Mrs. Damerel went back into the house with a countenance much less
placid than that of her husband. I scarcely know why it is that the
contrast of perfect repose and enjoyment with anxiety, work, and care
should irritate the worker as it invariably does; but here indeed there
was reason enough; for Mrs. Damerel felt that the two people luxuriating
in total absence of care on this delightful morning ought to have taken
a considerable share with her in her labors and lightened the burden she
was now obliged to bear alone. This mingled a sharpness of feeling with
her toils. People who interpret human nature coarsely--and they are,
perhaps, the majority--would have said that Mrs. Damerel was jealous of
her husband’s preference for Rose’s society, and this would have been a
total and vulgar mistake; but she had in her mind a feeling which it is
difficult to explain, which for the moment made her irritation with Rose
more strong than her irritation with Rose’s father. He was, in the first
place, a man--grand distinction, half contemptuous, half respectful,
with which women of Mrs. Damerel’s age (I don’t say young women often do
it, at least consciously--except in the case of their fathers and
brothers) account for and make up their minds to so many things. I am
not attempting to account for this sentiment, which is so similar to
that with which men in their turn regard women; I only acknowledge its
existence. He was a man, brought up as all men are (I still quote Mrs.
Damerel’s thoughts, to which she seldom or never gave expression), to
think of themselves first, and expect everything to give in to them. But
Rose had none of these privileges. What her mother as a woman had to
take upon her, Rose had an equal right to take too. Mrs. Damerel herself
could not forget, though everybody else did, that she had been a Rose
too, in her proper person; the time even since that miraculous period
was not so far off to her as to the others; but before she was Rose’s
age she had been married, and had already become, to some extent, Mr.
Damerel’s shield and buckler against the world and its annoyances. And
here was Rose growing up as if she, instead of being a woman as nature
made her, was herself one of the privileged class, to whom women are the
ministers. This annoyed Mrs. Damerel more, perhaps, than the facts
justified; it gave her a sense of injured virtue as well as feeling. It
would be the ruin of the girl--it was wrong to let her get into such
ways. The mother was angry, which is always painful and aggravates
everything. She was too proud to struggle with her daughter, or to exact
help which was not freely given; for Rose was no longer a child to be
sent hither and thither and directed what to do. And Mrs. Damerel was no
more perfect than Rose was--she had her own difficulties of temper like
other people. This was one of them--that she drew back within herself
when she felt her appeal refused or even left without response. She went
in with a little scorn, a little pride, a good deal of anger and more of
mortification. “I must do everything myself, it appears,” she said, with
a swelling of the heart which was very natural, I think. After the sun
on the lawn, it was very warm in-doors and the school-room was very
noisy indeed by the time she had got rid of the applicants in the hall,
one of whom (most respectful and indeed obsequious, and perfectly
willing to accept her excuses, but yet a dun notwithstanding) had come
to say that he had many heavy payments to make up, etc.--and if Mrs.
Damerel could oblige him--Mrs. Damerel could not oblige him, but he was
very civil and full of apologies for troubling her.
I do not, by any means, intend to say that the rector’s wife was
tortured by perpetual struggling with her creditors. It was not so bad
as that. The difficulty was rather to keep going, to be not too much in
debt to any one, to pay soon enough to preserve her credit, and yet get
as long a day as possible. Mrs. Damerel had come by long practice to
have the finest intuition in such matters. She knew exactly how long a
tailor or a wine merchant would wait for his money without acerbation of
temper, and would seize that crowning moment to have him paid by hook or
by crook. But by thus making a fine art of her bills, she added
infinitely to her mental burdens--for a woman must never forget anything
or neglect anything when she holds her tradespeople so very delicately
in hand.
The school-room, as I have just said, was very noisy, not to say
uproarious, when she got back to it, and it was hard not to remember
that Rose ought to have been there. There were five children in it, of
various ages and sizes. The two big boys were both at Eton. The eldest,
Bertie, who was bright and clever, was “on the foundation,” and
therefore did not cost his parents much; the second had his expenses
paid by a relation--thus these two were off their mother’s hands. The
eldest in the school-room was Agatha, aged fourteen, who taught the two
little ones; but who, during her mother’s absence, ought to have been
playing “her scales,” and had conscientiously tried to do so for ten
minutes, at the end of which time she had been obliged to resign the
music in order to rescue these same two little ones, her special charge,
from the hands of Dick, aged ten, who was subjecting them to unknown
tortures, which caused the babes to howl unmercifully. Patty, the next
girl to Agatha, aided and abetted Dick; and what with the laughter of
these two pickles, and the screams of the small ones, and poor Agatha’s
remonstrances, the scene was Pandemonium itself, and almost as hot; for
the room was on the sunny side of the house, and blazing,
notwithstanding the drawn blinds. The children were all languid and
irritable with the heat, hating their confinement in-doors; and, indeed,
if Rose had come, she would have made a very poor exchange. Agatha’s
music had tumbled down from the piano, the old red cover was half drawn
off the table, and threatened at any moment a clean sweep of copybooks,
inkbottles and slates. Dick stood among his books, all tumbled on the
floor, his heels crushing the cover of one, while Patty sat upon the
open dictionary, doubling down half the leaves with her weight. Such a
scene for a bothered mother to come into! Mr. Damerel himself heard some
faint rumor of the noise, and his fine brow had begun to draw itself
into lines, and a resolution to “speak to their mother” formed itself
within his mind. Poor mother! She could have cried when she went in out
of all her other troubles; but that was a mere momentary weakness, and
the rebels were soon reduced to order, Agatha sent back to her scales,
and Dick and Patty to their copybooks. “You two little ones may go,”
Mrs. Damerel said, and with a shriek of delight the babies toddled out
and made their way to the hayfield behind the house, where they were
perfectly happy, and liable to no more danger than that of being carried
off in a load of fragrant hay. When Mr. Nolan, the curate, came in to
talk about parish business, Agatha’s “scales,” not badly played, were
trilling through the place, and Patty and Dick, very deep in ink, and
leaning all their weight upon their respective pens, were busy with
their writing; and calm--the calm of deep awe--prevailed.
“Shall I disturb you if I come in here?” asked the curate, with a mellow
sound in his voice which was not brogue--or at least he thought it was
not, and was ingenuously surprised when he was recognized as an
Irish-man. (“It will be my name, to be sure,” he would say on such
occasions, somewhat puzzled.) He was a bony man, loosely put together,
in a long coat, with rather a wisp of a white tie; for, indeed, it was
very hot and dusty on the roads, and where the rector is an elegant man
of very refined mind, the curate, like the wife, has generally a good
deal to do.
“Indeed, the lessons have been so much disturbed as it is, that it does
not much matter,” said Mrs. Damerel. “On Monday morning there are so
many things to call me away.”
“How selfish of me!” said the curate. “Monday morning is just the time
I’ve little or nothing to do, except when there’s sickness. What a brute
I was not to offer meself,--and indeed, that’s just what I’ve come to
speak about.”
“No, no, you are too kind, and do too much already,” said Mrs. Damerel,
looking at him with a grateful smile, but shaking her head. “And,
indeed,” she added, the cloud coming over her face again, “Rose ought to
come and relieve me; but her father has to be attended to, and that
takes up so much of her time.”
“To be sure,” said the curate cheerily, “and reason good. Besides, it
would be wearing work for one like her--whereas the like o’ me is made
for it. Look here, Dick, my boy, will you promise to learn your lessons
like a brick to-morrow if I ask the mother for a holiday to-day?”
“Oh, hurrah!” cried Dick, delighted.
“Oh, mamma, like twenty bricks,” cried Patty, “though how a brick can
learn lessons?--It’s so hot, and one keeps thinking of the hayfield.”
“Then be off wi’ you all,” cried the curate. “Don’t you see the mother
smile? and Agatha too. I’m going to talk business. Sure, you don’t mind
for one day?”
“Oh, mind!” said poor Mrs. Damerel, with a half-smile; then waiting till
they were all out of hearing, an exit speedily accomplished, “if it were
not for duty, how glad I should be to give it up altogether!--but they
could not go on with Miss Hunt,” she added, with a quick glance at the
curate to see whether by chance he understood her. Good curate, he could
be very stolid on occasion, though I hope he was not fool enough to be
taken in by Mrs. Damerel’s pretences: though it was true enough that
Miss Hunt was impracticable. She could not afford a better; this was
what she really meant.
“Out of the question,” said Mr. Nolan; “and I’m no scholar myself to
speak of, notwithstanding what I’m going to have the presumption to say
to you. It’s just this--I don’t do much visiting of mornings; they don’t
like it. It takes them all in a mess as it were, before they’ve had time
to get tidy, and these mornings hang heavy on my hands. I want you to
let me have the three big ones. I might get them on a bit; and time, as
I tell you, my dear lady, hangs heavy on my hands.”
“How can you tell me such a fib?” said Mrs. Damerel, half crying, half
laughing. “Oh, you are too good, too good; but, Mr. Nolan, I can’t take
anything more from you. Rose must help me, it is her duty; it is bad for
her to be left so much to herself; why, I was married and had all the
troubles of life on my head at her age.”
“And so she’ll have, before you know where you are,” said the good
curate, which will show the reader at once that he entertained no
absorbing passion for Miss Rose, though I am aware it is a curate’s duty
so to do. “So she’ll have; she’ll be marrying some great grandee or
other. She looks like a princess, and that’s what she’ll be.”
“She has no right to be a princess,” said the mother, overwrought and
irritable, “and duty is better than ease surely. You, I know, think so.”
“For the like of me, yes,” said the curate; “for her, I don’t know.”
“I was once very much like her, though you would not think it,” said the
mother, with the slightest tinge of bitterness, “but that is not the
question--no, no, we must not trouble you.”
“When I tell you the mornings hang on my hands! I don’t know what to do
with my mornings. There’s Tuesday I’m due at the schools, but the rest
of the week I do nothing but idle. And idling’s a great temptation. A
cigar comes natural when you’ve nothing to do. You don’t like a man
smoking in the morning; I’ve heard you say so. So you see the young ones
will save me from a--no, I won’t say cigar; worse than that; cigars are
too dear for a curate, me dear lady--from a pipe.”
“Mr. Nolan, you are too good for this world,” said poor Mrs. Damerel,
affected to tears; “but I must first try what can be done at home,” she
added after a pause; “no, no, you weigh me down under your kindness.
What would the parish be but for you?”
“It would be just the same if I were dead and buried,” said the curate,
shrugging his shoulders. “Ah, that’s the worst of it: try for a little
bit of a corner of work like a child’s lessons, and you may be of
service; but try to mend the world, even a bit of a parish, and you’re
nowhere. They don’t think half as much of me as they do of the rector?”
he added, with a curious smile, which the rector’s wife only half
understood. Was it satirical? or could it be possible that the curate
was surprised that the people thought more of the rector than of
himself? Mrs. Damerel was aware, no one better, of her husband’s faults.
Many a time she was ready to say in bitterness (to herself) that he was
wearing her to death; but nevertheless she looked at long,
loosely-built, snub-nosed Mr. Nolan, with mingled amusement and
surprise. Was it possible that he could entertain any hopes of rivalling
her husband? Of course a visit from the rector was an honor to any one,
for Mr. Damerel was a man who, notwithstanding a little human weakness,
was the very picture and model of a gentleman; and the idea of comparing
him with good Mr. Nolan was too absurd.
“Yes, no doubt they are pleased to see him,” she said: “poor people are
very quick to recognize high breeding; but I am sure, my dear Mr. Nolan,
that they are all very fond of you.”
The curate made no immediate answer. I am not sure that he had not in
his private heart something of the same feeling with which his present
companion had been thinking of her daughter, a feeling less intense in
so far as it was much more indifferent to him, yet in a way stronger
because untempered by affection. The rector was of his own kind, the
ornamental and useless specimen, while he was the worker whom nobody
thought of; but these secret feelings neither of the two confided to the
other. Mr. Nolan would have been horrified had he detected in Mrs.
Damerel that slight bitterness about Rose, which indeed would have
shocked herself as deeply had she paused to identity the sentiment, and
she would have been, and was, to some slight extent--suspecting the
existence of the feeling--contemptuous and indignant of Nolan’s
“jealousy,” as I fear she would have called it. They returned, however,
to the educational question, which did not involve anything painful, and
after considerable discussion it was settled that he should give the
elder children lessons in the morning “if their papa approved.” It is
impossible to say what a relief this decision was to the mother, who had
felt these lessons to be the last straw which proverbially breaks the
camel’s back. She was glad of the chat with a sympathizing friend, who
understood, without saying anything about, her troubles--and doubly glad
of the holiday exacted from her by his means--and gladder still to get
rid of him and return to her many other occupations; for it was Monday,
as has already been mentioned, and there was the laundress to look
after, and a thousand other things awaiting her. The curate went out by
the garden door when he left her, out upon the lawn, where he paused to
look at as charming a scene as could be found in England: a fair country
spreading out for miles its trees and fields and soft undulations under
a summer sky, which was pale with excess of light, and ran into faint
lines of misty distance almost colorless in heat and haze. Here and
there the sunshine caught in a bend of the river, and brought out a
startling gleam as from a piece of silver. The world was still with noon
and distance, no sound in the air but the rustle of the leaves, the hum
of insects; the landscape was all the sweeter that there was no
remarkable feature in it, nothing but breadth and space, and undulating
lines, and light, everywhere light; and to make up for its broad, soft
vagueness, how distinct, like a picture, was the little group in the
foreground--the lime-trees in their silken green, the soft rippling
shadows on the grass, the picturesque figure in the chair, and the
beautiful girl!
The beauty of the sight charmed good Mr. Nolan. Had it been put to him
at that moment, I believe he would have protested that his rector should
never do anything in his life except recline with languid limbs
out-stretched, and his poetical head bent over his book, under the
sweet shadow of the trees. And if this was true even in respect to Mr.
Damerel, how much more true was it with Rose?
“Well, Nolan,” said Mr. Damerel, suavely, as the bony curate and his
shadow came stalking across the sunshine; “well, worrying yourself to
death as usual in this hot weather? My wife and you are congenial
souls.”
“That is true, and it’s a great honor for me,” said Nolan. “_She_ is
worrying herself to death with the children, and one thing and another.
As for me, in the mornings, as I tell her, I’ve next to nothing to do.”
Rose looked up hastily as he spoke. How angry she felt! If her mother
chose to worry herself to death, who had anything to do with that? was
it not her own pleasure? A hot flush came over the girl’s face. Mr.
Nolan thought it was the quick, ingenuous shame which is so beautiful in
youth; but it was a totally different sentiment.
“Mamma does nothing she does not choose to do,” she cried; then blushed
more hotly, perceiving vaguely that there was something of self-defense
in the heat with which she spoke.
Mr. Nolan was not graceful in his manners, like Mr. Damerel, but he had
that good breeding which comes from the heart, and he changed the
subject instantly, and began to talk to the rector of parish business,
over which Mr. Damerel yawned with evident weariness. “Excuse me; the
heat makes one languid,” he said. “You have my full sanction, Nolan. You
know how entirely I trust to your discretion; indeed, I feel that you
understand the people in some respects better than I do. Don’t trouble
yourself to enter into details.”
Mr. Nolan withdrew from these refined precincts with an odd smile upon
his face, which was not half so handsome as Mr. Damerel’s. He had the
parish in his hands, and the rector did not care to be troubled with
details; but the rector had all the advantages of the position, all the
income, and even so much the moral superiority over his curate, that
even _they_ (by which pronoun Mr. Nolan indicated his poorer
parishioners) felt much more deeply honored by a chance word from the
rector than they did by his constant ministrations and kindness.
What an odd, unequal world this is! he was thinking of himself--not
ruled by justice, or even a pretence at justice, but by circumstances
alone and external appearances. This did not make him bitter, for he had
a kind of placid philosophy in him, and was of the kind of man who takes
things very easily, as people say; but the curious force of the contrast
made him smile.