MR. PRESCOTT spread himself out before the fireplace, standing with his legs apart, and his coat tails extended. There was, of course, no fire in the month of June, but an Englishman spreading himself out upon his own hearthrug, like a cock on his appropriate elevation, is more an Englishman than at any other moment. The Squire looked benevolently, yet severely upon the curate, who sat before him, twisting his soft hat in his hands. This was the only sign of embarrassment Mr. Asquith showed, but it was very discernible. He sat with his face turned towards his judge, without any shrinking or quailing, a little pale, very self-possessed andquiet. It was a very serious moment, and that the curate well knew.
“My niece!” Mr. Prescott said, and his countenance cleared a little, for he had thought at first that it must be one of the princesses of his house that this man was wooing. “Mary! why, Mary is not old enough for this sort of thing. How old is she? Why, she is only a child!”
“You have got used to considering her a child, Mr. Prescott; but I believe she is one-and-twenty, if you will inquire.”
Mr. Prescott made a calculation within himself, and after a moment said, “So she is: I believe she is in her two-and-twentieth year. Who would have thought it! You must know,” he added, “Mr. Asquith—though I don’t know what your ideas may be on that subject—that though Mary is my niece, she has no money, not a penny. My sister was sadly imprudent in her marriage. Her orphan child, of course, had a home with me, but there is nothing in the way of fortune, not a sou.”
“So I understood,” said the curate, “otherwise I should never have ventured to approach her, being myself so poor a man.”
“Ah!” said the Squire, looking at him doubtfully; then he added with cheerfulness, “You are still on the first step, Mr. Asquith, there is no telling how far you may go.”
“I am not the stuff of which bishops are made,” said the curate, with a short laugh.
“Well, there is no telling,” said the other; and then he entered upon business. “You will understand,” he said, “that I must make certain inquiries before going any farther. In the matter of family now. We are not rich people, but in that respect we Prescotts have certain pretensions——”
“In that respect it is very easy to answer you, Mr. Prescott. So far as old family goes, mine is old enough. We have been in Cumberland in direct descent, father and son, settled in the same place, for three hundred years. But——” Mr. Prescott had been nodding his head in approval,saying to himself that he knew Asquith was a good name in the North. He looked up, but only with the faintest shadow on his face, at the curate’s “but.”
“But,” repeated Mr. Asquith firmly, “though we are an old-established race, we are not what you would call gentry, Mr. Prescott. My father is of the old class of statesmen in Cumberland——”
“What is that?” asked the Squire hastily.
“It is, I suppose, what you call yeomen in the South.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Prescott. He recovered from this shock, however, in shorter time than might have been expected; for a substantial yeoman is a very respectable personage, and there are often nice little hoards of money behind them; and then it was only Mary, after all.
“I don’t pretend to say that I should not have been better pleased had you sprung from a family of gentry, Mr. Asquith; but after all, to have a family of any kind is something in these days. And you, of course, have had the education of agentleman.” The curate winced a little at this, not liking the idea that he had not always been a gentleman, even though he had the moment before disowned any such pretensions. But he did not betray his impatience, and Mr. Prescott continued, “The most important point is: you propose to marry my niece: what have you to support her? I have told you she has nothing of her own. Are you in circumstances to keep her in the position to which she has been accustomed? Your private means——”
“Mr. Prescott,” said the curate crushing his hat in his tremulous hands, “that is exactly the question—that is the painful part—I have nothing. I have no private means; I have no expectations to speak of. My father, when he dies, will leave me perhaps some trifle—a few hundred pounds; but the fact is, I have nothing—nothing but my income from my curacy.” He had not strength enough to meet the Squire’s astonished gaze. His head drooped forward a little. “I am aware that you must think me presumptuous to the lastdegree, even careless of her comfort—for I have nothing but my poverty to offer—nothing——” for once in his life Mr. Asquith’s courage fairly failed him, and he would have liked to run away, and be heard of in Horton no more. Oh, happy Mary, before whom no such ordeal lay!
“This is a very strange statement, Mr. Asquith,” the Squire said.
The curate assented with a movement of his head; he could not say any more.
“It is a very strange statement,” Mr. Prescott repeated. “You don’t expect, I hope, that I—with the many calls upon me——”
Mr. Asquith half got up from his chair; he raised his hand, half deprecating, half indignant.
“I have a great many claims upon me,” said the Squire reassured; “the estate does not bring in half it once did. You know as well as I do how landed property has deteriorated; and my second son is in the army, and has a great many expenses, and my girls to be provided for—I cannot be responsible for anything so far asMary is concerned. I have given her her education and all that, but as for any allowance——”
“If she had anything of the sort, do you think I could ever have spoken?” the curate said.
Mr. Prescott was reassured: there was obvious sincerity in this disclaimer. He stood for a moment silent with a perturbed countenance, and then he said suddenly, “That’s all very well, Mr. Asquith, but you’re not like a silly girl who knows nothing—you’ve some acquaintance with the world. It is quite right of you to express such sentiments. But if you marry her, how are you to keep her? that is the question for me.”
“Sir,” said the curate, “you have a right to say anything—everything on that subject. Itisthe question, I know all the gravity of it. It is what I cannot answer even to myself.”
“If you would not have spoken in the other case, supposing she had something of her own—how was it that you spoke now?” said the Squire, pushing his advantage; “a man ought to be able to deny himself in such circumstances. Men ofyour cloth permit themselves freedoms which other poor men don’t. A parson marries and has a large family, and everybody is sorry for him, whereas, if it was a poor soldier who did it, or a clerk in a public office, or——”
The curate did not speak, it was all perfectly true. He had said the same himself a hundred times. He had said, even to the unfortunate culprit himself, that a clergyman, because he was a clergyman, had no right. And now it was brought home to himself, and he had not a word to say.
“What does my brother Hugh give you?” said the inexorable Squire. “A hundred a year? I suppose it is as much as he can afford. And how are you to live with a wife on a hundred a year? How do you live on it without a wife? Percy, besides his pay, costs me—but that is nothing to the purpose. I ask you, can you live on it yourself, Asquith, without any supplement, without anything from home?”
The curate smiled somewhat grimly. Anythingfrom home! He had been obliged to pay back to his poor father various sums expended on his education, which was a very different thing from receiving help from home. He said, “I have been able to manage—without any assistance,” in a subdued tone. It was not pleasant to be thus cross-examined, but the Squire had a right to ask all manner of questions. He had put himself in Mr. Prescott’s power.
“Supposing you have—I think it’s very much to your credit. And there’s the lodgings, of course, that’s always something. But supposing you have—how are you to keep a wife? And have you thought of the consequences, sir?” said the Squire severely. “If it was only a wife even; but you know what always follows—half-a-dozen children before you know where you are. How are you to educate them, sir? How are you to feed them? How are you to set them out in the world? And yet you come and ask me, a man that has seen such things happen a hundred times, to give you my niece.”
Mr. Asquith blushed like a girl at this suggestion. Mary herself was scarcely more modest, more delicate in all such embarrassing questions. And though he was not a humorous man by nature, a gleam of the ludicrous made its way into the question through the fierce countenance of the Squire. “These consequences,” he said, “cannot come all at once. They will take a few years at least: and I don’t calculate on staying always at Horton. In a town, in a large parish, curates have better pay.”
“And are worked off their feet, they and all their belongings, their wives made drudges of, regular parish women, Bible women, or whatever you call them. I know what goes on in large parishes, in great towns. And the children grow up on the streets. No, the country’s bad enough, but at least they can get fresh air and milk in the country, and people may be kind to them: and there’s always a schoolmaster or someone to give them a little education.”
“Mr. Prescott,” said the curate mildly, “the children you are so kindly anxious about are not born yet, and perhaps never will be. Don’t let us go any farther than is necessary. The question in the meantime concerns only Mary and myself.”
“And how long will that be the case?” cried the Squire. But presently he calmed down. “You might get food perhaps,” he said. “I say perhaps—I don’t see how you are to do it—but allow that you could get food out of it, and a cottage to live in—where are your clothes to come from? Where are your shoes to come from? Mary is a lady; she has been brought up to have servants to wait upon her. Is my niece to be your housemaid, Mr. Asquith? your cook, and your washerwoman, and everything? You should marry somebody that is used to that sort of thing. Somebody who has the strength for it. Somebody in your own class of life!”
The curate rose up with a flush of anger on his face. He could keep his temper, but yet it stung him, all the more that it was just enough, and he had already said all this to himself. He said, “Ifear it will do no good to talk of it longer, Mr. Prescott—you drive me to despair. And I don’t deny that it is all true, everything you say. But I shall not always be curate at Horton. I shall not always continue a curate even, I hope. Sometimes, even without much influence, if a man does his work well, promotion comes.”
“Very seldom,” said the Squire.
“Still it comes sometimes: and if ever man had an inducement to work—will you think it over and try to look upon it more favourably? I know what a sacrifice it must be for her. Still, she has a right to choose too.”
“To choose—at her age—knowing nothing of the world! Whatever you felt, sir, you should have kept it to yourself—you should not have spoken. How is a girl to know?”
“I thought so too,” said the poor curate, humbly. “But a man has not always command of himself.”
“A man ought always to have command of himself when another person’s comfort is concerned, especially a clergyman, who makes more profession of virtue than other men,” said the Squire, following him to the door, and sending that last volley after him. Mr. Asquith went away from the Hall a miserable man. He had not the heart to ask for Mary, to tell her how he had failed. As he hurried away, however, down the avenue, his heart, which had sunk altogether, began to rise a little in indignation. Why a clergyman more than other men? That a clergyman should be shut out from that side of life altogether was comprehensible. He might take vows as in the Church of Rome, there was reason in that. When men were so poor as he was, instead of tantalising them with the idea of freedom, and exposing them to all its risks, it might be better if they were under the protection of vows and forbidden to marry. But as that was not so, and the English ideal was quite different, why should it be worse in a clergyman than in other men? A clergyman could not struggle and push for promotion. He could not compete andshoulder his way through the crowd. Must he give up also all that made existence sweet? And then the further question arose, would it have been better for Mary had he held his tongue and gone away and never told her he loved her? Had he perhaps closed that chapter to her too? Perhaps she might have forgotten him, and learned to love a richer man. But then perhaps she might not. Naturally a man feels that a woman who has learned to lovehimwill not easily change, or transfer her affections to another. Would it not have been a wrong to Mary had he kept silence, had he never told her? It is better even to love and lose, the poet says, than never to love at all. It is better to have the triumph and delight of knowing that you are loved, even if that love never comes to any earthly close. Why should Mary have lost that because they were both poor? Nobody could take away from them that moment of blessedness, that sense of sweetest union, even if they might never marry at all—never—
But here a pang which was very acute and poignant like a sword went through the curate’s heart. Never marry at all! Lose her, leave her, be parted from her, after what they had said to each other! Oh, what deep shadows come along with the brightest sunshine of life! What was the good of living at all, of having known each other, of having recognized the loveliness and sweetness of existence, if this was what had to be?
THE reader who is experienced, and knows how things go in this world, especially in questions of love and marriage, will not be surprised to hear that notwithstanding this troublous passage and several more, Mary was married to the curate in the autumn of that same year. When two people have set their hearts on this conclusion, it is astonishing how very seldom they are foiled, or disappointed in it. One or the other must break down in resolution: there must be a faint heart somewhere before parents or guardians or trustees or any authorities whatsoever can resist them. In the present case the authorities were weaker than usual, for they were not agreed. Mr. Prescott, to his astonishment, found that evenhis wife was not at one with him on this important question. He hurried to the morning room in which she was sitting to tell her, still in all the excitement of the discussion with the curate; but his fervour was chilled by the very first words she said. “I let him know very clearly what my opinion was. I told him that this sort of thing was doubly culpable in a clergyman. Between ourselves, it is only clergymen who do it. They believe in some sort of miracle, I suppose—feeding by the ravens, or that sort of thing: or else they expect to be maintained by the girl’s family; but I soon let him see that nothing of the kind was to be looked for here.”
“I hope, however, you didn’t send him away for good, John?” said Mrs. Prescott, with a serious look.
“Send him away for good! I daresay he did not see much good in it: but I gave him a very decided answer, if that is what you mean.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Prescott, “I don’t mean tosay that it would be a good marriage for Mary: but very few men come to Horton at all, and we can’t expect to live for ever, and it would be better that she should have somebody to take care of her. I am not a matchmaker, you know. I have been so too little, for there are Sophie and Anna still. But I do think that in certain circumstances you ought to be very careful how you reject an offer. If anything were to happen to us, what would become of your niece? The girls might not care to have her always with them, and it would not be at all suitable to have her here with John. She would be in a very embarrassing position, poor child—one trying for all of them. But if she had a husband to take care of her——”
“A husband who could not give her bread, much less butter to her bread.”
“Oh, no one can ever tell. Someone with a living to give away might take a fancy to him: clergymen have many ways of ingratiating themselves. Or he might get a curacy in a town,where the pay is better, and where it is important to get a man who can preach. He is a very good preacher, far better than your brother Hugh, who always sends me to sleep. I don’t know why you should reject Mr. Asquith. He has a great many things in his favour, and Mary likes him. Has she told me? Well, without her telling me, I hope I am not so stupid as to be ignorant of what’s in a girl’s mind. She will be very much surprised, and I am not so sure that she will obey.”
“Mary—not obey!—I think you must be dreaming.”
“It is all very easy to speak. Mary is most obedient about everything that is of no consequence: but this is of great consequence, John. And the girl is of age, though we have all got into the habit of treating her like a child. Why should she let her best chance drop, because you don’t like it? I don’t mean to say that it is much of a chance. But still a man like that may always get on, whereas a girl has very little likelihood,by herself, of getting on. And we can’t always be here to look after her.”
“I don’t see why you should be so very determined on that subject,” said the Squire, with a little irritation. “We are not so dreadfully aged, when all is said.”
“No, we are not dreadfully aged, but we can’t last forever. Suppose you were to be taken from us,” said Mrs. Prescott, with placidity, “three girls would be a great responsibility for me: and suppose I were to go first, you would feel it still more. Indeed, I should be very sorry to refuse an offer for Mary. To see her with a husband to take care of her, would be a great comfort to me. Of course all that we can do must be for our own girls—and not too much for them,” the mother said.
The Squire went out for his walk that day full of thought. He was a man who at the bottom of his heart was a kind man, and one with a conscience, a conscience of the kind which sometimes gives its possessor a great deal of trouble. Heasked himself what was his duty to his sister’s child? not to plunge her into poverty and the cares of life in order to get rid of the responsibility from his own shoulders. Oh no, that could never be his duty. But, at the same time, on the other hand, to leave her in the care of a good husband was the best thing that could happen to any girl. He knew enough of Mr. Asquith to be sure that he would be a good husband. He was a good man, a man quite superior to the ordinary type; though the curate was not very popular at the Hall, still the Squire had perception enough to know this—that he was above the average, not at all a common man. And he must be very much in love with Mary, knowing that she had no money and no expectations, to have subjected himself to such a cross-examination as Mr. Prescott knew he had inflicted, on her account. Enlightened by his wife’s remarks, the Squire thought the matter all over again from another point of view. The man was very poor, but then Mary was very simple in her tastes, and if thegirl really preferred to marry him in a cottage, rather than to live on at the Hall, perhaps it was true that her uncle had no right to cross her. It was not exactly, he said to himself, as if he were her father. She had always been a docile little thing, but his wife seemed to think that there was a possibility that in this matter Mary might not be so docile, that she might take her own way; and if she did so there would be a breach in the family, and he would be compelled to withdraw his protection from her, and her mother’s story might be enacted over again. Mary’s mother’s story had not been happy. She too had been asked in marriage by a poor man, and had been refused by her father. And she had run away with her lover, and had suffered more than Mr. Prescott liked to think of before she died. He said to himself now that perhaps if his father had consented, if they had tried to help Burnet on instead of letting him sink, things might have been different. Anyhow, he would never allow that episode to be repeated. And if Mary wouldmarry Mr. Asquith, she must do it with the consent of her people, and everything that could be done must be done for her husband.
He went across the park to the rectory and consulted his brother Hugh on the subject, who was first amused and then shook his head. “I knew there would be mischief when I saw what kind of a man the fellow was,” the rector said.
“What kind of a man! Why, he is not a lady’s man at all, he plays no tennis, he never comes up in the afternoon, he seems to care nothing for society. Neither John nor the girls can make anything of him.”
“Ah, that’s the dangerous sort,” said the Rev. Hugh, “there’s no flutter in him. He settles on one, and there’s an end of it. He’s a terrible fellow to stick to a thing. Take my word for it, John, you’ll have to give in.”
The Squire liked this view of the subject less than his wife’s view, and went home roused and irritated, vowing that he would not give in. But by that time he found Anna and Sophie discussingMary’s trousseau, and the whole household astir. “Of course she must have her things nice, and plenty of them, for one never knows whether she will be able to get any more when they’re done,” her cousins said. They were very good-natured. They never doubted the propriety of accepting the curate, and were, indeed, very strong in their mother’s view of the subject—that seeing the uncertainty of life and the possibility any day of “something happening” to papa, to get Mary off the hands of the family and settled for life was a thing in every way to be desired. Mr. Prescott naturally did not contemplate the likelihood of “something happening” to himself with so much philosophy. But as they were all of one accord on the subject, and his own thoughts so much divided, he gave in, of course, as everybody knew he would do.
And the fact of Mr. Asquith’s extreme poverty had its share, too, in quickening the marriage. A very rich man and a very poor man have nothing to wait for; they are alike in that—the rich,because his means are assured; the poor because he has no means to assure. There is nothing to wait for in either case. The rector gave Mr. Asquith privately to understand that he would be on the outlook for something better for him; and recommended the curate to do the same thing for himself. “For this may do to begin with, but it is poor pickings for two—and still less for three or four,” Mr. Hugh Prescott said. And thus everything was arranged. John Prescott was the only one who took any unexpected part in the matter. He astonished them all one day by announcing suddenly that Mary must have a “thettlement.” “A settlement?” said his father. “Poor child, there is nothing to settle either on one side or the other.”
The conversation took place at luncheon one day, when Mary was at the rectory.
“That’s just why there must be a thettlement,” repeated John, with an obstinate air which he could put on when he chose, and of which they were all a little afraid.
“What nonsense!” said Mrs. Prescott; “her clothes are all there will be to settle, and they couldn’t be taken from her, whatever might happen.”
“I know what I’m thaying,” said John. “She wants thomething to fall back upon, it he dies; for he may die, as well as another.”
“That’s very true,” said Mr. Prescott, with some energy. He was relieved to feel that there was someone else to whom “something might happen,” as well as himself.
“She must have a thouthand poundth,” John said.
And then there arose a cry in the room, a sort of concerted yet unconcerted and unharmonious union of voices. The Squire made his exclamation in a deep growling bass. Mrs. Prescott came in with a sort of alto, and the girls gave a short shrill shriek. A thousand pounds! thousands of pounds were not plentiful in Horton. Anna and Sophie themselves knew that very few would fall to their share, and neither of them hadso much as a curate to make a living for her. They had been very willing to be liberal about the trousseau, but a thousand pounds! that was a different matter altogether. They all gazed with horror at the revolutionary who proposed this. John was not clever, as everybody knew; he looked still less clever than he was. He had pale blue eyes of a wandering sort, which did not look as if they were very secure in their sockets, and a long fair moustache drooping over the corners of his mouth. And he had a habit of sticking a glass in one eye, which fell out every minute or two and made a break in his conversation. Many people about Horton were of opinion that he was “not all there,” but his family did not generally think so. At this moment, however, with one accord it occurred to them all that there was something not quite sane about John.
“Thir,” said John to his father, “you needn’t trouble if you’ve any objection. I mean to do it mythelf.”
“Do it yourself! you must be out of yoursenses,” cried his mother. “Where will you get a thousand pounds? I never heard such madness in all my life.”
“I suppose he means to take it off his legacy,” said the Squire, pale with emotion; “if you’ve got a thousand pounds to dispose of, you had better look a little nearer home. There’s Percy always drawing upon me, and there’s the house falling to pieces——”
“Or if you want to give it away, give it to your sisters, who have a great deal more to keep up with their little money than ever Mary will have,” Mrs. Prescott said.
John did not say much. “I’ve thpoken to Bateman about the thettlement,” he informed them, looking round dully with those unsteady eyes of his, with an awkward jerk of his head and twist of his face to arrest the fall of the eyeglass. The family, looking at him, were all exceptionally impressed with the dulness of John’s appearance, the queerness of his aspect. Really he did not look as if he were “all there.” But they wereperfectly convinced they might move Horton House as soon as John, and that the settlement on Mary, which they all thought so completely unnecessary, was an accomplished thing.
Mary was more affected by it than she had ever been by anything in her life. John!—she said to herself that he had always taken her part, always been kind to her. Like the rest of the family, she had regretted sometimes that the dashing Percy, who was so much nicer to look at, so much more of a personage, so full of spirit and life, had not been the elder brother. But Percy would have kept all his pounds to himself, everybody knew, though he had the air of being far more open-handed than his brother. Percy, however, on this emergency came out too in a very good light. He sent her a set of gold ornaments, a necklace and a bracelet of Indian work, for he was in India at the time, along with a delightful letter, asking how she could answer to herself for marrying first of all, she, who had always been the little one, and who could only be,Percy thought, about fifteen now. “Tell Asquith I think he is a very lucky fellow,” Percy wrote. John never said a word, even at the wedding breakfast, when it was expected he should propose the health of the bride and bridegroom. All that he did was to get up from his seat, looking about him dully with those unsteady eyes, give a gasp like a fish, and then sit down again, his eyeglass rattling against his plate as it fell, which was the only sound he produced. But everybody knew what he meant, which was the great matter. And as for the “thettlement,” the wisest man in England could not have arranged it more securely than John had done.
And so Mary and the curate were married in the late autumn, when the leaves were covering all the country roads, and the November fogs were coming on.
THE Asquiths, though they were so poor, got on very pleasantly at first. Mary had forty-five pounds a year from her thousand, and thought herself a millionaire; and Uncle Hugh gave the curate twenty pounds more in lieu of the lodgings, which were not adapted for a married man. With this twenty pounds they got a very pretty cottage—a little house which Mr. Prescott said was good enough for anybody; where, indeed, the widow of the last rector had lived till her death; and which had a pleasant garden, and was far above the pretensions of people possessing an income which even with these additions only came to a hundred and sixty-five pounds a year. The house was furnished for them, almostentirely by their kind friends—a very large contribution coming from the Hall, where there were many rooms that were never used, and even in the lumber-room many articles that were good to fill up. In this way the new married pair acquired some things that were very good and charming, and some things that were much the reverse. They got some Chippendale chairs, and an old cabinet which was in point of taste enough to make the fortune of any house; but they also got a number of things manufactured in the first half of the present century, of which the least said the better. They did not themselves much mind, and probably, being uninstructed, preferred the style of George IV. to that of Queen Anne.
And thus they lived very happily for two or three years. They lived very happy ever after, might indeed have been said of them, as if they had made love and married in a fairy tale. No words could have described their condition better. Mary, delivered from the small talk of the Hortondrawing-room, and living in constant companionship with a man of education, whose tastes were more cultivated and developed than those of the race of squires, which was all she had hitherto known, brightened in intelligence as well as in happiness, and with the quick receptivity of her age grew into, without labour, that atmosphere of culture and understanding which is thefine fleurof education. She did not actually know much more, perhaps, than she had known in her former condition; but she began to understand all kinds of allusions, and to know what people meant when they quoted the poets, or referred to those great characters in fiction who are the most living people under the sun. She no longer required to have things explained to her of this kind. And as for the curate, it was astonishing how he brightened and softened, and became reconciled to the facts of existence; and found beauty and sweetness in those common paths which he had been disposed to look upon with hasty contempt. No two people in the world,perhaps, can live so much together, share everything so entirely, become one another, so to speak, in so complete a way as a country clergyman and his wife. Except the writing of his sermons, there was no part of his work into which Mr. Asquith’s young wife did not enter; and even the sermons, which were all read to her before they were preached, were the better for Mary; for the curate was quick to note when her attention failed, when her eyelids drooped, as they did sometimes, over her eyes. She was far too loyal, and too much an enthusiast, you may be sure, ever to allow in words that those prelections were less than perfect; but Mr. Asquith was clever enough to see that sometimes her attention flagged. Once or twice, before the first year was out, Mary nodded while she listened—a delinquency which she denied almost furiously, with the wrath of a dove; and which was easily explained by the fact that she was at that moment “not very strong:” but which nevertheless Mr. Asquith, as he laughed andkissed her and said, “That was too much for you, Mary,” took to heart. “Too much for me!” she cried; “if you mean far finer and higher than anything I could reach by myself, of course you are quite right, Henry; but only in that sense,” the tears coming into her eyes in the indignation of her protest. The curate did not insist, nor try to prove to her that she had indeed dozed, which some men would have done. He was too delicate and tender for any such brutal ways of proving himself in the right; but, all the same, he laid that involuntary criticism to heart, to the great advantage of his preaching. Thus they did each other mutual good.
And what a beautiful life these two lived! I know a little pair in a little town, with not much more money than the Asquiths, and connections much less important, and surroundings much less pretty—a pair who have only a little house in a street, with unlovely houses of the poor about them, instead of comely cottages, who do very much the same, all honour to them! TheAsquiths flung themselves upon that parish, and took the charge of it with a rush, out of the calm elderly hands which had for years managed it so easily. I do not undertake to say that they did no harm, or that they were always wise; nobody is that I have ever come in contact with: but if there is any finer thing in the world than to maintain a brave struggle with all that is evil on account of others, on account of the poor, who so often cannot help themselves, I don’t know what it is. These two laid siege to all the strongholds of ill in the village—and evil, or the Evil One if you please to put it so, has many such strongholds—with all the energies of their being. They fought against wickedness, against disorder, against disease, against waste, and dirt, and drink; against the coarse habits and unlovely speech of the little rural place. They made a chivalrous attempt to turn all those rustics into ladies and gentlemen—into what is better, Christian men and women, into good and pure and thoughtful persons, considering not only theirlatter end, as the parson had always bidden them to do, but also their present living and all their habits and ways. The curate had been working very steadily, in this sense, since he came to Horton; but when he had, so to speak, Mary’s young enthusiasm, her feminine practicalness, yet scorn of the practical and contempt of all the limits of possibility, poured into him, stimulating his own strength, the result was tremendous. The parish for a moment was taken by surprise, and in its astonishment was ready to consent to anything the young innovators desired. It would sin no more, neither be untidy any more; it would abandon the public-house and wash its babies’ faces three times in the day; it would put something in the savings-bank every Saturday of its life, and open all its windows every morning, and pursue every smell to the death. All this and more it undertook in the consternation caused by that sudden onslaught: and for a little time, with those two active young people in constant circulation among the cottages, giving nobodyany peace, scolding, praising, persuading, contrasting, encouraging, helping too in that incomprehensible way in which the poor do help the poor, a great effect was produced. As for going to church, that was the first and easiest point; and here Mary came in with her music, which the curate did not understand, influencing the choice of the hymns, and getting up choir practices, and heaven knows how many other seductions—artful temptations to the young to do well instead of doing ill—sweetnesses and pleasures to make delightful the narrow way.
“You think you are doing an immense deal,” said Uncle Hugh, “but you’ll find it won’t last.”
“Why shouldn’t it last?” cried Mary. “They are so much happier in themselves. Don’t you think a man must feel what a difference it makes when he comes home sober, and finds a nice supper waiting him on Saturday nights; and then to go out to church with all the children,neat and clean, round him, instead of lounging, dirty, at the door with his pipe?”
“Perhaps it is more comfortable,” said the rector, shaking his head. “Ishould think so, certainly; but it isn’t human nature, my dear. You will find that he will rather have his fling at the public-house, though he feels wretched next morning. He likes to see his children nice; but better still he likes his own pleasure. You’ll find it won’t last.”
“We must be prepared for a few downfalls,” said the curate. “I tell Mary that we must not expect everything to go on velvet. Some of them will fall away; but with patience, and sticking to it, and never giving in——”
“Never giving in!” cried Mary. “Why, uncle, you don’t suppose I am so silly as to think we could build Rome in a day. We quite look for failures now and then,” she said, with her bright face. “We should almost be disappointed if we had no failures; shouldn’t we, Henry? for then it wouldn’t look real; butwith patience and time everything can be done.”
The rector only shook his head. He did not say, as he might have done, that it was very presumptuous of these young people to think they could do more in a few months than he had done in his long incumbency. The rector’s wife was very strong on this point, and quite angry with Mary and the curate for their ridiculous hopes; but Mr. Prescott himself felt, perhaps, that his reign had been an indolent one, and that he had not done all he might. But he shook his head; for, after all, though he had been indolent, he knew human nature better than they did. He was not angry with them; but he had seen such crusades before, and had various sad experiences as to the dying out of enthusiasm, and the failure of hope. And the rector, who was a kind man in his heart, knew through the ladies of the family that the time was approaching when Mary would be “not very strong,” and apt to flag in other matters besides that of listening to her husband’s sermon.And he knew, also, that the conditions of life would change for them; that the young wife would find work of her own to do, which could not be put aside for the parish; and that “patience and time,” on which they calculated, were just what they would not have to give: for when babies began to come, and all their expenses were increased, how were they to go on with one hundred and sixty-five pounds a year? The rector said to himself that he would not discourage them, that they should do what they would as long as they could. But he foresaw that the time would come when Mr. Asquith would be compelled to seek another curacy with a little more money, and when Mary, instead of being the good angel of the parish, would have to be nurse and superior servant-of-all-work at home.
“Poor things!” he said to his wife. “It is sad when you have to acknowledge that you are no longer equal to the task you have set for yourself.”
“I don’t call them poor things,” said Mrs.Prescott. “I think them very presuming, Hugh, after you have spent so many years here, to think they can bring in new principles and make a reformation in a single day.”
“We might have done more, my dear. We have taken things very quietly; most likely we could have done more.”
“You are as bad as they are, with your humility!” cried the rector’s wife. “I have no patience with you. What have you left undone that you ought to have done? I am sure you’ve always been at their beck and call, rising up out of your warm bed to go and visit them in the middle of the night, when you have been sent for—more like a country practitioner than a beneficed clergyman! And though I say it that perhaps shouldn’t say it, never one has been sent away, as you know, that came in want to our pantry door. And as for lyings-in, and those sort of things——” cried the country lady.
“We needn’t go into details. As for your part of it, my dear, I know that’s always been welldone,” said the politic rector. “Anyhow, don’t let us say anything to discourage the Asquiths. It’s always a good thing to stir a parish up.”
“It’s like those revivalists,” said Mrs. Prescott—“a great fuss, and then everything falling back worse than before.”
“Oh no! not worse than before: somebody is always the better for it. I like a good stirring up.”
All this was very noble of the rector, who, if ever he had stirred up the parish, had ceased to do it long ago. Perhaps he was a little moved by the fervent conviction of the curate and the curate’s wife that in their little day, and with the small means at their command, they could do so much; at all events, he let them have their way and try their best. And a great deal of work was done, with an effect by which they were greatly delighted and elated in the first year.
But then came the time when Mary was “not very strong,” and the choir practices and various other things had to be given up—not entirely givenup, for the schoolmaster and his daughter made an attempt to keep them on, which was more trying to the nerves and patience of the invalid than if they had ceased altogether. For jealousies arose, and the different parties thought themselves entitled to carry their grievances to Mrs. Asquith, even when she was very unfit for any disturbance; and everything was very heavy on the curate’s shoulders during that period of inaction which was compulsory on Mary’s part. They had undertaken so much, that when one was withdrawn the other could not but break down with overwork. However, there was presently a re-beginning; and Mary, smiling and happier than ever, prettier than ever, and full of a warmer enthusiasm still, came again to the charge. She understood the poor women, the poor mothers, so much better now, she declared. Even the curate himself was not such an instructor as that little three-weeks-old baby, which did nothing but sleep, and feed, and grow. That was a teacher fresh from heaven; it threw light on so many things, on the verystructure of the world, and how it hung together, and the love of God, and the ways of men. Mary thought she had never before so fully understood the prayer which is addressed to Our Father: she had not known all it meant before: and the curate, indescribably softened, touched, melted out of all perception of the hardness, feeling more than ever the sweetness of life, received this ineffable lesson too.
And so the crusade against the powers of evil was taken up again, with all the new life of this little heavenly messenger to stimulate them; but not quite so much of the more vulgar strength, the physical power, the detachedness and freedom. Mary had to be at home with the baby so often and so long. And the curate had so strong a bond drawing him in the same direction, to make sure that all was going well. But still the parish did not suffer in those young and happy years.
EVEN in the quietest lives the first few years of married life are apt to bring changes: the ideal dies off, with its fairy colours; the realities of ordinary existence come with a leap upon the surprised young people, to whom everything has been enveloped in the glory and the brightness of a dream. That plunge into the matter-of-fact is often more trying to the husband—who rarely sees the bride of his visions drop into the occupations of the housewife and the mother without a certain pang—than to the young woman herself, who in the pride and delight of maternity finds a still higher promotion, and to whom the commonest cares, the most material offices, which she would have shrunk from a littlewhile before, become half divine. But when the house is very poor to begin with, and there is no margin left for enlargements, this inevitable change is more deeply felt. By the time the third child arrived, the Asquiths had changed their ideas about many things. Mary’s help in the parish was now very fitful. She still accomplished what was a great deal “for her:” but there had been no conditions or limits to her labours in those early days, when she had worked like a second curate, bearing her full share of everything. These were the days in which so many things had been undertaken, more than any merely mortal curate could keep up; and in the meantime there had been a great many disappointments in the parish. Even before Mary’s powers failed, the influence of the new impulse was over. The people had got accustomed to all the many things that were being done for them: they were no longer taken by surprise. The ancientvis inertia—that desire to be let alone which is so strong in the English character—came uppermostonce more. “Oh, here’s this botherin’ practice again!” the boys and girls began to say; or, “It’s club night, but I ain’t a-going. Them as gets the good of the money can come and fetch it!”—for the village people by this time had got it well into their heads that the custody of their pennies and sixpences was in some occult way to the curate’s advantage. And so in one way after another, ground was lost. Mr. Asquith got fagged and worn out in his efforts to do more than one man could do, without the help which had borne him up so triumphantly at first; he was deeply discouraged by the defection of so many; and he felt to the bottom of his soul the triumph in the eyes of Mrs. Prescott, at the rectory, who had always said nothing would come of it. The rector, for his part, would not show any triumph. He had behaved very well throughout; he had not resented the curate’s attempts to improve upon all his own ways, and do more than ever had been done before in Horton. And now when the fervour of these first reformations began tofail, he did not say, “I told you so,” as so many would have done. He was very moderate, very temperate, rather consoling than aggravating the disappointment. “Human nature is always the same,” he said. “Even when you get it stirred up for a time, it reclaims its right to do wrong—and yet all good work tells in the long run,” Mr. Prescott said, which was very good-natured of him, and was indeed straining a point; for he was by no means so sure that in the long run these Quixotic exertions did tell. But Mrs. Prescott was not so forbearing. “You might have known from the beginning this was how it would be,” she said to Mary. “You young people think you are the only people who have ever attempted anything; but it isn’t so—it’s quite the contrary. We have all tried what we could do, and we’ve all been disappointed. I could have told you so from the first, if you had shown any inclination to be guided by me!”
“Oh, Aunt Jane!” cried Mary, “it all went on beautifully at first. It is my fault, that havenot kept up as I ought to have done. If I hadn’t been such a poor creature, everything would have gone well.”
“There is something in that,” said Mrs. Prescott, who had never had any babies. “It is always a sad thing when a young woman has so many children——”
“Aunt Jane!” cried Mary, almost with a scream. She gathered the little new baby to her bosom, and over its downy little head glared at her childless aunt. “As if they were not the most precious things in life—as if they were not God’s best gift! as if we could do without any one of them!”
“Perhaps not, my dear, now they are here,” said Mrs. Prescott; “but you may let your friends say that it would have been much better for you if they had not come so fast.”
To this Mary could not make any reply, though her indignation was scarcely diminished. She was, indeed, very indignant on this point. All of these ladies—her aunt at the Hall and the girls,as well as her aunt at the rectory—spoke and looked as if Mary was no better than a victim, helplessly overwhelmed with children; whereas she was a proud and happy mother, thinking none of them fit to be compared with her in her glory. That they should venture to pity her, and say poor Mary! she, who was in full possession of all that is most excellent in life, was almost more than the curate’s wife could bear. Her two little boys and her little girl were her jewels as they were those of the Roman woman whom Mary had heard of, but whom she would have thought it too high-flown to quote. She felt, all the same, very much like that classical matron. Anna and Sophie were very proud of their diamond pins, which even for diamonds were poor things; and they had the impertinence to pity her and her three children! Mary fumed all the time they paid her their visits, which had the air of being visits of condolence rather than of congratulation; and in her weakness cried with vexation and indignation after they had left. The curate camein before those angry tears were dried, and her agitated feelings burst forth. “They come to me and pity me,” she cried, “till I don’t know how to endure them! Oh, Harry, I wish we were not so near my relations! Strangers daren’t be so nasty to you as your relations!” Mary sobbed, with the long-pent-up feeling, which in that moment of feebleness she could not restrain.
“My dearest, never mind them,” he said soothingly. And then, after a pause, with some hesitation,—“Mary, this gives me courage to say what I never liked to say before. Don’t you find, even with your own little income, dear, which I was so anxious should not be touched, and with all the advantages here, that it is very difficult to make both ends meet?”
“Oh, Harry! I have been trying to keep it from you. I didn’t want to burden you with that too. Difficult! it is impossible! I must give Betsy warning. I have been making up my mind to it. After all, it is only pride, you know, for she is very little good. I have had most of the workto do myself all the time. I must give her warning as soon as I am well—or rather, we must try to find her a place, which is the best way.”
“What?” cried the curate. “Betsy, the only creature you have to do anything for you! No, no. I cannot allow that.”
“The housekeeping is my share,” said Mary, with a smile; “now that I can do so little in the parish, I may at least be of use at home. And if you only knew how little good she is! She can’t even amuse little Hetty, and Jack won’t go to her!” These frightful details Mary gave with the temerity they deserved. “I’ll tell you what I am going to do. There are the Woods, who have always been so nice, so regular at school, and attentive about the club. I mean to have Rosie, the eldest, to come in for an hour or two in the morning to look after the children while I get things tidy; and then Mrs. Wood herself will come on Saturdays and give everything a good clean up: and you will see we shall get onbeautifully,” Mary said, smiling upon him with her dewy eyes, which were still wet. But the irritation had all died away, and in the pallor of her recent pangs, and the sacredness of her motherhood, no queen of a poet’s imagination could have looked more sweet.
“Oh, Mary, my darling!” cried the poor curate in his love and compunction. “To think I should have brought you to this!”
“To what?” said Mary radiant, “to the greatest happiness in life, to do everything for one’s own? Oh! Harry, I am afraid I have not the self-devotion a clergyman’s wife ought to have. I was happy to work in the parish—but, dear, if you won’t despise me very much—I think I am happier to work for the children and you.”
What could the poor man do? He kissed her and went away humiliated, yet happy. That he should have to consent to be served by her in the homeliest practical ways—she, who was his love and his lady—had something excruciating in it;and to think that his love should have brought her to this, and that he should have foreseen it, and yet done it in the weakness of his soul! But when he went back to that, the curate could not be sorry either that he had loved Mary, or that he had told her his love, or married her. She was not sorry—God bless her!—but radiant and happy as the day, and more sweet, and more sacred, and more beautiful than she had been even in her girlhood. What could he say? He would not even disturb that exquisite moment by telling her of the change that he was beginning to contemplate. Things could wait at least for a few days.
But when she told him that she had given Betsy warning, the curate did speak. “I have done it,” she said, partly by way of excuse for bringing in the tea herself, which she did, panting a little, but smiling over the tray. “We shall be so much better off with Mrs. Wood coming in one day in the week. Then we shall really have the satisfaction of knowing that everything is clean foronce, and no little spy in the house to report to everybody what we have for dinner; but we must try and get her another place, Harry; for though the children don’t like her, and I should never recommend her for a nursery, there are some things that she can do.”
“Some things you have taught her to do,” Mr. Asquith said.
“So much the more credit to me,” said Mary, laughing, “for she is not very easy to teach.”
It was evening, and the children were in bed and all quiet. The little creature last born lay all covered up in the sitting-room beside them, in a cradle, which the ladies at the Hall, notwithstanding their indignation at his appearance, had trimmed with muslin and lace and made very ornamental: and Mary was glad to put herself in the rocking-chair which her cousin John had given her, and lie back a little and rest. “One never knows,” she said, “how pleasant it is to rock, till one knows what work is. But, Harry, you are over-tired, you don’t care for your tea.”
“I care a great deal more for seeing you tired,” he said. “Mary, I want to speak to you about something very serious. Would it break your heart, my dearest, if we were to go away from Horton? That is the question I didn’t venture to ask the other day.”
“Break my heart! when the children are well, and you? What a question to ask! Nothing could break my heart,” cried Mary, with a delightful laugh, “so long as all is right with you.”
And then he told her that another curacy had been offered him, a curacy in a large town. It would be very different from Horton. He would be under the orders of a very well-known clergyman, a great organiser, a man who was very absolute in his parish, instead of being free to do almost anything he pleased, as under Uncle Hugh’s mild sway. And he would have a great deal of work, but within bounds and limits, so that he would know what was expected from him, without having the general responsibility of everything. And though he would be under therector, yet he would be over several younger curates, and in his way a sort of vice-bishop too. “But you must remember,” he said, “that we shall have to live in a street without any garden, with very little fresh air. It will be quite town, not even like a suburb—nothing but stone walls all round you.”
Mary’s countenance fell. “Oh, Harry! that will not be good for the children.”
“I believe there is a park in which the children can walk,” he said, upon which Mary brightened once more.
“In that case, I don’t mind the other things,” she said, rocking softly in her chair; “but, Harry, how shall you like to be dictated to, and told everything that you have to do?”
“I should like anything,” he said, “that gave you a little more comfort, my poor Mary. There is two hundred and fifty a year——”
He said it with solemnity, as was right—“Two hundred and fifty a year.” Few are the curates who rejoice in such an income. Mary broughther chair down upon the floor with a sound which but lightly emphasised her astonishment and awe. These feelings were so strong in her mind that they had to be expressed before pleasure came.
“And you really have this offered to you, Harry?offered, without looking for it?”
“Yes,” said the curate, with the hush and wonder of humility, feeling that he could not account for such a piece of good fortune.
“That shows,” cried she, “how much you are appreciated, how you are understood. Oh, Harry! the world is wonderfully kind and right-feeling, after all.”
“Yes,” he said, “sometimes; there are a great many kind people in the world. And you don’t mind it, my darling? you don’t mind leaving Horton and all your relations, and the neighbourhood you have lived in all your life?”
“Mind it!” she cried, and paused a little, and dried her eyes, which were full. “Harry,” she said, with a little solemnity, “I think when people marry and have a family of their own, it is alwaysa little like the beginning of a new world; don’t you think so? Everything is changed. It seems natural to go to a new place, to make a real new start, more natural than to stay where one has always been. Then, when they grow up, there will be openings for the boys; and Hetty will be able to get a good education. Mind it! I am sure it is the right thing.”
“I am very glad, dear. I feared you might have doubts about leaving the parish.”
“After all,” said Mary, “we have done everything we could for the parish; and perhaps a little novelty would be good for them now. Uncle Hugh will be very particular in choosing a very good man to succeed you. And we have done everything we could; perhaps a new curate who is a novelty may be better for the parish too.”
THERE was a good deal of difficulty made among the relations about this removal. The ladies particularly were very decided on the subject. Who would look after Mary? who would see that she did not do too much, that she took proper nourishment, that she had from time to time a new gown, if she went away? “She will never think of these things for herself,” said Mrs. Prescott at the Hall to Mrs. Prescott at the Rectory. “She will give everything to the children. She will think of him and them, and never of herself.”
“But I don’t see what we can do,” said the clergyman’s wife. “We cannot keep them hereagainst their will. It is a far better income than Hugh can afford to give. And with children coming so fast, they will soon have to think of education and all that. I don’t like it any more than you do,” added the clerical lady, “but what can we do?”
They, however, all felt that Mary’s satisfaction in the change was ungrateful and almost unnatural.
“You will never know the advantages you have had till you go away,” her aunt said to her. “You have always had some one to refer to, some one to take you out a little and make you forget your cares. But among strangers it will be different. You don’t know how different it will be.”
Perhaps Mary was a little ungrateful. She did not estimate at their due value the dinners at the Hall to which she and the curate had often gone quite unwillingly, though the givers of these entertainments thought it was a great thing for the young couple to have somebody who wasalways ready to ask them. Young couples are apt to be ungrateful in this way, to think little of the home invitations, and to prefer their own company to that of their relatives; and Mary had not been better than others in this respect. She and Mr. Asquith had said to each other that it was a bore when they went to the Hall to dine. They had said to each other that their evenings at home were much more delightful. Though Mary at this period would not have believed it possible, yet there were moments in later years when they would have found it very agreeable to return to those old dinners at the Hall: but of that she was at present quite unaware. She was, indeed, it must be allowed, a little too exultant and happy about her move. To think that this advancement had been offered to the curate, such an important post, so much superior to anything that could have been hoped for at this early stage, elated her beyond measure. And the increased income was a great thing. Giving up at once, and with great ease, the ideaof training young servants to such perfection that people should come far and near to compete for a maid who had been with Mrs. Asquith, which was her first ideal, Mary rejoiced in the prospect of getting a real servant, a woman who knew her work, “a thorough good maid-of-all-work,” she said with importance, as if she had been speaking of a groom of the chambers. “Oh, the relief it will be just to tell her what has to be done, without having to show her everything!” Mrs. Asquith said.
“But you used to think it would be so much better to train one to your own ways,” the curate replied, not being used to so rapid a change of principle.
“Ah, I have learned something myself since then,” said Mary. And so she had—the first lesson in life, which has so many and such hard lessons, especially for those who study in the school of poverty. Poor Mary thought her troubles were over now. She even formed dreams of having a little nursemaid to wheel out theperambulator, Two hundred and fifty eked out by that forty-five of her own! Why, it was a princely income; and privation and discomfort, she fully believed, were now to be things of the past.
There was some difficulty in getting the furniture transported to the new place, for some of it was very heavy and large, having come direct, as has been said, from the lumber rooms and unused part of the Hall. The curate proposed with diffidence that these lordly articles should be sold, and others more suitable bought, to save the expense of carriage; but Mary was shocked by the suggestion. “They are all presents,” she said; “we couldn’t, oh, we couldn’t, Harry, without hurting their feelings. It would look as if we thought those things not good enough for us that were good enough for them.”
“But they were not good enough for them, or they would not have been given to us,” said the curate, a speech which he repented immediately, for Mary would not have such a reproach thrownupon her relations; and her husband ate his words and explained that it was because the great mahogany sideboard, etc., were too good for a curate’s little house that he wished to dispose of them, which mended matters. And even now everybody was very kind. Uncle Hugh insisted on adding twenty pounds to the last quarter’s income for travelling expenses, which, considering that his curate was deserting him, was liberal indeed; and the Squire was not behind in liberality. There was perhaps a little of the feeling on the part of the richer relations that they were thus washing their hands of Mary, setting her up once for all, so that she never could have any excuse for saying that her mother’s brothers had not done their duty by her. Neither of these kind men, who were really fond of her in their way, would have said this even to themselves. But it must be remembered that she had chosen for herself, and contrary to their advice, and that she had been fully warned of the poverty which was likely to be her lot, and that they could notalways stand between her and its penalties. But if this was their feeling, they were at least very kind and liberal in this final setting out, which also was her own doing or her husband’s doing, and no way suggested by any desire of theirs to get rid of her. And her aunt and the girls urged upon her the necessity of writing, and keeping them fully informed of all that happened. “Write every week,” said Mrs. Prescott at the Hall; “if you don’t make a habit of it, you will fall out of it altogether. Now, Mary, remember, once a week.”
“Don’t let us hear of the new babies only through the newspapers,” said Mrs. Prescott at the Rectory.
“Oh, Aunt John, of course I shall write every week, or oftener. Oh, Aunt Hugh, how could you suppose such a thing? and perhaps there will be no more babies,” Mary said.
She was a little tearful as she bade them all good-bye, remembering then, with a touch of compunction, how kind they had always been; but all the same she was radiant, setting out uponlife for the first time, setting out fairly upon the new world, upon her own career, without any of the old traditions. Heretofore, though she had attained the dignity of marriage and maternity, Mary had not felt the greater splendour of independence. Now she was going out with no head but her husband, and no beaten paths in which she must tread. They were going to trace their own way through the world, their own way and that of their children, the way of a new family, a new house, a new nation and tribe, distinct among the other tribes, not linked on, a subsidiary sept to the tribe of the Prescotts. Perhaps there was a little ingratitude in this, too, as there is in every erection of a new standard; but they did not see it from that point of view. She was radiant in the glory of her separate beginning, glad to throw off the thraldom of natural subjection, just as they were perhaps glad to wash their hands of her and her concerns. Neither expressed the feeling, or would have acknowledged it; but it was a natural feeling enough on both sides.
John was the last of the Prescotts to bid his cousin good-bye. He came in at a very inappropriate moment, when all the things were packed, and the children were having their hats and hoods tied on, and making a great noise in inarticulate baby excitement, delighted with the commotion. He strolled in at this moment probably because it was the worst he could have chosen, and stood looking at the emptied and desolate cottage, and the family all in their travelling dresses, waiting for the carriage which was coming from the Hall to take them to the station. “I’ve come to thay good-bye,” said John, looking all about him, as if with a desire to see whether they were carrying any of the fixtures away.
“Oh, John, how kind of you,” said Mary, “though we are in such a confusion: there is not a chair to ask you to sit down in.”
“I don’t want to thit down,” said John. And he stood for a little longer gazing round him until Mr. Asquith had gone out to look for the carriage, which was late—or at least, so theythought in their anxiety, to be in good time for the train. This appeared to be what John wanted, for he said more quickly than usual, “I don’t want to thit down; I want to thay thomething before you go away.”