‘No, I did not get any satisfaction; I can’t say that he gave me any satisfaction,’ the Curate said.
He had put down his pipe out of deference to his father, who had come into the little den inhabited by Charley the morning after his return. Mr. Ashley’s own study was a refined and comfortable place, as became the study of a dignified clergyman; but his son had a little three-cornered room, full of pipes and papers, the despair of every housemaid that ever came into the house. Charley had felt himself more than usually that morning in need of the solace that his pipe could give. He had returned home late the evening before, and he had already had great discussions with his brother Willie as to Rose Mountford, whom Willie on a second interview had pronounced ‘just as nice as ever,’ but whom the elder had begun to regard with absolute disgust. Willie had gone off to Hunston to execute a commission which in reality was from Anne, and which the Curate had thought might have been committed to himself—to inquire into the resources of the ‘Black Bull,’ where old Saymore had now for some time been landlord, and to find out whether the whole party could be accommodated there. The Curate had lighted his pipe when his brother went off on this mission. He wanted it, poor fellow! He sat by the open window with a book upon the ledge, smoking out into the garden; the view was limited, a hedgerow or two in the distance, breaking the flatness of the fields, a big old walnut tree in front shutting in one side, a clump of evergreens on the other. What he was reading was only a railway novel picked up in mere listlessness; he pitched it away into a large untidy waste-paper basket, and put down his pipe when his father came in. The Rector had not been used in his youth to such disorderly ways, and he did not like smoke.
‘No, sir, no satisfaction; the reverse of that—and yet, perhaps, there is something to be said too on his side,’ the Curate said.
‘Something on his side! I don’t know what you mean,’ cried his father. ‘When I was a young fellow, to behave in this sort of way was disgrace to an honourable man. That is to say, no honourable man would have been guilty of it. Your word was your word, and at any cost it had to be kept.’
‘Father,’ said Charley with unusual energy, ‘it seems to me that the most unbearable point of all this is—that you and I should venture to talk of any fellow, confound him! keeping his word and behaving honourably to—— That’s what I can’t put up with, for my part.’
‘You are quite right,’ said the Rector, abashed for the moment. And then he added, pettishly, ‘but what can we do? We must use the common words, even though Anne is the subject. Charley, there is nobody so near a brother to her as you are, nor a father as I.’
‘Yes, I suppose I’m like a brother,’ the Curate said with a sigh.
‘Then tell me exactly what this fellow said.’
Mr. Ashley was wound up for immediate action. Perhaps the increased tedium of life since the departure of ‘the family’ from Mount had made him more willing, now when it seemed to have come to a climax, for an excitement of any kind.
‘It isn’t what she has a right to,’ said the Curate, painfully impartial when he had told his tale. ‘She—ought to be received like a blessing wherever she goes. We know that better than anyone: but I don’t say that Douglas doesn’t know it too——’