MARY’S LITTLE THOUGHTS.
Mary’s mind was supposed to be very youthful and unformed. She had been
kept longer a child than is usual, and yet, by reason of a sort of
solitude in which she lived in the midst of a family which was, yet was
not, absolutely her own family, her thoughts had exercised themselves
silently on many subjects not commonly considered by children; but all
in a shy and voiceless way, so that nobody round her had any conception
of many reasonings which had gone on in her mind. When Mr. Asquith came
to Horton she had been very curious about him, and when he failed to
interest the rest, he became still more a curiosity and interest to
Mary.
Among the subjects which occupied her silent thoughts there had been
many little questions about the clergymen and their ways. As a matter of
fact clergymen were more frequent visitors at Horton than any other
class of men, and Mary had secretly been a critic of them all her life.
Her Uncle Hugh was a clergyman whom she saw perpetually. He was a parish
priest, with not very much to do, and one who was fully convinced that
he did his duty. But Mary was not equally convinced. There was a good
deal in his life which did not seem to that little critic to be much in
harmony with what she read in her New Testament. To be sure, she knew
well enough that every man who is in the Church can’t go wandering about
the world like St. Paul, teaching and preaching to the heathen.
Mary was aware that the change of times must be taken into account, and
that the steady work of a parish has to be considered as well as the
romance of missionary devotion. But she could not quite reconcile Uncle
Hugh to the standard in which she believed, even after everything was
taken into account. He was too comfortable, too much at his ease, had
more spare time than he ought to have had, and, indeed, altogether was
too like Uncle John, who was the merely secular head of the family, than
satisfied the rigorous ideal of youth. There was indeed very little
difference between Uncle Hugh and Uncle John. The elder brother sat in a
little room which was called his business-room, whereas the special
retirement of the other was spoken of as the study: and the parson wore
a white tie instead of the cosy checked one which generally enveloped
the throat of the Squire, and a black coat instead of a shooting-jacket;
but during the week these were the chief differences between them. Mary,
all silent in the background, not considered by anybody to have an
opinion at all, arraigned these two before her private tribunal, and was
not satisfied, and concluded that there should have been a great deal
more difference. To be sure, on Sunday there was difference enough.
Uncle Hugh in his surplice was a commanding figure, and he preached
while Uncle John yawned and listened. He was not a very good preacher.
None of these things are hid from the inexorable little judges from
seven to seventeen, who give us all our due. In her heart, though she
was fond of him, she was not satisfied with Uncle Hugh as a clergyman.
His bishop was very well satisfied, but not Mary. And the curates were
still less satisfactory. The High Church development was only in its
beginning in those days, and curates made little or no pretensions to
sacerdotal superiority, but were just young men in the Church, as their
brothers were young men in the army. They were very good-natured young
fellows most of them, very willing to give a shilling or even
half-a-crown to poor old Hodge--not quite so willing to administer
spiritual consolation or pray by his bedside--yet, by the aid of the
service for the visitation of the sick, getting manfully through that
too, and then, with a sigh of relief, coming up to croquet at the Hall.
They had always time for croquet, and took enormously long walks, and
had a considerable difficulty in getting through the long days in a dull
little place where, as they would sometimes complain, there was nothing
to do. Most of the young men who had been curates to Mr. Prescott of
Horton Rectory, left him with the best of recommendations; but little
Mary, that little Rhadamantha, had them all up at the bar before her,
and judged them severely, though she never said a word.
But Mr. Asquith was something altogether new, and of a different order
of being. When John said he was dull, and the girls that there was
nothing in him, Mary demurred, as has been seen. She said to herself
that Mr. Asquith was nice, and she liked the looks of him; and having
thus, as it were, given herself from the first a brief in his defence,
it was not so easy to put on the judge’s cap and pronounce the verdict.
Something, perhaps, from the beginning softened that judgment. She
expected, to start with, that he would be different: and he was
different. The dinners at the Hall bored him, which was a pity; and he
would have none of the croquet, and instead of complaining that there
was nothing to do, his excuse was that he had not time enough for the
amusements which the young people of the parish set such store by. He
had not time. The other curates had not known what to do with their
time. Certainly he was different.
And then Mary had begun to meet him about in all the cottages where
there were sick people, where there was special need of kindness and
help. He did not give away shillings, except rarely, for he had very few
to give. He was not a young man on his promotion, waiting till the
family living should be vacant, or till somebody should give him a
benefice, but had thrown himself into his work as if he never meant to
go away. Mary made some small investigations on this point in the most
innocent and natural way. She said to the Rector, “Uncle Hugh, I suppose
Mr. Asquith is going to stay longer than the other curates,” at a
moment when Mr. Prescott was unoccupied, and had time to answer the
question.
“Eh?” cried the Rector, “Asquith stay longer? What makes you think so?”
“He talks as if he were always to be here,” said Mary.
“Oh, do you think so? This little girl is not such a fool as she looks,”
said his reverence. “I’ve noticed that too.”
“Don’t speak to Mary so,” said Mrs. Hugh Prescott, who was somewhat
matter of fact. “She is not a fool at all, oh no; she has a great deal
of observation. But Mr. Asquith had better not deceive himself, Hugh,
for you know you have always liked a change of curates. Perhaps I had
better say a word----”
The Rector’s wife was fond of saying a word, which generally made the
person addressed very angry, though she had no such meaning. Her husband
stopped her with a movement of his hand. “Don’t, my dear,” he said. “It
is not that he thinks too much of himself. He has not the prospects of
the other young men. He is not serving his apprenticeship here with the
hope of soon setting up for himself.”
“You speak of the Church as if it were a trade, Hugh.”
“Do I, my dear? Well, perhaps it is something the same after all, if you
think of it--for most people are looking out for something better. I
should not mind being a canon or a prebendary myself, or even a dean.”
“And is not Mr. Asquith looking out for something better?” said Mary.
She was more interested in this question than in any other that could at
the moment be presented to her.
“Poor fellow! I don’t know that he has anything better to look for,”
said the Rector. “He has few friends, and nobody to push him. I should
not wonder if he remained a curate all his life.”
“Nobody does that nowadays,” said Mrs. Hugh Prescott. “Something always
turns up. A poor clergyman, so far as I can see, has just as many
chances as one that is well off. He is kind to somebody’s child, or
attends somebody’s mother on her deathbed, or something of that sort.
There is a special providence for poor curates, I think.”
Mary took in all this with quick ears, and asked herself, whether, in
reality, a special providence was all that Mr. Asquith had to look to.
“There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God,” we say
in church day by day: but even that pious sentiment seems to convey a
veiled opinion that other aid would be desirable: but when it is said of
a man that a special providence is wanted for his promotion, that man’s
hopes do not, to most of the world, seem particularly well founded. Mary
felt with a curious swelling of her heart that she was glad this was the
case with Mr. Asquith. She was proud of it, if pride is possible in such
a matter. When she tested him by the first great commission which sent
men out to preach without even bread in their scrip, much less money in
their purse--that test which no one had borne as yet--she felt that at
last here was one who could bear it; and this gave Mary a degree of
pleasure quite incommensurate with his stay in the parish, or of any
possible knowledge he could have of her, or she of him. After all she
had nothing at all to do with it; and what were his principles of
action, or how he was moved by the absence of all means of advancing
himself, she had not the least way of knowing. It might be this that
made him what John called dull. Mary could not tell. But she felt in her
heart, though she was so ignorant, that the real clergyman for whom she
had been looking had appeared at last--the only one who could bear the
test which had not succeeded at all with the rest of the curates, nor
even Uncle Hugh.
And this was the conclusion which had been formed in her mind even
before she began to meet Mr. Asquith in the cottages. She was keenly
alive to his demeanour there. It was as if she had gone to collect
evidence upon this subject. When she was giving poor Sally Williams her
pudding, she was at the same moment mentally weighing the curate and his
manners to poor Mrs. Williams, and making him out. Perhaps Mary was not
quite an impartial judge, being biassed, as has been said, by the other
pieces of evidence which she had already put together, and even by
something more subtle still, by her own foregone conclusion, and certain
weakening prepossessions that had stolen into her heart. But about the
time when Mr. Asquith took fright and began to shut himself up and
relinquish his visits to the cottages, Mary had completed all her
investigations, or had forgotten them, or had come to think them the
most unnecessary, the most impertinent of inquiries, having somehow
suddenly and unconsciously been led to the conclusion that there was
nobody like Mr. Asquith, and that whatever he did became, from the fact
of his doing it, right. It gave all the more weight to her opinion in
this respect that she was not, as has been seen, a girl who naturally
believed in curates, or took the excellence of that class for granted,
as some young women do. It was, however, a somewhat severe test of
Mary’s faith that almost simultaneously with her full conviction of it,
this perfect man should suddenly begin to conduct himself in so strange
a way. For she could not help being struck by the fact that she met him
no longer, even had the poor people been silent on the subject, which
they were not. They poured out their complaints to her, sometimes quite
simply, sometimes with a little mischievous meaning. “Mr. Asquith? We
haven’t seen Mr. Asquith, no--not for ten days; him as used to come in
and give my poor Sally a comfor’able word ’most every day. I don’t know
what’s the cause. I only hope, Miss Mary, as we’ve done nothing to
offend him. It ain’t with our will if we has, for a kinder gentleman
never come inside my door.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Williams, I am sure he would not take offence. Perhaps he
is very busy; you know a clergyman--has to study a great deal,” said
Mary, pausing to pick up the first excuse that came handy.
Mrs. Williams shook her head. “If it had been most clergymen,” she said,
“I shouldn’t have wondered, for they soon tires--but Mr. Asquith! oh, he
did seem another sort, he did!” the poor woman cried.
And then old Mrs. Sims at the almshouses had her little word to put in:
“I can’t think what’s come over Mr. Asquith, that was such a kind
gentleman. He’s not come no more since the last time as he met you here,
Miss Mary. It couldn’t be as a fine, tall gentleman like ’im was afraid
of you.”
“Why should anyone be afraid of me?” Mary cried, with a laugh. But she
was glad to get outside that keen-sighted old woman’s cottage, for she
felt the heat of a coming blush which swept all over her, up to the very
roots of her hair, a blush which sent all her blood coursing through her
veins, and made her feel disposed to laugh again, and then to cry.
Afraid of her! Why should any one, much less the curate, be afraid of
her, a little person who was only Mary, and whom nobody made any
account of? But as she asked herself that question, Mary knew that it
was so. She knew with a sudden flash of discovery, which was very
wonderful and sweet, that Mr. Asquith was afraid of her, of loving her,
and of betraying he loved her; and that he was making a stand against
his heart and trying to avoid her, and put her out of his life. It was a
tremendous, overpowering discovery; but after she had got accustomed to
the thought, Mary once more laughed in her heart; for she knew by
instinct, though she had never had any experience, that these tactics
were never successful, and that in this endeavour Mr. Asquith would
fail.
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