“What be they going on about?” Gaffer demanded crossly.
The offer was explained to him, and also that in accepting it Hiram had addressed Mr. Ames by his Christian name.
Gaffer beamed.
“Tes like I always say,” he declared. “Do right by ’er and she’ll do right by us. Bain’t it already begun?”
On returning to the Hall Tinkler insisted that his master eat something, and brought him cold meat, bread and pickles in the summerhouse. Lady Peake was taking her customary afternoon nap, so they were spared recriminations about her nephew’s absence from the lunch-table.
Talking feverishly with his mouth full, Ernest at first exclaimed over and over about the excitement of finding a pre-Christian ceremony in a modern English village, and gave Tinkler positive orders to call at the vicarage and tell Miss Pollock he proposed to take up her invitation this very afternoon. Little by little the food and cider combined to make him drowsy, and in the end he muttered something about taking forty winks. Satisfied he was indeed asleep, Tinkler returned the tray to the kitchen and undertook his errand.
When he came back less than half an hour later, however, he found his master awake again and plagued by his old uncertainties. On being told that he was engaged for tea at four o’clock, he lapsed into his usual despondency.
“It’s no use, Tinkler,” he muttered. “I’m not up to it. You’ll have to go back and apologise. How can I face the vicar? I don’t believe in his religion! I’m likely to insult him in an unguarded moment, aren’t I?”
“No, sir.”
“What?” Ernest glanced up, blinking. “But you know damn’ well I don’t give a farthing for his mumbo-jumbo!”
“Yes, sir. But as a result of what has transpired today I am also aware that you take great interest in the survival of old customs. So does Mr. Pollock.”
“But Mr. Stoddard said—”
“He seems to be mistaken. While I was at the vicarage I took the liberty of mentioning the subject to Mrs. Kail the housekeeper. She’s local. And a very affable person, I may say. It is her opinion that were it up entirely to the vicar there would be no objection to resuming the ceremony.”
Slowly—sluggishly—Ernest worked it out. He said at last, “You mean my aunt is once again the fly in the ointment?”
“It would appear so, sir.”
“Hmm …” He glanced towards the house, towards the drawn curtains of his aunt’s room. “In that case … All right, Tinkler. I’ll put a bold face on it. But you come too. Go and pump Mrs.—did you say Kail? Yes?—and if I make a mess of it maybe you can think of a better approach next time.”
He turned his gaze in the direction of the few cottages visible from here.
“They seem like decent people,” he muttered, half inaudibly. “I don’t want to let them down …”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Peake,” said the vicar. His bespectacled face was deeply lined and his movements were stiff from arthritis, but his voice remained firm and resonant. “So glad you could join us. Do sit down.”
Awkwardly, Ernest took his place at the table that had been set out in a shady arbor. Miss Pollock smiled at him and inquired whether he preferred Indian or China tea, then proffered plates of cakes and dainty fish-paste sandwiches.
But her smile struck Ernest as forced, and once again he wondered whether he was doing the right thing. His nerve had almost failed him again at the last moment, and he had been half minded to turn back, but Tinkler had kept on going and at last he had stumbled to catch up.
“I’m especially pleased you’ve come,” the vicar continued, wiping a trace of tea from his upper lip with a wide white napkin. “I—ah—I have been hoping for a little chat with you.”
About what? Instantly Ernest was on edge. Was there, after all, to be an argument about his non-attendance at church? In that case, the best form of defence was certainly attack. He countered, “As a matter of fact, padre”—the colloquial military term for a chaplain sprang automatically to his lips—“there’s something I’d like to discuss with you as well. Apparently the people in the village …”
But the words trailed away. Miss Pollock had leaned forward, her expression troubled.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Peake, Grandfather did broach his subject first. And it concerns your aunt.”
“It would,” Ernest muttered.
“Excuse me?” the vicar said, cupping a hand to his ear. “I’m becoming a little hard of hearing, I’m afraid.”
Disregarding him, his granddaughter said fiercely, “Have you heard what she’s decided to do now?”
This sounded alarming. Ernest shook his head. “I’m afraid not. To be candid, I’m rather avoiding her at the moment.”
“It’s a scandal and a shame!” Under the table she stamped her small foot on the grass. Her grandfather laid a restraining touch on her arm, but she shook it off.
“I’m sorry, Grandfather, but I will not be silenced! What she intends to do is—is downright un-Christian!”
The old man sighed.
“Uncharitable at least, I must concede … But Mr. Peake doesn’t yet know what we are talking about, does he?”
The girl swung to face the visitor.
“You heard about poor George Gibson’s death?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You know he was a labourer on your aunt’s estate—not that he could do much work after being gassed?”
This time, a nod.
“And that he left a wife and three children?”
Another nod.
“Well, Sir Roderick said in his will he could stay in his cottage for life because he’d been wounded in the War. Now he’s gone, your aunt intends to throw the family out. She told Mrs. Gibson today. They have one week.”
“But that’s disgraceful!” Ernest exclaimed. “Why?”
The vicar gave a gentle cough. She ignored it.
“Mrs. Gibson’s youngest was born in March 1919.”
For a moment Ernest failed to make the connection. Then he realised what the date implied. Slowly he said, “I take it you mean the youngest child is not her husband’s?”
“How could it be? He’d been a prisoner of war since ‘17!” She leaned forward, her eyes beseeching. “But he’d forgiven her! He treated the child as he did his own—I saw. Why can’t your aunt do the same? What gives her the right to pass this kind of ‘moral’ judgment? One week for the poor wretch to find a new home, or else it’ll be the bailiffs and eviction!”
She was almost panting with the force of her tirade. In passing Ernest marvelled at how lovely it made her look. Previously he had thought of her as a rather pallid girl, meekly content to exist in her grandfather’s shadow, but now there was colour flaming in her cheeks and righteous anger in her voice.
At length he said, “Whoso shall offend one of these little ones …”
In a tone of unexpected cordiality the vicar said, “I gather from Alice that you are one of the unfortunates who lost his faith owing to the War, but I must say that is precisely the text that has been running through my own mind. An attitude such as your aunt’s belongs to the old covenant which Our Lord came to replace with the gospel of love. We no longer think it proper that the sins of the ancestors should be visited on the children, and it is they who will suffer the worst.”
Wasn’t the War the visiting of our forebears’ sins upon us, the young cannon-fodder?
But Ernest bit back the bitter comment. He said after a pause, “I have scant influence with my aunt, I’m afraid. What I can do, though, I certainly will.”
“Thank you,” Alice said, leaning forward and laying her slim hand on his. “Thank you very much. More tea? And now: what was it that you wanted to discuss with us?”