Faith and Unfaith: A Novel. Duchess

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СКАЧАТЬ Mrs. Redmond, with some hesitation. "The salary is the thing. I hear of no one now who will come for less than sixty or seventy pounds a year at the lowest; and with Henry at school, and Rupert's college expenses, forty pounds is as much as we can afford to give."

      "Miss Broughton will, I think, be quite content with that: she only wants to be happy, and at rest, and she will be all that with you and Cissy and Mr. Redmond. She is young, and it is her first trial, but she is very clever: she has a really lovely voice, and paints excessively well. Ethel has rather a taste for painting, has she not?"

      "A decided talent for it. All my family were remarkable for their artistic tendencies, so she, doubtless, inherits it; and – yes, of course, it would be a great thing for her to have some one on the spot to develop this talent, and train it. Your friend, you say, is well connected?"

      "Very highly connected, on her mother's side. Her father was a lieutenant in the navy, and very respectable too, I believe; though I know nothing of him."

      "That she should be a lady is, of course, indispensable," says Mrs. Redmond, with all the pride that ought to belong to softgoods people. "I need hardly say that, I think. But why does she not appeal for help to her mother's relations?"

      "Because she prefers honest work to begging from those who up to this have taken no notice of her."

      "I admire her," says Mrs. Redmond, warmly. "If you think she will be satisfied with forty pounds, I should like to try what she could do with the children."

      "I am very glad you have so decided. I know no place in which I would rather see a friend of mine than here."

      "Thank you, my dear. Then will you write to her, or shall I?"

      "Let me write to her first, if you don't mind: I think I can settle everything."

      "Mind? – no, indeed: it is only too good of you to take so much trouble about me."

      To which Clarissa says, prettily, —

      "Do not put it in that light: there is no pleasure so keen as that of being able to help one's friends."

      Then she rises, and, having left behind her three socks that no earthly power can ever again draw upon a child's foot, so hopelessly has she brought heel and sole together, she says good-by to Mrs. Redmond, and leaves the room.

      Outside on the avenue she encounters the vicar, hurrying home.

      "Turn with me," she says, putting her hand through his arm. "I have something to say to you."

      "Going to be married?" asks he, gayly.

      "Nonsense!" – blushing, in that he has so closely hit the mark. "It is not of anything so paltry I would unburden my mind."

      "Then you have nothing of importance to tell me," says the vicar; "and I must go. Your story will keep: my work will not. I am in a great hurry: old Betty Martin – "

      "Must wait. I insist on it. Dying! nonsense! she has been dying every week for three years, and you believe her every time. Come as far as the gate with me."

      "You command, I obey," says the vicar, with a sigh of resignation, walking on beside his pet parishioner. "But if you could only understand the trouble I am in with those Batesons you would know some pity for me."

      "What! again?" says Clarissa, showing, and feeling, deep compassion.

      "Even so. This time about the bread. You know what unpleasant bread they bake, and how Mrs. Redmond objects to it; and really it is bad for the children."

      "It is poison," says Clarissa, who never does anything by halves, and who is nothing if not sympathetic.

      "Well so I said; and when I had expostulated with them, mildly but firmly, and suggested that better flour might make better dough, and they had declined to take any notice of my protest, – why, I just ordered my bread from the Burtons opposite, and – "

      The vicar pauses.

      "And you have been happy ever since?"

      "Well, yes, my dear. I suppose in a way I have; that is, I have ceased to miss the inevitable breakfast-lecture on the darkness and coarseness of the bread; but I have hardly gained on other points, and the Batesons are a perpetual scourge. They have decided on never again 'darkening the church door' (their own words, my dear Clarissa), because I have taken the vicarage custom from them. They prefer imperilling their souls to giving up the chance of punishing me. And now the question is, whether I should not consent to the slow poisoning of my children, rather than drive my parishioners into the arms of the Methodists, who keep open house for all comers below the hill."

      "I don't think I should poison the children," says Clarissa.

      "But what is to become of my choir? Charlotte Bateson has the sweetest voice in it, and now she will not come to church. I am at my wits' end when I think of it all."

      "I am going to supply Charlotte's place for you," says Clarissa, slyly.

      "Thank you, my dear. But, you see, you would never be in time. And, unfortunately, the services must begin always at a regular hour. Punctuality was the one thing I never could teach you, – that, and the Catechism."

      "What a libel!" says Clarissa. "I shouldn't malign my own teaching if I were you. I am perfectly certain I could say it all now, this very moment, from start to finish, questions and all, without a mistake. Shall I?"

      "No, no. I'll take your word for it," says the vicar, hastily. "The fact is, I have just been listening to it at the morning school in the village, and when one has heard a thing repeated fourteen times with variations, one naturally is not ambitious of hearing it again, no matter how profitable it may be."

      "When I spoke of filling Charlotte's place," says Clarissa, "I did not allude in any way to myself, but to – And now I am coming to my news."

      "So glad!" says the vicar; "I may overtake old Betty yet."

      "I have secured a governess for Mrs. Redmond. Such a dear little governess! And I want you to promise me to be more than usually kind to her, because she is young and friendless and it is her first effort at teaching."

      "So that question is settled at last," says the vicar, with a deep – if carefully suppressed – sigh of relief. "I am rejoiced, if only for my wife's sake, who has been worrying herself for weeks past, trying to replace the inestimable – if somewhat depressing – Miss Prood."

      "Has she?" says Clarissa, kindly. "Worry is a bad thing. But to-day Mrs. Redmond seems much better than she has been for a long time. Indeed, she said so."

      "Did she?" says the vicar, with a comical, transient smile, Mrs. Redmond's maladies being of the purely imaginary order.

      "What are you laughing at now?" asks Clarissa, who has marked this passing gleam of amusement.

      "At you, my dear, you are so quaintly humorous," replies he. "But go on: tell me of this new acquisition to our household. Is she a friend of yours?"

      "Yes, a great friend."

      "Then of course we shall like her."

      "Thank you," says Clarissa. "She is very pretty, and very charming. Perhaps, after all, I am doing a foolish thing for myself. How shall I feel when she has cut me out at the vicarage?"

      "Not СКАЧАТЬ