Chapter Six.
Claudia’s Home.
The Rectory at Britton-Garnett was one of those picturesque, tempting-looking, old cottage-like houses which, seen in summer by a passer-by, embowered in greenery and roses, remain in the memory as a sort of little earthly paradise. And its inhabitants, who loved it well in spite of its imperfections, would have accepted the verdict without much protest.
“It is a sweet little place,” Mrs Meredon would say, “and for rich people it might really be made almost perfect. But with these old houses, you see, there seems always something that wants doing or repairing. The roof is in a very bad state, and we are sometimes very much afraid that there is dry-rot in the old wainscoting.”
But the roof had to be patched up, and the incipient dry-rot had to be left to itself. Mr Meredon was far too poor to spend a shilling or even a sixpence that he could possibly help; and as the house was his own private property,—for what had been the Rectory was a very small house in the village, quite out of the question as the abode of a large family,—there was no one to appeal to for necessary repairs, as is usually the case. The Rectory proper was, in point of fact, large enough for the living, which was a very small one. Long ago now, when the Meredons first came there, shortly after their marriage, it had been with the idea that Britton-Garnett was but the stepping-stone to better things. But years had gone on without the better things coming, and now for some considerable time past the Rector had left off hoping that they ever would, or that he could be able conscientiously to accept them should they do so. For a terrible misfortune had come over him, literally to darken his life. He had grown almost totally blind.
It had been softened to some extent by a very slow and gradual approach. The sufferer himself, and his wife and elder children, had had time to prepare for it, and to make their account with it. There was even now a good hope that, with great care and prudence, the glimmering of sight that remained to him might be preserved; that the disease had, so to speak, done its worst. But adieu to all prospects of a more active career, of the wide-spread usefulness and distinction Mr Meredon had sometimes dreamt of, of “the better things,” in the practical sense even, that he had hoped for, when he and his light-hearted and talented but portionless young bride had, like so many thousands of others in fact and fiction, “so very imprudently married.” It was even harder in some ways than if the poor man had become completely blind, for then there would have been nothing more to fear, no use in precautions or care.
“Sometimes I could wish it had been so,” he once confessed to his wife. “I don’t know but that it would have been easier for you all.”
“Easier for you, perhaps, dear Basil,” said his wife. “But for us—oh no! Think what it would be for you not to know the children’s faces as they grow up, not to—”