“You are as bad as they are, with your humility!” cried the rector’s wife. “I have no patience with you. What have you left undone that you ought to have done? I am sure you’ve always been at their beck and call, rising up out of your warm bed to go and visit them in the middle of the night, when you have been sent for—more like a country practitioner than a beneficed clergyman! And though I say it that perhaps shouldn’t say it, never one has been sent away, as you know, that came in want to our pantry door. And as for lyings-in, and those sort of things——” cried the country lady.
“We needn’t go into details. As for your part of it, my dear, I know that’s always been well done,” said the politic rector. “Anyhow, don’t let us say anything to discourage the Asquiths. It’s always a good thing to stir a parish up.”
“It’s like those revivalists,” said Mrs. Prescott—“a great fuss, and then everything falling back worse than before.”
“Oh no! not worse than before: somebody is always the better for it. I like a good stirring up.”
All this was very noble of the rector, who, if ever he had stirred up the parish, had ceased to do it long ago. Perhaps he was a little moved by the fervent conviction of the curate and the curate’s wife that in their little day, and with the small means at their command, they could do so much; at all events, he let them have their way and try their best. And a great deal of work was done, with an effect by which they were greatly delighted and elated in the first year.
But then came the time when Mary was “not very strong,” and the choir practices and various other things had to be given up—not entirely given up, for the schoolmaster and his daughter made an attempt to keep them on, which was more trying to the nerves and patience of the invalid than if they had ceased altogether. For jealousies arose, and the different parties thought themselves entitled to carry their grievances to Mrs. Asquith, even when she was very unfit for any disturbance; and everything was very heavy on the curate’s shoulders during that period of inaction which was compulsory on Mary’s part. They had undertaken so much, that when one was withdrawn the other could not but break down with overwork. However, there was presently a re-beginning; and Mary, smiling and happier than ever, prettier than ever, and full of a warmer enthusiasm still, came again to the charge. She understood the poor women, the poor mothers, so much better now, she declared. Even the curate himself was not such an instructor as that little three-weeks-old baby, which did nothing but sleep, and feed, and grow. That was a teacher fresh from heaven; it threw light on so many things, on the very structure of the world, and how it hung together, and the love of God, and the ways of men. Mary thought she had never before so fully understood the prayer which is addressed to Our Father: she had not known all it meant before: and the curate, indescribably softened, touched, melted out of all perception of the hardness, feeling more than ever the sweetness of life, received this ineffable lesson too.
And so the crusade against the powers of evil was taken up again, with all the new life of this little heavenly messenger to stimulate them; but not quite so much of the more vulgar strength, the physical power, the detachedness and freedom. Mary had to be at home with the baby so often and so long. And the curate had so strong a bond drawing him in the same direction, to make sure that all was going well. But still the parish did not suffer in those young and happy years.