Part 10

Alas! he was soon driven to be of old Mrs. Fretchett's opinions. There was no more sedateness, no more going sadly, after this; nor ever did scolding seem more entirely thrown away than that extempore sermon upon the day of Dolly's return. She was gayer, prettier, more heedless, more flighty than of old. The drawing-room was never free from curates now, whose business might indeed be with the Archdeacon; but by the time he was ready to talk it over, to audit their accounts, or sign their checks, the gentlemen were always upstairs, and--_difficilis descensus Olympi_. There were rumors of disagreements among the black-coated ones. The parish districts--and especially their lady visitors--declared that they were neglected; the rector never got a quiet cup of tea in his own house, nor even a quiet placid moment; for the sounds of young people laughing and, as Mrs. Fretchett called it, "fribbling" upstairs would float down to him working in his study, and then he would pish and pshaw, and move his chair impatiently. And no wonder. It meant that the parish was taking its chance; it meant that his system was breaking down. He knew it did. He told himself he did well to be angry. And he did thoroughly well; but after all it gave him small satisfaction. He began to feel more sore, and think more seriously about the matter every day. He could not have the work of ten years and more undone in this absurd fashion. Some remedy must be found. He might get rid of all the curates in a body, for violent diseases call for violent remedies; but that might not turn out a remedy. Or Dorothy might be--well, not dismissed exactly--but disposed of out of the way in some sort or other. The more Archdeacon Holden thought it over, the more he was forced to the opinion that his duty lay in this direction. And then something happened which brought matters to a head.

It was on the day of the Grammar School sports, which were held by his permission in the large field at the back of the rectory, where the old town wall, running round two sides of the enclosure, afforded a capital place, of vantage for such spectators as did not wish to enter the ground. It was past five o'clock, and the sports were over. Of course the Archdeacon had attended them; and then he had retired to his study, and was thinking of going upstairs to tea, when a renewal of the shouting in the rear of the house attracted his attention. Wondering what this might be he mounted to the drawing-room, and finding only Granny there, fenced in as usual with her screen, walked to the further window which overlooked the field. The sports, to all appearance, had been resumed, late as it was; for though the ground was almost clear, a crowd was fast collecting upon the wall, and he could make out figures--it was just growing dusk--moving quickly round the ropes, which had not been taken away. One, two, three, four, five black figures moving swiftly in single file.

"I am afraid this won't do. I don't think that this can be allowed," he was beginning, shaking his head slowly, under the impression that the town boys had taken advantage of the place and occasion to get up a little impromptu competition of their own. "I don't think--good heavens!"

Granny awoke upon the instant, the Archdeacon's voice rang out so loud in anger and reprobation. "What is it?" the old lady said, weakly, feeling for her stick. "What is it, my dear? I hope it is not much. You know it is very near quarter day, George, very near, and some money will be paid in then. Dear me, dear me!"

Even in his wrathful astonishment the Archdeacon tried to say gently, "It is not that, Granny. It is nothing of any consequence. I shall be back in a moment."

And then he ran downstairs. Nothing of any consequence indeed; three steps at a time, and so, bare-headed and his skirts flying behind him, reached the terrace, taking no notice of a couple of maids in the hall, who were looking through a window and giggling, and who fled at his approach. On the terrace, with a charming hood over her head, was Dorothy, looking down into the field, and now laughing and now clapping a pair of little gloved hands in great delight, a white rose on the wall before her. He scarce looked at her, but peered into the dusk. Yes, his eyes had not played him false. The five athletes speeding round the roped circle were his five curates, and none others.

"Isn't it fun?" cried Dorothy at his side, all unconscious of his feelings. "The boys were nothing to them, they look so funny in their long coats. They are walking a mile, and the winner is to have this rose. Don't you think Mr. Bigham is gaining?"

The Archdeacon was speechless. He glared at this mocker, and then at the crowd upon the wall opposite--the cheering, shouting, growing crowd--and breathed hard. Funny! Fun! Had the girl lost all sense of decorum? He would waste no words upon her; but he ran down the steps and strode across the grass as swiftly as his dignity, a little impaired by haste and passion, would permit. Fortunately the competitors were just then at the near side of the circle. But, for that very reason, by the time he approached the ropes, the walkers, who had only eyes for one another and that slender figure on the terrace, had passed the point nearest to him, and were speeding away quite unconscious of their superior's presence. He thought he should cut off the last man, and increased his pace. He called to him and waved his hand. But Mr. Brune, intent upon the business before him, and going steadily like a machine heel and toe, his elbows well in, and his eyes upon the small of his predecessor's back, neither saw nor heard him. The Archdeacon was excited and provoked. In the heat of the moment he followed, still calling to him; and, being quite fresh, began to overhaul Mr. Brune. He did not hear a louder shout rise from the crowd upon the wall; he did not hear his ward clapping her hands in a perfect ecstasy of delight; he did not--indeed he could not--hear the giggling of the maids at the hall window. But all these people and everybody else thought that he had joined in the "parsons' race." Some, like Dorothy, thought it was very nice "and liberal" of him; and more, like Mrs. Fretchett, who had a fine view from her window, thought it very odd of him. And the faster he pressed on to catch Brune, becoming with every stride more and more angry, the more the crowd upon the wall shouted, and Dolly clapped, and Brune increased his speed, and the maids giggled; until at length the Archdeacon, beginning to suspect that his own position was far from dignified, and a glimmer of the light in which he was being viewed by others dawning upon him, broke into a run, and the crowd into a shout of reprobation of his unfairness; and then at last he laid his hand upon Mr. Brune's shoulder.

"Stop, Mr. Brune," he gasped; "stop! This is most unseemly. Do you hear? Most unseemly! I exceedingly disapprove of this--this disgraceful exhibition. Do you see the people, sir?"

This at last brought Mr. Brune to a standstill. He was a pitiable object as, hot, dishevelled, and panting, his tie awry and his collar rumpled, he stared, dumfounded, into his superior's flushed and indignant face. He tremulously wiped his brow, and by a tremendous effort recovered his eyeglasses from between his shoulders, where they had been swinging rhythmically. He put them on and looked round. Then he became aware of the spectators who had gathered since he and his fellows had, in quite a private way, started on their little frolic, and the affair became apparent to him in its true colors. For, left to themselves, and unperverted by Dolly and unreasoning rivalry, there were no curates anywhere of more proper ideas than the Archdeacon's. Brune dropped his glasses, quite crushed; but, seeing the necessity for action, revived. He did what the Archdeacon should have done at first. He jumped over the ropes and ran across to stay the others.

Their rector did not wait to speak with them then, but, still frowning, stalked back to the terrace, striving to recover his self-possession upon his way. With but partial success, for as he mounted the steps, "Oh, guardian!" cried a merry laughing voice from above him, "what is the matter? Why did you stop? I am sure you would have beaten them all if you had gone on as well as you started. You walked capitally. And why have they all stopped?"

"Because they have come to their senses," he said, hoarsely, striving vainly to repress his passion. "Have you ever heard of Circe, girl?"

Dolly only stared. This tone at any rate she had never heard before.

"Because my parish is not large enough to contain her foolish rout and their senseless tricks. They were walking for a rose, were they?" he continued, bitterly. What he had said already seemed to have hurt the girl not one whit, only surprised her; and he was terribly exasperated. "I suppose that is but a pretty figure of speech, and stands for yourself. I am surprised you have so much modesty. It is fitting and maidenly in my ward to offer herself as the prize of a public walking match."

Her face turned white in the dusk. "How dare you!" she cried, starting back as if he had struck her. He had hurt her at last, if that was what he wished to do. "How dare you!" she cried, passionately. But this time there came a quiver in her voice and a catching of her breath, and before he could be ready for this change of front she was gone, and he heard her sobbing bitterly as she passed through the hall. Only the white rose lay where she had flung it.

He went into his study and sat down very miserably, thinking, no doubt, over the state of the parish, and of what Mrs. Fretchett would say, and took no tea that evening. Only at one time or another, before nine o'clock prayers, he saw all the five curates. At dinner he was very silent, looking from time to time curiously at Dolly, who was silent too, attending chiefly to Granny's wants, and avoiding his eyes with a conscious shrinking, new in her and strangely painful to him.

But the Archdeacon had made up his mind, and before twenty-four hours were over had put it before Dorothy. First, however, he had asked her pardon quite formally for what he had said in his haste; and the strange look which pained him had passed from the girl's face, as melts a shadow cast by a cloud that was before the sun, and suddenly, even as we look up, is not. And then he had gone on to speak seriously to her of the state of his parish, touching upon the report of the previous day's doings, which was already abroad, and which Dolly, with some temper and as much justice, set down to Mrs. Fretchett.

"Well, my dear," the Archdeacon answered pleasantly, though in a tone which made her look sharply at him, "she and I are--well, old enough to remember that you are young, and, as Granny says, young folks will be young. Still I am bound to take care that the interests of my parish come first. It must not suffer through any one, even through you. And suffer it does, Dolly; which brings me to the other matter. An opportunity offers--I may say, three opportunities--of solving our difficulty. I have told you that you are too thoughtless for a clergyman's daughter, but I think you would make a good and true clergyman's wife."

Crash! Dorothy had dropped the paperweight with which she was playing. He let her stoop to pick it up, which she did clumsily, and was long about it, and then he went on. "I have had three proposals for your hand, my dear. I do not know that this _embarras de richesses_ is altogether to your credit, but so it is. Three of your fellow-culprits of yesterday, Philip Emerson, Mr. Bigham, and Mr. Brune are anxious to press their suits. They all have some means, and are young men of whom, notwithstanding that little affair, I can approve."

She was drawing outlines on her work-table with one white forefinger. "I don't think I want to marry either of them," she murmured with much indifference, considering the effect of an imaginary landscape with her head on one side.

The Archdeacon frowned. "They think that you have given them reason to hope."

"They cannot all think that!" she retorted, pouting scornfully. And the worst of it was that he could not controvert this.

"Philip Emerson, Dorothy, seemed in particular to fancy he had received some encouragement."

"Oh," said Dolly, "I should like to ask him what he meant; I don't think he would dare to say it to my face. Perhaps he meant this!" She went on contemptuously, rummaging in her work-basket--

"For all I can remember he may have given it to me. One of them did, I know. Isn't it nonsense?"

She held a crumpled scrap of paper towards her guardian, and he took it with the air of a man accepting service of a writ. "Am I to read it?" he asked stiffly.

"Of course--I suppose he intended it to be read."

And the Archdeacon holding it gingerly, just as if it were the royal invitation before mentioned, read a few lines--

"Ah, great gray eyes, that, in my true love's face, Tell of the pure and noble soul within; One look in your calm depths I fain would trace, I fain would win."

and threw it down with a contemptuous "pshaw!" He looked through the window for a moment before he spoke again; then with a great show of cheerfulness he said, "Now, my dear, let us be serious, which of them would you like to see yourself?"

"Which of them!" she answered impatiently. "None of them--ever! I hate them! That is, I mean that I don't want to marry them."

"I shall not let you give that answer without thought. It seems to me that you must have encouraged one or the other of them. You must take a fortnight to think it over."

"I won't have a minute!" she cried angrily.

"A clear fortnight," he repeated with some sternness. "If you are then resolved, I shall be the last to force you to marry against your will. I have, indeed, no legal power over you. I am not your father."

"No, you are not," she replied sullenly.

That pained the Archdeacon more than all that had gone before. It was not only thoughtless, it was ungracious, it was ungrateful, and it hardened his heart so that he spoke out what was in his thoughts.

"Quite so," he began. "I was only going to say that if at the end of the time you found yourself unable to embrace----"

"I am a woman, if I am your ward," suddenly and spitefully.

"--to embrace this opportunity," shot out the clergyman, very red in the face, "then I should have to make an alteration in my household; in what direction, you will, no doubt, be able to guess."

She bent over her work and made no reply, so that he felt a cruel satisfaction that he had at last managed to cow her. Then, as there seemed no more to be said, the Archdeacon went downstairs and tried to feel content with his partial success. One way or another the difficulty would now be settled. And this being so, if he sighed over the consideration of this comfortable fact, we may presume that the sigh was one of relief.

The gravity which on a sudden fell upon the rectory folk was not unmarked by Stirhampton. But Stirhampton felt no surprise at it. Stirhampton well understood the cause of it. What wonder, asked Stirhampton, if the Archdeacon looked perplexed, and Miss Dorothy gloomy, and the curates anxious? What wonder, indeed, when as sure as eggs were what they seemed to be--and there they generally were--the Court of Arches had its eyes upon Stirhampton, and sentences of suspension were in the air, and there was even talk of unfrocking! so that much discussion was raised in town circles as to the details of that ceremony, and whether a cook's cleaver did, or did not, figure in it, and if it did, in what particular way it was used? What wonder, indeed? though those who knew best whispered that the race for the girl's hand (oh, those giggling eavesdropping maids!), disgraceful as it was in men of their calling and the Archdeacon's age, might--observe--_might_ have been overlooked. "But when it came," said these, "to the Archdeacon, in his chagrin at being outstripped by younger men, striking Mr. Brune, and knocking his own curate over the ropes, so that the very crowd cried shame! that was indeed going a little too far. There could be no winking at that, be the authority ever so favorable to him."

Still there are always froward people who will have no fire where others have been the first to espy the smoke. There were these at Stirhampton, men who were rude and said it was all fiddle-de-dee when Mrs. Fretchett said it was _scandalum magnatum_--a plain and unmannerly contradiction--and made themselves otherwise unpleasant. But even these grew silent after a time, when a very weighty fact came to be known. Two official letters--missives were the more proper word--of most threatening appearance had been delivered at the rectory. Their envelopes had been stamped with the name of an august street, and bore also in the left-hand bottom corner a distinguished title. On one had been a twopenny stamp. Timid people scanned the rector with curious pity, and such upon the whole was the effect of this postal intelligence that the doctrine of _scandalum magnatum_ gained almost universal credence; even the froward ones grew serious and thought it over.

It was probably from a feeling of delicacy that they refrained from carrying their surmises to the Archdeacon. To the curates some hints were given, but what with their obtuseness--they scarcely seemed to understand--and a fretful touchy disposition, noticeable in young men, nothing came of these hints.

Of all the rectory folk, it was Dolly only who (oh, those giggling, tattling maids!) came to hear of the rumor. It distressed her beyond measure. She could not feel sure that it was untrue. Nay, she knew that one part was true, for had she not seen the Archdeacon read one and the other of the letters mentioned, and immediately thereafter fall into deep thought. Ever since he had been grave and preoccupied. Her ideas upon unfrocking--though the cleaver was not one of them--were sufficiently terrible, and grew more and more vivid and daunting the longer she dwelt upon them. Yet there was not between herself and her guardian such an amount of confidence as made it easy for her to speak to him upon such a subject.

So poor Dorothy knew not what to think. She had her own little distresses, we know; but they were forgotten in this greater apprehension that she had brought grief and disgrace upon the Archdeacon. And when, about the end of the fortnight, he bade her come to his study, she thought of them only as of matters to be put aside, if mentioned, as quickly as possible, as matters of no importance in the face of the blow she felt was about to fall.

Archdeacon Holden was writing steadily. He looked up at her entrance to point with a faint smile to a chair, and then went on with his work. She fancied that there was something strange and new in his air; she marked under the paper-weight the letters about which all the town was talking; at her elbow she spied an envelope addressed to the Dean and Chapter of W----, the patron of the living, and Dorothy felt sick at heart.

Whether he was or was not aware of the direction of her thoughts, he folded his letter slowly, willing, perhaps, to put off as long as possible the evil day when something must be told. It was not until he had risen and approached the fireplace, so that his back was towards her, that he said pleasantly:

"Well, Dorothy, we will talk of your affairs first."

"They will not occupy you long," was her quiet answer; what were these things to her now? "I have made up my mind, or rather it is unchanged. If I have thoughtlessly caused pain to Mr. Emerson and the others, I am sorry; but I cannot marry any of them."

He did not speak for a moment. Perhaps his thoughts had gone off to his own matters, for his hand shook a little as he adjusted the date-case over the mantelpiece. "You are quite sure, my dear?" he said at last. There was no displeasure in his tone.

"I am quite sure."

"Well, that would have been an embarrassing answer, Dorothy, if things still stood as they were," he said. "But they do not; and any change I am going to make will be the result of another cause. I have some news for you. I am going to leave Stirhampton, and you are the first person to whom I have told the fact. You will not do my parish much more harm, my dear, for in a few weeks at most I shall be without one."

His back was towards her, and so he could not see the current of grief and trouble that flashed from Dolly's heart to Dolly's face. He waited for the eager, happy words of congratulation that should have come; for the touch at which he should turn to meet the bright, animated face that would smile on him for a moment, and then flit joyfully upstairs to Granny. He waited for these things, wondering if his elevation could bring him any other pleasure to compare with this. And then, instead, he heard behind him a quick, low sob, and turned, with a sinking of the heart, to find the girl crying bitterly, her face cast forward in utter self-abandonment upon her arms, and her whole frame quivering with the sharpness of her sorrow.

His heart sank with a natural foreboding. But surely it must have been a singularly affectionate one, or where otherwise lay hidden the source of that deep feeling which welled up in the simple words wrung from him by the sight of her distress. "My darling, my darling, only tell me what it is!" he cried, stroking her fair hair and striving to comfort her. "Tell me your trouble. Don't you know I would give my life to save you pain, Dolly? Don't hurt me like this, but look up and tell me. What is it, my darling?"

But for a time, though she heard him, she would not be comforted, and his words even seemed to give a fresh impulse to her grief. At last, amid half-stifled sobs, with her face still hidden, Dolly made him understand what she had heard and what she had feared, and what she had supposed him to mean when he said he was about to leave Stirhampton; and poured out, too, her own self-reproach, while he stood over her and listened, and now touched the bowed head, and now smiled grimly at the rumor of that unfrocking. And when he came to answer her, he did it in a score of words that dried her eyes effectually, and made her turn her flushed, pitiful, tear-stained face upon him, a glorious smile of pure happiness irradiating it that somehow made his heart leap up like a boy's--and then ache as those deserve to ache who play the boy when old enough to know better.