“I have what’ll keep me busy for a fortnight yet.”
“I will see you again before then. I hope your husband will soon be better.”
“There be no hope of that, ma’am. The only betterness for him ‘ll be when God takes him.”
“I know you will be able to find a use for this,” said Mrs. Haldane in a whisper, as they went, out of the house. “Goodbye for the present.”
“Oh, ma’am! God bless you!” said Mrs. Mansfield, the tears springing into her eyes as she looked at the gold coin in her hand.
CHAPTER IX. A SUMMER SHOWER.
After that first round of visitation Mrs. Haldane and the vicar met very frequently.
She found that she could be of use to a great number of poor people, and the occupation afforded her by her self-imposed duties was novel and interesting. It is pleasant to take the place of Providence, and mete out help and gladness to afflicted humanity. She was actuated by no petty spirit of vanity or ostentation; and though she soon learned that the poorer and more necessitous people are, the more thankless they are as a rule, these disagreeable experiences did not disillusion her. Very often she would leave her carriage at the village inn and accompany Mr. Santley on foot across the fields and down the deep green lanes to the different houses at which he was to call. Their conversations on these occasions were very interesting to her; and more than once as she drove back home in the evening she fell a-thinking of that distant schoolgirl past which Jiad so nearly faded away from her memory, and began to wonder whether, if her family had not so promptly extinguished that little romance of hers, she would now have been the wife of the vicar of Omberley. No word had yet passed between them of that old time, and occasionally she felt just the least curiosity to know how he regarded it. She knew he had not forgotten it, and she smiled to herself as she called to mind the way in which he had addressed her as “Ellen” that first Sunday. She had ever since been only Mrs. Haldane to him. There was a singular fascination about him which she was unable to explain to herself. She remembered his words, his looks his gestures with a curious distinctness. She was conscious that, notwithstanding his reticence, he still entertained a warm attachment to her. She could see it in his eyes, could hear it in the tones of his voice, could feel it in the pressure of his hand. There is no incentive to affection so powerful and subtle as the knowledge that one is beloved. Without any analysis of her feelings or any misgiving whatever, Mrs. Haldane knew that the vicar’s friendship was very dear to her, that his sympathy and counsel were rapidly growing indispensable. Many things troubled her in connection with her husband—his indifference to any form of religion, his stern acceptance of the conclusions of science, however destructive they might be of all that the world had clung to as essential to goodness and happiness, his utter disbelief of the truths of revelation, his rejection of the only God in whom she could place trust and confidence. Diffidently at first, and with pain and doubt, she spoke to Mr. Santley of these troubles, and of the waverings of her own convictions. Her husband was so good, so upright and noble a man, that she could not despair of his some day returning to the faith and the Church of his boyhood. Could the vicar not aid her in winning him back to God? Then, too, at times her husband’s words appealed to her reason so irresistibly that she began to question whether after all she had not spent her life in the worship of a delusion. That did not happen often, but it terrified her that it should be possible for her at any time or in any circumstance to call in question the fatherhood of God or the divinity of Christ.