When the vicar's wife went off with a young and penniless man the scandal knew no
bounds. Her two little girls were only seven and nine years old respectively. And the vicar
was such a good husband. True, his hair was grey. But his moustache was dark, he was
handsome, and still full of furtive passion for his unrestrained and beautiful wife.
Why did she go? Why did she burst away with such an éclat of revulsion, like a touch of
madness?
Nobody gave any answer. Only the pious said she was a bad woman. While some of the
good women kept silent. They knew.
The two little girls never knew. Wounded, they decided that it was because their mother
found them negligible.
The ill wind that blows nobody any good swept away the vicarage family on its blast.
Then lo and behold! the vicar, who was somewhat distinguished as an essayist and a
controversialist, and whose case had aroused sympathy among the bookish men, received
the living of Papplewick. The Lord had tempered the wind of misfortune with a rectorate
in the north country.
The rectory was a rather ugly stone house down by the river Papple, before you come into
the village. Further on, beyond where the road crosses the stream, were the big old stone
cotton–mills, once driven by water. The road curved uphill, into the bleak stone streets of
the village.
The vicarage family received decided modification, upon its transference into the rectory.
The vicar, now the rector, fetched up his old mother and his sister, and a brother from the
city. The two little girls had a very different milieu from the old home.
The rector was now forty–seven years old, he had displayed an intense and not very
dignified grief after the flight of his wife. Sympathetic ladies had stayed him from suicide.
His hair was almost white, and he had a wild–eyed, tragic look. You had only to look at
him, to know how dreadful it all was, and how he had been wronged.
Yet somewhere there was a false note. And some of the ladies, who had sympathised most
profoundly with the vicar, secretly rather disliked the rector. There was a certain furtive
self– righteousness about him, when all was said and done.
The little girls, of course, in the vague way of children, accepted the family verdict.
Granny, who was over seventy and whose sight was failing, became the central figure in
the house. Aunt Cissie, who was over forty, pale, pious, and gnawed by an inward worm,
kept house. Uncle Fred, a stingy and grey–faced man of forty, who just lived dingily for
himself, went into town every day. And the rector, of course, was the most important
person, after Granny.
They called her The Mater. She was one of those physically vulgar, clever old bodies who
had got her own way all her life by buttering the weaknesses of her men–folk. Very
