‘Canon, what does this story mean which I meet wherever I go? I heard it at the St. Clairs’ yesterday, but took no notice, and to-day there’s poor Lady Thompson bursting and panting—what does it all mean?’
‘I should be better able to answer if you told me what it was.’
‘That is just like a man,’ cried Mrs. Jenkinson, ‘as if you did not know! When any gossip is going it always gets here first of all. I believe you have a telephone, or whatever you call them. Is there anything in it? What is the meaning of it? You have always had a fancy for the girl, more than I saw any reason for—but that’s your way.’
‘The girl,’ said the Canon. ‘I suppose you mean old Hayward’s girl. Well, and what do they say?’
‘I am very surprised that you should ask me; and now I feel sure there must be something in it,’ Mrs. Jenkinson cried.
‘That she was a schoolmistress, or something of that sort? I always suspected as much. The mother was a governess—and if Hayward left her, as he seems to have done, with poor relations—and what then, my dear?’ said the Canon briskly. ‘Eh? that doesn’t alter the fact that she’s a very nice girl.’
‘It alters the situation,’ said the Canon’s wife. ‘Miss Beachey is a very nice girl; but I should not ask her to meet the St. Clairs, for example, in my drawing-room.’
‘Empty-headed noodles,’ said the Canon. ‘Miss Beachey is worth the whole bundle of them; but I hope you don’t compare Miss Beachey with Joyce.’
‘If that were all!’ said the lady, shaking her head. ‘I hear now that’s not half. They say she’s nothing to the Haywards at all—only a girl that took their fancy, and that they took out of her natural position——’
‘I’ll swear she never took Mrs. Hayward’s fancy, Charlotte!
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’
‘Well, well. Mrs. Hayward is a woman of sense; she knows it is vain to go against a man when he has taken a notion in his head. The Colonel saw her, it appears, and thought her like his first wife. These romantic plans never succeed. It appears she was engaged to a man in her own class, and he has been here making a disturbance. I am very distressed for these poor people. Well? You know all about it, of course, a great deal better than I do.’
‘My dear, I think that notion of yours about a telephone is quite just. Of course I have heard it all—first, that she had been a schoolmarm, as these troublesome Americans say (we’ll all find ourselves speaking American one of these days), then a board schoolmistress, additional horror! Yesterday, however, nobody had any doubt she was old Hayward’s daughter. The other thing has come up to-day. I don’t believe a word of it, if that’s any satisfaction to you.’
‘It is very little satisfaction to me, Canon,’ said Mrs. Jenkinson, shaking her head, ‘for I know how you are swayed by your feelings. You like her, therefore nothing that tells against her can be true. But unfortunately I can’t give up my judgment in that way.’
‘What has your judgment got to do with it? That’s a big thing to be put in movement for such a small matter,’ said the Canon, pushing his chair from the table. The rotundity of the vast black-silk waistcoat burst forth from under that shadow with an imposing air. He crossed one leg over the other, filling half the vacant space with a neat foot in a black gaiter and well-brushed shoe.
‘I don’t call it a small matter. I am very surprised that you should think so. A Scotch country girl, with a pupil-teacher’s training, brought among us—presented to us all as a young lady!’
‘Well, wasn’t she a young lady? What fault have you to find with her? She puts me to my p’s and q’s, I can tell you, with what you call her pupil-teacher’s——’ The Canon changed his position impatiently, bringing his other foot into that elevated position. ‘It’s all a horrid nuisance!’ he cried. ‘I don’t know when I’ve been more vexed. Hayward’s an old fool—I always knew it. I wish they had never settled here.’
‘I knew you’d think so, Canon,’ Mrs. Jenkinson cried.
‘What was the good, if you knew I’d think so, of aggravating everything? I’ll tell you what it is,—it’s those pernicious people at St. Augustine’s. That woman must be in mischief. I told you so. She can’t keep out of it. And to fall foul of the
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 people who have been her best friends! But for that poor girl, whom she’s fixing her fangs in, neither old Sam nor I would have moved a step. I’ve a great mind to go and stop the building. It would serve them right.’
‘I don’t defend Dora Sitwell, Canon; but if there had been nothing wrong she could not have made a story. It is the people who shock all the instincts of society and break its rules—as the Haywards have done——’
‘Well, I said he was an old fool,’ said the Canon, getting up and marching about the room, which shook and creaked under him—the windows rattling, the boards bending. ‘I give him up to you—flay him alive, if you like—— Still, at the same time,’ he added, stopping in front of her, with his long coat swinging, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, ‘if a man should happen by any misfortune to find his own child in an inferior position—suppose she had been a housemaid instead of a board schoolmistress—should he have left her there? is that what you ladies think the right thing to do? Respect the delicate breeding of girls who have run about town for two or three seasons, and don’t bring the rustic Una here.’
‘The Una!’ said Mrs. Jenkinson. ‘Canon, when you are very excited, you always become extravagant. Una was a princess, not a schoolmistress. Oh yes, of course, it’s all one in a fairy tale; but a Una, with a lover who comes and makes a disturbance——! And besides, everybody says she’s not their daughter—only a country girl to whom they took a fancy.’
‘A strange fancy on the wife’s part!’
‘I do wish you would be reasonable. The wife, of course, saw the difficulties, poor woman! Very likely she disapproved of all that romantic nonsense, adopting a stranger—if it had been a child even! but a grown-up girl with a lover. It has not been for her happiness either, poor thing. To have been left in her own sphere, and married, as she would naturally have done, would have been far better. I am sorry for her, and I am sorry for Mrs. Hayward. As for him, it is all his fault, and I have no patience with him,’ cried Mrs. Jenkinson. ‘You are quite right, Canon; he is an old fool.’
‘Still, I don’t see, if he had been Solomon, how he was to have left the poor little girl behind him when he had once found her. Do you?’
‘Canon,’ said Mrs. Jenkinson, with a dignified look of reproach, ‘I allow that you may be a partisan; but don’t keep up that transparent fiction with me.
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’
The Canon said, ‘By!’ in an access of feeling, and with a fling which made the rectory ring. It is not permitted to a Churchman to swear: even By Jove! comes amiss with a clerical coat and gaiters; but the use of that innocent monosyllable can be forbidden to no one—the wealthy English language would fall to pieces without it. He said ‘By!’ making a fling round the room which caused every window in the old house to tremble, and then he came to a sudden stop in front of his wife, like a ship arrested in full sail. ‘Fiction!’ he said; ‘the girl’s the image of her mother. My brother Jim was in Hayward’s regiment. I remember the poor thing, and the marriage, and all about it. Hayward behaved like a fool in that business too—he’ll probably wreck his daughter’s happiness now,—but mind you, Charlotte, there’s no fiction about it. You can say I said so. I mean to say so myself till I make the welkin ring—whatever that may be,’ he added, with a short laugh.
‘Oh, you’ll make the welkin ring, I don’t doubt, anyhow: but, of course, that’s strong evidence, Canon—if you stick to it.’
‘I’ll stick to it,’ Dr. Jenkinson said. ‘Poor little girl! I knew she’d get into trouble; but, my dear, if I were you, I’d go forth to all the tea-parties and sweep these cobwebs away.’
‘My dear, if I were you, I’d do it myself,’ said the lady. ‘You had better go now, while you are so hot, to Lady St. Clair’s.’
The Canon flung himself down in his study chair, once more making the rectory ring. He said something about tabbies and old cats, which a clerical authority ought not to have said, and then he informed his wife that he was writing his sermon—the sermon which she knew he had to preach before a Diocesan Conference. ‘I felt very much in the vein before you came in. I must try to gather together my scattered ideas.’
‘You don’t seem to have made much progress,’ said Mrs. Jenkinson, looking severely at a blank sheet of paper on the writing-table. The Canon uttered a low chuckle of conscious guilt, and drew it towards him.
‘I’ll tell you what—I’ll give them a good rousing sermon on scandal and tea-parties.’
‘Oh, tea-parties! your clubs and things are worse than all the tea-parties in the world,’ said Mrs. Jenkinson, rising with dignity. The rectory was an old house, and very ready to creak and rattle; but scarcely a window moved in its frame, or a board vibrated under her movements. The Canon’s lightest gesture, when he threw himself back in his chair, or pulled it forward in the heat of composition, made every timber thrill.
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Mrs. Jenkinson took her way with dainty steps along the road, where there were puddles, for it had been raining, to Lady St. Clair’s. Now that the days were closing in, and winter approaching, the season of tea-parties had set in. The gardens were all bare and desolate, not so much as a belated red geranium left in the be............