The Pit Town Coronet Volume Ii Part 12

"I mean to live for the next twenty years, my dear, and if Puffin intends to put up with twenty years of Lucy Warrender for the sake of this living, though it is a fat one, I shall consider that the labourer will have been worthy of his hire."

"Don't be profane, John," said the lady reprovingly.

"To do Puffin justice, I don't think he is mercenary. Lucy has probably turned his head."

"John, Mr. Puffin is not of an inflammable nature."

"All curates are of an inflammable nature, my dear; why you turned my head in your time."

"I trust, Mr. Dodd, that my mental qualities attracted you, and not mere physical beauty."

"Of course, my dear, of course; but you were a monstrous fine woman then, and for the matter of that, you are still, Cecilia," said the vicar, as he helped himself to a third gla.s.s of his '47 port.

His wife smiled and smoothed her cap ribbons.

"Don't exceed, John," she said, with a warning gesture, "or Mr. Puffin may not have to wait twenty years for his preferment after all. You must admonish him, John; a man of his principles, his pretended principles, is not suited for married life. He told me himself, that ever since his ordination he has a.s.sumed what he calls a priestly garb. I ask you, John, how could he be married in a ca.s.sock? How could he go on his honeymoon in it?"

"Well, he could leave it off, my dear."

"But he has declared to me that he never would leave it off. How often has he sneered at ordinary clerical attire, though he has never dared to suggest that you should masquerade in, what he calls, proper ecclesiastical costume."

"There may be reasons, my dear; he may have bandy legs."

"His legs are perfectly indifferent to me, Mr. Dodd. If he wishes to marry, he should dress like other people."

"You should suggest that to Lucy Warrender, my dear."

"If I thought for a moment, Mr. Dodd, that there was a possibility of his being the means of rescuing the girl by his own self-sacrifice, I should not say one word; if he has a taste for martyrdom, it would not be for me to interfere; but I know that Lucy is only wickedly encouraging him for the sake of winning the bet of a new bonnet from her cousin's husband. You must warn and admonish him, John, or he must go.

Stacey would have been a far more suitable partner for him."

"Why didn't you suggest it, my dear?"

"It is not my duty to secure a husband for my sister-in-law, Mr. Dodd."

"You thought it was, in the squire's case, Cecilia."

But the vicar's wife let the taunt pa.s.s by unnoticed.

"If you don't admonish him, John, I must. It will be a thankless office, for the wretched man seems bent on his own destruction."

"Well, he has chosen a particularly pleasant form of suicide, Cecilia."

"Flippancy, Mr. Dodd, is not becoming in a clergyman," said his wife with a ruffled air, "and it is not good taste for a clergyman to openly express his admiration for his female paris.h.i.+oners to his wife, and so violate the sanct.i.ty of his own fireside."

"I'm not going to make or meddle in the matter, Mrs. Dodd," said her husband.

"'Tis a vicar's duty to protect his curate, Mr. Dodd."

"Not when the curate is perfectly well able to take care of himself, my dear. Besides, there is another point of view; Lucy might do worse."

"Well, John," she replied, "I shall say no more. I can only hope that it is not in a spirit of professional jealousy that you allow this poor thoughtless young fellow to rush to his doom." And then she rang for coffee.

Next day the Reverend Barnes Puffin lunched at The Warren. Being a feast day he did full justice to the meal. He was overflowing with good spirits, and as soon as lunch was over he seized the first opportunity of securing a _tete-a-tete_ with the squire's niece. As Miss Warrender took the arm of the clergyman, she cast an amused and meaning glance at Haggard. Little by little the pair wandered away into the secluded rose garden, and the Reverend Barnes Puffin felt that he had got his chance.

"Do you care for parish work, Miss Warrender?" said the Celibate, after a few commonplace phrases.

"To tell you the truth, Mr. Puffin, I don't know; I have never tried."

"It is a great privilege, you know," he said. "Has it never occurred to you, my dear Miss Warrender, that it might be your vocation, your natural aim in life."

"No, I don't think it ever has, Mr. Puffin," she said. "I did know a girl once, one of my school friends, she joined a sisterhood; you know I fancy it was the dress attracted her. She joined a sisterhood, but they made the poor thing wear dreadful thick shoes like a man's, and she had to scrub floors, which spoilt her pretty hands; poor child, they have remained red ever since, and she was glad to marry an army doctor and go to China with him. I suppose red hands don't matter in China," the girl said meditatively. "No, I don't think I should care to scrub floors, Mr.

Puffin," and she spread out her taper fingers as though for her own inspection.

The curate admired the fingers, and observed with satisfaction that they were undecorated by a prohibitive ring.

"There are other spheres, dear Miss Warrender, than sisterhoods. Our friend Mrs. Dodd has found a happy and congenial one here in King's Warren."

"But then she is a clergyman's wife, Mr. Puffin, and a privileged person."

"It is a privilege, Miss Warrender, a great privilege. I'm glad it commends itself to you as such."

"Oh, yes; Mrs. Dodd is much to be envied, but then Mrs. Dodd is a very clever woman; she, Mr. Puffin, has caught her hare."

"And having caught him, Miss Warrender, she has accommodated him to her own taste."

"Hers is a master mind, Mr. Puffin."

"It is perhaps as easy, my dear young lady, to rule by love as to rule by fear."

"And much nicer, I should think, Mr. Puffin."

The curate blushed, and then he made an audacious statement.

"Mine is a very accommodating nature, Miss Warrender."

"That's very fortunate for you, Mr. Puffin, for you must have so much to put up with from the poor people."

"I have lately been engaged, Miss Warrender, in a very serious mental struggle. I am afraid I have been arrogant. I am afraid that I have boasted and bragged to my friends and to my paris.h.i.+oners that I was not as other men are, that my whole soul was given up to duty, that I was a Celibate, not merely from vocation but from inclination. But my feelings have undergone a change. At first, dear Miss Warrender, I was overpowered by a sense of what I considered my own degradation, but that feeling has entirely pa.s.sed away. I confess to you that when I first came here I considered myself on a higher platform to that of most men, and I supposed that in obstinately refraining from the ordinary lot of clergymen, I mean marriage, that I was exercising a considerable degree of self-abnegation, in fact that I was leading a higher life. I now see that all this was a wicked error. The Church enjoins penance, and I have come to the conclusion from my intimate acquaintance with the sufferings of my unfortunate vicar, that instead of making a sacrifice in abstaining from matrimony I was actually guilty of profound and calculating selfishness. I see, too, that a married clergyman in giving up the idea of celibacy secures at least one efficient coadjutor in his parish work. As you know, Miss Warrender, I am in the habit of acting upon my convictions."

"Then of course, Mr. Puffin, you will at once seek to secure the hand of some particularly objectionable person, in order to render the touching martyrdom you speak of the more meritorious?"

"No, Miss Warrender, I shall not look upon that as a bounden duty. My position as a Celibate has many advantages from a professional point of view, for the female portion of my paris.h.i.+oners are enabled to look upon me as one of themselves."

"Oh, I don't quite think that, Mr. Puffin; of course there is something--well, epicene about your dress, but then to some minds, you know, the clerical dress has a great attractiveness. Why the Louis Quatorze abbes, that we see so much of in comic opera, were terribly wicked people, you know, Mr. Puffin, and _they_ clung very tightly to the clerical dress, and so did Tartuffe for the matter of that."

"Dear Miss Warrender, the cleric garb is but a delightful reminiscence of a past time; there is nothing ridiculous in it. You have the same thing in the Blue Coat boy, and there is a.s.suredly nothing ridiculous in a Blue Coat boy."

"Quite the contrary, Mr. Puffin; it is rather romantic than otherwise, but I can't fancy a full-grown man in yellow stockings, and a--hem--undivided skirt. By the way, Mr. Puffin, I can give you a suggestion: if you did really carry out your ideas and marry after all, you might adopt the Blue Coat costume as a sort of sign of your apostacy, a kind of _san benito_; you would still be retaining the mediaeval idea, you see, and be thoroughly distinguishable from Tartuffe and the wicked abbes we were talking about."