The Return of Peter Grimm Part 10

"Good-morning, Mrs. Batholommey," answered Kathrien, loudly enough to drown McPherson's growl of unwelcoming welcome. "Good-morning, Pastor.

Oom Peter will be back directly. I'll tell him you're here."

She hurried out of the room. McPherson showed strong inclination to follow her. But Mrs. Batholommey had already singled him out for her prey and bore down upon him with a becomingly woe-begone face.

"Oh, Doctor," she panted, wiping her eyes. "Does he know it yet? _Does_ he?"

"Does _who_ know _what_?" snapped the doctor, his glance straying wrathfully toward the rotund clergyman, who all at once a.s.sumed an abjectly apologetic air and interested himself in a picture on the farther wall.

"Poor dear Mr. Grimm," pursued Mrs. Batholommey. "Does he know he's going to die?"

Willem, who was halfway out of the room by this time, halted, turned back and, un.o.bserved, stood listening with wide eyes and open mouth.

"What in blue blazes are you talking about?" thundered McPherson, glowering down on his rector's wife in a most unadmiring manner.

"About Mr. Grimm. Does he know yet that he must die?"

"Does the whole d.a.m.ned town know it?" roared the doctor.

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Batholommey in prim horror at the explosive adjective.

"You see, Doctor," put in the rector with urbane haste, before his spouse could recover breath to rebuke the blasphemer or return to the attack. "You see, it's this way: You consulted Mr. Grimm's lawyer. And his wife told _my_ wife."

"Gabbed, did he?" snorted McPherson. "To perdition with the professional man who gabs to his wife!"

"Oh, Doctor!" expostulated Mrs. Batholommey. "How can----?"

"I am inexpressibly grieved," said her husband, "to learn that Mr.

Grimm has an incurable malady. And is it true that the nature of it is----?"

"The nature of the whole affair is _this_," returned McPherson. "He isn't to be told. Understand that, please. He must _not_ know. I didn't say he had to die at once. He may outlive us all. He probably will. And, in any event, no one must speak to him about it."

"I should think," said Mrs. Batholommey in lofty rebuke, "that a man's rector might be allowed to talk to him on such a theme. It seems to me, Dr. McPherson, if _you_ can't do any more, it's _his_ turn. From the way you doctors a.s.sume control of everything, it's a wonder to me you don't want to baptise the babies, too."

"Rose!" murmured the doctor in mild reproof.

"At the last moment," Mrs. Batholommey insisted, ignoring her husband, "Mr. Grimm will want to make a will. And you know he _hasn't_. He'll want to remember the Episcopal Church of Grimm Manor, and his charities--and his--friends. If he doesn't, the rector will be blamed as usual. You're not doing right, Doctor, in keeping----"

"Rose! My dear!" interjected her husband. "These private matters----"

"But----"

"I'll trouble you, Mrs. Batholommey," shouted McPherson, "to attend to your own affairs, and----"

"Doctor!" bleated the rector.

"Oh, let him talk, Henry!" sniffed Mrs. Batholommey in semi-tearful exaltation. "I can bear it. Besides," coming to earth level, "no one in town pays any attention to what he says since he has taken up with spiritualism."

"Oh, Rose! My dear!"

"Shut up!" whispered McPherson wrathfully. "Here he comes. Remember what I----"

Peter Grimm put an end to the warning by reappearing from the cellar with a small demijohn in his hand. His face brightened into a smile of pleasant greeting as he saw his two new guests.

"Why," he exclaimed, "this is the jolliest sort of a surprise. I hope I haven't kept you waiting long?"

The rector and his wife glanced at each other in embarra.s.sment. Mrs.

Batholommey turned toward Peter with a lachrymose grimace, intended doubtless for a consoling smile, and seemed about to break into a torrent of speech. But the rector, after a timid look at McPherson, nervously forestalled her by coming hurriedly to the front.

"Good-morning, dear friend," said he. "This is just a little impromptu visit of grat.i.tude. We wish to thank you for the lovely flowers that Willem brought us a few minutes ago, and for the n.o.ble check you sent yesterday."

"Why," laughed Peter uncomfortably, "please don't even think of thanking me. I----"

"And," nervously pursued the rector, sparring for time, "I want to let you know how much we are still enjoying the delicious vegetables you so generously provided. I _did_ relish that squash. If I were obliged to say offhand what my favourite vegetable is, I----"

"Pardon me," interposed Peter, his glance straying past the rector and resting with swift concern upon Mrs. Batholommey's quivering expanse of face, "but is anything distressing you, Mrs. Ba----?"

"No, no!" interjected the rector with break-neck haste.

"No, no!" responded Mrs. Batholommey in the same breath.

A half inaudible growl from Dr. McPherson completed the triple chord of negation. A chord so explosive, so cra.s.sly out of keeping with the simple question that evoked it that Grimm stared amazed from one of the trio to another.

Willem, strolling from his retreat, crossed to the table, picked up a picture book, and in leisurely fas.h.i.+on mounted with it to the gallery landing that overlooked the room. There he threw himself on a settee between the bedroom doors and opened the book at random.

His lower lip quivered ever so little and his blue eyes were big with a troubled wonder. From time to time his glance would stray from the gaudy pages of the picture book down to Grimm in the room below. And each time the wonder in his eyes became tinged with a new sorrow.

Meantime, Peter Grimm's look of questioning, perplexed sympathy toward her tumult ridden self was becoming far too much for Mrs. Batholommey's jellylike self-control. The jelly began to quake--quite visibly.

"I was afraid," Peter went on kindly, "that something unpleasant might have happened. And I hoped perhaps I might be able----"

"Oh, no! No, no, _no_!" denied the utterly fl.u.s.tered woman. "I--I hope you are feeling well, Mr. Grimm. No--no--I don't mean that. I--I don't mean that I hope you are _well_. Of course not. I--that is----"

"Of course she hopes it," boomed her husband, coming to the rescue with heavy and uncertain cheeriness that rang as false as the ring of a leaden dollar. "And of course _all_ of us hope it, dear Mr. Grimm. With all our hearts. And we wish you many, _many_ years of life and----"

"Oh, indeed we do," chimed in Mrs. Batholommey. "And, as Dr. McPherson just said, there may perhaps be no reason,--with proper care--why you shouldn't----"

"A blundering rector must be put up with because of his cloth. But when it comes to a blundering rectorette, there ought to be a line drawn!"

It was McPherson who said it. He addressed no one, but seemed to be confining his heretical sentiments to the window seat. Also he spoke in a gruff undertone--that filled the room like far off thunder.

Peter Grimm flung himself into the breach, even before the wave of outraged red could gush to Mrs. Batholommey's shaking visage.

"Will you--will you have a gla.s.s of plum brandy?" he asked her, and then caught himself with the scared grin of a very guilty schoolboy.

"I thank you," she retorted, safe for the moment in the full majesty of Temperance. "I do not take such things. Perhaps you forget I am the President of our local W. C. T. U. and the----"

"The Little Brothers of the Artesian Well," added Grimm, "or whatever they call it. I remember. And I'm sorry. I wouldn't tempt you from your principles for the world. Forgive me. How about _you_, Pastor? A little drop of plum brandy, for--for--let's see, what is it St. Paul says about----?"