What suggestions of any mystery unexplained had arisen out of my visit to the vestry? I saw no suggestions anywhere. What progress had I made towards discovering the suspected stain on the reputation of Sir Percival’s mother? The one fact I had ascertained vindicated her reputation. Fresh doubts, fresh difficulties, fresh delays began to open before me in interminable prospect. What was I to do next? The one immediate resource left to me appeared to be this. I might institute inquiries about “Miss Elster of Knowlesbury,” on the chance of advancing towards the main object of my investigation, by first discovering the secret of Mrs. Catherick’s contempt for Sir Percival’s mother.
“Have you found what you wanted, sir?” said the clerk, as I closed the register-book.
“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.”