CHAPTER IV.
MARY’S LITTLE THOUGHTS.
MARY’S mind was supposed to be very youthful and unformed. She had been kept longer a child than is usual, and yet, by reason of a sort of solitude in which she lived in the midst of a family which was, yet was not, absolutely her own family, her thoughts had exercised themselves silently on many subjects not commonly considered by children; but all in a shy and voiceless way, so that nobody round her had any conception of many reasonings which had gone on in her mind. When Mr. Asquith came to Horton she had been very curious about him, and when he failed to interest the rest, he became still more a curiosity and interest to Mary.
Among the subjects which occupied her silent thoughts there had been many little questions about the clergymen and their ways. As a matter of fact clergymen were more frequent visitors at Horton than any other class of men, and Mary had secretly been a critic of them all her life. Her Uncle Hugh was a clergyman whom she saw perpetually. He was a parish priest, with not very much to do, and one who was fully convinced that he did his duty. But Mary was not equally convinced. There was a good deal in his life which did not seem to that little critic to be much in harmony with what she read in her New Testament. To be sure, she knew well enough that every man who is in the Church can’t go wandering about the world like St. Paul, teaching and preaching to the heathen.
Mary was aware that the change of times must be taken into account, and that the steady work of a parish has to be considered as well as the romance of missionary devotion. But she could not quite reconcile Uncle Hugh to the standard in which she believed, even after everything was taken into account. He was too comfortable, too much at his ease, had more spare time than he ought to have had, and, indeed, altogether was too like Uncle John, who was the merely secular head of the family, than satisfied the rigorous ideal of youth. There was indeed very little difference between Uncle Hugh and Uncle John. The elder brother sat in a little room which was called his business-room, whereas the special retirement of the other was spoken of as the study: and the parson wore a white tie instead of the cosy checked one which generally enveloped the throat of the Squire, and a black coat instead of a shooting-jacket; but during the week these were the chief differences between them. Mary, all silent in the background, not considered by anybody to have an opinion at all, arraigned these two before her private tribunal, and was not satisfied, and concluded that there should have been a great deal more difference. To be sure, on Sunday there was difference enough. Uncle Hugh in his surplice was a commanding figure, and he preached while Uncle John yawned and listened. He was not a very good preacher.
None of these things are hid from the inexorable little judges from seven to seventeen, who give us all our due. In her heart, though she was fond of him, she was not satisfied with Uncle Hugh as a clergyman. His bishop was very well satisfied, but not Mary. And the curates were still less satisfactory. The High Church development was only in its beginning in those days, and curates made little or no pretensions to sacerdotal superiority, but were just young men in the Church, as their brothers were young men in the army. They were very good-natured young fellows most of them, very willing to give a shilling or even half-a-crown to poor old Hodge—not quite so willing to administer spiritual consolation or pray by his bedside—yet, by the aid of the service for the visitation of the sick, getting manfully through that too, and then, with a sigh of relief, coming up to croquet at the Hall. They had always time for croquet, and took enormously long walks, and had a considerable difficulty in getting through the long days in a dull little place where, as they would sometimes complain, there was nothing to do. Most of the young men who had been curates to Mr. Prescott of Horton Rectory, left him with the best of recommendations; but little Mary, that little Rhadamantha, had them all up at the bar before her, and judged them severely, though she never said a word.
But Mr. Asquith was something altogether new, and of a different order of being. When John said he was dull, and the girls that there was nothing in him, Mary demurred, as has been seen. She said to herself that Mr. Asquith was nice, and she liked the looks of him; and having thus, as it were, given herself from the first a brief in his defence, it was not so easy to put on the judge’s cap and pronounce the verdict. Something, perhaps, from the beginning softened that judgment. She expected, to start with, that he would be different: and he was different. The dinners at the Hall bored him, which was a pity; and he would have none of the croquet, and instead of complaining that there was nothing to do, his excuse was that he had not time enough for the amusements which the young people of the parish set such store by. He had not time. The other curates had not known what to do with their time. Certainly he was different.
And then Mary had begun to meet him about in all the cottages where there were sick people, where there was special need of kindness and help. He did not give away shillings, except rarely, for he had very few to give. He was not a young man on his promotion, waiting till the family living should be vacant, or till somebody should give him a benefice, but had thrown himself into his work as if he never meant to go away. Mary made some small investigations on this point in the most innocent and natural way. She said to the Rector, “Uncle Hugh, I suppose Mr. Asquith is going to stay longer than the other curates,” at a moment when Mr. Prescott was unoccupied, and had time to answer the question.
“Eh?” cried the Rector, “Asquith stay longer? What makes you think so?”
“He talks as if he were always to be here,” said Mary.
“Oh, do you think so? This little girl is not such a fool as she looks,” said his reverence. “I’ve noticed that too.”
“Don’t speak to Mary so,” said Mrs. Hugh Prescott, who was somewhat matter of fact. “She is not a fool at all, oh no; she has a great deal of observation. But Mr. Asquith had better not deceive himself, Hugh, for you know you have always liked a change of curates. Perhaps I had better say a word——”
The Rector’s wife was fond of saying a word, which generally made the person addressed very angry, though she had no such meaning. Her husband stopped her with a movement of his hand. “Don’t, my dear,” he said. “It is not that he thinks too much of himself. He has not the prospects of the other young men. He is not serving his apprenticeship here with the hope of soon setting up for himself.”
“You speak of the Church as if it were a trade, Hugh.”
“Do I, my dear? Well, perhaps it is something the same after all, if you think of it—for most people are looking out for something better. I should not mind being a canon or a prebendary myself, or even a dean.”
“And is not Mr. Asquith looking out for something better?” said Mary. She was more interested in this question than in any other that could at the moment be presented to her.
“Poor fellow! I don’t know that he has anything better to look for,” said the Rector. “He has few friends, and nobody to push him. I should not wonder if he remained a curate all his life.”
“Nobody does that nowadays,” said Mrs. Hugh Prescott. “Something always turns up. A poor clergyman, so far as I can see, has just as many chances as one that is well off. He is kind to somebody’s child, or attends somebody’s mother on her deathbed, or something of that sort. There is a special providence for poor curates, I think.”
Mary took in all this with quick ears, and asked herself, whether, in reality, a special providence was all that Mr. Asquith had to look to. “There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God,” we say in church day by day: but even that pious sentiment seems to convey a veiled opinion that other aid would be desirable: but when it is said of a man that a special providence is wanted for his promotion, that man’s hopes do not, to most of the world, seem particularly well founded. Mary felt with a curious swelling of her heart that she was glad this was the case with Mr. Asquith. She was proud of it, if pride is possible in such a matter. When she tested him by the first great commission which sent men out to preach without even bread in their scrip, much less money in their purse—that test which no one had borne as yet—she felt that at last here was one who could bear it; and this gave Mary a degree of pleasure quite incommensurate with his stay in the parish, or of any possible knowledge he could have of her, or she of him. After all she had nothing at all to do with it; and what were his principles of action, or how he was moved by the absence of all means of advancing himself, she had not the least way of knowing. It might be this that made him what John called dull. Mary could not tell. But she felt in her heart, though she was so ignorant, that the real clergyman for whom she had been looking had appeared at last—the only one who could bear the test which had not succeeded at all with the rest of the curates, nor even Uncle Hugh.
And this was the conclusion which had been formed in her mind even before she began to meet Mr. Asquith in the cottages. She was keenly alive to his demeanour there. It was as if she had gone to collect evidence upon this subject. When she was giving poor Sally Williams her pudding, she was at the same moment mentally weighing the curate and his manners to poor Mrs. Williams, and making him out. Perhaps Mary was not quite an impartial judge, being biassed, as has been said, by the other pieces of evidence which she had already put together, and even by something more subtle still, by her own foregone conclusion, and certain weakening prepossessions that had stolen into her heart. But about the time when Mr. Asquith took fright and began to shut himself up and relinquish his visits to the cottages, Mary had completed all her investigations, or had forgotten them, or had come to think them the most unnecessary, the most impertinent of inquiries, having somehow suddenly and unconsciously been led to the conclusion that there was nobody like Mr. Asquith, and that whatever he did became, from the fact of his doing it, right. It gave all the more weight to her opinion in this respect that she was not, as has been seen, a girl who naturally believed in curates, or took the excellence of that class for granted, as some young women do. It was, however, a somewhat severe test of Mary’s faith that almost simultaneously with her full conviction of it, this perfect man should suddenly begin to conduct himself in so strange a way. For she could not help being struck by the fact that she met him no longer, even had the poor people been silent on the subject, which they were not. They poured out their complaints to her, sometimes quite simply, sometimes with a little mischievous meaning. “Mr. Asquith? We haven’t seen Mr. Asquith, no—not for ten days; him as used to come in and give my poor Sally a comfor’able word ’most every day. I don’t know what’s the cause. I only hope, Miss Mary, as we’ve done nothing to offend him. It ain’t with our will if we has, for a kinder gentleman never come inside my door.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Williams, I am sure he would not take offence. Perhaps he is very busy; you know a clergyman—has to study a great deal,” said Mary, pausing to pick up the first excuse that came handy.
Mrs. Williams shook her head. “If it had been most clergymen,” she said, “I shouldn’t have wondered, for they soon tires—but Mr. Asquith! oh, he did seem another sort, he did!” the poor woman cried.
And then old Mrs. Sims at the almshouses had her little word to put in: “I can’t think what’s come over Mr. Asquith, that was such a kind gentleman. He’s not come no more since the last time as he met you here, Miss Mary. It couldn’t be as a fine, tall gentleman like ’im was afraid of you.”
“Why should anyone be afraid of me?” Mary cried, with a laugh. But she was glad to get outside that keen-sighted old woman’s cottage, for she felt the heat of a coming blush which swept all over her, up to the very roots of her hair, a blush which sent all her blood coursing through her veins, and made her feel disposed to laugh again, and then to cry. Afraid of her! Why should any one, much less the curate, be afraid of her, a little person who was only Mary, and whom nobody made any account of? But as she asked herself that question, Mary knew that it was so. She knew with a sudden flash of discovery, which was very wonderful and sweet, that Mr. Asquith was afraid of her, of loving her, and of betraying he loved her; and that he was making a stand against his heart and trying to avoid her, and put her out of his life. It was a tremendous, overpowering discovery; but after she had got accustomed to the thought, Mary once more laughed in her heart; for she knew by instinct, though she had never had any experience, that these tactics were never successful, and that in this endeavour Mr. Asquith would fail.
CHAPTER V.
SELF-BETRAYED.
OF course Mary proved right. In such a small parish as Horton it was quite impossible that two people could live for many weeks without meeting each other. The curate might shut himself up for a few days. He might say he was busy with his sermon; he might say he had a headache; he might acknowledge that his activity in the parish and all the institutions he had set up had thrown him into arrears with his reading, and such intellectual work as is necessary for a man who has to write two sermons every week. But this could not last for ever. Mary, who was so simple and so sweet, was not like those powers of darkness whom we must resist till they flee from us; indeed, Mary was so far different that when she was resisted she did not flee. She was so clever that she divined at once that in resisting the charm of her mild society poor Mr. Asquith had made a confession of his weakness, and it gave her a great and, it is to be feared, a mischievous amusement to watch how long he would keep to that. Alas! he could not keep to it very long. He was obliged to go to the rectory to communicate with his chief, and he could not help meeting Mary there. He had even to walk with her as far as the lodge, to carry something that was too heavy for her, and then Mary behaved very badly to the poor curate. She put on an air of sympathy to conceal her amusement, and she said, “I am afraid you have not been well lately, Mr. Asquith. I have not seen you anywhere about.”
“No,” said the curate, with his heart sinking, “I have been—not very well.”
“I am so sorry,” said the little hypocrite. “I hope you don’t find that Horton does not suit you: and just when you have got so well into the work.”
“Oh, it is not that it doesn’t suit me,” the curate said, “quite the reverse. The air is very pure and sweet.” He gave a side glance at her as he spoke, and it is to be feared that it was Mary and not the air he was thinking of when he used these words.
“Poor Sally Williams is longing to see you,” said Mary. “I go often, but I am not the same good. She likes her pudding, but I can’t talk to her as you do, Mr. Asquith; and they say,” continued the girl, with a soft shade of awe coming over her face, “that she has not very long to live.”
“You teach me my duty,” cried the curate, quite overwhelmed. “I have been very neglectful. I shall certainly not miss another day.”
“And old Mrs. Sims thinks you have forgotten the old people at the almshouses. She shakes her head and says, ‘Ah, I never thought as he’d keep it up like that: they never does,’ Mrs. Sims says.”
“Thank you so much for telling me,” said Mr. Asquith; “indeed it was not inadvertence. I knew that I was neglecting one duty: but I thought, perhaps, it might be excusable on account of another.”
“Oh, Mr. Asquith!” cried Mary, “I never meant to say you neglected anything, you must not think so. But ought a person to neglect one duty on account of another? You said the other day in your sermon——”
“Oh! don’t talk to me about my sermon. It was a poor performance off the book, when I had no experience; but you are right, we have no warrant to forget one duty for the sake of another. The part of a true man is to do all, and not to flinch. The spirit is willing, but oh! the flesh is very weak.”
I hope the reader will not think badly of Mary if I allow that the agitation of the curate filled her with a sort of elation and mischievous triumph for the moment. She had nearly laughed in the face of his gravity, and if she had done what was in her heart she would have cried out, “All this bother about a little girl like me!” But she did not say anything; she did not laugh; and when she looked up into his face for a moment at the lodge-gate, when he gave the books he was carrying for her to Mrs. Martingale, the coachman’s wife, to be sent up to the house, Mary was filled with sudden compunctions, and felt disposed rather to cry. She waved her hand to him as she went up the avenue with an April sort of face, half smiling, half weeping, which gave him a great deal of thought as he turned sadly upon his own way. He did not know what it meant, poor young man! It looked as if she were sorry for him, but why should she be sorry for him? Did she see, did she understand, the cause of his trouble? did she mean to support him with her sympathy, or to mock him, or to show him how far, far he was out of her sphere? He thought a great deal more about this than was at all consistent with the many other things he had to think of, and, alas! got the books of the lending library entirely into disorder, and forgot how much money he had received that week from the penny-bank and the clothing-club. He put down twice as much as they had paid to each subscriber’s name, and had to make it up from his own poor little purse; fortunately the entire amount was not considerable, but it was a great deal too much to be taken out of his poor pocket by Mary’s little regretful, sympathetic, yet mischievous look.
To tell the truth, Mary’s heart was bounding along the avenue like a bird, though her feet went soberly enough. It was so light, there was no keeping it still; it sang little trills of pleasure along the way, and mounted up towards heaven, and found a new brightness over all the earth. To think that she who was only Mary should suddenly have become the princess of a kingdom all her own—to think that she should be all at once of consequence enough to make a man abandon all his duties! It was indeed very wrong of a man in Mr. Asquith’s position to abandon any of his duties for the sake of this little girl: but Mary did not see it in that light. As she walked by herself up the avenue she laughed loud out, and then felt dreadfully ashamed of herself, and dried her eyes, which were full of tears. How foolish it was of him! To say even to herself that this man, who was the best man she had ever met, was foolish, was a sort of delightful little sin to Mary, a piece of profanity—a small wickedness. How dared she say he was foolish? and yet—oh! how foolish he was. How nice of him to be so silly! Perhaps he was afraid that she did not care for him, would not have him if he asked her? No doubt that was what he was afraid of. To think that he knew Latin and Greek and theology, and all manner of things, and could read German, yet could not read what was in Mary’s eyes! She sat down by the roadside, before the house was in sight, not daring to see anybody, glad to be alone, to have time to think over again what he said and how he looked, and to say to herself how silly it was!
All this time, as will be seen, Mary had not the faintest enlightenment as to what it was that Mr. Asquith feared. She never thought of his poverty, of what it is to be a poor curate or a poor curate’s wife, without hope of advancement, or money enough to keep the wolf from the door. She thought only of him, and how glad she would be to do everything for him—to live in a cottage, and look after her own little housekeeping, and make him comfortable, more comfortable than ever he had been in his life, and to help him and work with him. She thought that to be the first in all the world to one who was the first in all the world to her, was the fairest fate that earth could give. She had no doubt on the subject, or fear—for how could she tell, who had never had above a few shillings in her life, how much two people require to live upon? or how could she take into consideration other consequences, which were more serious still?
Mr. Asquith went to see Sally Williams that day, and for many days after, as long as the poor girl lived, but never again did he meet Mary there. He did not see her at the almshouses, he encountered her nowhere—which indeed was a little instinctive coquetry mingled with modesty on Mary’s part: for she would not, after having exerted herself to bring him back, allow him to find her in his way, as if that had been what she wanted. And now it was the curate’s turn to be astonished, and to feel himself injured. Though he had retired from his daily duties in order to avoid Mary, he felt himself sadly aggrieved, now that he had returned to them, to find that Mary avoided him. Instead of congratulating himself that they were both of accord, and that in this way his purpose would be the better accomplished, this inconsistent young man felt sadly disappointed, taken in, cheated, and ill-used. Why had she spoken to him so, if she had meant to conclude their intercourse in this way? Mr. Asquith’s annoyance was all the greater from the fact that Mary did not neglect her little offices of charity in order to avoid him as he had done in order to avoid her. She was cleverer than he was, so far as this went, and had her faculties more free. He was always hearing wherever he went that Miss Mary had just gone. “It is not five minutes since Miss Mary went. She is that good,” said poor Mrs. Williams, “now that my poor girl is sinking, she never misses a day.” “You’re kindly welcome, Mr. Asquith, sir,” said the old woman at the almshouse. “Take that chair, sir. It’s one as was set for Miss Mary. She was scarce gone when I see you coming.” Mr. Asquith was fretted beyond description by these perpetual missings. He could not get them or her out of his head. Sometimes he was more angry than words can say. He thought she did it on purpose (which was not far from the truth), in order to show him how presumptuous he was, and how impossible that she could ever care for him (which was not the truth at all). And at last the poor curate was wrought to such a point of exasperation that he made up his mind, when he did meet her, that he would tell her what she had done, and how cruelly she had treated him, and then leave the parish altogether. But he would not go without letting her know. She should be made aware that what was sport to her was death to him. To have wrung a man’s heart and spoiled his life might appear to her a small matter, but the curate was resolved that so far he would have his revenge, since he could have nothing else, and that she should know what she had done.
They met at last quite accidentally, in the quietest road, where their interview was certain not to be disturbed by any intruder. At least, it can scarcely be said that they met; he was jogging wearily, determinedly along, thinking how he never saw her, and how he must see her, once at least, before the end of all things, when suddenly the grey frock he knew so well appeared round the corner of a cross road, and Mary, not seeing him, went on before him, tranquilly, on her way home. The curate’s heart stood still. Should he, now that the matter was in his own hands, put off the crisis? Should he have it out now once for all? After standing still for that one moment, his heart bounded up into his throat, wildly beating, and in a long stride or two Mr. Asquith was at Mary’s side.
And now for the vials of wrath that were to be poured out, the passion of love and reproach that was to end all their intercourse, and with it that glimpse of a sweeter life which had come suddenly to the curate in Horton! But when he came up with her he was breathless, partly from haste, partly from agitation, and it was Mary who said the first word. She looked up into his face surprised and smiling, with a sweetness that went to his very heart. There was no guilty consciousness in her eyes. She did not look at him as one who had sinned against him, as one who felt that he had something to reproach her with, but with a look of pleasure, as if she were quite happy in this unexpected meeting. “Oh, Mr. Asquith, is it you? What a long time it is since I have seen you!” she said, in her pleasant voice.
“It is a long time,” said the curate, panting: and then he added, “I fear I have made you change your hours and your habits, which is more than I am worth.”
“Change my hours and my——. I haven’t got any hours or habits,” cried Mary, “and indeed I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, Miss Mary!” he cried. I don’t think he knew her surname at all, or if he once knew it he had forgotten it, for Mary was the only name he ever heard given to her. “Oh, Miss Mary!” he cried, “I never meet you now in any of the cottages wherever I go: and I know how that is. I know that you have seen what was going on in my presumptuous mind: but there was no presumption in it, if you only knew. I know very well I am poor—as poor as—as poor as a church mouse, as people say,—too poor to ask any woman to share my miserable fortunes. Don’t, don’t for heaven’s sake be afraid of me! If I can’t help thinking of you, at least I can help saying it. I gave up my visiting when I saw what was coming: but you spoke to me yourself on that subject. You said, had a man a right to neglect his duty for the sake of—for the sake of—— And I knew that what you said was just. From that day I made up my mind to go on with all my usual visiting, and to go on seeing you, which was always sweet though cruel; to go on as if it did not matter, only never to say a word——”
“And what has made you change your resolution, Mr. Asquith?” said Mary, very demurely, without raising her eyes.
“Change? I have not changed at all,” he said. And then he stopped short, with a look of misery and confusion. “What have I done?” he said. “What have I done? though I did not intend it—it has been too much for me—I have betrayed myself after all!”
And for a moment he turned his back upon her, as if he would have fled.
“Don’t run away,” said Mary, softly touching his arm with her hand. “Why shouldn’t you tell me—whatever you wanted to tell me?—if you did really want to tell me anything,” she said.
“Oh, Mary!” cried the curate, and paused; for the words came so fast upon him that he did not know which to say first.
“Yes?” said Mary softly, giving him one little sidelong glance: and then her face crimsoned over, and she drooped her head, but still with a modest note of interrogation in the turn of her fine little pink ear.
CHAPTER VI.
PARADISE LANE.
“WE must tell them all directly,” Mary said.
“Tell them!” cried the curate. For one brief half hour he had forgotten everything, and given himself up to that delight which once in his life every man has a right to—or so at least we think when we are young—the delight of loving and being loved. The bare country road had turned into Paradise, into Elysium for both of them; it was more beautiful and sweet than anything out of heaven. The green boughs waved softly between them and the celestial blue above, making a chequer-work of sun and shade that flickered and danced, and made the very dust under their feet happy; and as for the flowers in the hedgerows, no roses were ever so sweet. They walked upon enchanted ground, and all nature sang soft hymns of praise over their happiness, which was sweeter than the roses, or anything that earth, our homely foster-mother, can give. She was wistfully glad of it, that brown and faithful nurse, that mother earth, who could strew flowers at their feet, but could not bestow such blessedness. But when Mary said those simple words, the world, which had nothing to do with that hour, suddenly rolled its great shadow round, coming between the curate and the sunshine of heaven. “Tell them!” he said, and his countenance fell. Oh yes, he knew very well they must be told: but he had been able to forget it for that moment of delight.
“Yes, tell them. You meant that?” said Mary, looking up somewhat alarmed in his face.
“Oh yes, I meant that,” he said with a groan—“at least, I didn’t mean anything. I never meant to tell you, let alone them.”
“So you said,” Mary remarked, in her demure way; “you told me you had made up your mind not to tell me——” and she laughed in the pleasure of her maiden power.
“Oh, my darling!” the curate said, “it would have been better if I had not told you. It would have been better if I had gone away, and smothered my heart or myself, if necessary, rather than have brought this trouble on you.”
“Trouble!” she cried, and laughed. Mary was not a bit afraid. She was as ignorant as the bird who was singing little saucy songs and melodious gibes at them overhead, calling on all his bird neighbours to make fun of the lovers, who had waited for June and full summer, instead of building their nests like prudent folk in the early spring. Mary knew about as much as the thrush did on the subject of ways and means—and she was not afraid.
“They will not hear me speak,” he said; “they will ask me how I could dare to think of dragging you down into my poverty? I know that is what they will do—and they will be right,” he added with a great sigh.
Mary paused a little in surprise, and then she asked, “I wonder what you think I am? Do you think I am rich?”
“No,” he said, pressing her hand close to his side. “Thank heaven! I know you are not rich.”
“I see very little to thank heaven about,” said Mary, “on that score: perhaps you think that I have great prospects, or that somebody is going to leave me a great deal of money, or—something. Why, I have not a penny in the world! And my aunt is always shaking her head and saying, ‘If anything happens to your uncle!’ Do you know what I should have to do then? I should have to go out as a governess, if anybody would have me to teach their children—or perhaps as a maid in the nursery.”
“Oh, hush!” he cried. “You a maid in the nursery! But, Mary darling, you would be almost better as a governess than you will be with me. Do you know how much I have a year? A hundred pounds and my lodging, and I don’t know where I am to get any more.”
“A hundred pounds! I never had a hundred shillings of my own. It seems quite a great sum,” said Mary. “I should think we could do very well upon that. We must have a cottage of our own though. I have often thought a cottage might be made very pretty if one were to take a little trouble. I should like it so much better than a big house.”
“Oh, Mary, you little angel! You have just come astray out of heaven, and you know nothing about this hard world,” he cried.
“Oh, don’t I?” said Mary, with a laugh of superior wisdom,—“much more than you do, I am sure, though you are so much cleverer than I. We could not have many servants, that’s true. But what is the good of them—except to get in each other’s way, and make aunt cross? I’ll tell you what I shall have. I’ll have a nice strong big girl out of the schools, and train her myself: and you’ll see, after a while, all the ladies will be contending to get one of the girls whom Mrs. ——”
Here Mary paused, and blushed redder than ever, and with a cough turned her head away.
“Finish your sentence,” said the happy curate, too happy for the moment to remember how foolish it was. “Mrs. ——? Finish what you were going to say.”
“You know well enough,” said Mary, who in the delightful fervour of settling everything had thus been carried away so much farther than she intended. She added after a moment in a lower tone, “You know it is a very funny name.”
“I think now it is the sweetest name in the world. Mary Asquith,” he said—“Mrs. Asquith—I prefer it to any in the world.”
“Well,” said Mary, considering, “it has this for it, that it is not just like anybody’s name. It has a great deal of character in it. You don’t forget it as soon as you have heard it, like Smith or Brown.”
“It is an old name,” he said, with a little pride, “and one very well known in Cumberland, and known only for good, Mary. But,” he added suddenly, after this outburst, “you are not to suppose that I am claiming to belong to a great family. Oh no, we are only yeomen; we are not equal to the Prescotts. We have an old house, which will be my brother’s, but not like Horton—a homely old place, no better than a farmhouse. That is another thing that will be against me,” he said, his voice sinking out of its happiness and pride into subdued tones.
“There cannot be anything against you,” said Mary, giving a little pressure to his arm. “Do you think I am such a prize? They will be glad, I shouldn’t wonder, to get me off their hands; my poor aunt will not have to say any more, ‘Mary, if anything happens to your uncle!’ I shall have my own—person,” she said, pausing for a word, and laughing over it, “my own—person to take care of me—and what more does any girl require?”
Mr. Asquith was cheered, and yet not quite cheered, by these encouragements. He was very happy, and yet quite miserable. Nothing could take away from him the delight and glory which had fallen upon him out of heaven in that homely green lane of Paradise. But—his mind made a leap forward, or backward rather, to the things he had seen, to the facts of life which he knew, to the hard, hard existence of poverty. Had any man a right to drag down a woman, a girl so gently bred as Mary, into that gulf? had any man a right to bring children into the world with no bread to give them? He had held very distinct views upon this subject, and had sworn to himself that he never would so sin against the innocent, against the unborn. How often had he seen what followed in other poor clerical houses! He had seen the pretty young bride, all unthinking, all unfearing, pleased with her little house, and her married dignity, dragged down into a careworn troubled woman, a hard-working woman, with rough hands and a burdened mind, manual labour, and mental care, her strength and her heart both failing as the heavy years went on. To think of Mary, so young and sweet, so thoughtless and lighthearted, so ignorant, bless her! of all these horrible realities, sinking, sinking year by year into such a woman—and by his means! The curate shrank within himself, his heart seemed to contract with a great pang. By his means! all because he could not contain himself, could not keep silent; could not love her without betraying his love. Oh, what a thing it was, that highest of human sentiments, that it could not curb a man’s tongue, or restrain his impulses! That a man should love and yet not be able to keep silent, to spare the object of his love! He might have loved her all his life, and his love would have been a sweetness and a strength to him; but he ought to have respected her innocence and her youth, and never have told it, locked it up in his own bosom. If he had never spoken, God bless her! that would have given her a pang: but had he gone away, in a little time she would have forgotten him. But now, there could be no forgetting—now there was no going back—and she herself would insist upon the consummation of this sacrifice, upon giving him the solace of her sweet companionship, making him happy, making herself a servant, enduring toil, and privation, and care for his sake. For the curate knew that, whatever any one might say, it was the woman that had the worst of it. He would have to submit that she should be his servant, executing even menial offices, with those hands which he might kiss and reverence, but whose work he could not do. The woman had the worst of it: and he knew so many cases,—some where she had sunk altogether into a half cook, half nurse—a careworn creature spoiled with toil; and some in which she had developed into a patient angel, sacred and consecrated in her labours and sufferings. Mary would be that, the lover thought; and yet, who could tell that she would be that? and who could dare to open to a woman’s feet that path of tears and bid her tread it, whatever might await her at the end? He went home to his lodgings with his heart bleeding, although his brain was giddy with happiness, and with the desire to believe that in his case there might be a difference, and that, for once, for once, all precedents notwithstanding, things might go well.
As for Mary, there never was a lighter heart than that with which she ran up the avenue, in too great a flutter and ferment to walk steadily, too happy to keep still. She felt as if she had wings, as if she trod upon air, and burst out singing, as she ran along under the trees, from pure joy. She had got her little promotion, the only promotion of which her life was capable. She had got her own world, her own life, her own share of the universe of God. To be sure she had been happy enough all her life, but how colourless that life looked amid the light and sunshine that streamed upon this! “Only Mary” in a house full of people was more important, and Mrs. Asquith in her own house, the dispenser of happiness, the little monarch of all she surveyed! What a difference! What a difference! These were the secondary matters, the first beyond all comparison being him, the man out of all the world whom God had chosen for Mary. It seemed to her that a whole long chain of special providences had brought them together. That he should have come here, of all places in the world—he for whom every parish in England would have competed had they but known. That he should have come to the Hall, and yet not fallen in with the ways of the Hall, or fallen in love with Anna or Sophie, which would have been so much more likely. That he should have met her, and liked her, Mary, the little one who was of no account, best! Could such things have happened had not the heavens specially interested themselves, and taken unusual trouble to bring it all about? Even the meeting this morning was providential, for she was to have gone off on a visit the very next day, and in the meantime a hundred things might have happened to close his mouth. And to think that he should have been so frightened to speak. Oh, how foolish men were sometimes, though they were also so clever! What great prospects did he suppose she could have to make him not good enough for her? Not good enough for her! It was almost with a little shriek of happiness, and scorn, and admiration that Mary commented to herself upon his intentions and his self-reproaches. The foolish fellow! the darling! the noble, humble, good!—everybody but himself knowing how much too good for her he was.
Women have a great deal to bear in this world. Their lot is in many respects harder than that of men, and neither higher education, nor the suffrage, nor anything else can mend it. But there is one moment at least in which a girl has always the best of it, and that is when she has just accepted her lover. At that blissful epoch she has all the pleasure, with little or nothing of the care. It is he who has to encounter the anxious father or careful trustee. He has to meet the scoff with which those personages receive the trembling announcement of a small, a very small income. He has to think where the money is to come from to set up the new household. She has the best of it for once in her life. Afterwards the tables are turned. Not always, perhaps, but very often; and always, I am inclined to think, when poverty is the lot.
But Mary thought of none of all these things; with her it was all sunshine. She could scarcely keep from bursting out with her great news to everyone she met. To sit down at lunch and eat as if nothing had happened was almost an impossibility. If they only knew! They might have known, indeed, had they looked at her, that something had happened. But nobody took any notice. A slight accident had happened to John, of which he was discoursing at great length. “I thlipped,” he said, “on the grass; there was nothing to make me thlip that I could see. It was thlippery with the rain, or because Morton had mowed it this morning. It was the strangest thing I ever thaw. On the grass—the thimplest thing! But I might have thprained my ankle. Yes, I might. I can’t think how I didn’t thprain my ankle,” said John.
“But you didn’t, you see, so it doesn’t matter,” said his father.
“He might have, though; and what a thing that would have been!” Mrs. Prescott remarked, who was more sympathetic, and had a great leaning to her eldest son.
“Yes, it would have been a very bad busineth,” said John.
And that was the sort of talk that was going on while Mary sat beaming, and nobody found her little secret out.