He was not belligerent, but he sounded dangerous. However, two youths and an older man were at the vestry door when we were ready to go back to the vicarage for lunch. The older chap, a respectable bloke, but an atheist and a postman, was the spokesman. He took off his cap when old Coutts invited him into the vestry, and spoke quite respectfully, but there was no mincing of words. He said bluntly:
“I wasn’t at your house throwing they stones. I don’t hold with misdirected violence nor ’timidation. But us wants to know what you and your good lady done with that poor girl’s babby, Mr. Coutts. Us knows you be the father, but where be little un?”
Old Coutts went most frightfully red.
“My good man,” he said, in a kind of choking gargle, “you are being profoundly, utterly and ludicrously slanderous. Your remarks are actionable. Be careful what you say.”
He paused and scowled at the postman fiercely, snorting somewhat.
The man stuck to his point.
“Beg pardon, Mr. Coutts,” he said, “but that poor girl was living under your roof when it happened, wasn’t she?”
“She was,” said the vicar, grimly.
“Unless it were Mr. Wells,” said the frightful fellow, suddenly turning on me.
“I deny it,” I said feebly.
“I’ll let the lads know, then,” said the postman, “but I doubt whether they’ll be satisfied with plain denials. It’s facts we’re after, Mr. Coutts.”
“Then you can go to hell to get them,” said old Coutts, irascibly, forgetting, of course, where we were.
So the bird slouched off, taking the two youths with him.
“I’m going to get Burt and his negro and Sir William to put out anybody who causes a disturbance at Evensong,” said the old boy, grimly. He’d been a missionary at some period in a probably purple past, and seemed well on to the psychology of the thing, for a disturbance at Evensong there certainly was. In fact, a bally riot would perhaps convey a more correct and enlightening impression.
Whether the second lesson was an unfortunate choice, or whether the time for the hurling of the first hymnbook had been pre-arranged, we shall never know;—any more, I suppose, than we shall know the same thing about the stool chucked by the old Scotswoman at Archbishop Laud’s backer in the year sixteen-thirty or forty something. Anyway, it came whizzing along, and only just missed me. I was reading the lesson, of course. I didn’t know what to do, but the vicar’s voice behind me said:
“Carry on, Wells,” and I was aware that he was standing beside me at the lectern. Suddenly the air was full of hymnbooks, and amid the frightful din—I stopped reading, of course—I had to—I could hear Mrs. Gatty’s voice declaiming:
“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”
Most inapposite, of course.
CHAPTER X
sundry alibis, and a regular facer
« ^ »
By the time I had struggled out of my surplice and coat, the riot was nearly over. The last stalwarts among the attacking party were being thrown out among the tombstones by Burt (who seemed to be enjoying himself), the vicar (who was trying not to seem to be enjoying himself), and Foster Washington Yorke, who, to the strains of “I got wings” was doing his bit with zealous fervour and Christian impartiality. Coming in at the death, so to speak, I put my boot behind a youth named Scoggin, whom I had been longing to kick for nearly eighteen months, and we barred the church door and continued the service. The vicar cut the sermon down to thirteen minutes by my watch, and, at the conclusion of the service, instead of going out into the vestry, he marched straight down the aisle to the West door, and, unbarring it, strode into the porch. I followed him, of course. There were the attackers lining the path, waiting for us. Our appearance immediately at the conclusion of the service was unlooked for, however, and it was obvious that we had taken them by surprise. The vicar gave them no time to recover, but, raising his arm and pointing first at those on the right and then at those on the left, he said:
“You have committed sacrilege. You have also disturbed the peace. I shall lay an information with the constable, and you will be called upon very shortly to give an account of yourselves. You may go.”
Of course, I don’t like old Coutts, but one can’t help admiring him. The lads looked at each other and licked their lips. Then they began to shamble off. There were fifteen of them. Some were not from our parish, but from the neighbouring village of Stadhemington.
“Interesting, of course,” said Mrs. Bradley, when she heard about it.
“Well, it shows what the villagers think,” I said.
“Yes,” said the little old woman. She grinned.
“And why do they think it?” she asked.
I shook my head and murmured something about smoke and fire, also about throwing mud and it sticking. Mrs. Bradley pursed her little beak and shook her head.
“Mrs. Coutts,” she said. “The camel bites and squeals. Anonymously, dear child.”
“You mean the Gatty visiting cards?” I said.
“Certainly,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Those cards came
