Only a Man like other Men.
They stood together in the north parlour: Sir Karl Andinnian and Miss
Blake. In the least severe terms he knew how to employ, Sir Karl was
telling her of her abuse of his hospitality--the setting his wife
against him--and intimating that her visit to them had better for the
present terminate.
It took Miss Blake by surprise. She had remarked a difference in their
behaviour to one another, in the past day or two. Lucy scarcely left
Sir Karl alone a minute: she was with him in his parlour; she clung to
his arm in unmistakable fondness in the garden; her eyes were for ever
seeking his with a look of pleading, deprecating love. "They could not
have been two greater simpletons in their honeymoon," severely thought
Miss Blake.
Something else had rather surprised her. Walking past the Maze on this
same morning, she saw the gate propped open, and a notice, that the
house was to let, erected on a board. The place was empty; the late
tenants of it, the lady and her maid, had departed. Turning to ask Mr.
Smith the meaning of this, she saw a similar board at his house: Mr.
Smith was packing up, and Clematis Cottage was in the market.
"Good gracious! Are you going to leave us, Mr. Smith?" she asked, she
asked, as that gentleman showed himself for a moment at the open
window, with an armful of books and papers.
"Sorry to say that I am, madam. Business is calling me to London."
"I hear that Mrs. Grey has left, too. What can have taken her away?"
"Don't know," said Mr. Smith. "Does not care to stop in the house,
perhaps, after a death has taken place in it. Servants must die as
well as other people, though."
Without another word to her, he went to the back of the room with his
load, and began stuffing it into a trunk with his one arm. Miss Blake
summed up the conclusion in her mind.
"Sir Karl must have summarily dismissed him."
Little did she foresee that Sir Karl was about, so to say, summarily
to dismiss herself. On this same day it was that he sought the
interview. When the past was touched upon by Karl, and her part in it,
Miss Blake, for once in her life, showed signs that she had a temper,
and her face turned white.
"You might have done me incalculable mischief, Miss Blake: mischief
that could never be repaired in this world," he said, standing to face
her. "I do not allude to the estrangement that might have been caused
between myself and my wife, but evil of a different nature. What could
possibly have induced you to take up so outrageous a notion in regard
to me?"
Miss Blake, in rather a shrill tone--for she was one of
those unfortunate individuals whose voices grow harsh with
annoyance--ventured upon a disparaging word of Mrs. Grey, but evaded
the true question. Karl did not allow her to go on.
"That lady, madam," he said, raising his hand with a kind of
solemnity, "was good and pure, and honourable as is my own wife; and
my dear wife knows it now. She was sacred to me as a sister. Her
husband was my dear and long-tried friend; and he was for some months
in great trouble and distress. I wished to do what I could to
alleviate it: my visits there were paid to _him_."
"But he was not living there," rejoined Miss Blake, partly in hardy
contest, partly in surprise.
"Indeed he was living there. He had his reasons for not wishing to
make any acquaintance in the place, and so kept himself in retirement;
reasons in which I fully acquiesced. However, his troubles are at an
end now; and--and the family have ceased to be my tenants."
Whether Miss Blake felt more angry or more vexed, she was not
collected enough at the moment to know. It was a very annoying
termination to her long and seemingly well-grounded suspicions. She
always wished to do right, and had the grace to feel somewhat ashamed
of the past.
"What I said to Lucy I believed I had perfectly good grounds for, Sir
Karl. I had the interests of religion at heart when I spoke."
"Religion!" repeated Sir Karl, his lips involuntarily curling.
"Religion is as religion does, Miss Blake."
"After all, she did not heed me; so, if it did no good, it did no
harm. Lucy is so very weak-minded--"
"Weak-minded!" interposed Sir Karl. "If to act as she did--to bear
patiently and make no stir under extreme provocation, trusting to the
future to right the wrong--if this is to be weak-minded, why I thank
God that she is so. Had she been strong-minded as you, Miss Blake, the
result might have been terribly different."
Miss Blake was nettled. Her manner froze.
"I see what it is, Sir Karl; you and your wife are so displeased with
me that I feel my presence in your house is no longer welcome. As soon
as I can make arrangements I will quit it--thanking you both for your
hospitality."
She paused. Sir Karl paused too. Perhaps she had a faint expectation
that he would hasten to refute the decision, and request her to stay
on. But he did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he, in a word or
two of politeness, acquiesced in the proposal of departure, as though
it admitted of no question.
"I should not have trespassed on you so long--in fact, I should not
have stayed at all after your first return here with Lady Andinnian,
but for St. Jerome's," she rejoined, her temper getting up again,
while there ran in her mind an undercurrent of thought, as to whether
she could find suitable lodgings in Foxwood.
"You will not have to regret that, in leaving," he observed. "I am
about to do away with St. Jerome's."
"To do away with St. Jerome's!"
"In a week's time from this it will be shut up, and all the nonsense
within its walls cleared away."
"The nonsense!" shrieked Miss Blake.
"Why you cannot call it sense--or religion either. To tell you the
truth, Miss Blake, the place has been an offence to me for some time.
It has caused a scandal--"
"For shame, Sir Karl Andinnian! Scandal, indeed!"
"And this little bit of fresh scandal that has arisen now, people
don't like at all," quietly persisted Sir Karl. "Neither do I. So, to
prevent the bishop coming down upon us here, Miss Blake, I close the
place."
Miss Blake compressed her lips. She could have struck him as he stood.
"What do you mean by a 'fresh' scandal, pray?"
"Well, the story runs that Mr. Cattacomb was seen to kiss one of the
young ladies in the vestry."
Miss Blake started, Miss Blake shrieked, Miss Blake wondered that the
very ceiling did not drop down upon the bold false tongue. To do her
justice, she believed St. Jerome's pastor was by far too holy a man
for any wickedness of the sort. Not to speak of restraining prudence.
"Sir Karl, may you be forgiven! Where do you expect to go to when you
die?"
"To the heaven, I hope, that our merciful God has provided for us," he
answered, meeting the query solemnly and with some emotion. "Some of
those dearer to me than life have gone on thither to wait for me."
At which Miss Blake drew up her pious head, and intimated that she
feared it might be another kind of place, unless he should mend his
manners. And Sir Karl closed the interview, leaving her to understand
that she had received her congé.
The circumstance to which he alluded was this. A day or two before,
some prying boys, comrades of Tom Pepp's, were about St. Jerome's as
usual. For, ever since its establishment, the place had been quite a
point of attraction to these young reptiles; and keep off they would
not. On the morning in question, hovering around the vestry window and
the walls generally, a slight inlet of view was discovered, in
consequence of the blinds being accidentally drawn somewhat aside. Of
course as many eyes were applied to the chink as could find space; and
they had the pleasure of seeing the parson steal a kiss or two from
the blushing cheek of Miss Jemima Moore. Rare nuts for the boys to
crack! Before the day had closed, it was being talked of in Foxwood,
and reached the ears of Miss Diana. She handed the case over to the
doctor.
Down he went to St. Jerome's on the following morning, and caught Mr.
Cattacomb alone in the vestry, just getting into his sheep-skin. Mr.
Moore wasted no time in circumlocution or superfluous greeting.
"You were seen to kiss my daughter, yesterday, young man."
To be pounced upon in this unprepared manner is enough to try the
nerves of almost any hero; what must it have been then for a modest
young clergyman, with a character for holiness, like Guy Cattacomb? He
stammered and stuttered, and blushed to the very roots of his scanty
hair. The tippet itself turned of a rosy hue.
"No equivocation, sir. Do you acknowledge it, or do you not?"
Gathering up his scared wits, and a modicum of courage, in the best
way he could, the Reverend Guy virtually acknowledged it to be true.
He added that he and Miss Jemima were seriously attached to each
other; that he hoped sometime to win her for his wife; and that a
sense of his utter want of means had alone prevented his speaking to
the doctor.
"Now, look here," said the surgeon, after a pause of consideration,
perceiving from the young man's earnest manner that this was the
actual state of the case, "I say _No_ to you at present. It lies with
yourself whether I ever say yes. If you and she care for one another,
I should be the last to stand in your way, once you have proved
yourself worthy of her. Get rid of all the rubbish that's filling up
your foolish brain;"--and he gave his hand a sweep around--"become a
faithful, honest clergyman of the Church of England, serving your
Master to the best of your power; and then you may ask for her. A
daughter of mine shall never tie herself to a vain fop. No; though I
had to banish her to the wilds of Kamschatka."
"I'll do my best, sir, to become what you will approve of," returned
the parson humbly, "if you will only give me hope of Miss Jemima."
"It is because I think you have some good in you, that I do give you
hope, Mr. Cattacomb. The issue lies with you."
Now, this was what Sir Karl alluded to. When it fell to Miss Blake's
lot to find it was true and to hear the particulars, she thought, in
her mortification, that the world must be drawing to an end: at least,
it was signally degenerating. That adored saint to have turned out to
be only a man after all--with all a man's frail nature! All Miss
Blake's esteemed admirers seemed to be slipping from her one by one.
She and the congregation generally were alike incensed. Mr. Cattacomb,
lost to any future hopes, fell in their estimation from fever-heat
down to zero: and they really did not much care, after this, whether
St. Jerome's was shut up or not. So Sir Karl and Farmer Truefit found
their way was made plain before them.
"What a heap of silk we have wasted on cushions and things for him?"
cried Charlotte St. Henry, in a passion. "And all through that sly
little cat, Jemima Moore!"
CONCLUSION.
A sweet calm day in early spring, Sir Karl and his wife stood on the
steps of their house, hand in hand, ready to welcome Colonel and Mrs.
Cleeve, who were driving up to pay a long visit. Lucy had recovered
all her good looks; Karl's face had lost its sadness.
Things had been getting themselves straight after the dark time of
trouble. Some pleasant neighbours were at the Maze now; Clematis
Cottage was occupied by Margaret Sumnor. There was a new vicar of
Foxwood. Mr. Sumnor, who had not been without his trials in life, had
died in the winter. His widow and second family went to reside in
London; Margaret, who had her own mother's fortune now--which was just
enough to live upon quietly--removed to Clematis Cottage, to the
extreme delight of Lady Andinnian. St. Jerome's had been converted
into a schoolroom again: its former clergyman had retired into private
life for a season, and no more omnibus-loads of young ladies came over
from Basham. Sir Karl was earning popularity everywhere. Caring
earnestly for those about him, actively promoting the welfare
of all unceasingly and untiringly, generous in aiding, chary of
fault-finding, Sir Karl Andinnian was esteemed and beloved even more
than Sir Joseph had been. Nothing educates and softens the human heart
like the sharp school of adversity.
"Lucy, you are a puzzle to me," said Mrs. Cleeve, when she had her
daughter to herself up stairs. "In the autumn you were so ill and so
sad; now you are looking so well and so radiantly happy."
"I am quite well, mamma, and happy."
"But what was the cause of your looking so ill then?"
Lucy did not answer, evading the question in the best way she could.
That past time would be ever sacred between herself and her husband.
"Well, I cannot understand it," concluded Mrs. Cleeve. "I only hope
you will continue as you are now. Sir Karl looks well, also; almost as
he did when we first knew him at Winchester, before his brother
brought that trouble on himself and all connected with him. To tell
you the truth, Lucy, I thought when I was last here that you were both
on the high road to consumption. Now you both look as though you were
on the road to--to----"
"A fine old age," put in Lucy, as her mother broke down for want of a
simile. "Well, mamma, I hope we are--if God shall so will it."
"And--why you have made this into a dressing-room again!" cried Mrs.
Cleeve, as Lucy took down her hair, and rang for Aglaé.
"Yes; I wanted it as one when I went back to my own room."
"What do you do with the other room--the one you slept in?" questioned
Mrs. Cleeve, throwing open the door as she spoke--for she had a great
love of seeing into house arrangements. "You have had the bed taken
away!"
"The room is not being used at present," replied Lucy.
"Karl--Karl----"
"Karl--what?" asked Mrs. Cleeve, wondering at the sudden timidity, and
looking round. Lucy's sweet face was blushing.
"Karl thinks I shall like to make it the day nursery."
"Oh, my dear! I am glad to hear _that_."
Lucy burst into tears of emotion. A very slight occurrence served
still to bring back the past and its repentance.
"Mamma, you do not know, you can never know, how good God has been to
me in all ways; and how little I deserved it."
And so we leave all things at peace. The dark storms had rolled away
and given place to sunshine.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Within the Maze, Vol. 2 (of 2), by Mrs. Henry Wood