A CURATE is a very useful member of the Church militant. He is the stuff out of which all its more dignified functionaries are made; and he does a great deal of the hard work, with a very limited proportion of the pay. But notwithstanding all this, he has a great deal to put up with in the way of snubs from his superiors, and indifference from the public, who accept his services often without prizing them very much. He has compensation in his youth, which makes him acceptable to the younger and fairer portion of the flock, and in his hopes of better things, as well as, no doubt, to leave pleasantry apart, in the satisfaction of performing important duties, and doing the sacred work to which he has dedicated himself.
Mr. Asquith, the new curate at Horton, had, however, but few of the compensations. There was a very small number of young ladies in the parish, and he was a young man who did not give himself to croquet or archery, or any of the gentle games then in vogue; for the period of which I speak was before the invention of lawn tennis. To none of these things did he incline. He was ready to tramp along the country roads in dust or in mud to carry consolation to any poor sick-bed. He was never tired with examining schools, catechizing children, conducting little cottage services; for those were the days when a high ritual was unusual, and daily prayers were rare in the churches. He would even interest himself in the village cricket, if need was, though awkwardly, and not in a way which impressed the rustic eleven. As for the minor organisations of the parish, the savings-banks, the clothing clubs, the lending library, they had no existence until he came.
The Rector frankly thought them quiet unnecessary; and Mrs. Prescott was of opinion that to set them a-going was a dangerous thing, and might put such a burden upon the next curate who should succeed Mr. Asquith as that problematical individual might not care to bear; and of course, she added, nobody could expect the Rector himself to be charged with the fatigue of keeping all these new-fangled institutions up.
Mr. Asquith paid little attention to these remonstrances. So long as he had permission to do what he thought right, even if it were only a formal permission, he was satisfied: and he went on working among his poor people, with the greatest indifference to any of those solaces, in the way of society and the making of friends, which are generally supposed to sweeten the lot of his class. He said “Bother!” when he was told that he was expected to be on certain occasions a guest at the Rectory; and he said “What a bore!” when he was invited to dine at the Hall. None of these delights tempted him. When John Prescott called on him, as in duty bound, he found the curate busy among calculations, planning out one of those village charities which were wanting in Horton, and rather abstracted and preoccupied—dull, John said, who was himself the dullest of men.
“I said we might perhaps let him have a day’s thooting now and again,” said John, who lisped a little.
“And what did he say to that?” said Anna; for indeed the girls were rather interested, and wanted to know what sort of person the new curate was.
“He thook his head,” said John; “and so he did when I asked if he was fond of croquet. And then I thaid, was he musical?”
“I hope he is musical,” said Sophie, “a violin would be such an addition. What did he say when you asked him that?”
“He thook his head again,” answered John.
“Oh, what a horrid man!”
“No, he’s not a horrid man; he’s a good fellow; but he’th dull—he’th dull,” said John, with emphasis; it was when he wanted to be emphatic that he lisped most. And as John was very dull himself, the sisters concluded, not unreasonably, that the man in whom he discovered that quality must be dull indeed.
Mary, who was in the room, listened with some curiosity, too, though she took no part in the conversation; and she was much amused to think that in the world, and even in the parish, there could thus be a duller man than John. Not that she was contemptuous of John for his dulness. She liked him almost the best of the family. He was tiresome, to be sure; if you were thrown upon him for society, it would not be cheerful society; but then you were never thrown upon John—there was always somebody else to talk, and show a little interest. And that he was tiresome was the worst that could be said of him. He never forced his dulness upon any one, as some do. He never wanted to be talked to, or amused, or taken any notice of. His temper was as even, and the grey atmosphere about him as tranquil as heart could desire. He was not clever, but he never gave any trouble, and he could even be very kind when it came into his head.
“Ah, well,” said Sophie, “it cannot be helped. A new man might have been an acquisition. He might have taught us some of the new rules for croquet, or he might have played a new instrument, or he might have sung. But it’s clear, from what John says, that he’s only the curate, and there’s nothing more to say.”
“I suppose,” said Anna, “he must be asked to dinner all the same.”
But though they did this only as a matter of duty, they would all have been extremely astonished, not to say offended, had they known that he said “What a bore!” on receiving the invitation. He was at that moment very much occupied about all the new things that he was setting up, altogether indifferent to the consideration that the next curate might not be of his way of thinking and might feel it a burden. Mr. Asquith, however, never spoke of the possibility of a change, but seemed to think that there never would be any other curate. He looked as though he meant to go on forever bringing all his schemes to perfection. The Rector could only afford to give him £100 a year and the use of the cottage in which the curates always lived, with the very barest furniture—merely what was necessary. But Mr. Asquith did not seem to think either of the small stipend or the bare lodgings; he seemed only to think of the work which he made so unnecessarily hard for himself. And presently he was so absorbed in this work, and found so many things to do, and set so many things going which nobody but himself took any interest in, that he fell almost out of the knowledge of the more important persons in the parish. They went their way, which was the old-established, correct way for gentlefolks in a country parish to go, in which they had gone long before he appeared, and would most likely go long after he had disappeared; and he went his, which was novel and new-fangled, and on the whole not a way approved of by the best people. And though the parish was quite small, and you would have supposed that all the educated persons belonging to the upper classes in it must have jostled each other every day, the fact was that they went on in parallel lines, as it were, without ever seeing each other.
He went to the Rectory now and then, of course, as in duty bound, but otherwise, when he was seen passing any of the chief houses in the place, and a chance visitor asked who he was, “Oh, it is only the curate,” was always the answer in Horton. This was really almost all that any one knew of him.
As a matter of fact, the Rector knew more, and all the world might have known what his antecedents were. He was a man from the North, the son of one of those sturdy small proprietors who are called statesmen in Cumberland, or were called so in former times—born upon his own paternal acres in a house which had belonged to his family for generations, and thus possessing many of the advantages of ancient lineage, though his was not what is called gentle blood. He had won a scholarship at Oxford, and had made his way through the university without, however, gaining any of those social advantages which, in the eyes of many people, are the chief recommendations of these homes of learning. He had not “made friends.” He had settled himself to his work there with the same gravity as at Horton, and thought the finest “wines” and the best company a bore. His talents did not lie in that way. He had no genius for acquaintance, and though he liked the river very well for relaxation, he never could be persuaded to make a business of it, as the boating men did, or, indeed, to “go in” for anything except his work. And even in his work he was not brilliant. His college set no high hopes on his head. He made his way quite quietly, unobserved, very much as he did at Horton, through those groves of Academe, generally to be found out of the crowd, in paths not much frequented, busy always, caring very little for pleasures by the way. As he got on, he became a little better known as having “coached” very effectually, but with little demonstration, several dunces for their smalls, and one or two better men for special subjects, especially theology: and so came through that part of his life with little fame, but such as it was, very good. Such a man leaves an impression, faint but lasting, and which is not dependent upon known and proved facts. This, indeed, is what almost everybody does one way or other. We don’t know any harm that the good-for-nothing may have done, but we become aware by something in the air that he is a good-for-nothing; and we may have no act of virtue to set against a man’s name, yet know that he is a good man by instinct, by an atmosphere about him, something like a moral taste of which we cannot explain the cause.
Mr. Asquith had this kind of reputation, if it can be called a reputation. He was poor; he had very little, if anything, more than the £100 a year which Mr. Prescott, the Rector, gave him. He was accustomed to spare living, and liked it, being unreasonably, and indeed wrongly, indifferent to what he ate and drank, and quite unworthy of the good cooking at the Rectory or the more pretentious efforts at the Hall. He liked his own chop at home quite as well, even when he had, as was sometimes necessary, to scrape off the cinders which it brought along with it from the gridiron, before he ate it. Mr. Asquith thought this was a very natural accident, and did not complain.
Such a man is the only man altogether independent in our complicated social system. He never remarked the ugly Kidderminster under his feet, or wished for a Persian rug in its place. He did not mind in the least when his clerical coat got shabby. What did it matter? Everybody knew him on the one hand—nobody knew him on the other. In either case he was indifferent, and consequently independent. If there was anything he was a little particular over, it was his washing, his landlady said. The landlady was an old servant at the Rectory, who had been provided for in this curate’s house, and who knew the ways of the kind. But she had never met with any like Mr. Asquith—no one who gave so little trouble, or was so easily satisfied.
But he was only the curate. Such qualities as his make little show. And after a while the Prescotts almost forgot that there was such a person in their neighbourhood. They said “How do you do, Mr. Asquith?” when they met him at the Rectory or on the road; but after they had done their duty by him, and asked him twice (which was really a superfluity of attention), he dropped into his own sphere, and save at Uncle Hugh’s, or in church, by accident, was seen of them no more.
