Matters went on quietly for some time without any catastrophe occurring
to the Rector. He had shut himself up from all society, and declined the
invitations of the parishioners for ten long days at least; but finding
that the kind people were only kinder than ever when they understood he
was "indisposed," poor Mr Proctor resumed his ordinary life, confiding
timidly in some extra precautions which his own ingenuity had invented.
He was shyer than ever of addressing the ladies in those parties he was
obliged to attend. He was especially embarrassed and uncomfortable in
the presence of the two Miss Wodehouses, who, unfortunately, were very
popular in Carlingford, and whom he could not help meeting everywhere.
Notwithstanding this embarrassment, it is curious how well he knew how
they looked, and what they were doing, and all about them. Though he
could not for his life have told what these things were called, he knew
Miss Wodehouse's dove-coloured dress and her French grey; and all those
gleams of blue which set off Lucy's fair curls, and floated about her
pretty person under various pretences, had a distinct though inarticulate
place in the good man's confused remembrance. But neither Lucy nor Miss
Wodehouse had brought matters to extremity. He even ventured to go to
their house occasionally without any harm coming of it, and lingered in
that blooming fragrant garden, where the blossoms had given place to
fruit, and ruddy apples hung heavy on the branches which had once
scattered their petals, rosy-white, on Frank Wentworth's Anglican coat.
Yet Mr Proctor was not lulled into incaution by this seeming calm.
Other people besides his mother had intimated to him that there were
expectations current of his "settling in life." He lived not in false
security, but wise trembling, never knowing what hour the thunderbolt
might fall upon his head.
It happened one day, while still in this condition of mind, that the
Rector was passing through Grove Street on his way home. He was walking
on the humbler side of the street, where there is a row of cottages with
little gardens in front of them--cheap houses, which are contented to be
haughtily overlooked by the staircase windows and blank walls of their
richer neighbours on the other side of the road. The Rector thought, but
could not be sure, that he had seen two figures like those of the Miss
Wodehouses going into one of these houses, and was making a little haste
to escape meeting those enemies of his peace. But as he wont hastily on,
he heard sobs and screams--sounds which a man who hid a good heart under
a shy exterior could not willingly pass by. He made a troubled pause
before the door from which these outcries proceeded, and while he stood
thus irresolute whether to pass on or to stop and inquire the cause,
some one came rushing out and took hold of his arm. "Please, sir, she's
dying--oh, please, sir, she thought a deal o' you. Please, will you come
in and speak to her?" cried the little servant-girl who had pounced
upon him so. The Rector stared at her in amazement. He had not his
prayer-book--he was not prepared; he had no idea of being called upon in
such an emergency. In the mean time the commotion rather increased in
the house, and he could hear in the distance a voice adjuring some one
to go for the clergyman. The Rector stood uncertain and perplexed,
perhaps in a more serious personal difficulty than had ever happened to
him all his life before. For what did he know about deathbeds? or what
had he to say to any one on that dread verge? He grew pale with real
vexation and distress.
"Have they gone for a doctor? that would be more to the purpose," he
said, unconsciously, aloud.
"Please, sir, it's no good," said the little maid-servant. "Please, the
doctor's been, but he's no good--and she's unhappy in her mind, though
she's quite resigned to go: and oh, please, if you would say a word to
her, it might do her a deal of good."
Thus adjured, the Rector had no choice. He went gloomily into the house
and up the stair after his little guide. Why did not they send for the
minister of Salem Chapel close by? or for Mr Wentworth, who was
accustomed to that sort of thing? Why did they resort to him in such an
emergency? He would have made his appearance before the highest magnates
of the land--before the Queen herself--before the bench of bishops or
the Privy Council--with less trepidation than he entered that poor
little room.
The sufferer lay breathing heavily in the poor apartment. She did not
look very ill to Mr Proctor's inexperienced eyes. Her colour was bright,
and her face full of eagerness. Near the door stood Miss Wodehouse,
looking compassionate but helpless, casting wistful glances at the bed,
but standing back in a corner as confused and embarrassed as the Rector
himself. Lucy was standing by the pillow of the sick woman with a watchful
readiness visible to the most unskilled eye--ready to raise her, to
change her position, to attend to her wants almost before they were
expressed. The contrast was wonderful. She had thrown off her bonnet
and shawl, and appeared, not like a stranger, but somehow in her natural
place, despite the sweet youthful beauty of her looks, and the gay girlish
dress with its floating ribbons. These singular adjuncts notwithstanding,
no homely nurse in a cotton gown could have looked more alert or
serviceable, or more natural to the position, than Lucy did. The poor
Rector, taking the seat which the little maid placed for him directly in
the centre of the room, looked at the nurse and the patient with a gasp
of perplexity and embarrassment. A deathbed, alas! was an unknown region
to him.
"Oh, sir, I'm obliged to you for coming--oh, sir, I'm grateful to you,"
cried the poor woman in the bed. "I've been ill, off and on, for years,
but never took thought to it as I ought. I've put off and put off,
waiting for a better time--and now, God help me, it's perhaps too late.
Oh, sir, tell me, when a person's ill and dying, is it too late?"
Before the Rector could even imagine what he could answer, the sick woman
took up the broken thread of her own words, and continued--
"I don't feel to trust as I ought to--I don't feel no confidence," she
said, in anxious confession. "Oh, sir, do you think it matters if one
feels it?--don't you think things might be right all the same though
we _were_ uneasy in our minds? My thinking can't change it one way or
another. Ask the good gentleman to speak to me, Miss Lucy, dear--he'll
mind what _you_ say."
A look from Lucy quickened the Rector's speech, but increased his
embarrassments. "It--it isn't her doctor she has no confidence in?" he
said, eagerly.
The poor woman gave a little cry. "The doctor--the doctor! what can he
do to a poor dying creature? Oh, Lord bless you, it's none of them things
I'm thinking of; it's my soul--my soul!"
"But my poor good woman," said Mr Proctor, "though it is very good and
praiseworthy of you to be anxious about your soul, let us hope that there
is no such--no such _haste_ as you seem to suppose."
The patient opened her eyes wide, and stared, with the anxious look of
disease, in his face.
"I mean," said the good man, faltering under that gaze, "that I see no
reason for your making yourself so very anxious. Let us hope it is not
so bad as that. You are very ill, but not _so_ ill--I suppose."
Here the Rector was interrupted by a groan from the patient, and by a
troubled, disapproving, disappointed look from Lucy Wodehouse. This
brought him to a sudden standstill. He gazed for a moment helplessly at
the poor woman in the bed. If he had known anything in the world which
would have given her consolation, he was ready to have made any exertion
for it; but he knew nothing to say--no medicine for a mind diseased was
in his repositories. He was deeply distressed to see the disappointment
which followed his words, but his distress only made him more silent,
more helpless, more inefficient than before.
After an interval which was disturbed only by the groans of the patient
and the uneasy fidgeting of good Miss Wodehouse in her corner, the Rector
again broke silence. The sick woman had turned to the wall, and closed
her eyes in dismay and disappointment--evidently she had ceased to
expect anything from him.
"If there is anything I can do," said poor Mr Proctor, "I am afraid I
have spoken hastily. I meant to try to calm her mind a little; if I can
be of any use?"
"Ah, maybe I'm hasty," said the dying woman, turning round again with a
sudden effort--"but, oh, to speak to me of having time when I've one
foot in the grave already!"
"Not so bad as that--not so bad as that," said the Rector, soothingly.
"But I tell you it is as bad as that," she cried, with the brief blaze
of anger common to great weakness. "I'm not a child to be persuaded
different from what I know. If you'd tell me--if you'd say a prayer--ah,
Miss Lucy, it's coming on again."
In a moment Lucy had raised the poor creature in her arms, and in default
of the pillows which were not at hand, had risen herself into their
place, and supported the gasping woman against her own breast. It was a
paroxysm dreadful to behold, in which every labouring breath seemed the
last. The Rector sat like one struck dumb, looking on at that mortal
struggle. Miss Wodehouse approached nervously from behind, and went up
to the bedside, faltering forth questions as to what she could do. Lucy
only waved her hand, as her own light figure swayed and changed, always
seeking the easiest attitude for the sufferer. As the elder sister drew
back, the Rector and she glanced at each other with wistful mutual looks
of sympathy. Both were equally well-disposed, equally helpless and
embarrassed. How to be of any use in that dreadful agony of nature was
denied to both. They stood looking on, awed and self-reproaching. Such
scenes have doubtless happened in sick-rooms before now.
When the fit was over, a hasty step came up the stair, and Mr Wentworth
entered the room. He explained in a whisper that he had not been at home
when the messenger came, but had followed whenever he heard of the
message. Seeing the Rector, he hesitated, and drew back with some
surprise, and, even (for he was far from perfect) in that chamber, a
little flush of offence. The Rector rose abruptly, waving his hand,
and went to join Miss Wodehouse in her corner. There the two elderly
spectators looked on silent at ministrations of which both were
incapable; one watching with wondering yet affectionate envy how Lucy
laid down the weakened but relieved patient upon her pillows; and one
beholding with a surprise he could not conceal, how a young man, not
half his own age, went softly, with all the confidence yet awe of
nature, into those mysteries which he dared not touch upon. The two
young creatures by the deathbed acknowledged that their patient was
dying; the woman stood by her watchful and affectionate--the man held up
before her that cross, not of wood or metal, but of truth and everlasting
verity, which is the only hope of man. The spectators looked on, and did
not interrupt--looked on, awed and wondering--unaware of how it was, but
watching, as if it were a miracle wrought before their eyes. Perhaps all
the years of his life had not taught the Rector so much as did that
half-hour in an unknown poor bed-chamber, where, honest and humble,
he stood aside, and, kneeling down, responded to his young brother's
prayer. His young brother--young enough to have been his son--not half
nor a quarter part so learned as he; but a world further on in that
profession which they shared--the art of winning souls.
When those prayers were over, the Rector, without a word to anybody,
stole quietly away. When he got into the street, however, he found
himself closely followed by Miss Wodehouse, of whom he was not at this
moment afraid. That good creature was crying softly under her veil. She
was eager to make up to him, to open out her full heart; and indeed
the Rector, like herself, in that wonderful sensation of surprised and
unenvying discomfiture, was glad at that moment of sympathy too.
"Oh, Mr Proctor, isn't it wonderful?" sighed good Miss Wodehouse.
The Rector did not speak, but he answered by a very emphatic nod of his
head.
"It did not use to be so when you and I were young," said his companion
in failure. "I sometimes take a little comfort from that; but no doubt,
if it had been in me, it would have shown itself somehow. Ah, I fear, I
fear, I was not well brought up; but, to be sure, that dear child has
not been brought up at all, if one may say so. Her poor mother died when
she was born. And oh, I'm afraid I never was kind to Lucy's mother, Mr
Proctor. You know she was only a year or two older than I was; and to
think of that child, that baby! What a world she is, and always was,
before me, that might have been her mother, Mr Proctor!" said Miss
Wodehouse, with a little sob.
"But things were different in our young days," said the Rector, repeating
her sentiment, without inquiring whether it were true or not, and finding
a certain vague consolation in it.
"Ah, that is true," said Miss Wodehouse--"that is true; what a blessing
things are so changed; and these blessed young creatures," she added
softly, with tears falling out of her gentle old eyes--"these blessed
young creatures are near the Fountainhead."
With this speech Miss Wodehouse held out her hand to the Rector,
and they parted with a warm mutual grasp. The Rector went straight
home--straight to his study, where he shut himself in, and was not to be
disturbed; that night was one long to be remembered in the good man's
history. For the first time in his life he set himself to inquire what
was his supposed business in this world. His treatise on the Greek verb,
and his new edition of Sophocles, were highly creditable to the Fellow
of All-Souls; but how about the Rector of Carlingford? What was he doing
here, among that little world of human creatures who were dying, being
born, perishing, suffering, falling into misfortune and anguish, and all
manner of human vicissitudes, every day? Young Wentworth knew what to
say to that woman in her distress; and so might the Rector, had her
distress concerned a disputed translation, or a disused idiom. The good
man was startled in his composure and calm. To-day he had visibly failed
in a duty which even in All-Souls was certainly known to be one of the
duties of a Christian priest. Was he a Christian priest, or what was he?
He was troubled to the very depths of his soul. To hold an office the
duties of which he could not perform, was clearly impossible. The only
question, and that a hard one, was, whether he could learn to discharge
those duties, or whether he must cease to be Rector of Carlingford. He
laboured over this problem in his solitude, and could find no answer.
"Things were different when we were young," was the only thought that
was any comfort to him, and that was poor consolation.
For one thing, it is hard upon the most magnanimous of men to confess
that he has undertaken an office for which he has not found himself
capable. Magnanimity was perhaps too lofty a word to apply to the
Rector; but he was honest to the bottom of his soul. As soon as he
became aware of what was included in the duties of his office, he must
perform them, or quit his post. But how to perform them? Can one _learn_
to convey consolation to the dying, to teach the ignorant, to comfort
the sorrowful? Are these matters to be acquired by study, like Greek
verbs or intricate measures? The Rector's heart said No. The Rector's
imagination unfolded before him, in all its halcyon blessedness, that
ancient paradise of All-Souls, where no such confounding demands ever
disturbed his beatitude. The good man groaned within himself over the
mortification, the labour, the sorrow, which this living was bringing
upon him. "If I had but let it pass to Morgan, who wanted to marry," he
said with self-reproach; and then suddenly bethought himself of his own
most innocent filial romance, and the pleasure his mother had taken in
her new house and new beginning of life. At that touch the tide flowed
back again. Could he dismiss her now to another solitary cottage in
Devonshire, her old home there being all dispersed and broken up, while
the house she had hoped to die in cast her out from its long-hoped-for
shelter? The Rector was quite overwhelmed by this new aggravation. If by
any effort of his own, any sacrifice to himself, he could preserve this
bright new home to his mother, would he shrink from that labour of love?
Nobody, however, knew anything about those conflicting thoughts which
rent his sober bosom. He preached next Sunday as usual, letting no trace
of the distressed, wistful anxiety to do his duty which now possessed
him gleam into his sermon. He looked down upon a crowd of unsympathetic,
uninterested faces, when he delivered that smooth little sermon, which
nobody cared much about, and which disturbed nobody. The only eyes which
in the smallest degree comprehended him were those of good Miss Wodehouse,
who had been the witness and the participator of his humiliation. Lucy
was not there. Doubtless Lucy was at St Roque's, where the sermons of
the perpetual curate differed much from those of the Rector of Carlingford.
Ah me! the rectorship, with all its responsibilities, was a serious
business; and what was to become of it yet, Mr Proctor could not see.
He was not a hasty man--he determined to wait and see what events might
make of it; to consider it ripely--to take full counsel with himself.
Every time he came out of his mother's presence, he came affected and
full of anxiety to preserve to her that home which pleased her so much.
She was the strong point in favour of Carlingford; and it was no small
tribute to the good man's filial affection, that for her chiefly he kept
his neck under the yoke of a service to which he knew himself unequal,
and, sighing, turned his back upon his beloved cloisters. If there had
been no other sick-beds immediately in Carlingford, Mrs Proctor would
have won the day.