Beatrix was far from suspecting on what a pedestal of adoration he had set her. It hardly showed in the way he treated her, which was masterful and encroaching. She knew she was being stormed, and rather enjoyed it, but she did not know how the weather would change, if she surrendered. Then there would be a deep enduring calm, and strength in which she could rest herself. If she surrendered! She was nowhere near it at present.
"I want you to tell me about that fellow you were in love with."
She turned a little pale at the shock, and stood still on the grassy path down which they were wandering towards the yew-enclosed lily pond. She was used to his abrupt attacks, and had nerved herself to meet one, as he had walked silent by her side. But she had not expected anything like this.
Her momentary pallor was succeeded by a deep blush, as she looked up at him with protesting eyes. He met her gaze, and adored her afresh because she did not look down.
"Really, I'm not going to talk to you about that," she said indignantly.
He went on, and after a moment's hesitation she went with him, though her inclination was to turn back. But she never ran away from anything.
"Why not?" he asked. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. I want to know how much you cared for him."
The shock once over, Beatrix was not sorry to have her lips opened for her. It is not often that a girlis given the opportunity of explaining that she did not care very much for a man to whom she has been engaged, and who has left her; at least, not to anybody to whom the statement will bring pleasure, and credence.
"Haven't you ever known what calf-love is?" she enquired, beginning by being very hard upon herself.
"Oh, yes, rather. All men do. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Love's a very beautiful thing, you know, and if you like beautiful things you're on the lookout for it from an early age. Sometimes it's the right sort of thing you get hold of, but as you don't know much when you're first attacked you generally don't."
Beatrix felt herself helped. "Well, I suppose girls have it, too," she said. "In books they are generally supposed to begin with a curate."
She felt suddenly rather like crying, she could not have told why; but it was because the love she had given to the man who had been sent away from her and had not come back again, had been a sacred thing, though now it was dead; and its uprooting had left a wound which had not yet become a scar. She was glad to sit down on one of the stone seats of the lily-pond garden, which by this time they had reached.
"Youwouldn't do that sort of thing," he said. "I expect until that fellow made love to you, you'd laughed at it all."
This was quite true, and she felt herself lifted by his understanding. It was painful to have loved and tolove no longer; but since she did love no longer it was more comforting to her self-respect to believe that her love had been of a lighter quality than she had thought it at the time.
She dropped the ugly idea of calf-love. She could do better than that, on consideration. "I should have been a Marquise you know," she said, "and a very rich and important one. Girls are apt to be bowled over by that sort of thing, you know."
"Youwouldn't be, though," he said again with great directness.
This was quite true too. She was flattered, but was not prepared to drop this line entirely. And she believed every word she was saying. "I don't mean that I was on the lookout for a title, in that crude sort of way," she said. "I don't think I'm like that."
How entirely unlike it he thought her he found it difficult to refrain from saying in a way that might have startled her, touched as he was by the pathetically doubtful note in her speech.
"Of course you're not," he said. "I told you so. But I suppose everybody all round you was egging you on, and flattering you about it. You'd like to think you were pleasing people."
How understanding he was, in spite of the rough shocks his speeches sometimes brought with them! It really had been like that, at first.
"My darling old Daddy wasn't pleased at all," she said. "He hated it."
"Yes, I know he did. It's a great feather in hiscap. Most fathers would have gone about purring. He was a good-looking fellow too, wasn't he? I never saw him myself, but my brother Geoffrey says he was."
This was a line she would rather have kept off of. "Yes, I suppose he was," she said judicially. "He was a lot older than me, and had seen a great deal of the world. Of course that flattered me. I don't think a younger man would have swept me off my feet as he did."
The Marquis de Lassigny had been thirty-six at the time of his quick wooing of Beatrix. Richard Mansergh was thirty-two, and had also seen a good deal of the world. This statement brought him pleasure.
"I see now," said Beatrix, speaking very calmly, "that I thought of him as possessing all sorts of qualities that weren't really his. Of course I thought I knew a great deal about men, as I had been out a whole season, and had seen so many of them. Now I see how little I really knew."
She was getting on very nicely, but his next words brought a check. "But you did love him," he said, uncompromisingly. "You wanted to give him everything that was in you."
How true that was she felt a pang in remembering. Whatever his love for her had been, hers had been for him the entire surrender of all she was or would be.
She was on her defence. "I told you I didn't know enough," she said. "But I had never loved anybodybefore—in that way. Of course I gave all the best that was in me."
He caught his breath. It wouldn't have been she if she hadn't done that. But what a treasure for a man to throw away! "He can't have been fit to black your boots," he said, "or he'd have waited for you for twenty years."
She felt the need of a lighter note. "I should have been old and ugly by that time," she said.
"You'd have been neither. But if you'd lost all your looks you'd have been just the same."
She was touched by the almost impersonal conviction in his speech, and comforted by his belief in her. But she was not yet ready. "It's very kind of you to say that," she said. "He didn't think so. And I'm very glad he didn't now. It took me a little time to get over it, but Ihavegot over it. I don't want anything that I haven't got now. I love my family, and they love me, and we're all going to be happy together for a long time. Now, I think we'll go in."
He rose obediently and walked back to the house by her side. She had given him no opening such as he ardently longed for, no response that might bid him hope. But he could wait for that. It would come in time, if mortal man could do anything to induce it.
As for her, she was in a more emotional state than appeared on the surface. Such an experience as she had undergone—to love for the first time, and to have the love rejected—could scarcely help hardening a nature such as hers, yielding and trustful. But thehardening would not set in until the wound became a scar; and he had opened it again, and delayed the process.
It served him better than he knew that he had done so.
The old Rector of Surley was duly buried, and all his friends and neighbours for miles round attended his burying. The Bishop was there, sympathetic and urbane. He talked most kindly to the Misses Cooper, and in such a way as once more to bring to their eyes those tears which the abundant business of the past few days had almost dried up. And he was closeted with Denis for nearly half an hour in the comfortable study of which the young man had made himself the occupant. Thereafter he retired to his niece's house, and spent a pleasant restful afternoon and evening, not too much overcome with melancholy to enjoy the little change.
Had he said anything? The sisters had hardly been able to restrain themselves from listening outside the door, and fastened upon Denis the moment their illustrious guest had left the house.
Denis frowned slightly. No, he had said nothing.
What had they talked about then? They were not going to be put off in that way, by the brother they had nursed, and smacked, not so many years before. They supposed, rather sharply, that he and the Bishop had not spent all that time together in silence.
Denis did not give them much information, but leftthem to infer that the Bishop's talk had just been that of a kind wise Father in God with a young man setting out upon his life's work. They construed this into a wish on his part to find out for himself whether this particular young man was a suitable object for his patronage, and hoped afresh. If he hadnotbeen going to offer Denis the living, he would certainly have said so, and advised him what to do when his curacy at Surley came to an end. For a new incumbent would not want a curate. Denis would either stay on as Rector or depart altogether.
Two or three days went past. Denis went to London on business connected with his father's estate, and having got there sent a telegram to say that he should not be returning until the following day.
His sisters did not quite like this. He had given no reason for staying away over the night, and, if they would have disclaimed the right to direct his movements, there was still a lingering idea in their minds that they ought to be consulted about them. He had taken up no clothes, and there was the hint of a suspicion that he had given them the slip; also that he had stayed up to amuse himself, which would not be becoming so soon after the sad event. Denis had always been extraordinarily well-behaved, and wise and steady beyond his years. They prided themselves a good deal on the way he had been brought up. He would not do anything actually wrong; that they were sure of. Still, it was a good thing that he would have them there to look after him. If he were appointedRector of Surley, he would want all the advice, and direction, that they could give him, at his age. They had made it plain to the Bishop, without, of course, obtruding themselves or their desires, that he could rely upon them to give that advice and direction.
The next morning the long-expected letter came. There was no doubt about it. It was written in the episcopal hand and sealed with the episcopal seal. Really, it was extraordinarily tiresome of Denis not to be there to open it.
It did not, however, take them quite half a minute to decide to open it themselves. A longer period of hesitation would have made it appear that it was not the most natural thing to do, as of course it was. Denis would certainly have asked them to open it if he had known he would be absent when it came, and after all, the letter was as important to them as it was to him.
They drew a long breath of delight and relief as they devoured its contents together. As they told one another immediately afterwards, they had really not dared to hope, but now their fears were set at rest it was easy to see that nothing else could have happened. If only their dear father could have known!
They both thought of him, in the pleasure to which they now gave themselves up. It would have sent him out of the world happy, the dear old man. Really, if the Bishop had intended to present Denis all along,hemighthave stretched the point and relieved their father's mind of its anxiety.
When they had settled down to the news, and to their cooling breakfast, a slight reaction set in. They felt all the fears and doubts with which they had lived for so long rolling back upon them, though now they should have been set at rest. Really, ithadscarcely seemed possible that the living should be given to Denis, considering his youth, and his Deacon's orders. Their talk for a time was almost as if they were blaming the Bishop for his presentation, and covered most of the ground that might have been taken by the Vicar of Abington, or other clerical critics, of such an appointment. But this state of mind, induced by fears too little allowed, and helped by the kind things the Bishop had said in his letter, soon disappeared. There would be a great deal of criticism to meet, and they at least must not show themselves to be influenced by any of it. The Bishop had made the appointment of his own free will, and on grounds that seemed good to him. They had done nothing to urge him, nor had they pulled any strings. That was a great comfort to them now, and they gave themselves and one another considerable credit for it. Then they decided that they had better not say anything about the appointment until Denis returned home. After all, the letterhadbeen written to him, and the news could wait. This was their only reference to the fact of their having opened the letter, and they felt that it covered everything.
But as Denis did not arrive by the train that would have brought him home in time for lunch, and could not now be expected until six o'clock, the news began to sit heavily upon them. They had been busy indoors all the morning, and had had only to stifle the natural desire to tell the servants. In the afternoon they went about the parish, and could not forbear from encouraging several with whom they had dealings by telling them that it was quite possible that they would not have to leave them after all. But as they had said this before, though not perhaps with the same satisfied look in their eyes, the secret was kept.
They came home to tea, and now they longed for Denis's return, for the news had burnt itself right through their lightly formed purpose, and only the hour or so that they would have to wait for him prevented their summoning all the servants, indoor and outdoor, and imparting to them their triumph.
There came a ring at the bell, and presently Mr. and Mrs. Mercer were announced. Rhoda and Ethel cast a sharp and identical meaning glance at one another before they rose to receive them. It said as plain as if spoken: "Youwon't be able to keep it in."
Denis's absence was explained and commented upon.
"I wanted to see him particularly," said the Vicar. "An old friend of mine, who has somewhat broken down in health, needs an assistant priest to go to him and do just the work that Denis has been doing here for your dear father. It would be the very place for him, if—if he were free to take it." He mentioned thename of his friend, of the pretty village in Devonshire of which he was Rector, and the stipend offered, while Rhoda and Ethel listened politely with meaning smiles on their faces, and wondered how they could ever have liked this man.
Mrs. Mercer saw the smiles, and though she did not understand their full import divined something of their source. "Of course, dear," she said, "we know it ispossiblethat Denis may be preferred to this living. In that case this offer would be of no use to him. We only thought that if hewasn't—! And my husband hasn't told you that there's a charming little house, big enough for all three of you."
"There was never really any chance of Denis's appointment here," said the Vicar, not without annoyance. "It was quite right to humour the poor old gentleman, as he so set his heart upon it; but Rhoda and Ethel are far too sensible to have any such ideas themselves; and it would be wrong too."
Rhoda had once boasted that there was nothing of the cat in her, but she enquired very sweetly, "And why wrong, Mr. Mercer?"
"My dear girl," said the Vicar, "you know as well as I do. It would be a job, and Bishops dare not perpetrate jobs in these days. And if you are inclined still to cherish hopes of that sort, as it is perhaps not altogether unnatural that you should, as you had to persuade your dear father of it for so long, let me tell you at once that the appointment has already been made, I am not at liberty to say inwhat quarter. But you will hear about it very soon."
It was Ethel who said, "Oh, really, Mr. Mercer! Did the Bishop tell you that himself?"
"You never toldme, Albert, when you came back from the Palace yesterday," said Mrs. Mercer in an aggrieved voice.
"It was not the Bishop himself, of course," said the Vicar. "But I had it on the best authority. Please don't ask me any more. The conversation was confidential."
"It wasn'tyouit was offered to, dear, was it?" enquired his wife. "No, I'm sure you would have told me that. I suppose Mr. Burgoyne must have told you." Mr. Burgoyne was the Bishop's chaplain.
The Vicar, like most self-important but weak men, was incapable of keeping anything to himself under pressure, and when Rhoda said, as sweetly as before: "If you've told us as much as that I think youmighttell us who the living has been offered to. Secrets are absolutely safe with us," he hummed and ha-ed, and then said: "Well, Burgoyne did not actually extract a promise from me to keep it to myself, but he gave me to understand,"—how grateful he was afterwards to have put it in that way—"that Leadbetter was to have it. It would be an appointment not altogether free from criticism. I believe that Leadbetter has never held a parochial charge, but he has been Precentor of the Cathedral for a great many years, and if good livingsareto be given in that sort of way,which personally I think they should not be, I don't know that the Bishop can be greatly blamed for giving it to him."
"Ithink they should be given to men who have borne the burden and heat of the day in the poorer livings," said Mrs. Mercer with a sigh, for she had been encouraged to hope, and the hope was now dead. She didn't ask herself why her husband had left her for nearly twenty-four hours without telling her so. There were questions about him occasionally which she refrained from asking herself. Shehadasked him why he seemed so bent upon going over to Surley that afternoon, as they had previously decided to do something else. She would have demurred to going if she had known that this piece of news was to be imparted to Rhoda and Ethel.
The time had come to speak. "Well, Mr. Mercer," said Rhoda, "either Mr. Burgoyne didn't know what he was talking about, or else you misunderstood him. I don't know what you mean by a job; I can't see one in it myself, and I'm quite sure the Bishop wouldn't be capable of such a thing; but hehasappointed Denis Rector of Surley, and in my opinion, a very good appointment it is."
"And in mine too," said Ethel. She did not add more, because the most interesting thing to do at the moment was to watch the Vicar's face.
There was no room for incredulity, with the announcement made in that fashion. He could only stare. But the quality of his stare was such as togive Rhoda and Ethel almost as much gratification as they had drawn from the Bishop's letter.
It was a gratification, however, that was broken in upon at once, for Mrs. Mercer, when she had once taken in the announcement, was so beaming and so sincere in her congratulations that they had to be met in something of the same spirit, and the full flavour of the triumph was lost.
The Vicar, also, when he had recovered himself, added his congratulations, and explained away as far as possible his previous unfortunate expressions; explained also that Mr. Burgoyne's assumption had been so near to being a direct statement that he must have been mistaken himself as to the Bishop's intentions. He was listened to with the utmost politeness, but was shown that he had not quite succeeded in wiping away the mark made by the word 'job,' and was left with the impression that if he was not very careful he would hear more of it.
He was not in fact able altogether to hide his chagrin, although he knew well that he was affording satisfaction in showing it. He took his wife away as soon as politeness permitted, and what he said to her on the way home did not add to her happiness in the stroke of good fortune that had come to her friends.
Rhoda and Ethel loudly, and almost indecently, exulted the moment their backs were turned. Really, it wastootransparent. The man had got over his disappointment at having his own absurd hopes dispelled, and had come with no other purpose than to crowover them.Shehad letthatout. Fancy not saying a word to her about it! She was a good little thing herself, and had reallymeantit when she had said she was pleased. She was worth a dozen of him, with his conceit and his spite. Thank goodness there were not many clergymen likehimin the Church. That sort of spirit did more harm to religion than any other. It would really be almost better to have an evil-liver in a parish. Fancy ever thinking that the Bishop could be taken in byhim! He knew better thanthat, at any rate. It had been a most painful exhibition, and the sooner it was forgotten the better.
It gave them something to talk about until Denis came home, when they both flew at him with the news, Rhoda brandishing the Bishop's letter. Questions as to what he had been doing, and why he hadn't let them know, could wait.
Denis's surprised displeasure at their action in opening the letter took them aback. In their eagerness to impart the news they had forgotten that there was anything irregular in the way they had obtained it. They were not accustomed to accept criticism from their brother, but whatever excuses may be made to one's self for opening letters addressed to somebody else, when there is strong curiosity to be satisfied, the doing so wears a different aspect when the excuses have to be made to that somebody else. Denis listened gravely to what they had to say, and then went off to his study, and his gravity and silence had this much effect that they did not follow him there, as theywould have thought themselves justified in doing in almost any other circumstances.
Nor did they see him again until they all three met in the drawing-room before dinner.
By that time the effect upon him of their well-meant action might have been expected to have worn off, and they were ready to talk it all over in the way he should have been prepared to do when they had first told him. Really, he lookedquitelike a Rector already, standing up before the fire in his silk waist-coat, with a look of self-possession and dignity that gave them a new idea of him. Perhaps they felt, as they came in together and saw him standing there, that he was, after all, the source from which the importance that was still happily to be theirs was to be drawn, and that the manner in which they had hitherto borne themselves towards him might have to be altered in some respects.
Rhoda dropped a curtsey, and said: "Homage to the Rector of Surley"; and Ethel followed suit.
Denis did not smile. "Have you told anybody of the Bishop's offer?" he said.
Rhoda drew herself together. It was time this rebellious spirit was crushed. "My dear boy," she said, "if you are still nursing a grievance at our having opened the Bishop's letter, which, after all, concerns us as much as it does you, do please get rid of it. It isn't a pretty spirit. You have already shut yourself up for nearly two hours, in which we might havebeen talking of the good thing that has happened; and surely that is enough."
He repeated his question. "Have you told anybody of the offer?"
"We told nobody," said Ethel, "as the letter was written to you, until Mr. and Mrs. Mercer called this afternoon. He had got it into his head that the living had been offered to Mr. Leadbetter, and came over with no other purpose than to tell us that, and see how we should take it. He hadn't even told his wife. When he had crowed over us enough, of course we had to tell him."
"It would have been impossible to have kept it to ourselves without acting a lie," added Rhoda.
Denis considered this piece of information, and drew away from the fire. "I'm very sorry you told him," he said, with his face half averted from them. "I have already written to refuse the Bishop's offer. I don't feel myself equal yet to the responsibilities of a parish. I want to do some years' hard work in a town first."
After a pause of consternation and incredulity, both sisters set on him at once. How could he possibly have made such a decision? It was really too outrageous. And without giving them the slightest warning! Couldn't he trust the Bishop to know and do what was right? Why on earth hadn't he taken their advice before doing such a thing?
All the scandalised surprise came back to that, andit was the first thing he answered, when the flood of speech showed signs of abating.
"I didn't tell you," he said, "because I didn't think there was any chance of the offer being made to me, and I wanted to avoid this sort of discussion."
Dinner was announced at that moment, and further discussion had to be put off until the parlour-maid had left them to themselves and their food for a time. The interval had been spent in almost complete silence, all three of them nerving themselves for what was to come.
All three began to speak at the same time, when the maid had shut the door behind her; but it was Denis who continued his speech, his sisters relinquishing theirs to listen to him.
"You ought not to make this difficult for me," he said. "I made up my mind long ago, and I'm sure I was right to do it. I didn't want to tell our dear father, because his ideas on these things were old-fashioned, and I don't think he could have seen it in its true light. Butyouought to be able to. I'm very sorry for your own disappointment, but you ought to be able to judge a matter like this on higher grounds."
This speech gave them plenty of material, and the sharp attack was renewed. How could he say such a wicked thing about their dear father! And the idea of accusingthemof thinking about themselves in that worldly way! He must know very well that all their thoughts had been for him, and for the good ofthe parish in which they had worked nearly all their lives. Please dropthatunworthy charge, if he could not see it all in its proper light yet.
There was plenty more of it, and he sat silent and flushed under the attack. But so far it had only stiffened him.
It is difficult for a domineering woman to relinquish the weapons which temperament thrusts into her hands, but they came to see that they could not move him by censure, and they descended to argument, as a half-way house to reasoning, but not without showing annoyance that they were forced to do so.
Surely the Bishop must know better than he what was the right thing to do in a matter like this! Wouldn't it be almost an impertinence to throw the offer back in his face? He could seethat, couldn't he? And it was not only the Bishop; it was the dying wish of their dear father, which really it was preposterous to set aside as merely old-fashioned. Andtheyhad no doubt about its being the right thing to accept, whatever their opinion might be worth. Did he really feel justified in going against the opinions of people so much older and wiser than himself?
This was rather more difficult to meet. They were considerations that he had spent much anxious thought over, during the long hour that he had spent by himself. And he could not yet be quite certain that he had solved them in the right way, though he had conscientiously followed the light that was in him. Also, his sisters had established a considerable authorityover him, and he was uncomfortable in withstanding them.
But he won through this stage, the contest being occasionally broken into by the intrusions of the maid, and the intervals being spent in bringing up more ammunition for the guns of argument.
He could only decide such a matter on his own conscience, which had given him a strong leading. He was quite sure that the Bishop would respect his decision. Couldn't they accept it now as having been made, and help him in looking forward and preparing for the new work he had undertaken?
This plea seemed to show a slight weakening. They drew from him the admission that his letter of refusal had not yet been posted, and set themselves ardently to induce him to reconsider it. Under the violence of the attack he seemed to waver, though the streak of obstinacy in him, almost more than the weight of his convictions, was all the time stiffening him under the appearance of indecision, which was only the result of not being able to find immediate answers to each and all of their arguments.
The battle moved its scene from the dining-room to the drawing-room, and raged with varying degrees of heat until it was nearly time for family prayers. It flared up hotly when Denis told them that he had spent the night with the Vicar of the London parish of whom he had already accepted a curacy; for he had to admit that he had been in negotiation about it for some time, and they pointed out to him with some truththat if he had told them of this, instead of keeping it himself as if it were a shameful secret, all the present trouble would have been avoided. And was itpossiblethat he had said nothing to the Bishop about it, when he had had that long talk with him, and he had been so kind?
In their offence at having been kept in the dark themselves, they had not at once fastened upon this, the weakest of all places in the young man's armour. Why had he not told the Bishop, in that talk in which the announcement of such a decision would only have drawn the kindest sympathy and the wisest advice? He had asked himself that question many times during the hour he had spent by himself battling with his temptation, and there had been no answer to it for which he could take any credit to himself.
For the temptation of the world, as represented by the Rectory of Surley, had been almost overwhelming, and although he had set in hand his arrangements under the belief that there was little likelihood of its being offered to him, he had not had the courage to make the offer impossible. He had set out to burn his boats by entering into correspondence with the London Vicar, but he had not been able to bring himself to apply the match, and it is doubtful if he would have done so later if he had not spent that evening with the devoted priest who had fired his spiritual ambition afresh. Coming down in the train he had reproached himself greatly for his vacillation, and his boats had flared up behind him in a most illuminatingconflagration. He reproached himself unsparingly for having, as he now saw, desired to gain from the Bishop's views defence for a young man's burying himself at the outset of his career in a comfortable country living, instead of trying to gain from him support for his higher ambitions. But he could not disguise from himself that his lack of frankness must appear most blameworthy to the man to whom in such a talk he had owed frankness above all things, and indeed, as he blushed hotly to think, simulated it.
Well, he had committed a grave fault, and must abide its consequences in lessened estimation of him by the man with whom he would have liked to stand well. But to disguise the fault by taking a reward for it would not help matters, and was an act which, in the sensitive state of conscience he had reached, would be impossible to him. The very fact that he had led the Bishop to imagine that he would be ready to accept the responsibilities and emoluments of Surley now prevented his doing so, more than any other fact.
But it may be imagined how much of this his sisters were able to accept, in their state of irritation and anger against him. They could only see the inexcusable fault, and it seemed to them the strongest reason yet advanced why he should obey their urging.
The poor badgered young man rose from his seat of purgation, saying that it was nearly time for prayers, but that he would rather not conduct them to-night,not feeling in tune for them, and would go to his study.
Then they fell upon him for wanting to avoid the very thing that would most help him to come to a right decision, and pointed out how very wrong his ideas must be since he could not even face his devotions.
So the servants were summoned, and he read and prayed before his household, and gained some solace and support from doing so.
When prayers were over he said, in a quieter voice than they had permitted him to use during the greater part of the contest, that he could not discuss the question any more. If he had done wrong, as he knew he had, he was now going to do right, and his letter of refusal would be sent to the Bishop the next morning.
Except where his feelings were deeply involved, as they had been in that matter of Beatrix's affair with the Marquis de Lassigny, George Grafton was a man who exercised authority with an easy grace which those who came within its sphere scarcely realised as authority, so much did his wishes seem to comply with their own. His family appeared to possess and to exercise complete liberty of action, and he to fall in with their wishes as much as they with his. But this was because they all loved one another, and they had kept him young between them. If any of them wanted to do anything that he did not care about, he had only to say that he didn't care about it, and they not only didn't do it, but didn't want to do it, because there was nothing so well worth doing as pleasing him. This was in small matters; but there had never been any big difference of desire, except in Beatrix's affair, which he had not handled with his wonted easy detachment. But in the way that had turned out he had proved to have been in the right, in a good many ways which she had not been able to see, and now did see; and his treatment of her during her recovery from love's illness had restored his happy ascendancy, somewhat shaken while the illness had lain heavily upon her.
With his servants and dependants there was never any trouble at all. They liked serving him, and took a pride in serving him well. In business it was the same; but on the rare occasions on which he had had to assert his authority he had done it with a decision that showed his customary easy manner to rest upon strength, and not upon a weak complaisance.
In business negotiation he usually had his way, because he had always made up his mind beforehand what his way was to be, and that it was reasonable that he should have it. By this means he missed thecoupsthat come from imposing unreasonable conditions on an opponent, but gained a reputation for fairness and straightness of dealing which made up for it.
He was, in fact, a man of decision and character, under his amiable easy-going exterior, and he was not afraid of a contest, though he preferred not to enter one unless he thought he had a good chance of coming out victor.
It is doubtful, however, whether he had ever entered into one which would provide such a test of his qualities, as when he decided to get rid of the Vicar of Abington—the Reverend A. Salisbury Mercer, M.A.
This was after the commotion occasioned by Denis Cooper's refusal of the living of Surley had died down.
The commotion had been considerable, and a good deal of it had been created by the Vicar of Abington, who really had nothing to do with it at all. Denis had now departed to his curacy in the East End ofLondon, and his sisters had betaken themselves to the Cathedral City of Medchester, where they had many friends, or at least acquaintances, and their activities could be made use of for the general benefit of their fellow church-people. Mr. Leadbetter had been instituted Rector of Surley, and it was beginning to be known that he had refused the Bishop's offer of the living before it had been made to Denis, but had thought better of it on going over to Surley, and finding that the little church, otherwise undistinguished, possessed a remarkable roof for sound. He was a bachelor, with plenty of money of his own, besides what would come to him from his rectorate, and intended to provide a new organ, and to train a small but exquisite choir to render a full musical service, after the manner of Cathedrals and College Chapels, twice a day.
Grafton unfolded his resolve to Worthing, over the dinner table, when the girls and Miss Waterhouse had left them to their cigars.
"I'm going to get rid of Mercer," he said. "The fellow has become an infernal nuisance, and I'm tired of him."
Worthing stared at him, and laughed. "You can't do it," he said. "I thought you knew better than that. You're the patron of the living, and you appoint a man when it becomes vacant. But once appointed he sticks there till he chooses to go. You've nothing more to do with it than anybody else."
"Oh, I know all that. When I say I'm going to getrid of him, I don't mean that I've got the power to turn him out. But you can do a good many things that you haven't got that sort of power over, if you go the right way to work."
"Well, I don't care much about Mercer myself, though I've always tried to keep my opinion dark for the sake of peace. He's a tiresome fellow, and that's a fact; but he's never done anything that he could be shifted for. It takes a Bishop all he knows, and a devil of a lot of money besides, to get rid of an incumbent who's a real wrong 'un. There was a case over at Minbrook when I first came here."
"I know that too. But to my mind a quarrelsome back-biting fellow like Mercer does more harm in a community like this than many a man who kicks over the traces in a way to give a handle against himself."
"I quite agree with you there," said Worthing, allowing himself to be diverted to this question of the welfare of a community, which he had much at heart. "I'm glad you take that view of it. It's the right view for a landholder to take, in my opinion. It's up to us who are running a place like this to keep people contented and happy. It's the human side, as I often tell young Bradby. You've got to be just in your dealings, but there are lots of little points where the law seems to give you an unfair advantage. I don't say it does, but it seems to, in the way things are looked at now, with all this Radicalism about. You can run things all right on the old system if you bring goodwill to bear, and remember the people you're dealingwith aren't any different to what you are yourself. It seems to me that's the best thing about the old system—the human contact between all parties concerned."
"Well, the parson of a village ought to be the one above all others who makes that contact. What's he there for otherwise?"
"I agree with that too. I'm a good churchman, and all that, and of course the religious side of it is important. But to my mind it's more important still that he should be the friend of all his people, rich and poor alike, so that they can go to him for anything, and find a friend in him."
"Thatisthe religious side of it, isn't it?"
"I suppose it ought to be. But the parsons now-a-days seem to want to run a country parish as they would a town one. We don't see much of it hereabouts, except with Brill, and he's kept in order by Lady Mansergh. Brill's a nice kind-hearted fellow too, and if it wasn't for all that high falutin' church business, and changing all the services from what they've been accustomed to, and shoving them off their perches generally, he'd do as well as any country parson. Take a man like Williams. He's a good deal more interested in his dogs and his carpentering than he is in his church services, I should say. I don't want to hold him up as a perfect example, but he's the friend of all his parishioners. Beckley's a close-fisted landlord, and doesn't get on particularly well with his tenants. But Williams often does them a good turn withhim. He's ahumansort of fellow. That's what I like about Williams."
"And that's just what Mercer isn't."
Worthing had rather forgotten about Mercer, and his inclination to make the best of people and give everybody a chance was strong in him. He frowned slightly. "He's cantankerous," he said. "I can't deny that."
"Yes, he's cantankerous, and a good many other things besides. There's hardly a soul round about—of our sort, I mean—that he hasn't fallen out with. When I first came here he warned me against the whole lot of them, without exception."
"Did he? Well, he oughtn't to have done that. I don't believe you'd find a nicer lot of people, take 'em all round, anywhere in England."
"That's what you told me, on the same day as he'd said the opposite, and I'm more inclined to your opinion than his. Then he makes trouble in the place itself. My girls and Miss Waterhouse are finding that out constantly. There's always a lot of quarrelling going on, and if you follow it up you generally find he has had a finger in the pie."
"Well, I can't deny that either. I've often had to smooth over things that he has put wrong. He is a tiresome fellow, and there's no denying it. It would certainly be a good thing for the parish if he were got rid of. Still he hasn't done anything that he could be got rid of for, and I don't see how you're going to bring it about."
"I'm going to ask him to go."
Worthing stared and laughed again. "I should like to be there when you do it," he said.
"I don't think you would. If you thought I was getting the better of him you'd want to take his part. That's what you're made like."
"Oh, I don't know about that. But I do like to keep the peace."
"If we can persuade Mr. Mercer to take himself off, I hope we shall get somebody here who'll help you. We'd better go up to the girls now. They'll be wanting their bridge."
When the Vicar walked up to the Abbey the next morning in answer to Grafton's note requesting an interview, it was with anticipations not unpleasurable. Somehow, he had never succeeded in gaining the footing of intimacy with his chief parishioners that he felt to be his due. It was even some weeks now since he had been invited to the house, and he had felt aggrieved about it, because in his position he ought to have been the most frequent guest at the only other house in the place occupied by such people as himself.
It had not always been so. On the Graftons' first arrival he had felt himself free to run in and out of the house on the most intimate terms, and had always been sure of a welcome, as was only right and proper. It had begun to steal over him lately, in wafts of cold suspicion, which he had put away from him whenever they approached, that his welcome had perhaps never been quite so warm as he had taken for granted. Hehad also begun to suspect that certain criticisms he had passed upon the Graftons—of course without meaning anything by them—might have come to their ears, and accounted for the cessation of invitations, to lunch and to dine, which had never failed even after the running in and out showed itself to be not quite what they wanted. But this suspicion had stiffened him against them. If they proved themselves difficult to get on with, as so many people in this part of the world unfortunately did, he was not the man to give in to them. He had his own position of dignity and responsibility and would take his stand unflinchingly upon that. It was the duty of a Squire and a parson to keep on good terms with one another for the sake of example, especially when the people of a parish were so quarrelsome and difficult to manage as they were at Abington. He had done all he could to bring that happy state of things about. If the other party was blind to the advantages, nay to the Christian duty, of such an understanding, then he must pursue his course unflinchingly apart. On no account would he knuckle under, and debase his sacred profession.
Still, he had nowishto quarrel, and it was somewhat of a relief to be asked to a consultation with Grafton, no doubt upon some measure of importance in connection with the parish. There had been far too little of that co-operation. A Squire might do so much to help a parson in his devoted labours for the good of the community, and Grafton had done so little, though on his first coming the Vicar had hadstrong hopes that here was at last a man who would back him up, in his spiritual duties, as he in his turn was only too anxious to give help and advice, inallmatters, in return.
But in spiritual matters he had even been denied what was undoubtedly his due. Grafton had not even come to church regularly, nor put pressure on his household to do so. The last was inexcusable. The Vicar could make allowances for a man in Grafton's position who worked in London, though not very regularly, and looked upon his days in the country as holidays. But his servants ought to bemadeto come to church. The Vicar had felt so strongly about this that he had once told Grafton so, and pointed out that he himself was always there in fair weather or foul. Grafton had said that most of his servants did attend church regularly, and none of them kept away altogether, and had not been able to see that that was not the point. And pressed to exercise his authority he had refused to do so.
Then there was that point of Barbara's confirmation. Miss Waterhouse had asked him the previous year whether he should be holding confirmation classes, and he had said that he should, for the Advent confirmation, but only for the young people of the village, and that of course Barbara could not be expected to attend them. He had offered, at the sacrifice of his own valuable time to prepare Barbara for confirmation by herself, and Miss Waterhouse had thanked him, but had put the matter off. Then whenthe time had drawn near, and he had raised the question, he had been told that Barbara would not be confirmed that year at all. They would be in London after Christmas and she would be confirmed in the spring, at the church where her sisters had been. But they had not moved to London after Christmas, and Barbara had not been confirmed. He had asked about it and received an evasive answer.
He was thinking of this, and getting nettled about it, as he walked through the park to the Abbey, when it suddenly occurred to him that this was probably what Grafton wanted to see him about. Well, if it was, that would put a good many things right. He would pocket the offence that he had felt and had beenrightin feeling, at having had his offer treated in the fashion it had been, and would renew it. Barbara was a very interesting child—she was seventeen, and ought to have been confirmed long ago—and he would enjoy his talks with her. By the time he reached the house he was convinced that it was Barbara's religious education that Grafton wished to see him about.
He was received in the long, low library, with its ranks of mellow russet books which no one ever read, its raftered ceiling, and its latticed windows. It was the room which Grafton called his, but seldom used except for business purposes or when men were staying in the house. He was writing at a table at the far end of the room when the Vicar was announced, and came forward to greet him at once with his pleasantfriendly air. It was no part of his intention to antagonise him.
The Vicar began the conversation. "I wondered, as I came up," he said in his pompous but would-be-intimate manner, "whether it was about Barbara's confirmation you wanted to talk to me. She really ought to have been confirmed last year, and the intention was that she should be this spring, wasn't it? There will be a confirmation either here or at Feltham later on in the year, and I shall be very pleased to prepare her for it if you wish it. I could come here once or twice a week, or she could come to me, whichever you preferred."
Grafton was about to refuse, rather shortly, when he bethought himself.
"Are you going to have a confirmation class?" he asked.
"Oh, yes. But I shouldn't expect her to attend that. It's for the boys and girls of the village. There are one or two farmers' daughters this year, but nobody of the same class as Barbara. You couldn't—"
"What has class got to do with it?" Grafton interrupted him. "I should have thought in a matter like that everybody was equal."
"Oh, well, if you take it like that!" said the Vicar, "Ithink so, of course, but—"
"What should you teach her?" asked Grafton.
"What should I teach her?" He seemed somewhat at a loss. "I shouldn't teach her any Roman doctrine, if that's what you're thinking of. Good PrayerBook doctrine, you know. At confirmation you take upon yourself the vows that others have made for you in your Baptism. You'll find it all in the Prayer Book. Careful preparation deepens the spiritual life, at a time when the young soul is at its most malleable, and open to religious impressions. It is a very blessed opportunity."
He spoke with unction. Grafton looked as if he were suffering from a slight nausea. "I don't care a bit about doctrine," he said. "I do believe in Christianity, and I think I recognise its spirit when I see it. I see it in my daughter Caroline. She hasn't a thought in her head that isn't sweet and good. She never thinks of herself when there's anybody else to think of. She does everybody good all round her, by just being herself."
The Vicar rather enjoyed theological discussion. "That's an interesting point of view," he said. "And a very natural one. I admire Caroline myself—enormously. But I should say hers was a natural goodness. Very beautiful, of course, and something to thank God for; but not ofitselfreligious."
"Why not?"
"Perhaps I should say not of itself Christian. You may observe the same sort of goodness in people who don't follow the Christian religion—in Buddhists and so forth. In the Christian religion we are taught to look for Grace, and—"
"Oh, well, grace or goodness—it's the same thing. I won't go on with this; I didn't ask you to be goodenough to come and see me to talk about Barbara's confirmation. I shouldn't want you to prepare her. It's yourself I want to talk about. You're not very comfortable here at Abington, are you? You don't care for the people round you, and you find it difficult to get on with the villagers."
The Vicar's mouth opened. "I don't understand you," he said.
"I know that as patron of this living I've no sort of authority over the man who holds it, or anything of that sort; but I might be able to ease the wheels a bit if you saw your way to exchanging it for another. I believe such things are done. I don't know whether you've ever thought about it."
The Vicar was still at a loss. "The living is certainly not much of a prize," he said, with a laugh. "It couldn't be held except by a man with private means of his own—considerable private means. If you had any idea of raising the endowment—"
"Well, I might do that—or add to the income, or whatever it might be, for a man who could make himself happy here, and get on with us all. I won't beat about the bush, Mercer. You seem to have got at loggerheads with everybody here, and it's no more comfortable for us than it is for you. You haven't fallen out with us yet, but I can't help feeling it may come any time. If I could do anything to make it easy for you to get away from a place where you don't find congenial society, we could part on good terms now, and it might save trouble in the future."
The Vicar now understood that the proposal was not to raise the endowment of the living for his own benefit. He had not yet grasped the fact that he was being invited to quit.
"I can only say that if you and I fall out it won't be my fault," he said. "It's quite true that the people round here—your sort of people, I mean—are a cantankerous lot."
"Well, I don't find them so, Mercer. I don't find them so."
He did not like being contradicted in this resolute fashion. "I'm afraid we must agree to differ on that point then," he said stiffly.
"It's thewholepoint, Mercer. It isn't only one or two you've managed to fall out with; that might happen to anybody, though if sensible people manage to fall out with their neighbours they generally manage to fall in again sooner or later. It's the whole lot. When we first came here you warned me against every single family about here we were likely to make friends with, except two. And you've fallen out with them since."
He now understood that he was being brought to book, and he liked that less than anything. He grew red and gobbled like a turkey cock before he spoke.
"This is a most unwarrantable attack," he said. "Did you ask me to come here to receive a lecture from you, Mr. Grafton?"
"I asked you to come here to see if we couldn't come to some mutual understanding that needn't reflectupon you if we can do so. My reasons for wanting a change made are likely to be painful to you, I know, and probably surprising as well. But I must state them if anything is to come of it. So I do so as directly as possible. If you'll accept them, and talk it over on the grounds that I should like a change made, so much the better. Then we needn't go over the reasons any more."
"You'd like a change made." He understood it now, and summoned all his powers of resistance, and resentment. "And you really think, Mr. Grafton, that because you've bought this property, and live in the biggest house on it, you can order things in that way. Let me tell you that there is one house in this parish that you havenotbought, and that is my humble Vicarage. You have no more right to dispose of that than you have of—of the Bishop's Palace at Medchester. You—"
"Can't we talk over things reasonably, Mercer? If I thought I had that sort of power, I should make some attempt to exercise it, shouldn't I? I shouldn't be asking you if we can't come to some understanding."
"And what understanding on such a subject is possible, I should like to know. You want me to go; that's the plain truth of the matter. Do you think I'm not a fit person to exercise my duties here, may I ask?"
Grafton was silent, with a silence that was significant.
There was a drop in the temperature. "For my own satisfaction this must be cleared up," said the Vicar, speaking with dignified restraint. "If you have any charges to bring against me I must know what they are, so that I can meet them in the open."
"There are no charges, Mercer, to be met in that way. I've told you already why I should like a change made, if you can bring yourself to consider it. It isn't only the people of our own sort, as you say, that you don't get on with. You're at loggerheads with half your parishioners at one time or another. My girls are always coming across it, wherever they go. They're keen—Caroline is especially—to make friends with the people in the place, and for us who live here in a certain relation with them to do what we can for them. It's one of the pleasures of landholding to be given that sort of opportunity. We've all of us come to see that. I believe we should be as happy and contented a community as you'd find anywhere, if—well, if it weren't for you, Mercer. I don't want to be offensive, but that's what it comes to."
The Vicar was trembling with anger. "But this is outrageous," he exclaimed.
"Oh, I don't think so," said Grafton easily. "I've no wish to offend you, but it seems to me that the state of things I want here is worth taking that risk for. I tell you plainly that you seem to me such a difficulty in the way of it that if you go on here I can't continue to offer you the friendship of myself and my family. In ordinary life, if a man you know is continuallyacting in a way you don't like, you drop his acquaintance, or if it's necessary you fight him. I don't want to fight you, and I don't suppose you want to fight me. I've said enough to show you that I've reasons which seem to me important for wanting to come to the understanding with you that I've indicated. I don't want to argue about them, or to push them in. They're there. I'll ask you to think over what I've said. Anything I can do to make it advantageous and agreeable to you to find some other place to work in, I will do; and if you decide to go, well, as far as people outside will be able to see, you and we will part as friends, and you'll be going, of course, of your own free will."
He rose from his chair, and the Vicar rose at the same time. He had an enormous amount to say, but found it difficult to say it as Grafton walked down the long room, opened the door for him, and accompanied him through the dining-room into the hall.
"It wants thinking over, I know," said Grafton, taking no notice of his beginnings of sentences. "You can't decide this sort of thing in a hurry. If you and Mrs. Mercer will come and dine with us to-morrow night, you and I could have a friendly talk about it afterwards and see if there's anything to be done. Caroline will write Mrs. Mercer a note."
The Vicar was on the doorstep, still striving for speech. Grafton said good-bye to him, and returned to the library.
Grafton didn't tell Caroline to write her note of invitation to Mrs. Mercer until the next morning. It was sent to the Vicarage by hand, with instructions to the bearer to wait for an answer.
Mrs. Mercer took it into her husband's study. In the ordinary way she would have done this with some expression of gaiety and pleasure, for she took such variations of life as happy surprises, and could be moved to excitement even by an invitation to a flower-show, with a garden party attached.
But this time her face did not light up as she opened and read the note, and only the thought of the waiting messenger sent her to her husband's room at once.
"Here is an invitation from Caroline for us to dine at the Abbey to-night," she said, with a grave face. "Do you wish me to accept it?"
The Vicar was very busy. He looked up from his writing as if he could hardly detach his thoughts from what he was doing, and said: "What is to-night? Thursday. There's nothing on, I think. Yes, accept it." Then he turned to his writing again.
Mrs. Mercer wrote her answer and sent it out. When she had done so she sat with a thoughtful look upon her face for some time, which gradually changed toone of decision. Then she went in to her husband's study again, and shut the door after her as if she meant to stay there. This was unusual. She was not made to feel herself welcome in that room in the morning hours.
She was not to be made welcome now. The Vicar had left his writing-table and was walking up and down the room, with a look on his face that was not pleasant to see. It didn't grow any more pleasant as he saw her shut the door behind her with that air which meant that she had something serious to say to him. "My dear, you're just interrupting me in a train of thought," he said in an annoyed voice. "If you want to talk about anything do please wait until lunch time, or at least until the post comes. I shall have a few minutes to spare then."
For answer she sat herself down in a high-backed chair which stood by the empty fireplace. "Albert," she said, "I must speak to you. Things are wrong with us all round, and I am kept out of it all. If I am to be a true wife to you, and stand by your side in all the difficulties and troubles which come to us with the people round, I ought to know what is going on, and not be kept in the dark, as you always keep me."
Tears stood in the little lady's eyes. She had been such a good loyal wife to him, putting all her money at his disposal, and allowing him to treat it as if it were his own, and even as if she ought to be thankful to him for the comfortable home that he could not havegiven her himself. She had never felt any disturbance of mind on that score, and did not feel any now. They were one, and hers was his. But for the trust and obedience she had given him, never questioning his wisdom, nor failing to take his side in the repeated disputes and estrangements that had come about between them and their neighbours, he did owe her return. The time had come when she could no longer go on putting her whole trust in him, if he did not show some corresponding trust in her.
He stopped in his walking up and down, and stood before her, the arrogant frown and look on his face which she knew so well. But something now told her that she must not be awed into submission by it, as previously she had always been.
"Really, I don't understand you," he said. "You must leave me to conduct my own affairs in my own way, as you have always done. You can help me in the difficulties I have in my work—and they are heavy enough, God knows, with the sort of people I have to deal with here—by giving me peace and quietness in my own home. You can help me in no other way. The troubles I have fall upon my own shoulders, and I am acting rightly by you in trying to keep you unaffected by them."
"But they do not only fall upon you," she said quietly. "We make friends with people, and everything seems to be going happily; and then suddenly we are not friends any longer. Often I have had to find it out for myself, and sometimes you don't even tellme what has happened to cause the change. It was so with the Beckleys. I have never known why we left off being friends with them. And I have never known why there was such disturbance before Mollie Walter was married. It would have been natural, as she was almost like your own daughter, as you so often used to say, that she should have been married from here, and that Mrs. Walter should have stayed on at the Cottage until after she was married. But her house at Wilborough was hurried on for her so that Mollie could be married from there, and you were not even asked to take part in the ceremony."
He had resumed his pacing of the room during the progress of this speech, and his look was not so arrogant as it had been.
"I certainly don't propose to go into old questions of that sort," he said. "They are over and done with, and—"
"I don't wish to go into them either," she said. "I didn't press you to take me into your confidence then, and I won't do it now. But I think you ought to tell me what has been the trouble with the Graftons. You have criticised them from time to time, as you criticise everybody,"—he frowned at this sentence, which was unlike any she had ever used to him—"but we have been on friendly terms with them for over a year. At first we were onveryfriendly terms with them, and you used to go to the Abbey in just the same way as you used to run in and out of Stone Cottage. They have always been as nice as possible to me, but I couldn'thelp seeing that they were not as friendly towards you as they had been. When you left off going there in the intimate way you did at first, they still asked us to the house fairly often. But this invitation to dinner to-night is the first we have had from them for weeks."
He did not usually allow her to speak at this length without interrupting her, but when you are brought to book about anything it is as well to know exactly what you have to meet. It may not after all be so difficult to meet it as you had anticipated.
It was with something like his customary tone that he said: "We have often discussed the Graftons together, and you know well enough that there are many things about them which I, as a priest of the Church, cannot approve of. If there has been any decline of intimacy between us it is for that reason and that reason alone. They are not what I thought they were when they first came here, and though in the position in which I stand towards them I must do my best to keep the peace for the good of the parish, I shall not surrender one jot or tittle of what I stand for here, for the sake of keeping in with the rich man of the parish."
It sounded very well to him, but she rather spoilt it by asking in a quiet voice: "What do you stand for here, Albert?"
Whether or not the necessity of explaining to her the whole gist and meaning of the Ordination Service withheld him from replying to her at once, she had time to go on before he spoke.
"I haven't been able to prevent myself asking that question lately," she said. "I was very much troubled by the way you behaved"—another phrase to which his ears were quite unaccustomed from her—"about the Coopers. When you thought that the Bishop had offered Surley to Mr. Leadbetter you didn't tell me anything about it, but you took me over there so that you might tellthem, though you knew what disappointment it would bring them. Then when they told you that the living had been offered to Denis, you congratulated them, but you spoke in such a different way to me as we came home; and you did your best to stir up trouble about it before you knew that Denis had refused the offer. And even when that did come out, you couldn't give him any credit for what was a fine action on his part, as I think, but could only talk about the way his sisters were served right in doing what they had, and put it about what they had done, to discredit them."
The Vicar had in fact arrived at the conclusion that Rhoda and Ethel had opened the Bishop's letter addressed to their brother, which it is probable that no one else would have guessed at; and righteous indignation at such an action had been his chief contribution to the talk that had resulted from the Bishop's offer and its refusal. It was somewhat disturbing to find that his wife had not taken that indignation at its face value. He defended himself at some length against her charge of uncharity, but her silence and her downcast look warned him that he was not impressing her, andas the ground was not of the strongest he relinquished it.
"But we will have an end to all this," he said, catching at his authority, so unexpectedly being questioned. "I can quite see that my silence as to the Graftons may have been misunderstood by you. The fact is that for months I have been coming to see that my position here will become impossible unless the Graftons refrain from meddling in affairs which are my concern and not theirs. I went down to the Abbey yesterday to have it out with Grafton once and for all. Either I must be allowed my own way here in matters which appertain to my office, and that must be definitely understood, or else I must fight for it, and all pretence of intimacy and friendship must be abandoned between us. Matters have come to a crisis. I found Grafton quite irreconcileable. He takes his stand, as a rich man of that type always does, upon his money."
"Oh, Albert!" she exclaimed.
"I don't mean to say, of course, that he mentions his money, but it comes down to that. He has bought this place, and imagines that he has bought all the people who live in it body and soul. I told him very plainly that he had not bought me, and that I was not for sale, and I flatter myself that I have given him something to think about. I was at first very angry, as you no doubt saw when I came home, but I have been thinking long and earnestly too. If you had not come in just now with a series of accusations which are reallyquite unjustified and exceptionally painful in the midst of a crisis of this sort, I should have told you in a very short time where my deliberations had led me. They are serious enough, and as you are concerned in the matter as well as myself, I should have consulted you before making any actual decision. But I feel that I can no longer go on here under such conditions. The work I have spent some of the best years of my life over is made of no avail, and to go on with it would only be to invite further failure. Better face all the distress of a complete break, and the expense of a move, and get away from the place. I had almost made up my mind to do that, and if you give me your concurrence I shall take the step without further hesitation. You know that when Sherlock sent the photograph of that charming little house at Darthead, which he was prepared to put at the disposal of anybody who would go and help him there, you said you wished we were in a position to go ourselves. Well, let us go, I say. It will mean some sacrifice of means, and I shall not be the ultimate authority at Darthead, as I have been here. But there will be less to keep up, and with an older man than he had anticipated getting, Sherlock would only be too glad to give a free hand. In fact he said that if he could get somebody whom he could thoroughly trust, he should try to get away for a year at least, and leave his curate in complete charge. Are you ready to make this new departure with me, Gertrude, and support me loyally in my reasons for making it?"