CHAPTER IV

CRAILING RECTORY

The early morning mist still lingered in the valleys and clung about the river banks as the Reverend Alan Stair, returning from his matutinal dip in the sea, swung up the lane and pushed open the door giving access from it to the Rectory grounds. The little wooden door, painted green and overhung with ivy, was never bolted. In the primitive Devon village of Crailing such a precaution would have been deemed entirely superfluous; indeed, the locking of the door would probably have been regarded by the villagers as equivalent to a reflection on their honesty, and should the pa.s.sage of time ultimately bring to the ancient rectory a fresh parson, obsessed by conventional opinion concerning the uses of bolts and bars, it is probable that the inhabitants of Crailing will manifest their disapproval in the simple and direct fashion of the Devon rustic--by placidly boycotting the church of their fathers and betaking themselves to the chapel round the corner. The little green door, innocent of lock and key, stood as a symbol of the close ties that bound the rector and his flock together, and woe betide the iconoclast who should venture to tamper with it.

The Rectory itself was a picturesque old house with latticed windows and thatched roof; the climbing roses, which in summer clothed it in a garment of crimson and pink and white, now shrouded its walls with a network of brown stems and twigs tipped with emerald buds. Beneath the warmth of the morning sun the damp was steaming from the weather-stained thatch in a cloud of pearly mist, while the starlings, nesting under the overhanging eaves, broke into a harsh twittering of alarm at the sound of the Rectory footsteps.

Alan Stair was a big, loose-limbed son of Anak, with little of the conventional cleric in his appearance as he came striding across the dewy lawn, clad in a disreputable old suit of grey tweeds and with his bathing-towel slung around his shoulders. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, and since he had characteristically omitted to provide himself with a hat, his abundant brown hair was rumpled and tossed by the wind, giving him an absurdly boyish air.

Arrived at the flagged path which ran the whole length of the house he sent up a Jovian shout, loud enough to arouse the most confirmed of sluggards from his slumbers, and one of the upper lattice windows flew open in response.

"That you, Dad?" called a fresh young voice.

"Sounds like it, doesn't it?" he laughed back. "Come down and give me my breakfast. There's a beautifully a.s.sorted smell of coffee and fried bacon wafting out from the dining room, and I can't bear it any longer."

An unfeeling giggle from above was the only answer, and the Reverend Alan made his way into the house, pausing to sling his bath-towel picturesquely over one of the pegs of the hat-stand as he pa.s.sed through the hall.

He was incurably disorderly, and only the strenuous efforts of his daughter Joan kept the habit within bounds. Since the death of her mother, nearly ten years ago, she had striven to fill her place and to be to this lovable, grown-up boy who was her father all that his adored young wife had been. And so far as material matters were concerned, she had succeeded. She it was who usually found the MS. of his sermon when, just as the bells were calling to service, he would come leaping up the stairs, three at a time, to inform her tragically that it was lost; she who saw to it that his meals were not forgotten in the exigencies of his parish work, and who supervised his outward man to the last detail--otherwise, in one of his frequent fits of absent-mindedness, he would have been quite capable of presenting himself at church in the identical grey tweeds he was now wearing.

Yet notwithstanding the irrepressible note of youth about him, which called forth a species of "mothering" from every woman of his acquaintance, Alan Stair was a man to whom people instinctively turned for counsel. A child in the material things of this world, he was a giant in spiritual development--broad-minded and tolerant, his religion spiced with a sense of humour and deepened by a sympathetic understanding of frail human nature. And it was to him that Ralph Quentin, when on his death-bed, had confided the care of his motherless little daughter, Diana, appointing him her sole guardian and trustee.

The two men had been friends from boyhood, and perhaps no one had better understood than Ralph, who had earlier suffered a similar loss, the terrible blank which the death of his wife had occasioned in Stair's life. The fellowship of suffering had drawn the two men together in a way that nothing else could have done, so that when Quentin made known his final wishes concerning his daughter, Alan Stair had gladly accepted the charge laid upon him, and Diana, then a child of ten, had made her permanent home at Crailing Rectory, speedily coming to look upon her guardian as a beloved elder brother, and upon his daughter, who was but two years her senior, as her greatest friend.

From the point of view of the Stairs themselves, the arrangement was not without its material advantages. Diana had inherited three hundred a year of her own, and the sum she contributed to "cover the cost of her upkeep," as she laughingly termed it when she was old enough to understand financial matters, was a very welcome addition to the slender resources provided by the value of the living.

But even had the circ.u.mstances been quite other than they were, so that the fulfilment of Ralph Quentin's last behest, instead of being an a.s.sistance to the household exchequer, had proved to be a drain upon it, Alan Stair would have acted in precisely the same way--for the simple reason that there was never any limit to his large conception of the meaning of the word friendship and of its liabilities.

Diana had speedily carved for herself a niche of her own in the Rectory household, so that when the exigencies of her musical training, as viewed through Carlo Baroni's eyes, had necessitated her departure from Crailing for a whole year, Stair and his daughter had felt her absence keenly, and they welcomed her back with open arms.

The account of the railway accident which had attended her homeward journey had filled them with anxiety lest she should suffer from the effects of shock, and they had insisted that she should breakfast in bed this first morning of her arrival, inclining to treat her rather as though she were a semi-invalid.

"Have you been to see Diana?" asked Stair anxiously, as his daughter joined him in the dining-room.

She shook her head.

"No need. Diana's been in to see me! There's no breakfast in bed about her; she'll be down directly. Even her arm doesn't pain her much."

Stair laughed.

"What a girl it is!" he exclaimed. "One would have expected her to feel a bit shaken up after her experience yesterday."

"I fancy something else must have happened beside the railway accident," observed Joan wisely. "Something interesting enough to have outweighed the shock of the smash-up. She's in quite absurdly good spirits for some unknown reason."

The Rector chuckled.

"Perhaps a gallant rescuer was added to the experience, eh?" he said.

"Perhaps so," replied his daughter, faintly smiling as she proceeded to pour out the coffee.

Jean Stair was a typical English country girl, strictly tailor-made in her appearance, with a predisposition towards stiff linen collars and neat ties. In figure she was slight almost to boyishness and she had no pretensions whatever to good looks, but there was nevertheless something frank and wholesome and sweet about her--something of the charm of a nice boy--that counterbalanced her undeniable plainness. As she had once told Diana: "I'm not beautiful, so I'm obliged to be good.

You're not compelled, by the same necessity, and I may yet see you sliding down the primrose path, whereas I shall inevitably end my days in the odour of sanct.i.ty--probably a parish worker to some celibate vicar!"

The Rector and Joan were half-way through their breakfast when a light step sounded in the hall outside, and a minute later the door flew open to admit Diana.

"Good morning, dear people," she exclaimed gaily. "Am I late? It looks like it from the devastated appearance of the bacon dish. Pobs, you've eaten all the breakfast!" And, she dropped, a light kiss on the top of the Rector's head. "Ugh! Your hair's all wet with sea-water.

Why don't you dry yourself when you take a bath, Pobs dear? I'll come with you to-morrow--not to dry you, I mean, but just to bathe."

Stair surveyed her with a twinkle as he retrieved her plate of kidneys and bacon from the hearth where it had been set down to keep hot.

"Diana, I regret to observe that your conversation lacks the flavour of respectability demanded by your present circ.u.mstances," he remarked.

"I fear you'll never be an ornament to any clerical household."

"No. _Pas mon metier_. Respectability isn't in the least a _sine qua non_ for a prima donna--far from it!"

Stair chuckled.

"To hear you talk, no one would imagine that in reality you were the most conventional of prudes," he flung at her.

"Oh, but I'm growing out of it," she returned hopefully. "Yesterday, for instance, I palled up with a perfectly strange young man. We conversed together as though we had known each other all our lives, shared the same table for dinner--"

"You didn't?" broke in Joan, a trifle shocked.

Diana nodded serenely.

"Indeed I did. And what was the reward of my misdeeds? Why, there he was at hand to save me when the smash came!"

"Who was he?" asked Joan curiously. "Any one from this part of the world?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," replied Diana. "I actually never inquired to whom I was indebted for my life and the various other trifles which he rescued for me from the wreck of our compartment. The only clue I have is the handkerchief he bound round my arm. It's very bluggy and it's marked M.E."

"M.E.," repeated the Rector. "Well, there must be plenty of M.E.'s in the world. Did he get out at Craiford?"

"He didn't," said Diana. "No; at present he is 'wropt in mist'ry,' but I feel sure we shall run up against each other again. I told him so."

"Did you, indeed?" Stair laughed. "And was he pleased at the prospect?"

"Well, frankly, Pobs, I can't say he seemed enraptured. On the contrary, he appeared to regard it in the light of a highly improbable and quite undesirable contingency."

"He must be lacking in appreciation," murmured Stair mockingly, pinching her cheek as he pa.s.sed her on his way to select a pipe from the array that adorned the chimney-piece.

"Are you going 'parishing' this morning?" inquired Diana, as she watched him fill and light his pipe.

"Yes, I promised to visit Susan Gurney--she's laid up with rheumatism, poor old soul."

"Then I'll drive you, shall I? I suppose you've still got Tommy and the ralli-cart?"

"Yes," replied Stair gravely. "Notwithstanding diminishing t.i.thes and increasing taxes, Tommy is still left to us. Apparently he thrives on a penurious diet, for he is fatter than ever."

Accordingly, half an hour later, the two set out behind the fat pony on a round of parochial visits. Underneath the seat of the trap reposed the numerous little packages of tea and tobacco with which the Rector, whose hand was always in his pocket, rarely omitted to season his visits to the sick among his parishioners.