“Should he be just a man?” asked Kate, with profound gravity. “Shouldn’t they be examples to all of us? I think they should be kept apart from other people, and even look different. I should not like to be intimate—not very intimate, you know—with a clergyman. I should feel as if it was wrong—when they have to teach us, and pray for us, and all that. Your son is not a clergyman yet, or I should never have ventured to speak to him as I did to-day.”
“But, you dear simple-minded child,” cried Mrs Mitford, half delighted with such an evidence of goodness, half confused by the thought of how this theory might affect her boy, “that is all very true; but unless they became monks at once, I don’t see how your notion could be carried out; and the experience of the Roman Catholics, dear, has shown us what a dreadful thing it is to make men monks. So that, you see, clergymen must mix in the world; and I am quite sure it is best for them to marry. When you consider how much a woman can do in a parish, Kate, and what a help she is, especially if her husband is very superior——”
“I don’t know, I am sure,” said Kate; “perhaps, in that case, you know, women should be the clergymen. But I do think they should be put up upon pedestals, and one should not be too familiar with them. Marrying a clergyman would be dreadful. I don’t know how any one could have the courage to do it. I suppose people did not look at things in that light when you were young?”
“No, indeed,” said Mrs Mitford, with a little warmth; “there were no High Church notions in my days. One thought one was doing the best one could for God, and that one had one’s work to do as well as one’s husband. And, my dear,” said the good woman, dropping into her usual soft humility, “I think you would think so, too, if you knew what the parish was when I came into it. Not that I have done much—not near so much, not half so much, as I ought to have done—but still, I think——”
“As if I ever doubted that!” cried Kate; “but then—not many are like you.”
“Oh yes, my dear! a great many,” said Mrs Mitford, with a smile of pleasure. “Even Mr Crediton’s pretty Kate, though he says she is a wilful little puss—if it came to be her fate to marry a clergyman——”
“That it never can be,” said Kate; “oh, dear, no! In the first place, papa would hate it; and, in the next place, I should—hate it myself.”
“Ah! my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, feeling, nevertheless, as if she had received a downright blow, “that all depends upon the man.”
They had come round in their walk to the path which led past the dining-room windows, where the blinds were but half dropped and the lights shining, and sounds of voices were audible as the gentlemen sat over their wine. It was the two elder men only who were talking—Dr Mitford’s precise tones, and those of Mr Crediton, which sounded, Kate thought, more “worldly.” John was taking no part in the conversation. Some time before, while they had still been at a little distance, Kate had seen him under the blind fidgeting in his chair, and listening to the sound of the footsteps outside. She knew as well that he was longing to join his mother and herself as if he had said it, and looked at him with an inward smile and philosophical reflection, whether a man who gave in so easily could be worth taking any trouble about. And yet, perhaps, it was not to Kate he had given in, but to the first idea of woman, the first enchantress whom he could make an idol of. “He shall not make an idol of me,” she said to herself; “if he cares for me, it must be as me, and not as a fairy princess.” This thought had just passed through her mind when she answered Mrs Mitford, which she did with a little nod of obstinacy and elevation of her drooping head.