A Tale of a Lonely Parish | Page 4

end his discourse with a merry laugh at
himself, or a shy apology for having talked so much. But the vicar
assured his wife that the boy's Greek and Latin verses were something
very extraordinary indeed, and much better than his own in his best
days. For John was passionately fond of the classics and did not
propose to acquire any more mathematical knowledge than was strictly
necessary for his matriculation and "little-go." He meant to be a famous
scholar and he meant to get a fellowship at his college in order to be
perfectly independent and to help his father.
John was a constant source of wonder to his companion the Honourable
Cornelius Angleside, who remembered to have seen fellows of that sort
at Eton but had never got near enough to them to know what they were
really like. Cornelius had a vague idea that there was some trick about
appearing to know so much and that those reading chaps were awful
humbugs. How the trick was performed he did not venture to explain,

but he was as firmly persuaded that it was managed by some species of
conjuring as that Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook performed their
wonders by sleight of hand. That one human brain should actually
contain the amount of knowledge John Short appeared to possess was
not credible to the Honourable Cornelius, and the latter spent more of
his time in trying to discover how John "did it" than in trying to "do it"
himself. Nevertheless, young Angleside liked Short after his own
fashion, and Short did not dislike Angleside. John's father had given
him to understand that as a general rule persons of wealth and good
birth were a set of overbearing, purse-proud bullies, who considered
men of genius to be little better than a set of learned monkeys, certainly
not good enough to black their boots. For John's father in his
misfortunes had imbibed sundry radical notions formerly peculiar to
poor literary men, and not yet altogether extinct, and he had
accordingly warned his son that all mammon was the mammon of
unrighteousness, and that the people who possessed it were the natural
enemies of people who had to live by their brains. But John had very
soon discovered that though Cornelius Angleside possessed the three
qualifications for perdition, in the shape of birth, wealth and ignorance,
against which his poor father railed unceasingly, he succeeded
nevertheless in making himself very good company. Angleside was not
overbearing, he was not purse-proud and he was not a bully. On the
contrary he was unobtrusive and sufficiently simple in manner, and he
certainly never mentioned the subject of his family or fortune; John
rather pitied him, on the whole, until he began to discover that
Angleside looked up to him on account of his mental superiority, and
then John, being very human, began to like him.
The life at the vicarage of Billingsfield, Essex, was not remarkable for
anything but its extreme regularity. Prayers, breakfast, work, lunch, a
walk, work, dinner, work, prayers, bed. The programme never varied,
save as the seasons introduced some change in the hours of the
establishment. The vicar, who was fond of a little gardening and
amused himself with a variety of experiments in the laying of
asparagus beds, found occasional excitement in the pursuit of a stray
cat which had managed to climb his wire netting and get at the heads of
his favourite vegetable, in which thrilling chase he was usually aided

by an old brown retriever answering, when he answered at all, to the
name of Carlo, and by the Honourable Cornelius, whose skill in
throwing stones was as phenomenal as his ignorance of Latin quantities.
The play was invariably opened by old Reynolds, the ancient and
bow-legged gardener, groom and man of all work at the vicarage.
"Please sir, there's Simon Gunn's cat in the sparrergrass." The
information was accompanied by a sort of chuckle of evil satisfaction
which at once roused the sleeping passions of the Reverend Augustin
Ambrose.
"Dear me, Reynolds, then why don't you turn her out?" and without
waiting for an answer, the excellent vicar would spring from his seat
and rush down the lawn in the direction of the beds, closely followed
by the Honourable Cornelius, who picked up stones from the gravel
path as he ran, and whose long legs made short work of the iron fence
at the bottom of the garden. Meanwhile the aged Reynolds let Carlo
loose from the yard and the hunt was prosecuted with great boldness
and ingenuity. The vicar's object was to get the cat out of the asparagus
bed as soon as possible without hurting her, for he was a humane man
and would not have hurt a fly. Cornelius, on the other hand, desired