Cousin Mary

by Mrs. Oliphant

“You speak of the Church as if it were a trade, Hugh.”

“Do I, my dear? Well, perhaps it is something the same after all, if you think of it—for most people are looking out for something better. I should not mind being a canon or a prebendary myself, or even a dean.”

“And is not Mr. Asquith looking out for something better?” said Mary. She was more interested in this question than in any other that could at the moment be presented to her.

“Poor fellow! I don’t know that he has anything better to look for,” said the Rector. “He has few friends, and nobody to push him. I should not wonder if he remained a curate all his life.”

“Nobody does that nowadays,” said Mrs. Hugh Prescott. “Something always turns up. A poor clergyman, so far as I can see, has just as many chances as one that is well off. He is kind to somebody’s child, or attends somebody’s mother on her deathbed, or something of that sort. There is a special providence for poor curates, I think.”

Mary took in all this with quick ears, and asked herself, whether, in reality, a special providence was all that Mr. Asquith had to look to. “There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God,” we say in church day by day: but even that pious sentiment seems to convey a veiled opinion that other aid would be desirable: but when it is said of a man that a special providence is wanted for his promotion, that man’s hopes do not, to most of the world, seem particularly well founded. Mary felt with a curious swelling of her heart that she was glad this was the case with Mr. Asquith. She was proud of it, if pride is possible in such a matter. When she tested him by the first great commission which sent men out to preach without even bread in their scrip, much less money in their purse—that test which no one had borne as yet—she felt that at last here was one who could bear it; and this gave Mary a degree of pleasure quite incommensurate with his stay in the parish, or of any possible knowledge he could have of her, or she of him. After all she had nothing at all to do with it; and what were his principles of action, or how he was moved by the absence of all means of advancing himself, she had not the least way of knowing. It might be this that made him what John called dull. Mary could not tell. But she felt in her heart, though she was so ignorant, that the real clergyman for whom she had been looking had appeared at last—the only one who could bear the test which had not succeeded at all with the rest of the curates, nor even Uncle Hugh.

And this was the conclusion which had been formed in her mind even before she began to meet Mr. Asquith in the cottages. She was keenly alive to his demeanour there. It was as if she had gone to collect evidence upon this subject. When she was giving poor Sally Williams her pudding, she was at the same moment mentally weighing the curate and his manners to poor Mrs. Williams, and making him out. Perhaps Mary was not quite an impartial judge, being biassed, as has been said, by the other pieces of evidence which she had already put together, and even by something more subtle still, by her own foregone conclusion, and certain weakening prepossessions that had stolen into her heart. But about the time when Mr. Asquith took fright and began to shut himself up and relinquish his visits to the cottages, Mary had completed all her investigations, or had forgotten them, or had come to think them the most unnecessary, the most impertinent of inquiries, having somehow suddenly and unconsciously been led to the conclusion that there was nobody like Mr. Asquith, and that whatever he did became, from the fact of his doing it, right. It gave all the more weight to her opinion in this respect that she was not, as has been seen, a girl who naturally believed in curates, or took the excellence of that class for granted, as some young women do. It was, however, a somewhat severe test of Mary’s faith that almost simultaneously with her full conviction of it, this perfect man should suddenly begin to conduct himself in so strange a way. For she could not help being struck by the fact that she met him no longer, even had the poor people been silent on the subject, which they were not. They poured out their complaints to her, sometimes quite simply, sometimes with a little mischievous meaning. “Mr. Asquith? We haven’t seen Mr. Asquith, no—not for ten days; him as used to come in and give my poor Sally a comfor’able word ’most every day. I don’t know what’s the cause. I only hope, Miss Mary, as we’ve done nothing to offend him. It ain’t with our will if we has, for a kinder gentleman never come inside my door.”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Williams, I am sure he would not take offence. Perhaps he is very busy; you know a clergyman—has to study a great deal,” said Mary, pausing to pick up the first excuse that came handy.

Mrs. Williams shook her head. “If it had been most clergymen,” she said, “I shouldn’t have wondered, for they soon tires—but Mr. Asquith! oh, he did seem another sort, he did!” the poor woman cried.

And then old Mrs. Sims at the almshouses had her little word to put in: “I can’t think what’s come over Mr. Asquith, that was such a kind gentleman. He’s not come no more since the last time as he met you here, Miss Mary. It couldn’t be as a fine, tall gentleman like ’im was afraid of you.”