The Claverings Part 58

"In what way have I behaved badly?"

"In endeavoring to gain her affections behind my back."

"But, Mr. Clavering, how otherwise could I gain them? How otherwise does any man gain any woman's love? If you mean--"

"Look here, Mr. Saul. I don't think that there is any necessity for an argument between you and me on this point. That you cannot marry Miss Clavering is so self-evident that it does not require to be discussed.

If there were nothing else against it, neither of you have got a penny.

I have not seen my daughter since I heard of this madness--hear me out if you please, sir--since I heard of this madness, but her mother tells me that she is quite aware of that fact. Your coming to me with such a proposition is an absurdity if it is nothing worse. Now you must do one of two things, Mr. Saul. You must either promise me that this shall be at an end altogether, or you must leave the parish."

"I certainly shall not promise you that my hopes as they regard your daughter will be at an end."

"Then, Mr. Saul, the sooner you go the better."

A dark cloud came across Mr. Saul's brow as he heard these last words.

"That is the way in which you would send away your groom, if he had offended you," he said.

"I do not wish to be unnecessarily harsh," said Mr. Clavering, "and what I say to you now I say to you not as my curate, but as to a most unwarranted suitor for my daughter's hand. Of course I cannot turn you out of the parish at a day's notice. I know that well enough. But your feelings as a gentleman ought to make you aware that you should go at once."

"And that is to be my only answer?"

"What answer did you expect?"

"I have been thinking so much lately of the answers I might get from your daughter, that I have not made other calculations. Perhaps I had no right to expect any other than that you have now given."

"Of course you had not. And now I ask you again to give her up."

"I shall not do that, certainly."

"Then, Mr. Saul, you must go; and, inconvenient as it will be to myself--terribly inconvenient--I must ask you to go at once. Of course I cannot allow you to meet my daughter any more. As long as you remain she will be debarred from going to her school, and you will be debarred from coming here."

"If I say that I will not seek her at the school?"

"I will not have it. It is out of the question that you should remain in the parish. You ought to feel it."

"Mr. Clavering, my going--I mean my instant going--is a matter of which I have not yet thought. I must consider it before I give you an answer."

"It ought to require no consideration," said Mr. Clavering, rising from his chair--"none at all; not a moment's. Heavens and earth! Why, what did you suppose you were to live upon? But I won't discuss it. I will not say one more word upon a subject which is so distasteful to me. You must excuse me if I leave you."

Mr. Saul then departed, and from this interview had arisen that state of things in the parish which had induced Mrs. Clavering to call Harry to their a.s.sistance. The rector had become more energetic on the subject than any of them had expected. He did not actually forbid his wife to see Mr. Saul, but he did say that Mr. Saul should not come to the rectory. Then there arose a question as to the Sunday services, and yet Mr. Clavering would have no intercourse with his curate. He would have no intercourse with him unless he would fix an immediate day for going, or else promise that he would think no more of f.a.n.n.y. Hitherto he had done neither, and therefore Mrs. Clavering had sent for her son.

Chapter XL

Mr. Saul's Abode

When Harry Clavering left London he was not well, though he did not care to tell himself that he was ill. But he had been so hara.s.sed by his position, was so ashamed of himself and as yet so unable to see any escape from his misery, that he was sore with fatigue and almost worn out with trouble. On his arrival at the parsonage, his mother at once asked him if he was ill, and received his petulant denial with an ill-satisfied countenance. That there was something wrong between him and Florence she suspected, but at the present moment she was not disposed to inquire into that matter. Harry's love affairs had for her a great interest, but f.a.n.n.y's love affairs at the present moment were paramount in her bosom. f.a.n.n.y, indeed, had become very troublesome since Mr. Saul's visit to her father. On the evening of her conversation with her mother, and on the following morning, f.a.n.n.y had carried herself with bravery, and Mrs. Clavering had been disposed to think that her daughter's heart was not wounded deeply. She had admitted the impossibility of her marriage with Mr. Saul, and had never insisted on the strength of her attachment. But no sooner was she told that Mr. Saul had been banished from the house, than she took upon herself to mope in the most love-lorn fas.h.i.+on, and behaved herself as though she were the victim of an all-absorbing pa.s.sion. Between her and her father no word on the subject had been spoken, and even to her mother she was silent, respectful and subdued, as it becomes daughters to be who are hardly used when they are in love. Now, Mrs. Clavering felt that in this her daughter was not treating her well.

"But you don't mean to say that she cares for him?" Harry said to his mother, when they were alone on the evening of his arrival.

"Yes, she cares for him, certainly. As far as I can tell, she cares for him very much."

"It is the oddest thing I ever knew in my life. I should have said he was the last man in the world for success of that kind."

"One never can tell, Harry. You see he is a very good young man."

"But girls don't fall in love with men because they're good, mother."

"I hope they do--for that and other things together."

"But he has got none of the other things. What a pity it was that he was let to stay here after he first made a fool of himself."

"It's too late to think of that now, Harry. Of course she can't marry him. They would have nothing to live on. I should say that he has no prospect of a living."

"I can't conceive how a man can do such a wicked thing," said Harry, moralizing, and forgetting for a moment his own sins. "Coming into a house like this, and in such a position, and then undermining a girl's affections, when he must know that it is quite out of the question that he should marry her! I call it downright wicked. It is treachery of the worst sort, and coming from a clergyman is, of course, the more to be condemned. I shan't be slow to tell him my mind."

"You will gain nothing by quarrelling with him."

"But how can I help it, if I am to see him at all?"

"I mean that I would not be rough with him. The great thing is to make him feel that he should go away as soon as possible, and renounce all idea of seeing f.a.n.n.y again. You see, your father will have no conversation with him at all, and it is so disagreeable about the services. They'll have to meet in the vestry-room on Sunday, and they won't speak. Will not that be terrible? Anything will be better than that he should remain here."

"And. what will my father do for a curate?"

"He can't do anything till he knows when Mr. Saul will go. He talks of taking all the services himself."

"He couldn't do it, mother. He must not think of it. However, I'll see Saul the first thing to-morrow."

The next day was Tuesday, and Harry proposed to leave the rectory at ten o'clock for Mr. Saul's lodgings. Before he did so, he had a few words with his father who professed even deeper animosity against Mr. Saul than his son. "After that," he said, "I'll believe that a girl may fall in love with any man! People say all manner of things about the folly of girls; but nothing but this--nothing short of this--would have convinced me that it was possible that f.a.n.n.y should have been such a fool. An ape of a fellow--not made like a man--with a thin hatchet face, and unwholesome stubbly chin. Good heavens!"

"He has talked her into it."

"But he is such an a.s.s. As far as I know him, he can't say Bo! to a goose."

"There I think you are perhaps wrong."

"Upon my word I've never been able to get a word from him except about the parish. He is the most uncompanionable fellow. There's Edward Fielding is as active a clergyman as Saul; but Edward Fielding has something to say for himself."

"Saul is a cleverer man than Edward is; but his cleverness is of a different sort."

"It is of a sort that is very invisible to me. But what does all that matter? He hasn't got a s.h.i.+lling. When I was a curate, we didn't think of doing such things as that." Mr. Clavering had only been a curate for twelve months, and during that time had become engaged to his present wife with the consent of every one concerned. "But clergymen were gentlemen then. I don't know what the Church will come to; I don't indeed."

After this Harry went away upon his mission. What a farce it was that he should be engaged to make straight the affairs of other people, when his own affairs were so very crooked! As he walked up to the old farm-house in which Mr. Saul was living, he thought of this, and acknowledged to himself that he could hardly make himself in earnest about his sister's affairs, because of his own troubles. He tried to fill himself with a proper feeling of dignified wrath and high paternal indignation against the poor curate; but under it all, and at the back of it all, and in front of it all, there was ever present to him his own position. Did he wish to escape from Lady Ongar; and if so, how was he to do it? And if he did not escape from Lady Ongar, how was he ever to hold up his head again?

He had sent a note to Mr. Saul on the previous evening giving notice of his intended visit, and had received an answer, in which the curate had promised that he would be at home. He had never been in Mr. Saul's room, and as he entered it, felt more strongly than ever how incongruous was the idea of Mr. Saul as a suitor to his sister. The Claverings had always had things comfortable around them. They were a people who had ever lived on Brussels carpets, and had seated themselves in capacious chairs. Ormolu, damask hangings, and Sevres china were not familiar to them; but they had never lacked anything that is needed for the comfort of the first-cla.s.s clerical world. Mr. Saul in his abode boasted but few comforts. He inhabited a big bed-room, in which there was a vast fireplace and a very small grate--the grate being very much more modern than the fireplace. There was a small rag of a carpet near the hearth, and on this stood a large deal table--a table made of unalloyed deal, without any mendacious paint, putting forward a pretence in the direction of mahogany. One wooden Windsor arm-chair--very comfortable in its way--was appropriated to the use of Mr. Saul himself; and two other small wooden chairs flanked the other side of the fireplace. In one distant corner stood Mr. Saul's small bed, and in another distant corner stood his small dressing-table. Against the wall stood a ricketty deal press in which he kept his clothes. Other furniture there was none. One of the large windows facing toward the farmyard had been permanently closed, and in the wide embrasure was placed a portion of Mr. Saul's library--books which he had brought with him from college; and on the ground under this closed window were arranged the others, making a long row, which stretched from the bed to the dressing-table, very pervious, I fear, to the attacks of mice. The big table near the fireplace was covered with books and papers--and, alas, with dust; for he had fallen into that terrible habit which prevails among bachelors, of allowing his work to remain ever open, never finished, always confused--with papers above books, and books above papers--looking as though no useful product could ever be made to come forth from such chaotic elements. But there Mr. Saul composed his sermons, and studied his Bible, and followed up, no doubt, some special darling pursuit, which his ambition dictated. But there he did not eat his meals; that had been made impossible by the pile of papers and dust; and his chop, therefore, or his broiled rasher, or bit of pig's fry was deposited for him on the little dressing-table, and there consumed.