Chapter III: Straws on the Wind

... I feel my genial spirits droop,
My hopes all flat....
—MILTON (_Samson Agonistes_).

“I never heard you, my dear Doctor, preach better!” said Madam Tutterville.

But the worthy lady’s countenance was overcast as she spoke; and the hands which were smoothing and folding the surplice that the parson had just laid aside were shaking. The reverend Horatio turned upon his spouse with a philosophic smile. The lady did not use to seek him thus in the sacristy after service unless something in the Sunday congregation seemed to call for her immediate comment. On this particular morning he well knew where the thorn pricked; for he himself, mounting to the pulpit with the consciousness of an extra-polished discourse awaiting that choice Oxford delivery which had so rare a chance of being appreciated, had not seen without a pang of vexation that the Bindon House pew was empty save for its usual occupant—Mrs. Marvel. Having promptly overcome his small weakness and proceeded with his sermon with all the eloquence he would have bestowed on the expected cultivated, or at least fashionable, audience, he was now all the more ready to banter his wife upon her distress.

“What is the matter, dear Sophia?”

“An ungrateful and reprobate generation! He that will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican!” cried Madam, suddenly rolling the surplice into a tight bundle and indignantly gesticulating with it.

“How now! has Joe Mossmason been snoring under your very nose, or has Barbara——”

“Tush, tush, Doctor! You know right well what I mean. Was not that empty pew a scandal and a disgrace? Bindon House full of guests and not one to come and bend the knee to their Lord!”

“And admire my rolling periods, is it not so, my faithful spouse?” quoth the parson good-naturedly.

“I took special care to remind them of the hour of service last night; not, indeed, that I ever expected anything of Maud; although she might well be thinking that in every cough she gives she can find the hand-writing on the wall. Amen, amen, I come like a thief in the night!”

The parson’s eyelids contracted slightly, but he made no reply. Seating himself in the wooden armchair, he began with some labour to encircle his unimpeachable legs with the light summer gaiters that their unprotected, silk-stocking state demanded for out-door walking.

“My dear Horatio, what are you doing? Allow me!” She was down on her knees in a second; and while, with her amazing activity of body, she wielded the button-hook, her tongue never ceased to wag under the stress of her equally amazing activity of mind.

“But that card-playing woman—that Jezebel—one would have thought she’d have had the decency to open a prayer-book on the day when the commandments of the Lord forbid her to shuffle a pack; she’s old enough to know better!”

“I’m not so sure,” said the reverend Horatio, complacently stretching out the other leg, “that she interprets the Sabbath ordinance in that spirit.”

“Horatio!” ejaculated the outraged churchwoman, “you do not mean to insinuate that such simony could take place within our diocese as card-playing on the Sunday?”

“I think, from what I have seen from the Honourable Mrs. Geary, that she is likely to show more interest in the card-tables than in the tables of Moses.”

He laughed gently.

“Talking of Moses,” cried Madam Tutterville, feverishly buttoning, “there’s that Mr. Villars—one would have thought he would come, if only to show himself a Christian.”

But she was careful, even in her righteous exasperation, not to nip her parson’s tender flesh.

“Thank you, Sophia!”

He rose and reached for his broad-brimmed hat; then suddenly perceiving from his wife’s empurpled cheek and trembling lip that the slight had gone deeper than he thought, he patted her on the shoulder and said in an altered manner:

“Come, come, Sophia, let us remember that fortunately we are not responsible for the shortcomings of Lady Lochore’s guests. Indeed, from what I saw last night, it is a matter of far deeper moment to consider the effect of their presence upon those two who are dear to us at Bindon.”

“You mean, Doctor?”

“I did not like David’s looks, my dear. I fear the strain and the disgust, and the effort to repress himself, are too much for him. And besides”—he paused a moment—“I don’t know that I altogether liked Ellinor’s looks either.”

“My dear Horatio! I thought I had never seen her so gay and so handsome.”

“Too gay, Sophia, and too handsome. So Mr. Herrick and Colonel Harcourt not to speak of that pitiable person, Mr. Villars, seem to find her. She appears to me to take their admiration with rather more ease than is perhaps altogether wise in a young woman in her position. I do not say,” he went on, bearing down the lady’s horrified exclamation—“I do not go so far as yourself in surmising that David had formed any serious attachment in that quarter; but then, you see, it might have ripened into one. There is no doubt there was a singular air of peace and happiness about Bindon before this most undesirable influx. But last night David’s eyes——” He broke off, readied for his cane and moved towards the porch.

“My dear sir,” panted Madam Tutterville after him, “you have plunged me in very deep anxiety! We seem indeed, as Paul says, to be going from Scyllis to Charybda! Pray proceed with your sentence—David’s eyes?”

But the parson had already repented.

“Nay, it is after all but a small matter. All I mean is that this noise, this wrangling, this frivolity, this trivial mirth, which is, after all, but the crackling of thorns, is peculiarly distasteful to such a man as David, and I was only sorry that your niece should seem to countenance it.”

“I will speak to her,” announced Madam Tutterville. “I will instantly seek her.”

“Nay,” said her lord, “my dear Sophia, here we have no right to interfere. Ellinor has sufficient experience of the world to be left to her own devices. I understand that Colonel Harcourt and Mr. Herrick are neither of them a mean _parti_, and, unless I am seriously mistaken, the younger man at least is genuinely enamoured. By what right can we permit our own secret wishes, our own rather wild match-making plans, to step in here?”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Sophia. “And we were so comfortable!”

The two stood arm-in-arm at the lych-gate and absently watched the last of their parishioners straggling homeward in groups through the avenue trees. Suddenly Madam Tutterville touched her husband’s arm and pointed with a dramatic gesture in the direction of the House.

Two tall slight figures were moving side by side across the sunlit green. Even as the rector looked a third, emerging from the shadows of the beeches, joined them with sweeping gestures of greeting.

“They have been, I declare, lying in wait for Ellinor ... and there she goes off between them, Sunday morning and all!”

Deeply shocked and annoyed was Madam Tutterville.

“I think,” said the parson, “that I will take an hour’s rest in the garden. I would, my dear Sophia, you had as soothing an acquaintance, on such an occasion as Ovid.”