Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series Part 94

Every morning she went through the ceremony of asking whether she was wanted, before attiring herself for church.

"Not I," cried Miss Deveen, with a half-smile. "Go, and welcome, Jemima!"

I stood at the window listening to the ting-tang: the bell of St.

Matthew's Church could be called nothing else: and watched her pick her way across the road, just deluged by the water-cart. She wore a striped fawn-coloured gown, cut straight up and down, which made her look all the thinner, and a straw bonnet and white veil. The church was on the other side of the wide road, lower down, but within view. Some stragglers went into it with Cattledon; not many.

"Does it pay to hold the daily morning service?"

"Pay?" repeated Miss Deveen, looking at me with an arch smile. And I felt ashamed of my inadvertent, hasty word.

"I mean, is the congregation sufficient to repay the trouble?"

"The congregation, Johnny, usually consists of some twenty people, a few more, or a few less, as may chance; and they are all young ladies," she added, the smile deepening to a laugh. "At least, unmarried ones; some are as old as Miss Cattledon. Two of them are widows of thirty-five: they are especially constant in attendance."

"They go after the curate," I said, laughing with Miss Deveen. "One year when Mr. Holland was ill, down with us, he had to take on a curate, and the young ladies ran after him."

"Yes, Johnny, the young ladies go after the curates; we have two of them. Mr. Lake is the permanent curate; he has been here, oh, twelve or thirteen years. He does the chief work, in the church and out of it; we have a great many poor, as I think you know. The other curate is changed at least every year, and is generally a young deacon, fresh from college. Our Rector is fond of giving young men their t.i.tle to orders.

The young fellow we have now is a n.o.bleman's grandson, with more money in his pocket to waste on light gloves and hair-wash than poor Mr. Lake dare spend on all his living."

"Mr. Lake seems to be a very good man."

"A better man never lived," returned Miss Deveen warmly, as she got up from the note she was writing, and came to my side. "Self-denying, anxious, painstaking; a true follower of his Master, a Christian to the very depths of his heart. He is one of those un.o.btrusive men whose merits are kept hidden from the world in general, who are content to work on patiently and silently in their path of duty, looking for no promotion, no reward here, because it seems to lie so very far away from their track."

"Is Mr. Lake poor?"

"Mr. Lake has just one hundred pounds a-year, Johnny. It was what Mr.

Selwyn offered him when he first came, and it has never been increased.

William Lake told me one day," added Miss Deveen, "that he thought the hundred a-year riches then. He was not a very young man; turned thirty; but his stipend in the country had been only fifty pounds a-year. To have it doubled all at once, no doubt did seem like riches."

"Why does not the Rector raise it?"

"The Rector says he can't afford to do it. I believe Mr. Lake once plucked up courage to ask him for a small increase: but it was of no use. The living is worth six hundred a-year, out of which the senior curate's stipend has to be paid; and Mr. Selwyn's family is expensive.

His two sons are just leaving college. So, poor Mr. Lake has just plodded on with his hundred a-year, and made it do. The Rector wishes he could raise it; he knows his worth. During this prolonged illness of Mr. Selwyn's he has been most indefatigable."

"Is Mr. Selwyn ill?"

"Not very ill, but ailing. He has been so for two years. He generally preaches on a Sunday morning, but that is about all the duty he has been able to take. Mr. Lake is virtually the inc.u.mbent; he does everything, in the church and out of it."

"Without the pay," I remarked.

"Without the pay, Johnny. His hundred a-year, however, seems to suffice him. He never grumbles at it, never complains, is always contented and cheerful: and no doubt will be contented with it to the end."

"But--if he has no more than that, and no expectation of more, how is it that the ladies run after him? They can't expect him to marry upon a hundred a-year."

"My dear Johnny, let a clergyman possess nothing but the white surplice on his back, the ladies would trot at his heels all the same. It comes naturally to them. They trust to future luck, you see; promotion is always possible, and they reckon upon it. I'm sure the way Mr. Lake gets run after is as good as a play. This young lady sends him a pair of slippers, her own work; that one embroiders a cus.h.i.+on for him: Cattledon painted a velvet fire-screen for him last year--'Oriental tinting.' You never saw a screen so gorgeous."

"Do you think he has--has--any idea of Miss Cattledon?"

"Just as much as he has of me," cried Miss Deveen. "He is kind and polite to her; as he is, naturally, to every one; but you may rely upon it he never gave her a word or a look that would be construed into anything warmer."

"How silly she must be!"

"Not more silly than the rest are. It is a mania, Johnny, and they all go in for it. Jemima Cattledon--stupid old thing!--cherishes hopes of Mr. Lake: a dozen others cherish the same. Most of them are worse than she is, for they course about the parish after him all day long.

Cattledon never does that: with all her zeal, she does not forget that she is a gentlewoman; she meets him here, at my house, and she goes to church to see and hear him, but she does not race after him."

"Do you think he is aware of all this pursuit?"

"Well, he must be, in a degree; William Lake is not a simpleton. But the very hopelessness of his being able to marry must in his mind act as a counterbalance, and cause him to look upon it as a harmless pastime. How could he think any one of them in earnest, remembering his poor hundred pounds a-year?"

Thus talking, the time slipped on, until we saw the congregation coming out of church. The service had taken just three-quarters-of-an-hour.

"Young Chisholm has been reading the prayers to-day; I am sure of that,"

remarked Miss Deveen. "He gabbles them over as fast as a parrot."

The ladies congregated within the porch, and without: ostensibly to exchange compliments with one another; in reality to wait for the curates. The two appeared together: Mr. Lake quiet and thoughtful; Mr.

Chisholm, a very tall, slim, empty-headed young fellow, smiling here, and shaking hands there, and ready to chatter with the lot.

For full five minutes they remained stationary. Some important subject of conversation had evidently been started, for they stood around Mr.

Lake, listening to something he was saying. The pew-opener, a woman in a muslin cap, and the bell-ringer, an old man in a battered hat, halted on the outskirts of the throng.

"One or other of those damsels is sure to invent some grave question to discuss with him," laughed Miss Deveen. "Perhaps Betty Smith has been breaking out again. She gives more trouble, with her alternate repentings and her lapsings to the tap-room, than all the rest of the old women put together."

Presently the group dispersed; some going one way, some another. Young Chisholm walked off at a smart pace, as if he meant to make a round of morning calls; the elder curate and Miss Cattledon crossed the road together.

"His way home lies past our house," remarked Miss Deveen, "so that he often does cross the road with her. He lives at Mrs. Topcroft's."

"Mrs. Topcroft's! What a curious name."

"So it is, Johnny. But she is a curiously good woman--in my opinion; worth her weight in gold. Those young ladies yonder turn up their noses at her, calling her a 'lodging-letter.' They are jealous; that's the truth; jealous of her daughter, Emma Topcroft. Cattledon, I know, thinks the young girl the one chief rival to be feared."

Mr. Lake pa.s.sed the garden with a bow, raising his hat to Miss Deveen; and Cattledon came in.

I went off, as quick as an omnibus could take me, to the Tavistock, being rather behind time, and preparing for a blowing-up from Mr.

Brandon in consequence.

"Are you Mr. Ludlow, sir?" asked the waiter.

"Yes."

"Then Mr. Brandon left word that he was going down to Lincoln's Inn, sir; and if he is not back here at one o'clock precisely, I was to say that you needn't come down again till to-morrow morning at ten."

I went into the Strand, and amused myself with looking at the shops, getting back to the hotel a few minutes after one. No; Mr. Brandon had not come in. All I could do was to leave Miss Deveen's note of invitation to dine with her--that day, or any other day that might be more convenient, or every day--and tell the man to be sure to give it him.

Then I went into the National Gallery, after getting some Bath buns at a pastrycook's. It was between five and six when I returned to Miss Deveen's. Her carriage had just driven up; she and Cattledon were alighting from it.

"I have a little commission to do yet at one of the shops in the neighbourhood, and I may as well go about it now," remarked Miss Deveen.

"Will you go with me, Johnny?"

Of course I said I would go; and Miss Cattledon was sent indoors to fetch a small paper parcel that lay on the table in the blue room.