“All because he is the heir!” thought Agnes to herself; and again she coloured with distress and vexation. It was impossible to keep something of this from her tone; when she spoke, it was in a voice subdued a little out of its usual tenor; but all that she asked was a casual question, meaning nothing—“If Mr Mead would have the duty while the Rector was away?”
“Yes,” said the Rector; “he is very much better fitted for it than I am. Here I have been cramping my wings these three years. Fathers and mothers are bitterly to blame; they bind a man to what his soul loathes, because it is his best method of earning some paltry pittance—so much a-year!”
After this exclamation the young clergyman made a pause, and so did his diffident and uneasy auditor, who “did not like” either to ask his meaning, or to make any comment upon it. After a few minutes he resumed again—
“I suppose it must constantly be so where we dare to think for ourselves,” he said, in a tone of self-conversation. “A man who thinks must come to conclusions different from those which are taught to him—different, perhaps, from all that has been concluded truest in the ages that are past. What shall we say? Woe be to me if I do not follow out my reasoning, to whatever length it may lead!”
“When Paul says, Woe be to him, it is, if he does not preach the Gospel,” said Agnes.
Mr Rivers smiled. “Be glad of your own happy exemption,” he said, turning to her, with the air of a man who knows by heart all the old arguments—all the feminine family arguments against scepticism and dangerous speculations. “I will leave you in possession of your beautiful Gospel—your pure faith. I shall not attempt to disturb your mind—do not fear.”
“You could not!” said Agnes, in a sudden and rash defiance. She turned to him in her turn, beginning to tremble a little with the excitement of controversy. She was a young polemic, rather more graceful in its manifestation, but quite as strong in the spirit of the conflict as any Mause Headrigg—which is to say, that, after her eager girlish fashion, she believed with her whole heart, and did not know what toleration meant.
Mr Rivers smiled once more. “I will not try,” he said. “I remember what Christ said, and endeavour to have charity even for those who condemn me.”
“Oh, Mr Rivers!” cried Agnes suddenly, and with trembling, “do not speak so coldly—do not say Christ; it sounds as if you did not care for Him—as if you thought He was no friend to you.”
The Rector paused, somewhat startled: it was an objection which never had occurred to him—one of those subtle touches concerning the spirit and not the letter, which, being perfectly sudden, and quite simple, had some chance of coming to the heart.