mrs. trimwell, brisk, black eyed, white-aproned, entered with a covered dish.
corin, deep in an armchair, was smoking a cigarette.
“i wonder,” said he meditative, between the inhalations of smoke, “what the old painter of the church down yonder thinks of our proceedings. it would be interesting to hear his own reflections on the subject. presumably he does reflect. if his spirit haunts the church, possibly some fine evening i shall see him. then i shall put a question or two.”
john merely laughed, and approached the table. mrs. trimwell, raising a dish-cover, disclosed two golden-brown soles, perfect samples of her culinary art.
“i have never,” continued corin, still reflective, “seen a spirit, but i firmly believe that one might be seen under favourable conditions.”
[pg 47]
“come and eat,” laughed john.
mrs. trimwell eyed corin for a moment in hesitating fashion. then she spoke with the air of one embarking on a weighty question, though addressing herself to john.
“there’s never no knowing, sir, what it mightn’t be given you nor any one to see. i seed an angel myself once.”
corin paused in the act of handing john a plate on which reposed one of the soles.
“an angel!” he ejaculated.
john took the plate.
“an angel!” he echoed dubious.
“i seed it,” reiterated mrs. trimwell, “as plain as i see you. i was doing my bit of ironing, the baby—that’s the youngest, sir—asleep in the cradle under the table, so as i could give the rocker a jog with my foot now and again, and the angel comed in.”
she paused, watching the effect of her words.
“but how?” queried john busy with the sole. “through the window, the ceiling, or the floor? angels, you know, are spirits, not corporeal weighty humans like ourselves. they’d never,” concluded john gravely, “make an ordinary, an expected entrance.”
[pg 48]
corin glanced at him sternly.
“i should have imagined you would have held the matter too sacred for joking about,” he remarked.
john smiled gently.
“this one,” said mrs. trimwell firmly, “came through the door. i heard the outer door click, and said i to myself, ‘that’s robert for sure.’ i thought he’d come home a bit earlier. then the kitchen door clicked. it opened just a little ways, and the beautifullest angel you ever seed comed in all floaty-like. i was that scared i dropped my iron—there’s the heat mark on the baby’s robe to this day—and i made a clean bolt for the back door. i never thought of the baby nor nothing. and as i bolted i squinnied over my shoulder, and i seed that angel by the table all white and shiny.”
again she stopped, and regarded john, who was eating steadily. to corin, who was all agog for a continuance of the story, she perversely paid no heed.
“but—” began john dubious.
“you may doubt me as much as you like, sir. i wasn’t going back to that kitchen without a neighbour. i told vicar myself, sir, and he didn’t [pg 49]believe me neither, though i’m a truthful woman. for as i says to my children: ‘you tell the truth at all costs. if you’re in a hole don’t tell a lie to try and get out of it. truth will always give you the surest hand up even though her clutch is a bit severe.’ i’d not deceive you, sir, and ’tis the truth i’ve spoken as i spoke it to vicar. i seed that angel.”
finality in her tone she stood there, slightly challenging, yet respectful withal.
“hmm!” mused john. “your integrity, mrs. trimwell, is, i am convinced, above suspicion. yet why, do you imagine, should the angel come? what, do you take it, was the motive for his visit?”
mrs. trimwell approached a step nearer. she lowered her voice to a confidential whisper.
“’twas that day to the minute, sir, as my uncle died.”
“ah!” john’s eyes, non-committal in expression, sought the window. corin cast a look of scorn at him; then turned, eager, to mrs. trimwell.
“did you tell the vicar that?” he demanded.
“i did, sir,” replied mrs. trimwell, including [pg 50]him for the first time within her range of vision. “but, lor’, where’s the use of telling things to he! he don’t understand no more than a bishop.”
“why a bishop?” thought john in parenthesis.
“when my tilda was down with pneumony,” pursued mrs. trimwell reminiscent, “and the doctor said there wasn’t no chance for her, ‘i’ll see about chances,’ says i. vicar, he talked about the will of the lord and submitting. ‘it’s not the minute to be talking about submitting yet,’ says i to him. ‘the lord may do the willing, and i’m not one to deny it, but ’tis we do the doing, and it kind of fits in. and if you think i’m going to leave off fighting for my tilda till the time comes as she’s ready to lay out, you’re much mistook.’ he was mistook, sir, for she’s in the kitchen now a-minding of the baby.” she ended on a note gloriously triumphant.
the triumph found quick response in john’s eyes. i fancy he saw here reflected the attitude of that old-time king, who strove in prayer for his child, till striving and prayer were no longer of avail.
“the fighting chance,” murmured corin, swallowing his last mouthful of sole.
[pg 51]
mrs. trimwell removed the plates and placed cold chicken and salad on the table.
“in a manner of speaking it was,” said she, eyeing him with approval. she moved towards the door, then turned.
“you will take coffee after lunch?” she asked.
john looked his assent, yet left it to corin, as in a manner host, to give verbal reply to the query.
“by all means,” replied corin. “i need,” he assured her, “every atom of support at your avail.”
mrs. trimwell looked at him commiseratingly.
“i’ll be bound it’s hard work down there,” said she sympathetically. “how do you find it, sir?”
“interesting,” returned corin, “distinctly interesting. i feel like an explorer of bygone centuries penetrating through modern hideousity, early victorian crudeness, puritan dreariness, and various other glooms, to the sweet, kindly simplicity, the grace, the freshness, the love of beauty, appertaining to the olden days. i am,” concluded corin, helping himself to salad, “crumbling to pieces that which has hidden beauty, and exposing beauty to the light of day. in other words, i’m scraping the plaster off the walls of the church, and enjoying myself.”
[pg 52]
mrs. trimwell nodded, frank approbation plainly visible on her face.
“and time it was scraped, too. a mucky looking place it was with them walls all stained and chipped and mildewed. not that it hurt me much, seeing as i never go inside it, except it’s for a christening or a burial.”
“oh!” remarked corin, and somewhat feebly, be it stated.
john cast a whimsical look in his direction.
“i don’t hold with church-going,” pursued mrs. trimwell calmly. “say your prayers at home if you want to say them, says i. and as for sermons,—if you’ve heard vicar talk out of the pulpit whether you will or no, you don’t run off smiling to hear him talk in it. leastways i don’t. there’s some as does, i know.”
“oh!” said corin again, and this time more feebly. (john, i fear me, was laughing inwardly.) to disagree with mrs. trimwell would, corin felt, be tantamount to calling her a black kettle, setting up himself the while as a shiny brass pot, to which title he knew he possessed no manner of right. yet to agree!—well, corin’s conscience, some hidden fragment of convention—call it what [pg 53]you will—felt a slight hint of repugnance at her sentiments.
there is your man, your male individual, all over. dogmatic religion—however vague the dogma—church-going is often outside his own category, yet for his women folk—any women folk—to speak against it holds for him a hint of distaste. it just serves to destroy that soft light of idealism with which he loves to surround women. every man has one woman, at least, in this idealistic shrine, or, if he has not, he is of all men most miserable. and here it is that your adherents to the old faith—the oldest faith in christendom—have a pull over your so-called enlightened individual. there is always one woman to whom those of that old faith can turn, one for whom no shrine is too fair, too lofty,—can be bedecked with no too costly wealth of love and homage. here, in this shrine, at her feet, may every idealistic thought of man towards woman be placed, preserved, and cherished.
corin, as already stated, said “oh!” an ejaculation at once feeble, utterly lacking in significance of any kind, a mere signal that his ears had received the speech.
[pg 54]
“miss rosamund don’t hold with my views,” went on mrs. trimwell, while john’s heart gave a sudden throb. “not that i pays over-much heed to her, being a papist what’s bound to go to church and obey their priests if they don’t want any little unpleasantness in the next world, which i takes it may be a considerable more unpleasantness than you nor i would suppose. still i will say she has a wonderful way of talking a thing clear, and if i didn’t know that popery was no better than a worshipping of graven images, i might go for to believe her.”
corin glanced anxiously in the direction of john,—john who was eating chicken with an expressionless face, though i’ll not vouch that his shoulders didn’t shake a little now and then.
“not that miss rosamund talks goody talk,” pursued mrs. trimwell, “which is a thing i never could abide in grown-up or child, and burnt them little tracty books they give my tilda up to sunday-school, setting of her off to talk texes to me and her father, which we didn’t smack her for though she deserved it. but there, she’d have been thinking she was an infant prodigal and a christian martyr if we had. no; i just said how if she [pg 55]was so fond of texes she could learn a few more instead of going along blackberrying with the other children, and i sets her down to get a chapter of the gospels by heart. we didn’t hear no more of texes after that, didn’t me and her father,” concluded mrs. trimwell dryly.
indubitably the corners of john’s mouth were twitching now. then mrs. trimwell’s eye caught his. laughter came, whole-heartedly to john, to mrs. trimwell first with a note of half apology, over which the entire humour of the reminiscence presently got the upper hand. corin joined in somewhat relieved. he had feared lest john’s feelings might be hurt.
“when i thinks of tilda setting there not knowing whether to sulk or pretend she liked it!” ejaculated mrs. trimwell after a moment. she wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes with her apron. “but there, it was coffee i was going after, and not memories of my tilda.”
mrs. trimwell vanished.
