The Rector of St. Mark's

by Mary Jane Holmes

And he would, he said; he would not go to Prospect Hill again for two whole weeks, nor visit at the cottages where he was sure to find her. He would keep himself at home; and he did, shutting himself up among his books, and not even making a pastoral call on Lucy when he heard that she was sick. And so Lucy came to him, looking dangerously charming in her green riding-habit—with the scarlet feather sweeping from her hat. Very prettily she pouted, too, chiding him for his neglect, and asking why he had not been to see her, nor anybody. There was the Widow Hobbs, and Mrs. Briggs and those miserable Donelsons—he had not been near them for a fortnight. What was the reason? she asked, beating her foot upon the carpet, and tapping the end of her riding whip upon the sermon he was writing.

"Are you displeased with me, Arthur?" she continued, her eyes filling with tears as she saw the grave expression on his face. "Have I done anything wrong? I am so sorry if I have."

Her voice had in it the grieved tones of a little child, and her eyes were very bright, with the tears, quivering on her long silken lashes. Leaning back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his head, a position he always assumed when puzzled and perplexed, the rector looked at her a moment before he spoke. He could not define to himself the nature of the interest he took in Lucy Harcourt. He admired her greatly, and the self-denials and generous exertions she had made to be of use to him since Anna went away had touched a tender chord and made her seem very near to him.

Habit with him was everything, and the past two weeks' isolation had shown him how necessary she had become to him. She did not satisfy his higher wants as Anna Ruthven had done. No one could ever do that, but she amused, and soothed, and rested him, and made his duties lighter by taking half of them upon herself. That she was more attached to him than he could wish, he greatly feared, for, since Captain Humphreys' visit, he had seen matters differently from what he saw them before, and had unsparingly questioned himself as to how far he would be answerable for her future weal or woe.

"Guilty, verily, I am guilty, in leading her on, if I meant nothing by it," he had written against himself, pausing in his sermon to write it just as Lucy came in, appealing so prettily to him to know why he had neglected her so long. She was very beautiful this morning, and Arthur felt his heart beat rapidly as he looked at her, and thought most any man who had never known Anna Ruthven would be glad to gather that bright creature in his own arms and know she was his own. One long, long sigh to the memory of all he had hoped for once—one bitter pang as he remembered Anna and that twilight hour in the church and then he made a mad plunge in the dark and said:

"Lucy, do you know people are beginning to talk about my seeing you so much?"

"Well, let them talk. Who cares?" Lucy replied, with a good deal of asperity of manner for her, for that very morning the old housekeeper at Prospect Hill had ventured to remonstrate with her for "running after the parson." "Pray, where is the wrong? What harm can come of it?" and she tossed her head pettishly.

"None, perhaps," Arthur replied, "if one could keep his affections under control. But if either of us should learn to love the other very much, and the love was not reciprocated, harm would surely come of that. At least, that was the view Captain Humphreys took of the matter when he was speaking to me about it."

There were red spots on Lucy's face, but her lips were very white, and the buttons on her riding dress rose and fell rapidly with the beating of her heart as she looked steadily at Arthur. Was he going to send her from him, send her back to the insipid life she had lived before she knew him? It was too terrible to believe, and the great tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. Then, as a flash of pride came to her aid, she dashed them away, and said haughtily:

"And so, for fear I shall fall in love with you, and be ruined, perhaps, you are sacrificing both comfort and freedom, shutting yourself up here among your books and studies to the neglect of other duties? But it need be so no longer. The necessity for it, if it existed once, certainly does not now. I will not be in your way. Forgive me that I ever have been."