"Judith! Better let alone," her sister interrupted, attempting to draw her back to her chair.
Judith flushed hotly. Like other zealous reformers of their neighbours, she was irritably intolerant of advice to herself; because, of course, she must be right--she always was. So are the others. She turned upon her sister with a frown, and there might have been words; but at that moment the click of the gate-latch sounded. The gate opened, and a clergyman appeared--a young clergyman. Judith admired clergymen, and we all admire youth, at least all who have lost their own.
By the time the Reverend Dionysius Bunce entered the room. Miss Judith's angry flush had cooled down, and her tightened lips had relaxed into a smile of virgin sweetness. She had a taste for clergymen, just as some other ladies have a taste for horses, and some for cats. People talk of "pigeon-fanciers." Miss Judith was a parson-fancier, that is, she fancied the parsons but she could not keep them, as the pigeon-fanciers keep their pets; they always flew away to fresher fields. Mr. Bunce was curate of St. Wittikind's, the church where Selby was organist and choirmaster. It was a place of worship which Miss Judith's pietistical scruples would not allow her to attend. The people there were given to singing harmoniously words which she held should be said discordantly, and to other practices equally to be regretted. St. Wittikind's, in fact, was "high," and she never mentioned it without drawing a long breath, and shaking her head sadly. Still, if her mind was controversial it was also feminine, and the curate's trim, ecclesiastical uniform attracted her much. The linen was so white, so tight, and so starchy, while that of the married curate of her own St. Silas' was yellow, limp, and even slovenly, like the services in which he assisted. No doubt it was right, from her standpoint, that the service should be bald and unattractive, and she had very decided views about vestments in church, but in vesture out of church, she had a woman's preference for neatness, and if she could win this young man from his unevangelical vagaries, would it not be like plucking a brand from the burning? She had long known him by sight, as indeed, she knew all the clergy, but hitherto he had been one of the black sheep in her eyes. Now, when she met him in a room, he was so neat and seemed so young and inexperienced, that her heart yearned towards him with a mother's interest--no! not a mother's interest precisely, but an interest of the adaptable kind, which may change into any other sort as occasion dictates.
In Miss Susan's eyes the curate appeared uninteresting enough. She thought him stubby, commonplace, and scarcely a gentleman, save that to a good churchwoman like herself, his orders, like the Queen's commission in the army, made his position unassailable. But then, Miss Susan had no enthusiasm, and was disposed to let the brands burn, each in its own fashion. She would have liked to go now, when she saw the clergyman sit down beside Mary's sofa, and pull out his book, and had risen with that intention, when Judith, clasping her black gloves and smiling with grave sweetness, as one may smile at a christening, asked if it was absolutely needful that they should go away. "For herself," she said, "there was no portion of our beautiful liturgy in which she so much delighted as in those sweet and improving passages which occur in the 'visitation of the sick,' and if Mr. Bunce did not object, she would feel it a privilege to be permitted to remain."
Poor Mr. Bunce could only acquiesce, and go on with his function, resigning the hope of whatever satisfaction he might otherwise have found in its performance, and a good deal disturbed by Miss Judith's sighs of extreme interest in one place, and the fervency of her responses in another. Susan, too, perforce sat down again, wondering internally at the queerness of her sister's taste. For herself, she felt perfectly well, and it only depressed her to listen to the curate's words. She looked out of the window where the sun was shining, and could not but think that it would have been far more cheerful to be walking down the street.
Having finished, Mr. Bunce would have liked to remain a little for a quiet chat with Mrs. Selby; but Miss Judith sat still and seemed bent on taking on herself the entire duty of conversing with him. It might be well intended, he thought, to save her sister fatigue, but it was not very interesting, so he quickly rose to leave. Judith did so at the same time, and when he reached the gate, the reverend man discovered that fate had condemned him to accompany the two ladies along more than a mile of suburban street, where he saw no hope of breaking away.
CHAPTER VIII.
[RALPH].
It was with a sweet and respectful smile that Judith looked at the curate, and left him to make the first observation. She would have liked to look up to him; that being her natural mental attitude to men of his cloth; but physically the thing was impracticable. She was not notably a tall woman, but he was distinctly a short man; and though too bulky to be called little, his figure justified Susan's mental definition of him as "stumpy." He was her junior too, and his countenance was not impressive. It was blond as regarded hair and eyes, indefinite in feature, pasty in complexion; still, it was neatly kept, and relieved from vacuity by that undoubting self-complacency which comes to those privileged to reprove and exhort unchallenged, for twenty minutes at a stretch.
Mr. Bunce waited, coughed, observed on the fineness of the weather, and was silent. Miss Susan agreed with him in her mind, but having nothing to say on the subject, said nothing, and it was left for Judith to fan the verbal spark, and nurse it into a conversation. She opened in dulcet tones, and with a respectful effusiveness, like the carved nymphs round an old fountain, catching the wasting driblets in their marble shells. She agreed that the weather was indeed extremely pleasant, and counted up how many other fine days there had been that week and the week before. But there had been a shower the week before that, just when the people were leaving the missionary meeting, where the good Bishop of Rara Tonga spoke so sweetly. Had Mr. Bunce been there? No? Ah! then, he had indeed missed a treat. It had been most instructive. The bishop told about a deacon who remembered having eaten part of his grandmother, and about the octopus coming out of the sea, to eat breadfruit on shore on moonlight nights,--perhaps it was not breadfruit, by the way, it may have been something else; and perhaps it was not an octopus; but at any rate it was some dreadful creature, and it did something very curious, and it was all most interesting; "and indeed, Mr. Bunce, you missed a treat."