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Updated: May 19, 2025
It was a perfect summer's morning when Mary, for the first time in many years, left her little home in Weircombe and started upon a journey she had never taken and never had thought of taking a journey which, to her unsophisticated mind, seemed fraught with strange possibilities of difficulty, even of peril.
And now there came a wondrous week of perfect weather. All the lovely Somersetshire coast lay under the warmth and brilliance of a dazzling sun, the sea was smooth, and small sailing skiffs danced merrily up and down from Minehead to Weircombe and back again with the ease and security of seabirds, whose happiest resting-place is on the waves.
Pray excuse me if I speak too boldly but that is the spirit and feeling of most of the Weircombe folk, and they are really very good, honest people." The Reverend Mr. Arbroath stood inert and silent for about two minutes, his eyes still fixed upon her, then, without a word, he turned on his heel and left the cottage.
But he was strong enough to be merry at times and his kindly temper and cheery conversation made him a great favourite with the Weircombe folk, who were never tired of "looking in" as they termed it, on Mary, and "'avin' a bit of a jaw with old David."
"I've travelled all the way from Weircombe, in Somerset, to bring him this from his dead friend, and I promised to give it to him myself. Please, please do not turn me away!" The clerk stared hard at the superscription on the packet, as he well might. For he had at once recognised the handwriting of David Helmsley.
In due course the "big 'edlines" which announced to the world in general that one of the most imperious "High" Anglicans of the Church had not only slipped from moral rectitude, but had intensified that sin by his publicly aggressive assumption of hypocritical virtue, appeared in the newspapers, and the village of Weircombe for about a week was brought into a certain notoriety which was distinctly displeasing to itself.
Fortunately for the peace of Weircombe, the frantic rush of social events, and incidents in which actual "news" of interest has no part, is too persistent and overwhelming for any one occurrence out of the million to occupy more than a brief passing notice, which is in its turn soon forgotten, and the "Scandalous Conduck of a Clergyman," as Mr.
"Go away!" he echoed. "What for? Where to?" She told him then of "old David's" last request to her, and of the duty she had undertaken to perform. He listened gravely. "You must do it, of course," he said. "But will you have to travel far?" "Some distance from Weircombe," she answered, evasively. "May I not go with you?" he asked. She hesitated. "I promised " she began.
And so the time went on to Christmas and New Year. Weircombe kept these festivals very quietly, yet not without cheerfulness. There was plenty of holly about, and the children, plunging into the thick of the woods at the summit of the "coombe" found mistletoe enough for the common need.
To look at Weircombe village as it lay peacefully aslant down the rocky "coombe," no one would have thought it likely to be a scene of silent, but none the less violent, internal feud; yet such nevertheless was the case, and all the trouble had arisen since the first Sunday of the first month of the Reverend Mr. Arbroath's "taking duty" in the parish.
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