“That could not be for some time, at least,” said Mildmay, with a laugh; “but I am not so disinterested in my visit as to have come merely to say good-bye. I wanted to speak to you about Brentburn.”
“Ah—oh,” said the Master; “to be sure, your living. You have been to see it? Well! and how do you think it will feel to be an orderly rector, setting a good example, instead of enjoying yourself, and collecting crockery here?”
That was a cruel speech, and Mildmay grew red at the unworthy title crockery; but the Master’s savage sentiments on this subject were known. What is a man with eight children to be expected to know about rare china?
“I believe there are much better collections than mine in some country rectories,” he said; “but, never mind; I want to speak to you of something more interesting than crockery. I do not think I can take Brentburn.”
The Master framed his lips into that shape which in a profane and secular person would have produced a whistle of surprise. “So!” he said, “you don’t like it? But I thought you were set upon it. All the better for poor Ruffhead, who will now be able to marry after all.”
“That is just what I wanted to speak to you about,” said Mildmay, embarrassed. “I don’t want it to fall to Ruffhead. Listen, before you say anything! I don’t want to play the part of the dog in the manger. Ruffhead is young, and so am I; but, my dear Master, listen to me. The curate in charge, Mr. St. John, is not young; he has been twenty years at Brentburn, a laborious excellent clergyman. Think how it would look in any other profession, if either Ruffhead or I should thus step over his head.”
“The curate in charge!” said the Master, bewildered. “What are you talking about? What has he to do with it? I know nothing about your curate in charge.”
“Of course you don’t; and therefore there seemed to be some hope in coming to tell you. He is a member of our own college; that of itself is something. He used to know you, he says, long ago, when he was an undergraduate. He has been Chester’s curate at Brentburn, occupying the place of the incumbent, and doing everything for twenty years; and now that Chester is dead, there is nothing for him but to be turned out at a moment’s notice, and to seek his bread, at over sixty, somewhere else—and he has children too.”
This last sentence was added at a venture to touch the Master’s sympathies; but I don’t think that dignitary perceived the application; for what is there in common between the master of a college and a poor curate? He shook his head with, however, that sympathetic gravity and deference towards misfortune which no man who respects himself ever refuses to show.
“St. John, St. John?” he said. “Yes, I think I recollect the name: very tall—stoops—a peaceable sort of being? Yes. So he’s Chester’s curate? Who would have thought it? I suppose he started in life as well as Chester did, or any of us. What has possessed him to stay so long there?”