CHAPTER I.

WILLOWTON IS IN TROUBLE

Willowton is a village of some seventeen thousand population, large enough for the inhabitants to talk of "going up the town" when they mean the broad main street which stands on a gentle slope leading from the railway station to the church. This street, which is paved at the sides with nice old-world, ankle-twisting cobbles, boasts of two drapers', a chemist's, a saddler's, grocer's, and bootmaker's shops. Away in the less aristocratic parts of the village are the butchers and bakers, and the miscellaneous stores so dear to the country housewives. About the middle of the town, in the very widest part, is the bridge, and close to the bridge itself is the Wild Swan public-house, or rather _hotel_, as it calls itself. The little stream that runs under the bridge comes along through miles of cool meadows, now golden with buttercups, for it is May. It comes through many gardens and orchards, now white with apple blossom; and when it leaves the bridge it burrows underground for some little distance, and reappears at the foot of the cottage gardens, to lose itself in pleasant meandering through more flowery meadows, till it passes out of the ken of Heigham folks, and out of our story's picture.

It was noon, and the sun was hot and the stream was low. There had been no rain for several weeks. The March winds had blown the seeds about; the wheat even drooped in the fields; April had refused her usual showers, and there was a dry, parched look everywhere while yet it was only May. Three men hung over the bridge, lazily resting their elbows on the parapet, and looking down into the water below at a large trout that was lying under a stone, waiting his opportunity to make his way further upstream to a deeper pool under the garden bank. Of these three "loafers," as the neighbours called them, one was a strong, well-built young man of one or two-and-twenty. His flushed face betrayed the fact that he had already visited the Wild Swan over the way; his great strong limbs were loosely knit; his big hands showed little signs of work; his lazy blue eyes looked as if they had never done anything more harmful or more useful than watch for trout.

His companions were of a different type. One was a discontented, surly-looking man of perhaps sixty years of age. He was reported to have been a great traveller. He certainly had been to America, to Australia, and to various ports in Europe, in his position as stoker on a merchant vessel; and he had seen a good deal of the seamy side of life, but not so much as he wished his listeners to believe, and was as bad a companion for a young fellow like George Lummis as could well be. The third man was a cripple. He came out daily on his crutches, and took up his position in the angle of the stone support, which stood out from the bridge a foot of so on to the road. He had a mild, weak face, in which a life's physical suffering was plainly to be read. He had never been of any use to anybody so far, and as far as his acquaintances knew, he had never had any desire to be so. The strongest feeling he possessed was an intense affection and admiration for the great, hulking, lazy six feet of humanity beside him.

The three men were in their own way discussing the general prosperity of the village, and abusing the district council, the parson, the doctor, the farmers, and, indeed, everybody who was at all better off or of more consequence than themselves. They were not speaking with any particular virulence, nor were they arguing their points with any warmth; they were only repeating a sort of formula they went through periodically whenever the occasion cropped up. They each knew exactly what the other would say. They had all three heard it so very many times before, and they had their answers all cut and dried, and ready for immediate use. The only variety was that sometimes they began with the parson and ended with the doctor, and sometimes they began with the doctor and ended with the parson. It was all chance, just whichever happened to go over the bridge first.

"There he goo!" they would ejaculate, often loud enough for the object of their remarks to hear, "a-drivin' in 'is carriage with a 'orse and liv'ry sarvent, all paid for out o' our club money, that's how that is. And what does he do for it, I should like yew jest te tell me?" etc., etc., etc., _ad lib_.

This, of course, if the passer-by happened to be the doctor; if, on the other hand, it was he vicar, it would be,---

"There goo th' parson, pore, hard-workin' chap! Two hundred and fifty pound a year for preachin' t' us of a Sunday--an' a lot o' good that dew us! I'd just like to have him aboard our ship for a fortnight. I'd teach him t' interfere, with his imperence."

It was the "traveller" who generally originated these remarks. The cripple always made a point of assenting; he wished to be agreeable, for the traveller was open-handed as well as long-tongued, and a quid of tobacco often found its way into the cripple's pocket after a prolonged debate, in which he took so prominent and important a part.

On these occasions George Lummis seldom did more than laugh a short laugh, when he thought it incumbent on him to do so, or even lift a faint protest when his sense of justice smote him (for he _had_ some sense of justice); and it was not so very many years ago that he was a schoolboy, and if he chose to exert his memory he could have told of many kindnesses he had received fro the late vicar and his family, and from that very doctor whom he allowed to be abused so roundly, who had pulled him through a bad attack of typhoid fever when he was a boy of sixteen. "And to very little purpose," the doctor would say to himself sometimes as he drove over the bridge and saw him loafing away the best years of his life with his good-for-nothing companions. "For his own sake I had almost better have let him die."

On this particular morning it was the vicar who passed first. He walked slowly and heavily, for he was carrying a weight. The perspiration stood in beads on his forehead, and his straw hat had got pushed back from his brow, so that the full blaze of the sun beat down on his forehead, from which the hair was beginning to recede--"slipping back" he would explain laughingly, "not falling off, forsooth!" His burden, which was in reality a big well-grown boy of fourteen, in the first stage of fever, was wrapped in a big, not overclean-looking blanket, and in his weakness he was unable to assist his bearer to carry him, and, indeed, with the best of intentions, was almost as dead a weight as if he had been in a faint.

As the vicar passed over the bridge he kept his eyes fixed straight in front of him. Neither by look nor by gesture did he ask the loungers there to help him, and no one offered to lend a hand. His strength, great as it was, was almost spent when he reached the hospital and gave over his patient to the doctor's charge, and he sat down with a sigh of relief on the wooden settle in the hall. It was cool and fresh in here, almost cold coming out of the dust and the sun. He wiped his brow with his handkerchief; the portress brought him a glass of water.

"Too hot yet, Mrs. Smith," he said. "I'll wait till I've cooled down; but I'm as thirsty as a fish!"

"And no wonder!" said the matron tartly, but not without a note of admiration in her tones; "I never heard such nonsense. Why couldn't the boy be brought in the ambulance like anybody else, I should like to know, without you having to carry him as if he was a baby! I haven't any patience with those Chapmans, that I haven't!"

"Well, nor have I--much," said the vicar reflectively. "That woman is the dirtiest of the whole row. It would be hard to beat her in the parish; but there is something about her--I don't know what it is. She never tells me lies or makes excuses; she never begs, and never complains of other people's good fortune, and is always good-tempered--bother her! She would be so much easier to influence if she had a spice of temper, wouldn't she--eh, Mrs. Smith?" with a twinkle in his big brown eyes; for Mrs. Smith had the defects of her qualities, and possessed the hasty temper that goes so often with a warm heart. "But I must be off. Let Tommy know that I'll call in and see him some time in the afternoon, and hope I shall find him in clover. No, I won't wait for the doctor; I know pretty well what he'll say. I'll be off," and the vicar tossed off his glass of water, put on his hat, this time well tilted over his eyes, and strode down the hill for the second time that morning.

His return road lay through the buttercup meadows and over the stream by a little foot-bridge into the village. He passed a long row of well-to-do, prosperous-looking cottages, with bright little gardens in front of them, and the running stream behind them. At the gate of one of these a young girl was standing shading her eyes from the sun. She made a pretty picture in her big shady hat and print blouse, short skirt, blue linen apron, her sleeves rolled up, showing a pair of nice plump arms; for Milly was washing to-day, and was not ashamed to be seen at it.

She had a paper in her hand, and was watching for the vicar. Overhead the lilacs and laburnums were fading in the drought, and the few flowers that had come to maturity were dying off before their time. So intent was the vicar on his own thoughts that he was striding past without seeing her.

"A letter, sir!" she cried out, holding it out to him over the palings.

"Oh!" Mr. Rutland took it and broke the seal.

It was a summons to attend a committee meeting of the sanitary board, now sitting at the Union--an informal meeting hastily convened owing to the pressing state of affairs, and to the somewhat unexpected reappearance of the sanitary inspector.

"Where's your grandfather?" he asked, folding the paper and putting it in his pocket.

"He's gone to toll again. Young Flower is dead."

The vicar made a gesture of dismay.

"You don't say so! I was with him most of the night. I hoped he was going to pull through. Ah, well!" But turning to Milly again, "Tell Jimmy when he comes in to let my housekeeper know I shan't be back," taking out his watch, "much before two o'clock, and I'll get some bread and cheese at the Union. She needn't think about me. Good-morning," and he went on with a nod.

"Good-morning, sir," said Milly demurely, and with a pretty little inclination of her head. Milly was too old to curtsy now, though the school children at Willowton, as indeed all the villages in East Anglia, still keep up the pretty custom of the old-world curtsey. Milly was nearly seventeen, and kept house for her old grandfather, who was parish sexton, clerk, or verger, or all three, just as it pleased him to call himself.