They said it was a reaction; that after the restraint of
Sunday with its three services, especially the last when he was
permitted to pour out his wild curatical eloquence, the need of doing
something violent and savage was most powerful; that he had, so to say,
to wash out the Sunday taste with blood.
One August, on one of these Mondays, he was dodging along a hedge-side
with his gun trying to get a shot at some bird, when he unfortunately
thrust his foot into a populous wasps' nest, and the infuriated wasps
issued in a cloud and inflicted many stings on his head and face and
neck and hands, and on other parts of his anatomy where they could
thrust their little needles through his clothes.
This mishap was the talk of the village. "Never mind," they said
cheerfully - they were all very cheerful over it - "he's a good sports-
man, and like all of that kind, hard as nails, and he'll soon be all
right, making a joke of it."
The result "proved the rogues, they lied," that he was not hard as
nails, but from that day onwards was a very poor creature indeed. The
brass and steel wires in his system had degenerated into just those
poor little soft grey threads which others have and are subject to many
fantastical ailments. He fell into a nervous condition and started and
blanched and was confused when suddenly hailed or spoken to even by
some harmless old woman. He trembled at a shadow, and the very sight
and sound of a wasp in the breakfast room when he was trying to eat a
little toast and marmalade filled him, thrilled him, with fantastic
terrors never felt before. And in vain to still the beating of his
heart he would sit repeating: "It's only a wasp and nothing more." Then
some of the parishioners who loved animals, for there are usually one
or two like that in a village, began to say that it was a "judgment" on
him, that old Mother Nature, angry at the persecutions of her feathered
children by this young cleric who was supposed to be a messenger of
mercy, had revenged herself on him in that way, using her little yellow
insects as her ministers.
XXXIV
IN CHITTERNE CHURCHYARD
Chitterne is one of those small out-of-the-world villages in the south
Wiltshire downs which attract one mainly because of their isolation and
loneliness and their unchangeableness. Here, however, you discover that
there has been an important change in comparatively recent years - some
time during the first half of the last century.
