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 t.i.tle. 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 embarra.s.sing 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.
"It is a mistake," was all he said; "I am leaving here, but not in disgrace, Dolly. I have accepted the Bishopric of the new see of Deringham. What a silly, loving, little girl it is! You may read the letter, my dear." And while Dolly, in radiant dishevelment, was striving to tell him her pleasure, he took an envelope from his pocket and held it out. Dolly seized it eagerly and opened it, and found within it not at all what the Archdeacon had thought was in it. The envelope contained no statesman"s autograph, or courtly to-ap.r.o.n-inviting note from Downing Street, but only a white rose, a dried rose, flattened, but still sweet and fragrant. Almost as soon as the girl"s fingers touched it the Archdeacon was aware of his mistake--surely a very curious mistake--and s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her with some confused words and a reddening brow. But Dolly had seen it--had certainly seen it; and somehow it brought back to her memory the day of the curates" race; so that when the Archdeacon brusquely put another letter into her hand, she read it with her eyes, and not her mind. As for the Archdeacon, he sought the window, and hemmed and hawed, and at last said, hastily, without turning, "There, there, my dear, I think there is no more to be said. Will you kindly go and tell Granny?" and so affected to select a volume from a shelf of the Early Fathers.
But Dorothy did not move. She sat stooping forward, pa.s.sing the hem of her much-bedabbled handkerchief through her fingers.
"Are you sure that you have told me all you wish to tell me?" she asked, slowly.
Her guardian started. "I think so," he answered, and plunged recklessly at a volume of Origen, or it might be St. Anthony, perhaps.
"Then why," cried Dolly, starting up and facing him, with crimson cheeks, "why did you call me your darling just now? You had no right to do it--no right, though you are my guardian, to say that--if you are going to say nothing more! If you want me, why don"t you ask for me! Philip could, and Mr. Brune, and the other! I hate a coward. Why cannot you say, if--you--want me?"
There are men who have seen Deans in their shirt-sleeves, playing billiards. And there is one still living--chiefly on the fact--who once was last in a three-legged race in double harness with a Duke. So it is undeniable that great men do unbend at times to a surprising extent. But that the Archdeacon at the point of the story we have reached unbent in the manner much hinted at in Stirhampton, I shall ask no reader to believe. The more as the real facts which have been told fully explain the disorder of lace and neck-ribbon, the softness of eye, and crimson of cheek, which Granny noticed about the girl when she ran in upon her, all smiles and tears, knocking down the screen, and hugging the little old lady into a state of deep alarm.
Which took, of course, the old direction. But the Archdeacon came upstairs in time to antic.i.p.ate the usual question. "No," he said, putting his hand on the kneeling girl"s head, "the balance is all right, Granny--except in years. There is a heavy overdraft of those against me."
"And I will honor it," said Dolly, gravely, and took his hand and kissed it. As for what followed--we had better put up Granny"s screen again. This the man of system, who had no taste for jests? But then it is just possible that Dolly did not mean it for a jest. The curates?
Mr. Philip Emerson, Mr. Brune, and Mr. Bigham? Indeed I cannot say what became of them. I should suppose they died prematurely of broken hearts. But the next time that I visit Deringham I will call at the Palace and ask the Bishop.
THE END.