on of the Vicar. This, at the first sight of Windlow, had
been one of the salient features of the scene. It had been amusing to
see the current of a human mind running so frankly open to inspection;
and, moreover, the Vicar's constantly expressed deference for the
exalted quality of Howard's mind and intellectual outfit, though it had
not been seriously regarded, had at least an emollient effect. But it
is one thing to sit and look on at a play and to be entertained by the
comic relief of some voluble character, and quite another to encounter
that volubility at full pressure in private life. There was a certain
charm at first in the Vicar's inconsequence and volatility; but in
daily intercourse the good man's lack of proportion, his indiscriminate
interest in things in general, proved decidedly fatiguing. Given a
crisis, and the Vicar's view was interesting, because it was, as a
rule, exactly the view which the average man would be likely to take,
melodramatic, sentimental, commonplace, with this difference, that
whereas the average man is tongue-tied and has no faculty of
expression, the Vicar had an extraordinarily rich and emphatic
vocabulary; and it was thus an artistic presentment of the ordinary
standpoint. But in daily life the Vicar talked with impregnable
continuity about any subject in which he happened to be interested. He
listened to no comment; he demanded no criticism. If he conversed about
his parishioners or his fellow-parsons or his country neighbours, it
was not uninteresting; but when it was genealogy or folklore or
prehistoric remains, it was merely a tissue of scraps, clawed out of
books and imperfectly remembered. Howard found himself respecting the
Vicar more and more; he was so kindly, so unworldly, so full of
perfectly guileless satisfaction: he was conscious too of his own
irrepressibility. He said to Howard one day, as they were walking
together, "Do you know, Howard, I often think how many blessings you
have brought us--I assure you, quiet and modest as you are, you are
felt, your influence permeates to the very ends of the parish; I cannot
exactly say what it is, but there's a sense of something that has to be
dealt with, to be reckoned with, a mind of force and energy in the
background; your approval is valued, your disapproval is feared. There
is a consciousness, not perhaps expressed or even actually realised, of
condescension, of gratification at one from so different a sphere
coming amon