FullReads

“Haven’t you any news for me?” asked Peake, during a pause in the talk. At the same moment the door opened and Mrs Lovatt entered. “Eh, Auntie Lovatt,” he went on, greeting her, “we’d given ye up.” Mrs Lovatt usually visited the Peakes on Saturday evenings, but she came later than her husband.

“Eh, but I was bound to come and see you to-night, Uncle Peake, after your visit to the great city. Well, you’re looking bonny.” She shook hands with him warmly, her face beaming goodwill, and then she kissed her half-sister and Ella, and told Sneyd that she had seen him that morning in the market-place.

Mrs Peake and Mrs Lovatt differed remarkably in character and appearance, though this did not prevent them from being passionately attached to one another. Mrs Lovatt was small, and rather plain; content to be her husband’s wife, she had no activities beyond her own home. Mrs Peake was tall, and strikingly handsome in spite of her fifty years, with a brilliant complexion and hair still raven black; her energy was exhaustless, and her spirit indomitable; she was the moving force of the Wesleyan Sunday School, and there was not a man in England who could have driven her against her will. She had a fortune of her own. Enoch Lovatt treated her with the respect due to an equal who had more than once proved herself capable of insisting on independence and equal rights in the most pugnacious manner.

“Well, auntie,” said Peake, “I’ve won eleven and fourpence to-night, and my wife’s collared it all from me.” He laughed with glee.

“Eh, you should be ashamed!” said Mrs Lovatt, embracing the company in a glance of reproof which rested last on Enoch Lovatt. She was a Methodist of the strictest, and her husband happened to be chapel steward. “If I had my way with those cards I’d soon play with them; I’d play with them at the back of the fire. Now you were asking for news when I came in, Uncle Peake. Have they told you about the new organ? We’re quite full of it at our house.”

“No,” said Peake, “they haven’t.”

“What!” she cried reproachfully. “You haven’t told him, Enoch–nor you, Nan?”

“Upon my word it never entered my head,” said Mrs Peake.

“Well, Uncle Peake,” Mrs Lovatt began, “we’re going to have a new organ for the Conference.”

“Not before it’s wanted,” said Peake. “I do like a bit of good music at service, and Best himself couldn’t make anything of that old wheezer we’ve got now.”

“Is that the reason we see you so seldom at chapel?” Mrs Lovatt asked tartly.

“I was there last Sunday morning.”

“And before that, Uncle Peake?” She smiled sweetly on him.

Peake was one of the worldlings who, in a religious sense, existed precariously on the fringe of the Methodist Society. He rented a pew, and he was never remiss in despatching his wife and daughter to occupy it. He imagined that his belief in the faith of his fathers was unshaken, but any reference to souls and salvation made him exceedingly restless and uncomfortable. He could not conceive himself crowned and harping in Paradise, and yet he vaguely surmised that in the last result he would arrive at that place and state, wafted thither by the prayers of his womenkind. Logical in all else, he was utterly illogical in his attitude towards the spiritual–an attitude which amounted to this: “Let a sleeping dog lie, but the animal isn’t asleep and means mischief.”

He smiled meditatively at Mrs Lovatt’s question, and turned it aside with another.

“What about this organ?”

“It’s going to cost nine hundred pounds,” continued Mrs Lovatt, “and Titus Blackhurst has arranged it all. It was built for a hall in Birmingham, but the manufacturers have somehow got it on their hands. Young Titus the organist has been over to see it, and he says it’s a bargain. The affair was all arranged as quick as you please at the Trustees’ meeting last Monday. Titus Blackhurst said he would give a hundred pounds if eight others would do the same within a fortnight–it must be settled at once. As Enoch said to me afterwards, it seemed, as soon as Mr Blackhurst had made his speech, that we must have that organ. We really couldn’t forshame to show up with the old one again at this Conference–don’t you remember the funny speech the President made about it at the last Conference, eleven years ago? Of course he was very polite and nice with his sarcasm, but I’m sure he meant us to take the hint. Now, would you believe, seven out of those eight subscriptions were promised by Wednesday morning! I think that was just splendid!”