Then the conversation turned to matters ecclesiastical, also, as between the two old gentlemen, reminiscent. They had been schoolfellows in their boyhood, but the clean-shaven, clear-cut face of Monsignor Culham, and the white hair, worn rather long, gave him a much older look than the other; yet there was hardly a year"s difference between them. Both had in common the same tall, straight figure, together with the same kindly geniality of expression.
"I think I shall invite myself this time next year, Grantley," said the prelate. "It is really a privilege to take part in such a solemnity as we held yesterday. It makes one antic.i.p.ate time--very much time, I fear--when such is more the rule throughout the country than an isolated and, of course, doubly valued privilege."
"My dear old friend, I hope you will. Only you must pardon my reminding you that it is for no want of asking on my part that ages have elapsed since you were here. And they have."
"Well, it certainly wasn"t yesterday, and I concede being in the wrong,"
rejoined Monsignor Culham. "But I have been in more than one cathedral church where the solemnities were nothing like so carefully and accurately performed. It was a rare pleasure to take part in these."
"Here, Wagram, get up and return thanks," laughed Haldane. "If it weren"t breakfast-time one would have said that Monsignor was proposing your health."
"The lion"s share of the kudos is due to Father Gayle," said Wagram.
"He and I between us managed to knock together a fairly decent choir for a country place, which includes Haldane, a host in himself, and, incidentally, Yvonne. The rest is easy."
""Incidentally Yvonne!"" repeated that young person with mock resentment.
"I don"t know about easy," declared Monsignor Culham. "The fact remains you had got together an outside crowd who weren"t accustomed to singing with each other--over and above your own people."
"Yes; but we sent word to the convent asking them to practise their children in what we were going to sing--and to practise them out of doors, too. For the rest of those who helped us we trusted to their intuitive gumption."
"Ah, that"s a good plan," said the prelate; "there"s too little care given to that sort of thing. Singers on such an occasion are left to sort themselves. Result: discord--hitches innumerable."
"I know," said Haldane. "I was on the sanctuary once in a strange church. They were going to have the _Te Deum_ solemnly sung for an occasion. I asked for a book with the square notation score. They had no such thing in their possession, and the consequence was everyone was dividing up the syllables at his own sweet will. It was neither harmonious nor jubilant."
"I should think not," a.s.sented Wagram emphatically. "Now, there is hardly an outdoor function I have been present at which hasn"t represented to my mind everything that outdoor singing ought not to be.
Unaccompanied singing is too apt to sound thin, and if backed up with bra.s.s instruments it sounds thinner still. So we dispense with them here, and our oft-repeated and especially final injunction to all hands is: "Sing up!""
"Well, it certainly was effective with your singers, Wagram," p.r.o.nounced Monsignor Culham, "and I shall cite it as an instance whenever opportunity offers."
"That"s good, Monsignor," returned Wagram. "We want all round to make everything as solemn and dignified and attractive as possible, as far as our opportunities here allow, especially to those outside; and we have reason to know that good results have followed."
"In conversions?"
"Yes. We throw open the grounds to all comers on these occasions, and in the result some who come merely to see a picturesque pageant are impressed, and--inquire further."
"I wonder what proportion of the said "all comers" confine their sense of the picturesque to the tables in the marquee," remarked Haldane, who was of a cynical bent.
"Well, you know the old saying, Haldane--that one of the ways to reach a man"s soul is through his stomach," laughed the Squire. "Anything in that paper, by the way?"
"N-no," answered Haldane, who had been skimming the local morning paper, while keeping one ear open for the general conversation. "Wait, though--yes, this is rather interesting--if only that it reminds me of a bad quarter of an hour once owing to a similar cause. Listen to this: "The R.M.S. _Rhodesian_, which arrived at Southampton yesterday evening, reports pa.s.sing a derelict in lat.i.tude 10 degrees 5 minutes north, longitude 16 degrees 36 minutes West. The hull was a dull rusty red, and apparently of about 900 or 1000 tons burthen. The vessel was partly submerged, the forecastle and p.o.o.p being above water. About eight feet of iron foremast was standing, and rather more of mizzen-mast, with some rigging trailing from it. No name was visible, and the hulk, which had apparently been a long time in the water, was lying dangerously in the track of steamers to and from the Cape." I should think so indeed,"
continued Haldane with some warmth. "It was just such a derelict that sc.r.a.ped past us one black night when I was coming home in the _Manchurian_ on that very line. It was about midnight, and everybody had turned in, but the skipper and I were having a parting yarn on the hurricane deck. We were so close to the thing that the flare of our lights showed it up barely ten yards from us; then it was gone. I asked the skipper what would have happened if we"d hit it straight and square, and he said he was no good at conundrums, but would almost rather have run full speed on against the face of a cliff."
"I suppose there was great excitement in the morning?" said the Squire.
"Not any; for the simple reason that n.o.body knew anything about it. The occurrence was logged, of course, but the skipper asked me not to blab, and I didn"t. Most of the pa.s.sengers were scary enough over the risks they knew about, he said, and if you told them a lot more that they didn"t many of them would die."
"They oughtn"t to leave a thing like that," said Wagram. "Why didn"t your captain stop and blow it up, Haldane?"
"I asked him, and he said his company didn"t contract for hulk-hunting on dark nights; it contracted to carry Her Majesty"s mails. Probably the skipper of the _Rhodesian_ reasoned in exactly the same way about this one."
"It"s as bad as an infernal machine."
"It _is_ an infernal machine," said Haldane.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
RETRIBUTION--SHARP AND SORE.
"Now I"ll race you, Mr Wagram."
"You"ll do nothing of the sort. When I consented to take charge of you--a weighty responsibility in itself--I did so on condition that it was at your own risk. In short, the average railway company couldn"t have contracted itself out of its liabilities more completely."
They were skimming along at the rate of about ten miles an hour, and that on an ideal road, smooth, dustless, and shaded by overhanging woods. Yvonne was trying how far she could ride with both hands off the handlebars, and performing various reckless feats, to the no small anxiety of her escort.
"Slow down here," said the latter. "This pace isn"t safe; too many rabbits."
"Too many rabbits?" echoed the girl. Then she gave forth a peal of laughter.
"Yes; it"s a screaming joke, isn"t it? But it may surprise you to hear that I"ve known of more than one bad spill caused by a fool of a rabbit dodging under the wheel, especially at night."
"Really? You"re not stuffing me?"
"Well, can"t you see for yourself how easily the thing might happen?
They"re crossing the road in gangs in both directions, and a rabbit is sometimes as great a fool as a human being in crossing a road, in that it is liable to change its mind and run back again. Result in either case, a bad spill for the bicyclist. You needn"t go far for an instance. Saunders, the chemist"s a.s.sistant in Ba.s.singham, was nearly killed that way. He was coasting down Swanton Hill in the moonlight, and a rabbit ran under his wheel. He was chucked off, and got concussion of the brain."
"Fancy being killed by a rabbit!"
"Yes. Sounds funny, doesn"t it? Here"s Pritchett"s."
They had emerged from the woods into an open road, beside which stood a large farmhouse. The farmer was somewhere about the place; he couldn"t be very far off, they were informed. His wife was away, but might be back any minute. Should Mr Pritchett be sent for?
"No, no," said Wagram; "just find a boy to show me where he is. I"ll go to him. Yvonne, you"d better wait here for me; a rest will do you no harm."
"All safe. Don"t be longer than you can help."
But Yvonne could not sit still for long, being of a restless temperament. She was soon outside again, and, promptly tiring of the ducks and fowls, she wandered down the shady road they had just come along.
Not far along this she came to a five-barred gate, opening into a broad green lane with high hedges, leading into the wood at right angles to the main road. In these hedges several whitish objects caught her glance.
"Honeysuckles," she said to herself. "Beauties, too, if only I can reach them."
In a moment she had opened the gate and was in the lane. But the coveted blossoms grew high, badly needing the aid of a hooked stick.
She looked around for something approximating to one and found it. Then followed a good deal of scrambling, and at last, hot and flushed and a little scratched, Yvonne made her way back to the gate, trying to reduce into portable size and shape the redundant stems of the fragrant creeper. Being thus intent she did not look up until she had reached the gate, and then with a slight start, for she discovered that she was no longer alone.
Standing on the other side of the gate, but facing her, with both elbows lounged over the top bar, was a pasty-faced, loosely-hung youth, clad in a bicycle suit of cheap build and loud design. This precious product nodded to her with a familiar grin but made no attempt to move.
"Will you make way for me, please? I wish to pa.s.s," she said crisply.