‘Yes,' I replied, ‘but I have some inquiries still to make. I suppose the clergyman who officiated here in the year eighteen hundred and three is no longer alive?'
‘No, no, sir, he was dead three or four years before I came here, and that was as long ago as the year twenty-seven, I got this place, sir,' persisted my talkative old friend, ‘through the clerk before me leaving it. They say he was driven out of house and home by his wife -- and she's living still down in the new town there. I don't know the rights of the story myself -- all I know is I got the place. Mr Wansborough got it for me -- the son of my old master that I was telling you of. He's a free pleasant gentleman as ever lived -- rides to the hounds, keeps his pointers and all that. He's vestry-clerk here now as his father was before him.
‘Did you not tell me your former master lived at Knowlesbury?' I asked, calling to mind the long story about the precise gentleman of the old school with which my talkative friend had wearied me before he opened the register-book.
‘Yes, to be sure, sir,' replied the clerk. ‘Old Mr Wansborough lived at Knowlesbury, and young Mr Wansborough lives there too.'
‘You said just now he was vestry-clerk, like his father before him.
I am not quite sure that I know what a vestry-clerk is.'
‘Don't you indeed, sir? -- and you come from London too! Every parish church, you know, has a vestry-clerk and a parish-clerk. The parish-clerk is a man like me (except that I've got a deal more learning than most of them -- though I don't boast of it). The vestry-clerk is a sort of an appointment that the lawyers get, and if there's any business to be done for the vestry, why there they are to do it. It's just the same in London. Every parish church there has got its vestry-clerk -- and you may take my word for it he's sure to be a lawyer.'
‘Then young Mr Wansborough is a lawyer, I suppose?'
‘Of course he is, sir! A lawyer in High Street, Knowlesbury -- the old offices that his father had before him. The number of times I've swept those offices out, and seen the old gentleman come trotting into business on his white pony, looking right and left all down the street and nodding to everybody! Bless you, he was a popular character! -- he'd have done in London!'
‘How far is it to Knowlesbury from this place?'
‘A long stretch, sir,' said the clerk, with that exaggerated idea of distance, and that vivid perception of difficulties in getting from place to place, which is peculiar to all country people. ‘Nigh on five mile, I can tell you!'
It was still early in the forenoon. There was plenty of time for a walk to Knowlesbury and back again to Welmingham; and there was no person probably in the town who was fitter to assist my inquiries about the character and position of Sir Percival's mother before her marriage than the local solicitor.
Resolving to go at once to Knowlesbury on foot, I led the way out of the vestry.
‘Thank you kindly, sir,' said the clerk, as I slipped my little present into his hand. ‘Are you really going to walk all the way to Knowlesbury and back? Well! you're strong on your legs, too -- and what a blessing that is, isn't it? There's the road, you can't miss it. I wish I was going your way -- it's pleasant to meet with gentlemen from London in a lost corner like this. One hears the news. Wish you good morning, sir, and thank you kindly once more.'
We parted. As I left the church behind me I looked back, and there were the two men again on the road below, with a third in their company, that third person being the short man in black whom I had traced to the railway the evening before.
The three stood talking together for a little while, then separated.
The man in black went away by himself towards Welmingham -- the other two remained together, evidently waiting to follow me as soon as I walked on.
I proceeded on my way without letting the fellows see that I took any special notice of them. They caused me no conscious irritation of feeling at that moment -- on the contrary, they rather revived my sinking hopes.
In the surPrise of discovering the evidence of the marriage, I had forgotten the inference I had drawn on first perceiving the men in the neighbourhood of the vestry. Their reappearance reminded me that Sir Percival had anticipated my visit to Old Welmingham church as the next result of my interview with Mrs Catherick -- otherwise he would never have placed his spies there to wait for me. Smoothly and fairly as appearances looked in the vestry, there was something wrong beneath them -- there was something in the register-book, for aught I knew, that I had not discovered yet.