"I MUST HAVE GRACE."
When the Rev. Archibald Drummond was nominated to the living of
Hadleigh in Sussex, it was at once understood by his family that he
had achieved a decided success in life.
Hadleigh until very recently had been a perpetual curacy, and the
perpetual curate in charge had lived in the large, shabby house with
the green door on the Braidwood Road, as it was called. There had been
some talk of a new vicarage, but as yet the first brick had not been
laid, the building-committee had fallen out on the question of the
site, and nothing had been definitely arranged: there was a good deal
of talk, too, about the church restoration, but at the present moment
nothing had been done.
Mr. Drummond had not been disturbed in his mind by the delay of the
building-committee in the matter of the new vicarage, but on the topic
of the church restoration he had been heard to say very bitter
things,--far too bitter, it was thought, to proceed from the lips of
such a new-comer. It is not always wise to be outspoken, and when Mr.
Drummond expressed himself a little too frankly on the ugliness of the
sacred edifice, which until lately had been a chapel-of-ease, he had
caused a great deal of dissatisfaction in the mind of his hearers; but
when the young vicar, still strongly imbued with the beauties of
Oxford architecture, had looked round blankly on the great square pews
and galleries, and then at the wooden pulpit, and the Ten Commandments
that adorned the east end, he was not quite so sure in his mind that
his position was as enviable as that of other men.
Church architecture was his hobby, and, if the truth must be told, he
was a little "High" in his views; without attaching himself to the
Ultra-Ritualistic party, he was still strongly impregnated with many
of their ideas; he preferred Gregorian to Anglican chants, and would
have had no objection to incense if his diocesan could have been
brought to appreciate it too.
An ornate service was decidedly to his taste. It was, therefore, a
severe mortification when he found himself compelled to minister
Sunday after Sunday in a building that was ugly enough for a
conventicle, and to listen to the florid voices of a mixed choir,
instead of the orderly array of men and boys in white surplices to
which he had been accustomed. If he had been combative by nature,--one
who loved to gird his armor about him and to plunge into every sort of
_melee_,--he would have rejoiced after a fashion at the thought of the
work cut out for him, of bringing order and beauty out of this chaos;
but he was by nature too impatient. He would have condemned and
destroyed instead of trying to renovate.
"Why not build a new church at once?" he said, with a certain youthful
intolerance that made people angry. "Never mind the vicarage; the old
house will last my time: but a place like this--a rising place--ought
to have a church worthy of it. It will be money thrown away to restore
this one," finished the young vicar, looking round him with sorely
troubled eyes; and it was this outspoken frankness that had lost him
popularity at first.
But, if the new vicar had secret cause for discontent in the Drummond
family there was nothing but the sweetness of triumph.
"Archie has never given me a moment's trouble from his birth," his
proud mother was wont to declare; and it must be owned that the young
man had done very fairly for himself.
There had been plenty of anxiety in the Drummond household while
Archibald was enjoying his first Oxford term. Things had come to a
climax: his father, who was a Leeds manufacturer, had failed most
utterly, and to a large amount. The firm of Drummond & Drummond, once
known as a most respectable and reliable firm, had come suddenly, but
not unexpectedly to the ground; and Archibald Drummond the elder had
been compelled to accept a managership in the very firm that, by
competition and underselling, had helped to ruin him.
It was a heavy trial to a man of Mr. Drummond's proud temperament; but
he went through with it in a tough, dogged way that excited his wife's
admiration. True, his bread was bitter to him for a long time, and the
sweetness of life, as he told himself, was over for him; but he had a
large family to maintain, sons and daughters growing up around him,
and the youngest was not yet six months old; under such circumstances
a man may be induced to put his pride in his pocket.
"Your father has grown quite gray, and has begun to stoop. It makes my
heart quite ache to see him sometimes," Mrs. Drummond wrote to her
eldest son; "but he never says a word to any of us. He just goes
through with it day after day."
At that time Archie was her great comfort. He had begun to make his
own way early in life, understanding from the first that his parents
could do very little for him. He had worked well at school, and had
succeeded in obtaining one or two scholarships. When his university
life commenced, and the household at Leeds became straitened in their
circumstances, he determined not to encumber them with his presence.
He soon became known in his college as a reading-man and a steady
worker; he was fortunate, too, in obtaining pupils for the long
vacation. By and by he became a fellow and tutor of his college, and
before he was eight-and-twenty the living of Hadleigh was offered to
him. It was not at all a rich living,--not being worth more than three
hundred a year,--and some of his Oxford friends would have dissuaded
him from accepting it; but Archibald Drummond was not of their
opinion. Oxford did not suit his constitution; he was never well
there. Sussex air, and especially the sea-side, would give him just
the tone he required. He liked the big old-fashioned house that would
be allotted to him. He could take pupils and add to his income in that
way; at present he had his fellowship. It was only in the event of his
marriage that his income might not be found sufficient. At the present
moment he had no matrimonial intentions: there was only one thing on
which he was determined, and that was, that Grace must live with him
and keep his house.
Grace was the sister next to him in age. Mattie,--or Matilda, as her
mother often called her,--was the eldest of the family, and was two
years older than Archibald. Between him and Grace there were two
brothers, Fred and Clyde, and beyond Grace a string of girls ending in
Dottie, who was not yet ten. Archibald used to forget their ages and
mix them up in the most helpless way; he was never quite sure if
Isabel were eighteen or twenty, or whether Clara or Susie came next.
He once forgot Laura altogether, and was only reminded of her
existence by the shock of surprise at seeing the awkward-looking,
ungainly girl standing before him, looking shyly up in his face.
Archibald was never quite alive to the blessing of having seven
sisters, none of them with any pretension to beauty, unless it were
Grace, though he was obliged to confess on his last visit to Leeds
that Isabel was certainly passable-looking. He tried to take a proper
amount of interest in them and be serenely unconscious of their want
of grace and polish; but the effort was too manifest, and neither
Clara nor Susie nor Laura regarded their grave elder brother with any
lively degree of affection. Mrs. Drummond was a somewhat stern and
exacting mother, but she was never so difficult to please as when her
eldest son was at home.
"Home is never so comfortable when Archie is in it," Susie would
grumble to her favorite confidante, Grace. "Every one is obliged to be
on their best behavior; and yet mother finds fault from morning to
night. Dottie is crying now because she has been scolded for coming
down to tea in a dirty pinafore."
"Oh, hush, Susie dear! you ought not to say such things," returned
Grace, in her quiet voice.
Poor Grace! these visits of Archie were her only pleasures. The
brother and sister were devoted to each other. In Archie's eyes not
one of the others was to be compared to her; and in this he was
perfectly right.
Grace Drummond was a tall, sweet-looking girl of two-and-twenty,--not
pretty, except in her brother's opinion, but possessing a soft, fair
comeliness that made her pleasant to look upon. In voice and manner
she was extremely quiet,--almost grave; and only those who lived with
her had any idea of the repressed strength and energy of her
character, and the almost masculine clearness of intellect that lay
under the soft exterior. One side of her nature was hidden from every
one but her brother, and to him only revealed by intermittent flashes,
and that was the passionate absorption of her affection in him. To her
parents she was dutiful and submissive, but when she grew up the yoke
of her mother's will was felt to be oppressive. Her father's nature
was more in sympathy with her own; but even with him she was reticent.
She was good to all her brothers and sisters, and especially devoted
to Dottie; but her affection for them was so strongly pervaded by
anxiety and the overweight of responsibility that its pains
overbalanced its pleasures. She loved them, and toiled in their
service from morning to night; but as yet she had not felt herself
rewarded by any decided success. But in Archie her pride was equal to
her love; she was critical, and her standard was somewhat high, but he
satisfied her. What other people recognized as faults, she regarded
as the merest blemishes. Without being absolutely faultless, which was
of course impossible in a creature of flesh and blood, he was still as
near perfection, she thought, as he could be. Perhaps her affection
for him blinded her somewhat, and cast a sort of loving glamour over
her eyes; for it must be owned that Archibald was by no means
extraordinary in either goodness or cleverness. From a boy she had
watched his career with dazzled eyes, rejoicing in every stroke of
success that came to him as though it were her own. Her own life was
dull and laborious, spent in the overcrowded house in Lowder Street,
but she forgot it in following his. Now and then bright days came to
her,--few in number, but absolutely golden, when this dearly-loved
brother came on a brief visit,--when they had snatches of delicious
talk in the empty school-room at the top of the house, or he took her
out with him for a long, quiet walk.
Mrs. Drummond always made some dry sarcastic remark when they came in,
for she was secretly jealous of Archie's affection for Grace. Hers was
rather a monopolizing nature, and she would willingly have had the
first share in her son's affections. It somewhat displeased her to see
him so wrapt up in the one sister to the exclusion of all the others,
as she told him.
"I think you might have asked Matilda or Isabel to accompany you. The
poor girls never see anything of you, Archie," she would say
plaintively to her son. But to Grace she would speak somewhat sharply,
bidding her fulfil some neglected duty, which another could as well
have performed, and making her at once understand by her manner that
she was to blame in leaving Mattie at home.
"Mother," Archibald said to her one day, when she had spoken with
unusual severity, and the poor girl had retreated from the room,
feeling as though she had been convicted of selfishness, "we must
settle the matter about which I spoke to you last night. I have been
thinking about it ever since. Mattie will not do at all. I must have
Grace!"
Mrs. Drummond looked up from her mending, and her thin lips settled
into a hard line that they always took when her mind was made up on a
disagreeable subject. She had a pinafore belonging to Dottie in her
hand; there was a jagged rent in it, and she sighed impatiently as she
put it down; though she was not a woman who shirked any of her
maternal duties, she had often been heard to say that her work was
never done, and that her mending-basket was never empty.
"But if I cannot spare Grace," she said, rather shortly, as she
meditated another lecture to the delinquent Dottie.
"But, mother, you must spare her!" returned her son, eagerly, leaning
his elbow on the mantelpiece, and watching her rapid manipulations
with apparent interest. "Look here; I am quite in earnest. I have set
my heart on having Grace. She is just the one to manage a clergyman's
household. She would be my right hand in the parish."
"She is our right hand too, Archie; but I suppose we are to cut it
off, that it may benefit you and your parish."
Mrs. Drummond seldom spoke so sharply to her eldest son; but this
request of his was grievous to her.
"I think Grace ought to be considered, too, in the matter," he
returned, somwhat sullenly. "She works harder than any paid governess,
and gets small thanks for her trouble."
"She does her duty," returned Mrs. Drummond, coldly,--she very seldom
praised any of her children,--"but not more than Mattie does hers. You
are prejudiced strongly against your sister, Archie; you are not fair
to her in any way. Mattie is a capital little housekeeper. She is
economical, and full of clever contrivances. It is not as though I
asked you to try Isabel. She is well enough, too, in her way, but a
little flighty, and rather too pretty, perhaps--" but here a laugh
from Archie grated on her ear.
"Too pretty!--what an absurd idea! The girl is passable-looking, and I
will not deny that she has improved lately; but, mother, there is not
one of the girls that can be called pretty except Grace."
Mrs. Drummond winced at her son's outspoken words. The plainness of
her daughters was a sore subject.
She had never understood why her girls were so ordinary-looking. She
had been a handsome girl in her time, and was still a fine-looking
woman. Her husband, too, had had a fair amount of good looks, and,
though he stooped, was still admirable in her eyes. The boys, too,
were thoroughly fine fellows. Fred was decidedly handsome, and so was
Clyde; and as for her favorite Archie, Mrs. Drummond glanced up at him
as he stood beside her.
He certainly looked a model young clergyman. His features were good,
but the lower part of his face was quite hidden by the fair mustache
and the soft silky beard. He had thoughtful gray eyes, which could
look as severe as hers sometimes; and, though his shoulders were
somewhat too sloping, there could be no fault found with his figure.
He was as nice-looking as possible, she thought, and no mother could
have been better satisfied. But why, with the exception of Grace and
Isabel, were her girls so deficient in outward graces? It could not be
denied that they were very ordinary girls. Laura was overgrown and
freckled, and had red hair; Susie was sickly-looking, and so
short-sighted that they feared she would have to take to spectacles;
and Clara was stolid and heavy-looking, one of those thick-set girls
that dress never seems to improve. Dottie had a funny little face; but
one could not judge of her yet. And Mattie,--Mrs. Drummond sighed
again as she thought of her eldest daughter,--Mattie was thirty; and
her mother felt she would never marry. It was not that she was so
absolutely plain,--people who liked her said Mattie had a nice
face,--but she was so abrupt, so uncouth in her awkwardness, such a
stranger to the minor morals of life, that it would be a wonder indeed
if she could find favor in any man's eyes.
"I do think you are too hard on your sisters," returned Mrs. Drummond,
stung by her son's remark. "Isabel was very much admired at her first
party last week. Mrs. Cochrane told me so, and so did Miss Blair." She
could have added that her maternal interest had been strongly stirred
by the mention of a certain Mr. Ellis Burton, who she had understood
had paid a great deal of attention that evening to Isabel, and who was
the eldest son of a wealthy manufacturer in Leeds. But Mrs. Drummond
had some good old-fashioned notions, and one of these was never to
speak on such delicate subjects as the matrimonial prospects of her
daughters: indeed, she often thanked heaven she was not a match-making
mother,--which was as well, under the circumstances.
"Well, well, we are not talking about Isabel," returned her son,
impatiently. "The question is about Grace, mother. I really do wish
very much that you and my father would stretch a point for me here. I
want her more than I can say."
"But, Archie, you must be reasonable. Just think a moment. Your father
cannot afford to send the girls to school, or to pay for a good
finishing governess. We have given Grace every advantage; and just as
she is making herself really useful to me in the school-room, you want
to deprive me of her services."
"You know I offered to pay for Clara's schooling," returned her son,
reproachfully. "She is more than sixteen, is she not! Surely Mattie
could teach the others?"
But Mrs. Drummond's clear, concise voice interrupted him:
"Archie, how can you talk such nonsense? You know poor Mattie was
never good at book-learning. She would hardly do for Dottie. Ask
Grace, if you doubt my word."
"Of course I do not doubt it, mother," in rather an aggravated voice,
for he felt he was having the worst of the argument.
"Then why do you not believe me when I tell you the thing you ask is
impossible?" replied his mother more calmly. "I am sorry for you if
you are disappointed, Archie; but you undervalue Mattie,--you do
indeed. She will make you a nice little housekeeper, and, though she
is not clever, she is so amiable that nothing ever puts her out; and
visiting the poor and sick-nursing are more in her line than in
Grace's. Mrs. Blair finds her invaluable. She wanted her for one of
her district visitors, and I said she had too much to do at home."
Archie shrugged his shoulders. Mrs. Blair was the wife of the vicar of
All Saints', where the Drummonds attended, and from a boy she had been
his pet aversion. She was a bustling, managing woman, and of course
Mattie was just to her taste. He did not see much use in continuing
the conversation; with all his affection for his mother,--and she was
better loved by her sons than by her daughters,--he knew her to be as
immovable as a rock when she had once made up her mind. He thought at
first of appealing to his father on Grace's behalf, but abandoned this
notion after a few minutes' reflection. His father was decided and
firm in all matters relating to business, but for many years past he
had abandoned the domestic reins to his wife's capable hands. Perhaps
he had proved her worth and prudence; perhaps he thought the
management of seven daughters too much for any man. Anyhow, he
interfered less and less as the years went on; and if at any time he
differed from his wife, she could always talk him over, as her son
well knew.
When the subject had been first mooted in the household, he had said a
word or two to his father, and had found him very reluctant to
entertain the idea of parting with Grace. She was his favorite
daughter, and he thought how he should miss her when he came home
weary and jaded at night.
"I don't think it will do at all," he had said, in an undecided
dissatisfied tone. "Won't one of the other girls serve your turn?
There's Mattie, or that little monkey Isabel, she is as pert and
lively as possible. But Grace; why, she is every one's right hand.
What would the mother or the young ones do without her?"
No; it was no use appealing to his father, Archie thought, and might
only make mischief in the house. He and Grace must make up their mind
to a few more years' separation. He turned away after his mother's
last speech, and finally left the room without saying another word.
There was a cloud on his face, and Mrs. Drummond saw that he was much
displeased; but, though she sighed again as she took up a pair of
Clyde's socks and inspected them carefully, there was no change in her
resolution that Mattie, and not Grace, should go to the vicarage for
the year's visit that was all Archie had asked.
There are mothers and mothers in this world,--some who are capable of
sacrificing their children to Moloch, who will barter their own flesh
and blood in return for some barren heritage or other. There are those
who will exact from those dependent on them heavy tithes of daily
patience and uncomplaining drudgery; while others, who are "mothers
indeed" give all, asking for nothing in return.
Mrs. Drummond was a good woman. She had many virtues and few faults.
She was lady-like, industrious and self-denying in her own personal
comforts, an exemplary wife, and a tolerant mistress; but she was
better understood by her sons than by her daughters.
Her maternal instincts were very strong, and no mother had more
delighted in her nursery than she had in hers. As long as there was a
baby in the house the tenderness of her love was apparent enough. She
wore herself out tending her infants, and no one ever heard her say a
harsh word in her nursery.
But as her children grew up, there was much clashing of wills in the
household. Her sons did not fear her in the least; but with her
daughters it was otherwise. They felt the mother's strong will
repressive; it threatened to dwarf their individuality and cramp that
free growth that is so necessary to young things.
Dottie, who by virtue of being the last baby had had more than her
fair amount of petting, was only just beginning to learn her lesson of
unquestioning obedience; and, as she was somewhat spoiled, her lesson
was hard one. But Laura and Susie and Clara had not yet found out that
their mother loved them and wished to be their friend; they were timid
and reserved with her, and took all their troubles to Grace. Even
Mattie, who was her first-born, and who was old enough to be her
mother's companion, quailed and blushed like a child under the dry
caustic speeches at which Clyde and Fred only laughed.
"You don't understand the mother. Her bark is worse than her bite,"
Clyde would say to his sister sometimes. "She is an awfully clever
woman, and it riles her to see herself surrounded by such a set of
ninnies. Now, don't sulk, Belle. You know Mattie's a duffer compared
to Grace; aren't you, Matt?"
At which truism poor Mattie would hang her head.
"Yes, Clyde; I know I am dreadfully stupid sometimes, and that makes
mother angry."
Mrs. Drummond often complained bitterly of her daughters' want of
confidence in her, but she never blamed herself for the barrier that
seemed between them. She was forever asserting maternal authority,
when such questions might have been safely laid to rest between her
and her grown-up daughters. Mrs. Challoner's oneness of sympathy with
her girls, her lax discipline, her perfect equality, would have
shocked a woman of Mrs. Drummond's calibre. She would not have
tolerated or understood it for a moment.
"My girls must do as I wish," was a very ordinary speech in her mouth.
"I always do as my girls wish," Mrs. Challoner would have said. And,
indeed, the two mothers were utterly dissimilar; but it may be doubted
whether the Challoner household were not far happier than the family
in Lowder Street.