“Oh, Mary, my darling!” cried the poor curate in his love and compunction. “To think I should have brought you to this!”
“To what?” said Mary radiant, “to the greatest happiness in life, to do everything for one’s own? Oh! Harry, I am afraid I have not the self-devotion a clergyman’s wife ought to have. I was happy to work in the parish—but, dear, if you won’t despise me very much—I think I am happier to work for the children and you.”
What could the poor man do? He kissed her and went away humiliated, yet happy. That he should have to consent to be served by her in the homeliest practical ways—she, who was his love and his lady—had something excruciating in it; and to think that his love should have brought her to this, and that he should have foreseen it, and yet done it in the weakness of his soul! But when he went back to that, the curate could not be sorry either that he had loved Mary, or that he had told her his love, or married her. She was not sorry—God bless her!—but radiant and happy as the day, and more sweet, and more sacred, and more beautiful than she had been even in her girlhood. What could he say? He would not even disturb that exquisite moment by telling her of the change that he was beginning to contemplate. Things could wait at least for a few days.
But when she told him that she had given Betsy warning, the curate did speak. “I have done it,” she said, partly by way of excuse for bringing in the tea herself, which she did, panting a little, but smiling over the tray. “We shall be so much better off with Mrs. Wood coming in one day in the week. Then we shall really have the satisfaction of knowing that everything is clean for once, and no little spy in the house to report to everybody what we have for dinner; but we must try and get her another place, Harry; for though the children don’t like her, and I should never recommend her for a nursery, there are some things that she can do.”
“Some things you have taught her to do,” Mr. Asquith said.
“So much the more credit to me,” said Mary, laughing, “for she is not very easy to teach.”
It was evening, and the children were in bed and all quiet. The little creature last born lay all covered up in the sitting-room beside them, in a cradle, which the ladies at the Hall, notwithstanding their indignation at his appearance, had trimmed with muslin and lace and made very ornamental: and Mary was glad to put herself in the rocking-chair which her cousin John had given her, and lie back a little and rest. “One never knows,” she said, “how pleasant it is to rock, till one knows what work is. But, Harry, you are over-tired, you don’t care for your tea.”
“I care a great deal more for seeing you tired,” he said. “Mary, I want to speak to you about something very serious. Would it break your heart, my dearest, if we were to go away from Horton? That is the question I didn’t venture to ask the other day.”
“Break my heart! when the children are well, and you? What a question to ask! Nothing could break my heart,” cried Mary, with a delightful laugh, “so long as all is right with you.”
And then he told her that another curacy had been offered him, a curacy in a large town. It would be very different from Horton. He would be under the orders of a very well-known clergyman, a great organiser, a man who was very absolute in his parish, instead of being free to do almost anything he pleased, as under Uncle Hugh’s mild sway. And he would have a great deal of work, but within bounds and limits, so that he would know what was expected from him, without having the general responsibility of everything. And though he would be under the rector, yet he would be over several younger curates, and in his way a sort of vice-bishop too. “But you must remember,” he said, “that we shall have to live in a street without any garden, with very little fresh air. It will be quite town, not even like a suburb—nothing but stone walls all round you.”