Whenever Mr. Marrapit had occasion to speak with Mr.
Fletcher, after the first few exchanges he would swallow
with distinct effort. It was wrath he swallowed;
and bitter as the pill was, rarely did he fail to
force it down. Mr. Fletcher spoke to him as no
other member of his establishment dared speak.
The formula of dismissal would leap to Mr. Marrapit’s
mouth: knowledge of the unusually small wage for
which Mr. Fletcher worked caused it to be stifled
ere it found tongue. Thousands of inferiors have
daily to bow to humiliations from their employers;
it is an encouraging thought for this army that masters
there be who, restrained by parsimony, daily writhe
beneath impertinences from valuable, ill-paid servants.
Mr. Marrapit swallowed. He said: “To
the smell of which I complain my cats are no party.
It is tobacco. The air reeks of tobacco.
I will not have tobacco in my garden.”
Twice, with a roaring sound, Mr. Fletcher inhaled.
He pointed towards an elm against the wall: “It
comes from over there.”
“Ascertain.”
The gardener plunged through the bushes; nosed laboriously;
his inhalations rasped across the shrubs. “There’s
no smoking here,” he called.
“Someone, in some place concealed, indubitably
smokes. Yourself you have noticed it. Follow
the scent.”
Exertion beaded upon Mr. Fletcher’s brow.
He drew his hand across it; thrust a damp and gloomy
face between the foliage towards his master.
“I’d like to know,” he asked, “if
this is to be one of my regular jobs for the future?
Was I engaged to ’unt smells all day? It’s
’ard-damn ’ard. I’m a gardener,
I am; not a blood-’ound.”
But Mr. Marrapit had passed on.
“Damn ’ard,” Mr. Fletcher repeated;
drew the snail from his pocket; plunged to consolation.
A short distance down the garden Mr. Marrapit himself
discovered the source of the smell that had offended
him. Bending to the left he came full upon it
where it uprose from a secluded patch of turf:
from the remains of a pipe there mounted steadily
through the still air a thin wisp of smoke.
Outraged, Mr. Marrapit stared; fuming, turned upon
the step that sounded on the path behind him.
The slim and tall young man who approached was that
nephew George, whose coming into Mr. Marrapit’s
household had considerably disturbed Mr. Marrapit’s
peace. Orphaned by the death of his mother, George
had gone into the guardianship of his uncle while
in his middle teens. The responsibility had been
thrust upon Mr. Marrapit by his sister. Vainly
he had writhed and twisted in fretful protest; she
shackled him to her desire by tearful and unceasing
entreaty. Vainly he urged that his means were
not what she thought; she assured him—and
by her will bore out the assurance—that
with her George should go her money.
And the will, when read, in some degree consoled Mr.
Marrapit for the sniffling encumbrance he took back
with him to Herons’ Holt after the funeral.
It was a simple and trustful will—commended
George into the keeping of her brother Christopher
Marrapit; desired that George should be entered in
her late husband’s—the medical—profession;
and for that purpose bequeathed her all to the said
brother.
