The English Novels Part B: The Mammon of Righteousness & Two Feet From Heaven by Percival Christopher Wren

Author:Percival Christopher Wren [Wren, Percival Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riner Publishing Company
Published: 2020-03-19T05:00:00+00:00

What was one to make of a thing like that?

Nothing—for as I have said—Neystoke was a splendid chap; a scholar and a gentleman; a model Vicar, and a powerful influence for good.

Very funny though—and I wondered what Bennett would say about it when next we met. Bennett said exactly nothing about it, which was precisely what I expected him to say.

Perhaps he hadn’t noticed anything?

Very unlikely, for Bennett is wonderfully clever at noticing, as any good doctor must be, of course. Anyway, we never referred to the incident, but though we said nothing, we thought the more. I certainly did, my very great interest in Richard Neystoke became yet greater, and I cultivated our friendship carefully. I saw a great deal of him—and of Jacintha—and we spent many afternoons in each other’s gardens and dined together frequently.

Jacintha is the perfect hostess and Richard tried hard to be the perfect host. He only failed through his curious and incurable attacks of absent-mindedness, and his habit of creeping quietly out of the room every few minutes. Before his guests had been there long, he would fall into a reverie—a sort of brown study—and forget them completely. His mind and thoughts would be obviously elsewhere; he would look as though sunk in grief, sorrow and regret; his face would wear its drawn, anxious and worried expression; and in his eyes I would see the look that I knew to be one of fear and apprehension, the look that I had so plainly and unmistakably seen on the night that the police had interrupted our dinner. Then he would go away for a while, even if we were at table.

And always when I alone, or I and other guests, were present, Jacintha, bravely and admirably playing her part as hostess, watched him anxiously, watched and waited for this failure of attention; this abandoning of his guests; this lapse, and sinking into forgetfulness of the present; and would do her best to recall and rally him, rouse him, and take him out of himself, as they say.

It must not be supposed that there was anything of boredom in this distrait condition, anything of weariness in well-doing on the social plane; for Richard Neystoke was the soul of hospitality, loved entertaining, and was at once too fine a spirit for boredom and too genuine a gentleman willingly to fail in the nicest courtesy and consideration to his guest or to his host.

But there it was—the memory, fear, remorse, or some other painful pre-occupation that haunted his mind, shadowed his life, and increasingly affected his health and happiness.

Worse still, from my point of view, it affected Jacintha’s peace and happiness of mind.

Then came the dramatic day when it was made patent even to the bluntest and dullest clod in his congregation that there was something radically wrong with the Vicar; and to Jacintha, to Bennett, and to me, that the time had come for something to be done about it, something really definite.

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