IN Miss Grey’s drawing-room, which was as small as Miss Grey herself, there were three persons assembled. Miss Grey, seated at the writing-table—much too large for the place, like the rest of the furniture; Florence Plowden on the big ‘Chesterfield’ sofa; and a large and tall individual standing in the middle of the floor. He was large in comparison with the ladies, and with the limited space in which he stood. But otherwise, though tall, he was a spare man; his length of limb and scantness of flesh made particularly apparent by his long clerical coat. Needless to say that he was the curate, and that it was parish business that formed the staple of the conversation. Florence had come in with her district visitor’s book; and other books of a similar description were on the table. They were talking in that curious jargon of business and gossip which makes up the talk of the workers in a parish or ecclesiastical organisation of any kind.
‘In whose district is Mead Lane?’ said Mr. Osborne. ‘A man came to me last night from No. 3, to ask me to go and see his wife. She had been in bed for about six weeks—very ill now. There is a baby, of course, and I don’t know how many children; man occasionally out of work—though not now. Everything in disorder, as you may imagine. Nobody had called to see them for weeks. A lady had come once or twice before the woman fell ill; never since.’
He made this report very drily, in staccato sentences, as if he were abridging from a book.
Miss Grey turned round, twisting on her chair to give Florence a look. ‘I knew it would be so,’ she said; ‘they are a couple of old maids wrapped up in themselves. She says: “Do you think you should go out, my dear, such a cold day?” and he says: “The parish can surely wait; but you mustn’t go out, with your delicate throat, in the rain.”’
‘This is very interesting as a social sketch,’ said the curate, ‘but it does not answer my question.’
Florence was far from being in high spirits, but her native genius was too much for her. She turned upon him with a little mincing air, and deprecatory friction of her hands. ‘Oh, don’t you really think so, Mr. Osborne?’ she said.
He laughed, though with a certain look of disapproval, as if amused against his will. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Mrs. Kendal; what is to be done with her? If she will not do what she undertakes, some one else must be got to do it.’
At which both Miss Grey and Florence shook their heads. ‘It would be such a slap in the face,’ said the little lady of the house. ‘They are good people in their way, and liberal enough. We must just manage it a little. Florence and I will go and see this poor woman, and if Mrs. Kendal hears of it we can say—— Oh, some excuse will be found easily enough.’
‘Excuse! When she has let the woman die nearly——’
‘A miss is as good as a mile. I’ll go over at once, and send in the nurse if she wants it. What did you say was the name? Brownjohn! Oh,’ said Miss Grey, with a sudden diminution of energy, ‘I’m afraid, Florry, we know the illnesses of Mrs. Brownjohn. She has a great many, and whatever district she is in, the visitor always neglects her. We know her case very well.’
‘The woman is very ill now, and the house in a dreadful state; and the man, of course, as if things were not bad enough, taking refuge in the public-house.’
‘Ah, that I can understand——’
‘The filthy place, Miss Grey, or the public-house?’ the curate said, with a little severity.
‘Oh, both, both! You must be a little human. The public-house is the natural consequence of a crowded little room, and no comfort—even without the dirt.’
‘But surely you don’t think that ought to be so? Surely you don’t suppose that it isn’t the man’s duty to rectify things instead of making them worse? If the wife’s unable to do her part, instead of abandoning her brutally, and letting everything go to destruction, oughtn’t he to stand in, to do what he can, to make life possible? That’s how I read a man’s duty, at least.’
‘Oh, my dear Mr. Osborne,’ said little Miss Grey, ‘it’s a man’s duty to be a good Christian and a perfect man. And so it is everybody’s duty; we all acknowledge that.’
Mr. Osborne snorted slightly, with the impatience of a fiery horse suddenly pulled up. ‘I hope I demand less than perfection, though I know that I ought not to be content with less,’ he said. ‘But in the meantime,’ he added, pausing a minute to expel that hot breath of impatience, ‘I don’t suppose you will think it right because of Mrs. Kendal’s feelings, or even her own imperfections, that this poor creature should be left to die?’
Miss Grey and Florry exchanged glances behind the curate’s back, with a slight shaking of heads. Oh, these arbitrary young men, wanting everything their own way, and thinking you have no feeling if you don’t go so far as they do! This was the sentiment in the older lady’s mind; but Florence was naturally more fierce.
‘We are not in the habit of leaving poor people to die—when there is any truth in it,’ she said.
He gave her a look half fierce, half tender, full of the natural animosity of a man checked in his certainties of opinion, yet with a longing that she at least should understand and know what he meant.
‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Grey, ‘I’ll go; and have a little order put in the place, at least. That little girl—- the eldest, Florry, don’t you remember?—who was sent to the seaside after her fever, she ought to be good for something now.’
‘There is a little girl,’ said the curate.
Miss Grey turned round upon him with a laugh that made him furious. ‘As if we didn’t know!’ she said. Then, turning to Florence again, ‘You might go in, as you pass, my dear, to Mrs. Gould, and see if the nurse is engaged. Tell her, if she can, to run round to Mead Lane about two o’clock. She’ll probably find me there, and if it is anything really serious we’ll get the doctor to see her. Come now, let’s see if there is anything else we want to consult Mr. Osborne about.’
‘I want to ask you, at least,’ he said, ‘if you will help me with my meeting, to give them an evening’s entertainment. I recognise,’ with a little severity, ‘as well as you do, that they must be amused as well as looked after.’
‘Well,’ said Miss Grey, ‘if it’s children I am quite ready to play any number of games with them. But I’m not a great one for providing amusement, Mr. Osborne. In the first place I can’t sing to them, or dance to them, or play the fiddle; in the next, I think they like their own amusements best.’
‘The public-house, Miss Grey?’
The little lady had tears in her eyes. ‘I am not in favour of the public-house, God knows—but I am not so sure that your meetings will do away with that. It’s just as likely to make them thirsty coming out at nine, after you’ve sung to them and fiddled to them, and seeing the red light in the window that looks so cheerful to them. But never mind me—Florry and Emmy will sing, and the London young ladies in the new villa will play the piano, and you can get a quartette of fiddles, you know, quite easily from Winwich. And Jim—Jim might recite; he used to be very good at it.’
‘Oh—Mr. Plowden!’ said the curate, with a slight hesitation.
‘Jim I mean: he used to read very well when he was a boy.’
‘I asked Lady William,’ Mr. Osborne said hurriedly, as if to change the subject, ‘but she said like you, Miss Grey, that she neither sang nor—I am not aware I suggested that any one should dance.’
‘They would like that! but the thing is not so much what they would like to see, but what all the ladies and gentlemen would like to do. And by-the-bye there is that dark-eyed woman at the school—whom I have a strong feeling I have seen before—and who looks no more like a schoolmistress than—any one does. I feel quite sure she could act or recite or something—or perhaps sing. I would ask her if I were you.’
‘I am unfortunate in not being of your opinion, Miss Grey; I should not think of asking that person to help in any case.’
‘Oh, you’re too particular,’ Miss Grey said.
And then Florence got up to go.
‘The old Lloyds,’ she said, ‘want to have a week of their pension in advance—may I say you will give it to them, Miss Grey?’
‘Oh dear, don’t say anything of the kind; if they get a week in advance how are they to live the next week when they have none?’
‘I said so—but then she cried, poor old body, and said they were worse off now than before—for if they wanted something very bad out of the usual way, some kind person used to give it to them—whereas now when they have a regular pension they have to stick to it, and nobody minds.’
‘There’s a sermon,’ cried Miss Grey, ‘on the uses of beneficence in a small parish. You have only to tell Mr. Swinford, Florry, and he’ll give them the advance and the week’s money too, and next time they’ll want a fortnight’s advance—it’s what I’ve always said. He’s a nice young fellow and a warm heart, but to sow money about is no good.’ ‘You said yourself, Miss Grey, that so much a week——’
‘Oh yes, I said it myself—I’d like to give them the advance and the week’s money too, just as well as Mr. Swinford does—though Mr. Osborne thinks on the other hand that I am ready, because I’ve little faith in her, to leave a poor creature to die. Oh, don’t say anything—I know of course you didn’t exactly mean that. Are you going too? Good-bye; I’ll get my bonnet and I’ll be in Mead Lane before you’ve got to the Rectory gate.’
It did not appear, however, that there was any intention in the mind of these two young people to take the road which led to the Rectory gate. There was a momentary pause when they got outside, and Florence hurriedly, in view of the fact that the curate’s way to his lodging did lie in that direction, held out her hand to him. ‘Good morning, I am going up to Mrs. Gould’s to see about the nurse,’ she said, somewhat breathless and eager to escape.
‘I am going that way, too,’ said the young man, but not without a blush. Curates are, after all, like other men, and do not hesitate to change their route and to assert that they always meant to go that way; but there is so much consistency in the young Anglican that he blushes when he announces that innocent fallacy. He was going that way: where, then, was he going to? The part of the parish in which Mrs. Gould lived was not in the curate’s district, and he could not surely have any impertinent intention of interfering with what was in the Rector’s hands? These ideas flashed through the mind of Florence, but naturally she did not put them into words. She was very angry with Mr. Osborne, full of indignation, and yet she did not wish him to turn back and leave her at Miss Grey’s door. The blush which had surprised him as he told that fib reflected itself on her countenance, but in both their hearts there was a thrill of pleasure as they turned thus into the wrong way—the way that Florry had chosen to elude him, without in the least wanting to go to Mrs. Gould’s (for she knew all the time where the parish nurse was); the way that he falsely asserted to be his, though he knew it was nothing of the kind. It was a guilty pleasure, which neither of them would have owned to, but yet there was not much guilt in it after all.
‘Miss Grey is a very good woman,’ said the curate, ‘and excellent for the parish—but she has very old-fashioned ways of looking at things.’
‘I don’t see that,’ said Florence lightly, ‘at all.’
‘You would, I am sure,’ said Mr. Osborne, ‘if you would allow yourself to take a larger view. You won’t, I am afraid, adopt my standing-point, for you think that I am opposed to her and that I don’t appreciate her.’
‘You can’t of course know her as we do,’ said Florence, ‘for all our lives she has been an example before our eyes.’
‘That is again entirely the individual view of the question,’ said the curate gently, ‘and in that I grant you—but don’t you think we might take a more extended range when the question is a public one? I don’t in the least object to that, far from it. I know there is nothing so good as the way of working by individualities, of getting hold of Tom, and Will, and Peter, one by one, the door-to-door system, as I may call it; but when you have a great public evil like that of intemperance, don’t you think, Miss Florence, it is well, while not leaving the other undone, to try what some large public method will do——’
‘Like Father Matthew’s?’ said Florence.
‘Father Matthew was too sensational,’ said Mr. Osborne; ‘and it is impossible to tell how much fiction there was in such a movement. Indeed, I rather think the one by one system is the best; but to interest them en masse, to make them see what a thing it would be for all their families, and themselves, of course, and how much purer and more rational pleasure they would get out of their lives——’
‘Do you think they learn in that way?’
‘If they don’t, I do not know how they are to learn.’
‘But they all know beforehand how dreadful a thing it is—they know it’s destruction. Oh, don’t you think they know far better than we do, since they see it before them every day, and all day long?’
‘What would you do, then,’ said the curate, ‘to bring this home to them? I’ve got all the statistics. Of course they know, for misfortune brings it home; but if we could fully convince them what a prodigious evil it is over all the country, how many better things they could do with the money. I remember proving to a man once, that if he only put by every penny he had been accustomed to spend in drink, he could buy his cottage, he could have a little garden of his own, and a pig, and I don’t know how many things which every man prizes——’
‘And did he do it?’ said Florence.
‘Do it!’ said the curate. ‘Of course that meant a course of years. One could not tell whether he did it or not, till a long time was passed. Well, no,’ he added, with a sigh, ‘I am trying to deceive you, not to admit my failure; he did not do it. He went on just in his old way, and almost killed his wife, and starved his children, till he died.’
‘Is it true, Mr. Osborne,’ said Florence, ‘that you said to old Mrs. Lloyd, if she would give up her beer, and take the pledge, you would do so too?’
A flush came over the curate’s face, of ingenuous pleasure and satisfaction. He liked her to know that he was capable of any sacrifice to save his flock. ‘It is quite true,’ he said. ‘I was quite ready, and had made up my mind to do it; for how can I ask my people to give up what I don’t give up myself?’
‘But why did you choose poor old Mrs. Lloyd? It did her no harm, her little drop of beer.’
‘Every drop of beer does harm, in a community like this, scourged by that vice——’
‘Mr. Osborne,’ said Florence timidly.
‘Yes,’ he said, bending towards her, ‘you were going to say something.’
‘I want to say something; but, oh, I don’t know whether I ought, I don’t know whether I may.’
The curate trembled, too, as much as she did. They were in a quiet road, with nobody in sight. He put his hand suddenly upon hers with a hurried, tremulous pressure. ‘There is nothing you ought not to say to me,’ he said. ‘Nothing, nothing that I will not gladly hear. If you should reprove me, even, it would be as a precious balm—whatever, whatever you will say!’
There was a little pause, and it was very still all about, a bird or two trilling in the half-clothed trees, not a harsher sound to disturb the two young creatures, there standing at the crisis of their lives. ‘But first,’ he said, ‘first let me say something to you——’
‘No,’ said Florence, ‘no, that was not what I meant, not now—I had something to say. Mr. Osborne, listen. If, instead of an old woman, and her a good old woman that did no harm, it were a man, a boy, a gentleman, that you could have held out your hand to—oh, not to make him take pledges and things! and perhaps, you, hearing of him, thought him no company for you. But if you could have turned him away from harm to go with you; if you had suffered his society, not approving of it, because your society might have saved him; if you had thought to yourself that to be your companion might have been everything for him, and that to make him do things with you, and almost live with you, though you might not like it, would have made life another thing to him. Oh, Mr. Osborne, would not that have been a better way?’ Her eyes were so full of tears that she could not see him, but when he spoke she heard a sound in his voice which made her start and turn hastily to where the man who was almost her accepted lover, who had the words on his lips that were to bind them for ever, stood. The music and the softness had altogether gone out of these staccato tones.
‘Miss Plowden,’ he said, as if a sudden gulf had come between them over which his voice sounded far away, ‘I will not even ask what you mean. I should feel myself a most presumptuous intruder, and impertinent—— Good morning. I find I have not so much time as I thought for this roundabout way.’