Читать книгу Gallybird онлайн

5 страница из 87

§ 2

He knocked at the door.

"Come in."

The room was dark, for the window was hung over with a cloth to keep out the sunset. Blocked against the smothered light was the figure of a man in a chair.

"Ah, so it's Parson. Welcome, and pray sit down, Sir."

Gervase groped for a stool.

"Pox on you, Harman, for your love of darkness. It ill becomes the regenerate son of light that you would be."

"My eyes are feeble, and run in the light. You must learn to pardon my infirmity."

He spoke in a trailing voice that made Gervase snort and blow his nose, as a Christian substitute for more violent expression. It always took him a few minutes to accustom himself to Exalted Harman, who was almost alone in the parish for his Roundhead manners. Everybody save he had long forgotten the Protector and the last revolution but one. No doubt it was his consciousness of wrong-doing, this lapse of his that was always under his nose, that made him prate like an Anabaptist rattler, for all that he was a sober member of a sober church. (Gervase prided himself that there was not a single conventicle in his parish.)