“And are worked off their feet, they and all their belongings, their wives made drudges of, regular parish women, Bible women, or whatever you call them. I know what goes on in large parishes, in great towns. And the children grow up on the streets. No, the country’s bad enough, but at least they can get fresh air and milk in the country, and people may be kind to them: and there’s always a schoolmaster or someone to give them a little education.”
“Mr. Prescott,” said the curate mildly, “the children you are so kindly anxious about are not born yet, and perhaps never will be. Don’t let us go any farther than is necessary. The question in the meantime concerns only Mary and myself.”
“And how long will that be the case?” cried the Squire. But presently he calmed down. “You might get food perhaps,” he said. “I say perhaps—I don’t see how you are to do it—but allow that you could get food out of it, and a cottage to live in—where are your clothes to come from? Where are your shoes to come from? Mary is a lady; she has been brought up to have servants to wait upon her. Is my niece to be your housemaid, Mr. Asquith? your cook, and your washerwoman, and everything? You should marry somebody that is used to that sort of thing. Somebody who has the strength for it. Somebody in your own class of life!”
The curate rose up with a flush of anger on his face. He could keep his temper, but yet it stung him, all the more that it was just enough, and he had already said all this to himself. He said, “I fear it will do no good to talk of it longer, Mr. Prescott—you drive me to despair. And I don’t deny that it is all true, everything you say. But I shall not always be curate at Horton. I shall not always continue a curate even, I hope. Sometimes, even without much influence, if a man does his work well, promotion comes.”
“Very seldom,” said the Squire.
“Still it comes sometimes: and if ever man had an inducement to work—will you think it over and try to look upon it more favourably? I know what a sacrifice it must be for her. Still, she has a right to choose too.”
“To choose—at her age—knowing nothing of the world! Whatever you felt, sir, you should have kept it to yourself—you should not have spoken. How is a girl to know?”
“I thought so too,” said the poor curate, humbly. “But a man has not always command of himself.”
“A man ought always to have command of himself when another person’s comfort is concerned, especially a clergyman, who makes more profession of virtue than other men,” said the Squire, following him to the door, and sending that last volley after him. Mr. Asquith went away from the Hall a miserable man. He had not the heart to ask for Mary, to tell her how he had failed. As he hurried away, however, down the avenue, his heart, which had sunk altogether, began to rise a little in indignation. Why a clergyman more than other men? That a clergyman should be shut out from that side of life altogether was comprehensible. He might take vows as in the Church of Rome, there was reason in that. When men were so poor as he was, instead of tantalising them with the idea of freedom, and exposing them to all its risks, it might be better if they were under the protection of vows and forbidden to marry. But as that was not so, and the English ideal was quite different, why should it be worse in a clergyman than in other men? A clergyman could not struggle and push for promotion. He could not compete and shoulder his way through the crowd. Must he give up also all that made existence sweet? And then the further question arose, would it have been better for Mary had he held his tongue and gone away and never told her he loved her? Had he perhaps closed that chapter to her too? Perhaps she might have forgotten him, and learned to love a richer man. But then perhaps she might not. Naturally a man feels that a woman who has learned to love him will not easily change, or transfer her affections to another. Would it not have been a wrong to Mary had he kept silence, had he never told her? It is better even to love and lose, the poet says, than never to love at all. It is better to have the triumph and delight of knowing that you are loved, even if that love never comes to any earthly close. Why should Mary have lost that because they were both poor? Nobody could take away from them that moment of blessedness, that sense of sweetest union, even if they might never marry at all—never—
But here a pang which was very acute and poignant like a sword went through the curate’s heart. Never marry at all! Lose her, leave her, be parted from her, after what they had said to each other! Oh, what deep shadows come along with the brightest sunshine of life! What was the good of living at all, of having known each other, of having recognized the loveliness and sweetness of existence, if this was what had to be?