SOUL OF PAUL
Nothing so horrible had ever happened to Paul before, nothing...
He felt as though he had committed a murder; it was as though he expected arrest and started at every knock on the door.Nothing so horrible...
It was, of course, in all the Skeaton papers.At the inquest it appeared that Mathew Cardinal had imitated the signature of a prosperous City friend; had he not chosen his own way out he would have discovered the arduous delights of hard labour.But he had chosen suicide and not "while of unsound mind." Yes, the uncle of the Rector's wife...Yes, The Rector's Wife's Uncle...Yes, The Rector's Wife's Uncle!
Sho discovered him, bumped right into him in the dark.What a queer story--like a novel.Oh, but she had always been queer--Trenchard had picked her up somewhere in a London slum; well, perhaps not a slum exactly but something very like it.Why did he marry her?
Perhaps he had to.Who knows? These clergymen are sly dogs.Always the worst if the truth were known...
So it went on.For nine whole days (and nights) it was the only topic in Skeaton.Paul caught the fringe of it.He had never known very much about his fellow-beings.He had always taken the things that they said to him as the true things, when they smiled he had thought that they meant their smiles.And why not?...since he always meant his.He had always been too lazy to dislike people, and his digestion had been too good and his ambition too slender to urge him towards spite and malice.He had believed that he was on excellent terms with all the world.
Now that was changed.He was watched, he knew, with curious, inquisitive, critical glances.Through no fault of his own he was soiled and smirched.That hearty confident laugh of his must be checked.He was afraid.Yes, he was afraid.He sat in his study and trembled at the thought of meeting his congregation.He had done nothing and yet his reputation was no longer clean.But he was afraid, also, of something else.He saw, desperately against his will, the central picture.He saw the body hanging in the dark room, Maggie tumbling against it, the cries, the lights, the crowd...