I never was able to have a word with her now, never could hear her darling voice repeat my name in those soft accents I loved so well. It was very hard—very hard, indeed! You see, I had ample reasons, beyond the requirements of mere social etiquette, for wishing to know Mrs Clyde.
Our suburb, you must know, was an extremely quiet place—“remote, unfriended, solitary, slow.”
Although everybody knew everybody, who happened to be anybody at all, there was not much of current sociability and party giving. We were not sociable. On the contrary, we were a very humdrum lot; rising early and going to town to our business and daily toil—such of us as had any sort of business to attend to—and coming back at a fixed regular hour. We were in the habit of having our respective dinners and teas, and, mayhap, suppers, at certain appointed times and seasons—also duly regulated—and subsequently going to bed, to recruit for the same routine on the morrow, without any excitements, or renovation and destruction of tissue worth speaking of.
A “tea-party” was quite a sensation in the parish of Saint Canon’s—equivalent to one of the queen’s garden fêtes. Beyond school treats and working parties, to which latter only the clergy and Lady Dorcases were admitted, and the anniversary of Christmas, when we sometimes did indulge a little in wholesome but subdued gaiety, we went on from year’s beginning to year’s end without balls, or dinners, or dances, or any of those resources which fashionable people have for killing time and keeping up acquaintanceship.
We were not “high-toned” people; quite the reverse, in fact, as, I believe, I have previously described. We only “dropped in” of an evening to see friends, and spend a quiet hour or two over bézique and music. On these occasions, a carpet cotillon or quadrille has been sometimes indulged in; but it was the exception and not the rule. We were generally satisfied with much milder pastime; our visits rarely exceeding the interval between tea and “supper” time, when we partook of a friendly, though seedy, abernethy and glass of wine or beer; and then went home virtuously to bed.
Our society being thus constituted, it became a matter almost of impossibility to meet any one particular person frequently, excepting out in the street, unless you had the entrée of their house. Hence, I never could chat with Min, as I had done at the decorations; and, naturally, I felt very much aggrieved thereanent.
What made it additionally provoking to me was, that Horner had contrived to get introduced to Mrs Clyde almost as soon as she had settled in the place, before I had returned from Paris; and there was Mr Mawley the curate, too, exercising the privilege of his cloth by continually frequenting her house. He drove me to desperation by going in and out, apparently just as the fancy suited him, as if he were a tame cat about the place.
His conduct was perfectly odious—that is, to any right-thinking person.
Curates and cousins are, I consider, two of the greatest obstacles to an innocent layman’s intimacy with the diviner portion of creation; and, in these days of reform and disestablishment, of hereditary and other conservative grievances, something ought to be done to abolish the persons in question, or at least handicap them so that other deserving young men might have a fair chance in the race for beauty’s smile and Hymen’s chain. They have an enormous advantage, at present, over outside men-folk. Girls like to have a sort of good-natured lap-dog about them, to play with occasionally and run their errands, “do this” and “that” for the asking—like Cornelius the centurion’s obedient servant—and make himself generally useful, without looking for any ulterior reward on account of services rendered. You see, cousins and curates are regarded as “harmless”—“detrimentals with the chill off,” so to speak. His scrap of relationship throws a glimmer of possession around the one, endowing with inherent right every act of his ministry; while his “cloth” invests the other with a halo of sanctity and Platonic freedom that disarms gossip of the usual clothes-peg whereon it hangs its scandal. “Cousin Tom”—by-the-way, did you ever read Mackworth Praed’s lines on the same theme?—is allowed opportunities for, and latitude in, flirtation, which poor Corydon, not a cousin never so remote, may sigh in vain for; and, who would be so despicable as to impute secular motives to the Reverend Hobplush’s tender ministrations towards those sweet young “sisters,” who dote on his sucking sermons and work him carpet slippers and text-markers without limit? Certainly, not I.
I do not mean to say, however, that curates and cousins have it all their own way always. There’s a sweet little cupid who “sits up aloft,” like Jack’s guardian angel, to watch o’er the loves of poor laymen. Still, it is very galling, to one of an ardent temperament especially, to mark the anxious solicitude with which “Cousin Tom” may hang over the divine creature—whom you can only look upon from afar as some distant star—without attracting any observations anent his “attentions.” The confounded airs of possession he gives himself, while you are languishing “out in the cold,” in the expressive vernacular, are frightful to contemplate. As for curate Hobplush, he may drop in whenever he pleases, being treated like one of the family circle; while you, miserable creature, can only call at stated intervals, always dreading the horrid possibility of out-staying your welcome, and receiving the metaphorical “cold shoulder”—though love may prompt you to the sacrifice.