The child in the crib stirred and moaned in its sleep, and the mother went to it and readjusted its position and murmured some soothing words to it, and returned to her chair.
“I am so sorry,” she said.
“Indeed, it is terrible,” assented Miss Chichester. “I thought I must come in and give you what little comfort I could. I brought Barry Malleson along, and he’s down-stairs with Mr. Farrar now, trying to prevail on him not to antagonize the vestrymen any more. Barry isn’t a communicant, you know, but he’s a man of such good judgment.”
“Is he?”
“Oh, very.”
“I do hope Mr. Farrar will listen to him.”
Miss Chichester rose to take her departure, but it was five minutes later before she actually got away, and when she went down-stairs Barry had already gone. He had not accomplished all that he had hoped to accomplish when he came, but he felt that he had made it so clear to the rector that he was on the wrong track that his restoration to reason and good judgment would necessarily soon follow.
But, while Barry left behind him a smiling, self-confident and optimistic host, Miss Chichester left in her wake a woman on whom the shock of disclosure had fallen with grievous and humiliating force. She had feared that something of the kind might happen, but she had never thought that it would come like this. She could not quite believe that the best people in the parish were in direct opposition to her husband; that gentlemen of the vestry who had always treated her with such marked courtesy and consideration could be so openly antagonistic toward him. And if it were all true, in what a cruel position was she herself placed. By birth, breeding and social alignment she belonged to the cultured class. She shirked none of the duties of a rector’s wife, so far as her physical and mental ability enabled her to perform those duties. She was devoted to her husband, her children and her Church. It was true that the new, and to her strange and incomprehensible, ideas promulgated by her husband concerning the duty of the Church and its adherents toward the humble and the poor gave her some anxiety when she heard them or thought about them; but she considered herself so ignorant in such matters, and regarded him as being so wise, that she usually preferred to dismiss the subject from her mind rather than to dwell upon it to her own confusion. Up to this time his attitude had not interfered in any way with her Church activities or her social relaxations. It had caused her no great embarrassment, nor had it given her any particular concern. But now a point had been reached beyond which the attempted carrying out of his policy must inevitably reflect upon her. If Miss Chichester’s story was true, the situation had grown suddenly acute. The most prominent men of the Church had come out in open rebellion against her husband. Their wives would naturally sympathize with them and side with them. They belonged to the class in which all of her social activities had been performed, and all of her social friendships maintained. How could she hope to hold her position among these people and at the same time remain loyal to her husband? It was a cruel dilemma in which she had, by no fault of her own, been suddenly and rudely placed.
At dinner time that evening her husband noticed her apparent distraction and despondency, and inquired of her concerning the cause of it. She successfully evaded his questions, and it was not until after the children had been put to bed that she repeated to him the tale that Miss Chichester had told to her that afternoon. He assured her that she had heard a grossly exaggerated account of what had actually taken place, but in its really material aspects he could not do otherwise than confirm the story. He did not consider, he said, that the opposition to his plans would necessarily lead to their suppression.