small, dusty strap-shoes.

This last discovery completely sobered him. He raised himself on his good arm and looked down at the something which had been supporting him. A golden head, resting on two plump arms crossed behind it; sturdy legs, crushed by his weight, which now drew themselves up stretching out again as if relieved ... and then the Bookie realised that Fuzzy had found him, and had stayed to keep guard.

"God help me for a drunken beast! and I can't carry him for my arm's broken," he ejaculated. He got up on to his knees feeling very giddy. The movement woke Fuzzy. He too was puzzled for a moment as to where he could be, then, he saw the Bookie, and, his brains not being muddled by various "drinks" and a heavy fall, he sat up, saying in his tender little voice: "Are you hurted much, my poor dear? I stayed with you till you woked up."

The Bookie looked at Fuzzy and tried to speak, but somehow he couldn't. Fuzzy was on his feet in a moment and held out his grubby hands: "Shall I pull you up? I can pull dad up."

The Bookie took one of the little hands and carried it to his lips, saying brokenly, "Why do you love me, Fuzzy? I'm not worth it."

Fuzzy took no notice of this remark, it was just one of those foolish and irrelevant things that grown-up people have a habit of saying, so he said, "Aren't you tired of sitting in the road? Hadn't we better go home? I'm very hungry."

The Bookie tried again to get up on to his feet, but something had gone wrong with his leg, as well as his arm, and after a few excruciating efforts he gave it up.

"I'm afraid it's no go, Fuzzy, I can't walk; you see I was pitched out of the dog-cart, and I'm all smashed up--whatever is to be done?"

"Shall you be very lonely if I go home and tell them?" asked Fuzzy with his arms round the Bookie's neck, "and then they could bring a carriage for you; you're too big to go in my mail cart, or I'd lend it to you. It's in a field wiv Nana."

"How on earth I got into this lane I can't think, it's right off the high road. O Fuzzy Wuzzy, what an ass I've been!" The Bookie groaned, and Fuzzy clasped his arms tighter round his neck. Then he wiped his friend's dirty face with the crumpled smock, remarking: "Your poor face is so grubby, and you've lost your hat!"

"Where's yours?" asked the Bookie.

"I think it felled into the ditch!" Fuzzy answered composedly, "but there's no sun to sun-stroke us."