FullReads

II

Peake dismissed from his mind as grotesque the suggestion that he should contribute a hundred pounds to the organ fund; it revolted his sense of the fitness of things; the next morning he had entirely forgotten it. But two days afterwards, when he was finishing his midday dinner with a piece of Cheshire cheese, his wife said:

“James, have you thought anything more about that organ affair?” She gave a timid little laugh.

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, holding a morsel of cheese on the end of his knife; then he ate the cheese in silence.

“Nan,” he said at length, rather deliberately, “have they been trying to come round you? Because it won’t work. Upon my soul I don’t know what some people are dreaming of. I tell you I never was more surprised i’ my life than when your sister made that suggestion. I’ll give ’em a guinea towards their blooming organ if that’s any use to ’em. Ella, go and see if the horse is ready.”

“Yes, father.”

He felt genuinely aggrieved.

“If they’d get a new organist,” he remarked, with ferocious satire, five minutes later, as he lit a cigar, “and a new choir–I could see summat in that.”

In another minute he was driving at a fine pace towards his colliery at Toft End. The horse, with swift instinct, had understood that to-day its master was not in the mood for badinage.

Half-way down the hill into Shawport he overtook a lady walking very slowly.

“Mrs Sutton!” he shouted in astonishment, and when he had finished with the tense frown which involuntarily accompanied the effort of stopping the horse dead within its own length, his face softened into a beautiful smile. “How’s this?” he questioned.

“Our mare’s gone lame,” Mrs Sutton answered, “and as I’m bound to get about I’m bound to walk.”

He descended instantly from the dogcart. “Climb up,” he said, “and tell me where you want to go to.”

“Nay, nay.”

“Climb up,” he repeated, and he helped her into the dogcart.

“Well,” she said, laughing, “what must be, must. I was trudging home, and I hope it isn’t out of your way.”

“It isn’t,” he said; “I’m for Toft End, and I should have driven up Trafalgar Road anyhow.”

Mrs Sutton was one of James Peake’s ideals. He worshipped this small frail woman of fifty-five, whose soft eyes were the mirror of as candid a soul as was ever prisoned in Staffordshire clay. More than forty years ago he had gone to school with her, and the remembrance of having kissed the pale girl when she was crying over a broken slate was still vivid in his mind. For nearly half a century she had remained to him exactly that same ethereal girl. The sole thing about her that puzzled him was that she should have found anything attractive in the man whom she allowed to marry her–Alderman Sutton. In all else he regarded her as an angel. And to many another, besides James Peake, it seemed that Sarah Sutton wore robes of light. She was a creature born to be the succour of misery, the balm of distress. She would have soothed the two thieves on Calvary. Led on by the bounteous instinct of a divine, all-embracing sympathy, the intrepid spirit within her continually forced its fragile physical mechanism into an activity which appeared almost supernatural. According to every rule of medicine she should have been dead long since; but she lived–by volition. It was to the credit of Bursley that the whole town recognized in Sarah Sutton the treasure it held.

“I wanted to see you,” Mrs Sutton said, after they had exchanged various inquiries.

“What about?”

“Mrs Lovatt was telling me yesterday you hadn’t made up your mind about that organ subscription.” They were ascending the steepest part of Oldcastle Street, and Peake lowered the reins and let the horse into a walk.

“Now look here, Mrs Sutton,” he began, with passionate frankness, “I can talk to you. You know me; you know I’m not one of their set, as it were. Of course I’ve got a pew and all that; but you know as well as I do that I don’t belong to the chapel lot. Why should they ask me? Why should they come to me? Why should I give all that sum?”