Notwithstanding Part 20

Miss Black was not eluded by such bagatelles as trains and omnibuses, but by things of greater importance, by new-laid eggs, and fresh b.u.t.ter, and cottage loaves. No egg until it was of advanced middle age would come within a mile of Miss Black. The whole village was aware that old Purvis sold her "potted eggs" at "new-laid" prices, and that she never detected the lime on them. Scones and tea-cakes and loaves with "kissing crust" remained obdurately huddled in the baker's cart at the Vicarage back door. All that ever found their way into the house were those unappropriated blessings, those emotionless rectangular travesties of bread called "tin loaves."

Coffee and Miss Black were not on speaking terms. After years of deadly enmity she had relinquished the fruitless struggle, and gave her brother coffee essence instead for breakfast--two spoonfuls to a cup of tepid milk.

Fire and water would not serve Miss Black. The bath water was always cold at the Vicarage, and the drinking water was invariably warm.

b.u.t.ter, that sensitive ally of the housekeeper, bore her a grudge. Miss Black said all the Riff b.u.t.ter was bad. In London she had said the same.

Biscuits became demoralized directly they set tin in the house. The first that emerged from the box were crisp, delicious, but in a day or two they were all weary, tough, and tasteless. They were kept on plates on sideboards in the sun, or thrust into mousy cupboards. She left off ordering gingerbread nuts at last, which her brother liked, because they all stuck together like putty. She attributed this peculiarity to the proximity of the Rieben.

Miss Black was no more perturbed by the ostracism in which she lived as regards the vegetable and mineral kingdom than Napoleon was by the alliance of Europe against him. She combined a high opinion of herself with a rooted conviction that everything vexatious or disagreeable was inherent in the nature of things--a sort of original sin. It was in the fallen nature of b.u.t.ter to be rancid, and eggs to be laid stale, and milk to be sour, and villagers to cheat, and old people to be fretful, and pretty women (like Annette) to be vain and unscrupulous, and men (like her brother) to care inordinately about food and to be enslaved by external attractions. She expected these things, and many more, as she stumped through life, and she was not disappointed.

"I think you are wrong, Walter," she said, masticating a plasmon biscuit, "in making Miss Georges take that bit in the anthem as a solo.

I went to see Mrs. c.o.c.ks this afternoon, and we got talking of the choir, and I am sure she did not like it."

"I cannot steer my course entirely by Mrs. c.o.c.ks."

"Of course not. But she told me that in Mr. Jones's time----"

"I am rather tired of hearing of Mr. Jones and his times."

"In his time all the trebles took the solo together, to prevent any jealousy or ill-feeling."

"I can't prevent jealousy of Miss Georges," said Mr. Black, looking coldly at his sister, and then still more coldly at the cup of tea she handed him, made quarter of an hour before by the young servant who, as the Miss Blinketts who had trained her had faithfully warned Miss Black, "mistook bubbling for boiling."

The tea was the consistency of treacle, and the cream his sister poured into it instantly took the contorted worm-like shapes which sour cream does take. Miss Black drank hers slowly, not finding it good, but thinking it was like all other tea.

"You won't make the jealousy less by putting her forward in everything."

"It irritates me to hear Miss Georges' voice m.u.f.fled up with Mrs. c.o.c.ks and Jane Smith. I don't suppose Riff Church has ever had such a voice in it since it was built."

"I'm sure I can't tell about that. But Miss Georges has been partly trained for a public singer."

"Has she? I did not know that."

"The truth is we know very little about her. I am not sure we ought not to have made more inquiries before we admitted her to the choir and the Sunday school."

"My dear, pure good-nature on her part is responsible for her being in either. And could anything be more ultra respectable than her aunts?"

"We don't know who her father was. I should not wonder if he were an actor, her manner of singing is so theatrical. Not quite a good example for the other trebles. She draws attention to herself."

"She can't help that, Angela. That is partly due to her appearance, for which she is not responsible."

Mr. Black, patient and kindly by nature, showed to greater advantage with his sister than with Annette, because he never attempted to show Miss Black the sort of man he was. You could not be two minutes in her society without realizing that she saw no more difference between one person and another than she did between fresh eggs and stale. Men were men to her, as eggs were eggs. And that was all about it.

"She is responsible for a good deal of the attention she courts," said Miss Black scornfully, and with a modic.u.m of truth on her side. "She need not let her hair stand out over her ears, or make those two little curls in the nape of her neck. And did you notice her absurd hat?"

"I noticed nothing absurd about it."

"When every one is wearing trimmed hats she must needs make herself conspicuous in a perfectly plain straw with no tr.i.m.m.i.n.g at all, except that black ribbon tied under her chin. Everybody was staring at her last Sunday."

"That I can well believe."

"I asked her where she had got that nice garden hat."

"Is it possible? How angry you would have been if she had asked you where you got yours!"

Mr. Black glanced for the first time at a battered but elaborate arrangement sprinkled with cornflowers, sitting a little crooked, like a badly balanced plate, on the top of his sister's narrow head.

"She wasn't the least angry. There was nothing to be offended at. And she said her aunt in Paris sent it her, who was a milliner."

"How like her to say that--to volunteer it!" said Mr. Black, aware that his sister was watching how he took the news of Annette's connection with trade. "But we must be careful how we repeat it. In this amazing little world of Riff it might be against her to have a milliner for an aunt."

"I don't see that Riff is more amazing than other places," said Miss Black, who had already circulated the story of the dressmaking aunt with the same diligence which she showed in the distribution of the parish magazine. "I hope we can all be civil to Miss Georges, even if her aunt is a dressmaker, and her father lower still in the social scale. She has no _De_ before her name. And Georges is a very common surname."

"Indeed!"

"Perhaps you are thinking of asking her to change it," said his sister, whose temper was liable to boil up with all the suddenness of milk.

"I had not got so far as that," he said, rising. "You must remember, Angela, that you see a possible wife for me in every woman I exchange a word with. It is very flattering that you should think so many might be prevailed on to share my little Vicarage, but the Church only allows me one wife, and the selection I believe rests with me."

"I know that. It's so silly to talk as if I expected anything different."

"All I can say is that if I could delude myself into believing that Miss Georges put on that hat or any other hat with a view to attracting me, I should feel some alacrity in finis.h.i.+ng my Sunday sermon, which I must now do without any alacrity at all."

Miss Black swallowed the remains of her plasmon biscuit, and said in the voice of one accustomed to the last word--

"Miss Georges is very good-looking, of course. No one admires that sort of pale, clear complexion and calm manner more than I do. But you must remember that they are merely the result of a const.i.tution free from an excess of uric acid. Non-gouty subjects always look like that."

CHAPTER XXII

"Give me the sweet cup wrought of the earth from which I was born, and under which I shall lie dead."--ZONAS.

From the church tower, Reader, you can see beyond the mill and the long water meadows the little hamlet of Swale.

That old house in the midst, with its wonderful twisted chimneys and broken wall, was once the home of the extinct Welyshams of Swale. But the name of Welysham, embedded in the history of Lows.h.i.+re and still renowned in India, is forgotten in Riff. Their old house, fast falling into ruins, is now used as a farm, until Roger can get leave to restore it, or pull it down. The sky looks in at the upper rooms. No one dare go up the wide oak staircase, and Mrs. Nicholls' chickens roost on the carved bal.u.s.trade of the minstrels' gallery.

We will go there next.

Mrs. Nicholls, the devoted nurse of all the Manvers family and the princ.i.p.al treble in the choir, had married at a portly age the tenant-farmer at Swale, and Annette was having tea with her on this particular afternoon, and hearing a full description, which scorned all omissions, of the last illness of Mr. Nicholls, who had not been able "to take a bite in his head" of anything solid for many weeks before his death.

"And so, miss," said Mrs. Nicholls philosophically, "when he went I felt it was all for the best. It's a poor thing for a man to live by suction."

Annette agreed.

"Swale seems quite empty this afternoon," she said, possibly not unwilling to change the subject. "There is hardly a soul to be seen."

"I expect they've all gone to Sir Harry's 'lection tea," said Mrs.