I find it better to leave things to Mary and just make up my mind to be uncomfortable and have nasty things to eat.” I’m evidently not a housekeeper by nature. “But, on the whole, I think things go worse when I’m trying. “My dear,” I said, “if you would only exercise a little care-” I have frequently hinted as much to Griselda, but she has only laughed. I am more than ever convinced that celibacy is desirable for the clergy. I have endeavoured to form her mind and failed. She treats the parish as a kind of huge joke arranged for her amusement. She is incompetent in every way, and extremely trying to live with. She is most distractingly pretty and quite incapable of taking anything seriously. Griselda is nearly twenty years younger than myself. Marriage, I have always held, is a serious affair, to be entered into only after long deliberation and forethought, and suitability of tastes and inclinations is the most important consideration. Why I should have urged Griselda to marry me at the end of twenty-four hours’ acquaintance is a mystery to me. I have always been of the opinion that a clergyman should be unmarried. My wife’s name is Griselda-a highly suitable name for a parson’s wife.
“It is a pity that I am such a shocking housekeeper,” said my wife, with a tinge of genuine regret in her voice. I said, “No, thank you,” and she deposited the dish with a clatter on the table and left the room. I did not reply at once, for Mary, setting the greens on the table with a bang, proceeded to thrust a dish of singularly moist and unpleasant dumplings under my nose. My wife said in a sympathetic voice: “Has he been very trying?” Mary, who is in service at the Vicarage as a stepping-stone to better things and higher wages, merely said in a loud, businesslike voice, “Greens,” and thrust a cracked dish at him in a truculent manner. Mary will give evidence, won’t you, Mary? And describe how you brandished the carving knife in a vindictive manner.” “That’ll be remembered against you when the old boy is found bathed in blood.
I had just finished carving some boiled beef (remarkably tough by the way) and on resuming my seat I remarked, in a spirit most unbecoming to my cloth, that anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe would be doing the world at large a service. The conversation, though in the main irrelevant to the matter in hand, yet contained one or two suggestive incidents which influenced later developments. It is difficult to know quite where to begin this story, but I have fixed my choice on a certain Wednesday at luncheon at the Vicarage.
0 kommentar(er)
