“The matter is one, Sir,” said the rector,
“which cannot be discussed in this manner.
There are two clergymen present to whom such language
is distasteful; as it is also I hope to the others
who are all members of the Church of England.
Perhaps you will allow me to request that the subject
may be changed.” After that conversation
flagged and the evening was by no means joyous.
The rector certainly regretted that his ’57
claret should have been expended on such a man.
“I don’t think,” said he when John
Morton had taken the Senator away, “that in
my whole life before I ever met such a brute as that
American Senator.”
Persecution
There was great consternation in the attorney’s
house after the writing of the letter to Lawrence
Twentyman. For twenty-four hours Mrs. Masters
did not speak to Mary, not at all intending to let
her sin pass with such moderate punishment as that,
but thinking during that period that as she might
perhaps induce Larry to ignore the letter and look
upon it as though it were not written, it would be
best to say nothing till the time should come in which
the lover might again urge his suit. But when
she found on the evening of the second day that Larry
did not come near the place she could control herself
no longer, and accused her step-daughter of ruining
herself, her father, and the whole family. “That
is very unfair, mamma,” Mary said. “I
have done nothing. I have only not done that
which nobody had a right to ask me to do.”
“Right indeed! And who are you with your
rights? A decent well-behaved young man with
five or six hundred a year has no right to ask you
to be his wife! All this comes of you staying
with an old woman with a handle to her name.”
It was in vain that Mary endeavoured to explain that
she had not alluded to Larry when she declared that
no one had a right to ask her to do it. She had,
she said, always thanked him for his good opinion
of her, and had spoken well of him whenever his name
was mentioned. But it was a matter on which a
young woman was entitled to judge for herself, and
no one had a right to scold her because she could
not love him. Mrs. Masters hated such arguments,
despised this rodomontade about love, and would have
crushed the girl into obedience could it have been
possible. “You are an idiot,” she
said, “an ungrateful idiot; and unless you think
better of it you’ll repent your folly to your
dying day. Who do you think is to come running
after a moping slut like you?” Then Mary gathered
herself up and left the room, feeling that she could
not live in the house if she were to be called a slut.
Soon after this Larry came to the attorney and got
him to come out into the street and to walk with him
round the churchyard. It was the spot in Dillsborough
in which they would most certainly be left undisturbed.
This took place on the day before his proposition for
the sale of Chowton Farm. When he got the attorney
into the churchyard he took out Mary’s letter
and in speechless agony handed it to the attorney.
“I saw it before it went,” said Masters
putting it back with his hand:
