The Making of a Prig. Evelyn Sharp

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СКАЧАТЬ young though, I should say—and a sallow face—"

      "How unhealthy it sounds; and I hate unhealthy people! I don't think I want to go now," said Katharine, in an altered tone.

      Nevertheless, when the unwilling pony was being urged again into the storm and the darkness, some one slipped through the little group in the porch, and sprang into the carriage beside the Rector. And the Rector, who was incapable of a decided action himself and never disputed one on the part of others, threw the rug over her knees, and they drove off together to the scene of the accident. It was a wild, black night; and the Rector shivered as he bent his head to the furious gusts of wind, and allowed the pony to struggle on feebly at its own pace. But Katharine sat upright with her head thrown back, and would have liked to laugh aloud as the wind caught her long loose hair and lashed it, wet with rain, across her face.

      The chalk pit was situated at the further end of the village; on a fine day, it might have been reached in a ten minutes' drive, but to-night it was nearly half an hour before the pony managed to bring its load to a standstill beside the group of men who had been waiting there since dusk. Katharine recognised all the village familiars who came forward at their approach—the doctor, who had tended her childish maladies; the schoolmaster, who had taught her to read; the churchwarden, who still loved to tell her stories that she had long ago learnt to know by heart. But she had no eyes for any of these to-night; she looked beyond them all, as she jumped lightly out of the carriage, at the man who lay on the ground with his eyes closed. A lantern hung from the branch above, and swung to and fro in the wind, casting intermittent gleams of light across his face.

      He opened his eyes wearily as the Rector came forward, and they rested at once upon Katharine, who stood bending over him with the rather heartless curiosity of a very young girl.

      "Kitty, move out of the way, my child," the Rector's voice was saying.

      "I don't think he looks unhealthy at all," said Katharine dreamily.

CHAPTER II

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      The sun rose, the following morning, on a scene of devastation. The storm of the previous night had come at the end of a month's hard frost, and everything was in a state of partial thaw. Glistening pools of water lay in the fields on the top of the still frozen ground, looking like patches of snow in the pale sunshine; and a curious phenomenon was discernible in the brooks and the ditches, where a layer of calm water covered the ice that still bound the flowing stream below. The only trace of last night's gale was a distant moaning in the tree-tops; while above was a deepening blueness of sky and a growing warmth in the sunshine. There was winter still on the ground, and the beginning of spring in the air.

      Two women had met under the beech-trees at the edge of the chalk pit. Early as it was they had already collected large bundles of sticks; for the beauty of the morning was nothing to them, and the storm, as far as they were concerned, merely meant the acquisition of firewood. They had matter for conversation enough, however; and it was this that was making them loiter so early in the morning near the scene of yesterday's accident.

      "Is it the poor thing what fell down yonder, you be a-talkin' of, Mrs. Jones? 'Cause I see Jim hisself this blessed morning, I did, and you can't tell me nothing I doan't know already, you can't, Mrs. Jones," said Widow Priest with fine scorn.

      There was a jealousy of long standing between the two neighbours. Mrs. Jones was the sturdy wife of the sexton, and her family was both large and increasing—a fact which she attributed entirely to Providence; though, when three of them succumbed to insufficient food and care, she put down their loss to the same convenient cause, and extracted as much consolation as she could out of three visits to the churchyard. Widow Priest, on the other hand, had buried no one in the little churchyard on the hill. For her husband had committed suicide, and they had laid him to an uneasy rest without the sedative of a religious ceremony; and his widow was thus robbed even of the triumph of alluding to his funeral. So her widowhood did not bring her its usual compensations; and she felt bitter towards the wife of the sexton, who had buried her three and kept five others, and would probably replace the lost ones in time.

      "I bain't so fond o' gossiping nor what you be, Widow Priest," returned Mrs. Jones in loud, hearty tones. "I got no time for talking wi' strangers here an' strangers there, wi' my man an' five little 'uns to do for. An' then there's always the three graves of a Saturday to tidy up, which you ain't got, poor thing; not but what I'm saying it be your fault, in course, Widow Priest."

      Widow Priest gave a contemptuous sniff as she sat down to tie up her fagots, and Mrs. Jones remained standing in front of her, with one arm thrown round her bundle of sticks, and the other placed akimbo, an effective picture of triumphant woman.

      "Touching the poor thing what broke his back yonder," she continued cheerfully: "I was putting the baby to bed at the time, I was, and I see the whole thing happen from my top window, I did. He jumped the fence, all careless like, jest as though he didn't know the pit were there for sure. An' straightway he tripped up, he did, an' down he went. God help him, I says! An' I puts the baby down, an' I says to our Liz, 'Here, my child,' I says, 'stand by your precious brother while I goes across to the pit,' I says. An' jest as I says that, up comes the Rector an' the doctor with him, driving friendly like together they was. So I says to our Liz, 'It's Providence,' I says, 'what sent they two blessed creatures here this day,' I says. An' I caught up my shawl, I did, an' went hollerin' after them. 'What is it, Mrs. Jones?' says the Rector, 'is it the baby again?'—'Baby?' I says, 'no, sir; not but what it racks me to hear that child cough, it do. There be a man yonder,' I says, 'jest broke his neck down agin the chalk pit.' Lord! it were a sight to see they two men turn that pony round! An' the rain were that bad, it give me lumbago all down my back, that did. Not but what I soon got back to baby again, poor little angel, with a cough that makes my heart ache, to hear it going jest like the others did afore they died. But ye didn't see him fall in, now; did ye, Widow Priest?"

      The widow shouldered her fagots grimly, and stalked off with dignity. When she reached the bend of the road, she turned round and shouted a parting word in a tone of unmitigated contempt.

      "It bain't his neck, nor his back, Mrs. Jones. It be both his legs, an' he be at the Rectory now, in the best bedroom, he be; an' there he'll likely stop a month or two, Jim says, he do. But Jim didn't give ye a call perhaps, Mrs. Jones?"

      "Bless ye, Widow Priest, I ain't told ye half what I know," cried Mrs. Jones. "You be a poor thing, you be, if ye can't stand to hear a body's tale; an' you that's so lonesome too, an' got no one to do for, like I have. Lord, what a hurry some folk do be in, for sure! Eh, but that be Miss Katharine yonder, blest if it ain't; an' Widow Priest be out o' sight, too! I reckon as Miss Katharine knows more nor Jim, an' I be going—"

      But a wail from the cottage opposite awakened the mother's sense of duty, and she hastened across the road and forgot all about the accident in an immediate necessity for castigation.

      Katharine came over the brow of the hill that sloped down towards the chalk pit, scaled the wooden fence at the bottom, and skirted the edge of the little chasm until she came to the line of beech-trees. Here she paused for a moment, pecked a hole in the soft ground with her heel, and peered thoughtfully down into the pit. Then she turned abruptly away again, and struck across the fields to the further side of the village, where she sped down a grassy lane that was for the most part under water, and stopped at last before a gap in the hedge that was hardly large enough to be noticeable. She squeezed adroitly through it, however, and came in view of an ugly modern house standing in a neglected looking garden, with an untidy farmyard and some stable buildings at the back. Here she was careful to keep a clump of box-trees between herself and СКАЧАТЬ