“Now, if I had the luck to hold a confidential talk with Maurice, I
should have gone round the entire Harley family,” said I to myself the
next morning, “and be in the secret of sundry imaginations which have
not seen the light of day--but Maurice, fortunately, is not likely to
make me nor any one else his _confidante_. I wonder if there is anything
at all concerning him which it would be worth one’s while to be curious
about?”
The question was solved sooner than I thought. When everybody had left
our pleasant breakfast-room but myself, and I, with my little basket of
keys in my hand, was preparing to follow, Maurice, who had been
lingering by the great window, startled me by asking for a few minutes’
conversation, “if I was quite at leisure.” I put down my basket with the
utmost promptitude. Curiosity, if not courtesy, made me perfectly at
leisure to hear anything he might have to say.
“I have undertaken a very foolish office,” said Maurice--“I have had the
supreme conceit and presumption of supposing that I could perhaps plead
with you, Mrs. Crofton, the cause of a friend.”
“I trust I shall feel sufficiently flattered,” said I, assuming the same
tone. “And pray who is the friend who has the advantage of your support,
Maurice? and what does he want of me?”
The young man colored and looked affronted--he was highly sensitive to
ridicule, like all self-regarding men.
“Nay, pray don’t convince me so distinctly of my folly before I start,”
he said; “the friend is a college friend of mine, who was so absurd as
to marry before he had anything to live on; a very good fellow with--oh!
don’t be afraid--perfectly sound views, I assure you, Mrs. Crofton,
though he is acquainted with me.”
“I should think being acquainted with you very likely to help a sensible
man to sound views,” said I, with some natural spite, thankful for the
opportunity of sending a private arrow into him in passing; “and what
does your friend want that I can help him in?”
“The Rector of Estcourt is an old man, and very ill,” said Maurice,
after a pause of offence; “Owen, my friend, has a curacy in
Simonborough. I told him I should venture--though of course aware I had
not the slightest title to influence you--to name him to Mrs. Crofton,
in case of anything happening.”
“Aware that you have not the slightest title to influence me--that
means, does it not, Maurice?” said I, “that you rather think you have
some claim upon that Rectory at Estcourt, and that you magnanimously
resign it in favor of your friend? It was your father’s--it is your
mother’s desire to see you in his place--you have thought of it vaguely
all your life as a kind of inheritance, which you were at liberty to
accept or withdraw from; now, to be sure, we are very, very old
friends--is not that plainly, and without any superfluity of words, what
you mean?”
Maurice made a still longer pause--he was seized with the restlessness
common to men when they are rather hard tested in conversation. He got
up unawares, picked up a book off the nearest table, as if he meant to
answer me by means of that, and then returned to his chair. Then, after
a little further struggle, he laughed, growing very red at the same
time.
“You put the case strongly, but I will not say you are wrong,” he
answered; “after all, I believe, if it must be put into words, that is
about how the thing stands; but, of course, you know I am perfectly
aware”----
“Exactly,” said I; “we both understand it, and it is not necessary to
enter further into that part of the subject; but now, tell me, Maurice,
supposing your rights of natural succession to be perfectly
acknowledged, why is it that you substitute another person, and postpone
your own settlement to his?”
“My dear Mrs. Crofton,” cried Maurice, restored to himself by the
question, “what would not I give to be able to accept as mine that calm,
religious life?--what would not I relinquish for a faith as entire and
simple as my friend Owen’s? But that is my misfortune. I suppose my mind
is not so wholesomely constituted as other people’s. I cannot believe so
and so, just because I am told to believe it--I cannot shape my creed
according to the received pattern. If I could, I should be but too
happy; but _que voulez-vous_? a man cannot act against his
convictions--against his nature.”
“Nay, I assure you I am a very calm spectator,” said I; “I would not
have either one thing or another. I have not the least doubt that you
will know better some day, and why should I concern myself about the
matter?”
“Why, indeed?” echoed Maurice, faintly; but he was mortified; he
expected a little honor, at the very least, as his natural due, if not a
womanish attempt at proselytizing. The discomfiture of my adversary was
balm to my eyes--I was, as may be perceived, in a perfectly unchristian
state of mind.
“And how then about yourself?--what do you mean to do?” asked I; “you
are getting towards the age when men begin to think of setting up houses
and families for themselves. Do you mean to be a College Don all your
life, Maurice? I fear that must be rather an unsatisfactory kind of
existence; and one must take care, if that is the case, not to ask any
young ladies again to meet you--some one might happen to be too
captivating for your peace of mind--a Miss Reredos might outweigh a
fellowship;--such things have been even with men of minds as original as
your own.”
“Miss Reredos! ah, she amuses herself!” said Maurice, with a conscious
smile.
“Yes, I think you are very well matched,” said I, calmly; “you will not
do her much harm, nor she inflict a very deep wound on your heart, but
it might have happened differently. People as wise as yourself, when
their turn comes, are often the most foolish in these concerns.”
“Ah, you forget that I am past youth,” said Maurice; “you, Mrs.
Crofton, have made a private agreement, I suppose, with the old enemy,
but I have no such privilege--I have done with that sort of thing long
ago. However, about Owen, if I may remind you, is there anything to
say?”
“Somebody asked me for the living of Estcourt when your father lay
dying; I was younger then, as you say--I was deeply horrified,” said I.
“We must wait.”
“Ah, yes; but my father was a man in the prime of life, and this is an
old man, whom even his own family cannot expect to live long,” said
Maurice; “but, of course, if you do not like it, I have not another word
to say.”
“Ah, Maurice,” said I, forgetting for a moment the personage who sat
before me, and thinking of Dr. Harley’s death-bed, and the fatherless
children there so helpless and dependent on other people’s judgment,
“your father was a good man, but he had not the heart to live after he
lost his fortune, and your mother is a good woman, but she had not the
heart to bring you up poorly and bravely in your own home. They are my
dear friends, and I dare speak of them even to you. Why did she send you
to that idle uncle of yours, to be brought up in idleness?--you big,
strong, indolent man! What is the good of you, though you are Fellow of
Exeter? You might have been of some use in the world by this time if you
had lived among your brothers and sisters, a widow’s son.”
Maurice started--rose up--made a surprised exclamation of my name--and
then dropped into his chair again without saying anything. He did not
answer me a word. The offence melted out of his face, but he kept his
eyes down and did not look at me. I could not tell whether he was
angry--I had been moved by my own feelings beyond, for the moment,
thinking of his.
“Ask your friend to come and see you here,” I said, after an awkward
little pause; “say, Mr. Crofton and I will be glad if he will dine with
us before you go--perhaps, to-morrow, Maurice, and that will leave him
time to get home on Saturday--and we will think about it, should the
living of Estcourt fall vacant. Forgive me,” I continued, as I rose to
go away, “I said more than I ought to have said.”
He took my hand and wrung it with an emphatic pressure; what he said I
made out only with difficulty, I think it was, “No more than is true.”
And I left him with somewhat uncomfortable feelings. I had not the very
least right to lecture this young man; quite the other way--for was not
I a woman and an illiterate person, and he Fellow of his College? I
confess I did not feel very self-complacent as I left the room. This
third confidential interview, in which I had over-passed the prudent
limits of friendliness, did not _feel_ at all satisfactory.
Nevertheless, I was glad to see that Maurice was magnanimous--that he
was likely to forgive me--and that possibly there were elements of
better things even in his regarding indolence. All which symptoms,
though in a moral point of view highly gratifying, made me but feel the
more strongly that I had gone beyond due limits, and exceeded the margin
of truth-telling and disagreeableness which one is _not_ allowed towards
one’s guests, and in one’s own house.