OF course Mary proved right. In such a small parish as Horton it was quite impossible that two people could live for many weeks without meeting each other. The curate might shut himself up for a few days. He might say he was busy with his sermon; he might say he had a headache; he might acknowledge that his activity in the parish and all the institutions he had set up had thrown him into arrears with his reading, and such intellectual work as is necessary for a man who has to write two sermons every week. But this could not last for ever. Mary, who was so simple and so sweet, was not like those powers of darkness whom we must resist till they flee from us; indeed, Mary was so far different that when she was resisted she did not flee. She was so clever that she divined at once that in resisting the charm of her mild society poor Mr. Asquith had made a confession of his weakness, and it gave her a great and, it is to be feared, a mischievous amusement to watch how long he would keep to that. Alas! he could not keep to it very long. He was obliged to go to the rectory to communicate with his chief, and he could not help meeting Mary there. He had even to walk with her as far as the lodge, to carry something that was too heavy for her, and then Mary behaved very badly to the poor curate. She put on an air of sympathy to conceal her amusement, and she said, “I am afraid you have not been well lately, Mr. Asquith. I have not seen you anywhere about.”
“No,” said the curate, with his heart sinking, “I have been—not very well.”
“I am so sorry,” said the little hypocrite. “I hope you don’t find that Horton does not suit you: and just when you have got so well into the work.”
“Oh, it is not that it doesn’t suit me,” the curate said, “quite the reverse. The air is very pure and sweet.” He gave a side glance at her as he spoke, and it is to be feared that it was Mary and not the air he was thinking of when he used these words.
“Poor Sally Williams is longing to see you,” said Mary. “I go often, but I am not the same good. She likes her pudding, but I can’t talk to her as you do, Mr. Asquith; and they say,” continued the girl, with a soft shade of awe coming over her face, “that she has not very long to live.”
“You teach me my duty,” cried the curate, quite overwhelmed. “I have been very neglectful. I shall certainly not miss another day.”
“And old Mrs. Sims thinks you have forgotten the old people at the almshouses. She shakes her head and says, ‘Ah, I never thought as he’d keep it up like that: they never does,’ Mrs. Sims says.”
“Thank you so much for telling me,” said Mr. Asquith; “indeed it was not inadvertence. I knew that I was neglecting one duty: but I thought, perhaps, it might be excusable on account of another.”
“Oh, Mr. Asquith!” cried Mary, “I never meant to say you neglected anything, you must not think so. But ought a person to neglect one duty on account of another? You said the other day in your sermon——”
“Oh! don’t talk to me about my sermon. It was a poor performance off the book, when I had no experience; but you are right, we have no warrant to forget one duty for the sake of another. The part of a true man is to do all, and not to flinch. The spirit is willing, but oh! the flesh is very weak.”
I hope the reader will not think badly of Mary if I allow that the agitation of the curate filled her with a sort of elation and mischievous triumph for the moment. She had nearly laughed in the face of his gravity, and if she had done what was in her heart she would have cried out, “All this bother about a little girl like me!” But she did not say anything; she did not laugh; and when she looked up into his face for a moment at the lodge-gate, when he gave the books he was carrying for her to Mrs. Martingale, the coachman’s wife, to be sent up to the house, Mary was filled with sudden compunctions, and felt disposed rather to cry. She waved her hand to him as she went up the avenue with an April sort of face, half smiling, half weeping, which gave him a great deal of thought as he turned sadly upon his own way. He did not know what it meant, poor young man! It looked as if she were sorry for him, but why should she be sorry for him? Did she see, did she understand, the cause of his trouble? did she mean to support him with her sympathy, or to mock him, or to show him how far, far he was out of her sphere? He thought a great deal more about this than was at all consistent with the many other things he had to think of, and, alas! got the books of the lending library entirely into disorder, and forgot how much money he had received that week from the penny-bank and the clothing-club. He put down twice as much as they had paid to each subscriber’s name, and had to make it up from his own poor little purse; fortunately the entire amount was not considerable, but it was a great deal too much to be taken out of his poor pocket by Mary’s little regretful, sympathetic, yet mischievous look.
To tell the truth, Mary’s heart was bounding along the avenue like a bird, though her feet went soberly enough. It was so light, there was no keeping it still; it sang little trills of pleasure along the way, and mounted up towards heaven, and found a new brightness over all the earth. To think that she who was only Mary should suddenly have become the princess of a kingdom all her own—to think that she should be all at once of consequence enough to make a man abandon all his duties! It was indeed very wrong of a man in Mr. Asquith’s position to abandon any of his duties for the sake of this little girl: but Mary did not see it in that light. As she walked by herself up the avenue she laughed loud out, and then felt dreadfully ashamed of herself, and dried her eyes, which were full of tears. How foolish it was of him! To say even to herself that this man, who was the best man she had ever met, was foolish, was a sort of delightful little sin to Mary, a piece of profanity—a small wickedness. How dared she say he was foolish? and yet—oh! how foolish he was. How nice of him to be so silly! Perhaps he was afraid that she did not care for him, would not have him if he asked her? No doubt that was what he was afraid of. To think that he knew Latin and Greek and theology, and all manner of things, and could read German, yet could not read what was in Mary’s eyes! She sat down by the roadside, before the house was in sight, not daring to see anybody, glad to be alone, to have time to think over again what he said and how he looked, and to say to herself how silly it was!
All this time, as will be seen, Mary had not the faintest enlightenment as to what it was that Mr. Asquith feared. She never thought of his poverty, of what it is to be a poor curate or a poor curate’s wife, without hope of advancement, or money enough to keep the wolf from the door. She thought only of him, and how glad she would be to do everything for him—to live in a cottage, and look after her own little housekeeping, and make him comfortable, more comfortable than ever he had been in his life, and to help him and work with him. She thought that to be the first in all the world to one who was the first in all the world to her, was the fairest fate that earth could give. She had no doubt on the subject, or fear—for how could she tell, who had never had above a few shillings in her life, how much two people require to live upon? or how could she take into consideration other consequences, which were more serious still?
Mr. Asquith went to see Sally Williams that day, and for many days after, as long as the poor girl lived, but never again did he meet Mary there. He did not see her at the almshouses, he encountered her nowhere—which indeed was a little instinctive coquetry mingled with modesty on Mary’s part: for she would not, after having exerted herself to bring him back, allow him to find her in his way, as if that had been what she wanted. And now it was the curate’s turn to be astonished, and to feel himself injured. Though he had retired from his daily duties in order to avoid Mary, he felt himself sadly aggrieved, now that he had returned to them, to find that Mary avoided him. Instead of congratulating himself that they were both of accord, and that in this way his purpose would be the better accomplished, this inconsistent young man felt sadly disappointed, taken in, cheated, and ill-used. Why had she spoken to him so, if she had meant to conclude their intercourse in this way? Mr. Asquith’s annoyance was all the greater from the fact that Mary did not neglect her little offices of charity in order to avoid him as he had done in order to avoid her. She was cleverer than he was, so far as this went, and had her faculties more free. He was always hearing wherever he went that Miss Mary had just gone. “It is not five minutes since Miss Mary went. She is that good,” said poor Mrs. Williams, “now that my poor girl is sinking, she never misses a day.” “You’re kindly welcome, Mr. Asquith, sir,” said the old woman at the almshouse. “Take that chair, sir. It’s one as was set for Miss Mary. She was scarce gone when I see you coming.” Mr. Asquith was fretted beyond description by these perpetual missings. He could not get them or her out of his head. Sometimes he was more angry than words can say. He thought she did it on purpose (which was not far from the truth), in order to show him how presumptuous he was, and how impossible that she could ever care for him (which was not the truth at all). And at last the poor curate was wrought to such a point of exasperation that he made up his mind, when he did meet her, that he would tell her what she had done, and how cruelly she had treated him, and then leave the parish altogether. But he would not go without letting her know. She should be made aware that what was sport to her was death to him. To have wrung a man’s heart and spoiled his life might appear to her a small matter, but the curate was resolved that so far he would have his revenge, since he could have nothing else, and that she should know what she had done.
They met at last quite accidentally, in the quietest road, where their interview was certain not to be disturbed by any intruder. At least, it can scarcely be said that they met; he was jogging wearily, determinedly along, thinking how he never saw her, and how he must see her, once at least, before the end of all things, when suddenly the grey frock he knew so well appeared round the corner of a cross road, and Mary, not seeing him, went on before him, tranquilly, on her way home. The curate’s heart stood still. Should he, now that the matter was in his own hands, put off the crisis? Should he have it out now once for all? After standing still for that one moment, his heart bounded up into his throat, wildly beating, and in a long stride or two Mr. Asquith was at Mary’s side.
And now for the vials of wrath that were to be poured out, the passion of love and reproach that was to end all their intercourse, and with it that glimpse of a sweeter life which had come suddenly to the curate in Horton! But when he came up with her he was breathless, partly from haste, partly from agitation, and it was Mary who said the first word. She looked up into his face surprised and smiling, with a sweetness that went to his very heart. There was no guilty consciousness in her eyes. She did not look at him as one who had sinned against him, as one who felt that he had something to reproach her with, but with a look of pleasure, as if she were quite happy in this unexpected meeting. “Oh, Mr. Asquith, is it you? What a long time it is since I have seen you!” she said, in her pleasant voice.
“It is a long time,” said the curate, panting: and then he added, “I fear I have made you change your hours and your habits, which is more than I am worth.”
“Change my hours and my——. I haven’t got any hours or habits,” cried Mary, “and indeed I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, Miss Mary!” he cried. I don’t think he knew her surname at all, or if he once knew it he had forgotten it, for Mary was the only name he ever heard given to her. “Oh, Miss Mary!” he cried, “I never meet you now in any of the cottages wherever I go: and I know how that is. I know that you have seen what was going on in my presumptuous mind: but there was no presumption in it, if you only knew. I know very well I am poor—as poor as—as poor as a church mouse, as people say,—too poor to ask any woman to share my miserable fortunes. Don’t, don’t for heaven’s sake be afraid of me! If I can’t help thinking of you, at least I can help saying it. I gave up my visiting when I saw what was coming: but you spoke to me yourself on that subject. You said, had a man a right to neglect his duty for the sake of—for the sake of—— And I knew that what you said was just. From that day I made up my mind to go on with all my usual visiting, and to go on seeing you, which was always sweet though cruel; to go on as if it did not matter, only never to say a word——”
“And what has made you change your resolution, Mr. Asquith?” said Mary, very demurely, without raising her eyes.
“Change? I have not changed at all,” he said. And then he stopped short, with a look of misery and confusion. “What have I done?” he said. “What have I done? though I did not intend it—it has been too much for me—I have betrayed myself after all!”
And for a moment he turned his back upon her, as if he would have fled.
“Don’t run away,” said Mary, softly touching his arm with her hand. “Why shouldn’t you tell me—whatever you wanted to tell me?—if you did really want to tell me anything,” she said.
“Oh, Mary!” cried the curate, and paused; for the words came so fast upon him that he did not know which to say first.
“Yes?” said Mary softly, giving him one little sidelong glance: and then her face crimsoned over, and she drooped her head, but still with a modest note of interrogation in the turn of her fine little pink ear.
