Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “It is not that,” crossly responded the Rector— “what people will think or say; it is for Sale’s own sake that I object. He cannot like the connection. A clergyman should marry in his own sphere.”

  “I suppose men are differently constituted, clergymen as well as others,” said I, with deprecation, remembering that I was a plain, inexperienced lad, and he was the Rector of Timberdale. “Some persons don’t care for social distinctions as others do, don’t even see them: perhaps Mr. Sale is one.”

  “He cares for probity and honour — he would not choose to ally himself to crime, to disgrace,” sternly spoke the Rector. “And he would do that in marrying Margaret Rymer. Remember what the son did, that ill-doing Benjamin,” added he, dropping his voice. “You know all about it, Johnny. The affair of the bank-note, I mean.”

  And if Herbert Tanerton had said to me the affair of the moon and planets, I could not have been more surprised. “How did you get to know of it?” I asked, when speech came to me.

  “Mr. Rymer told me on his death-bed. I was attending him spiritually. Of course, I have never spoken of it, even to my wife — I should not think of speaking of it; but I consider that it lies in my duty to disclose the facts to Mr. Sale.”

  “Oh no, don’t — don’t, please, Mr. Tanerton!” I cried out, starting up in a sort of distress, for the words seemed to take hold of me. “No one knows of it: no one but the Squire, and I, as you say, and Mrs. Rymer, and you, and Ben himself; Jelf’s dead, you know. It need never be brought up again in this world; and I dare say it never will be. Pray don’t tell Mr. Sale — for Margaret’s sake.”

  “But I have said that I consider it my duty to tell him,” replied the parson, steadily. “Here he comes!”

  I turned to the window, and saw Sale trudging up to the parsonage through the snowy field pathway, his black hair and red rugged face presenting a sort of contrast to the white glare around. Ugly, he might be called; but it was a face to be liked, for all that. And the ring of his voice was true and earnest.

  The affair of the bank-note had helped to kill Thomas Rymer, and sent Mr. Ben off on his wanderings again. It was a bit of ill-luck for Ben, for he had really pulled up, was reading hard at his medical books, and become as steady as could be. Never since then — some ten months ago now — had Ben been heard of; never had it been spoken of to man or woman. Need Herbert Tanerton disclose it to the curate? No: and I did not think he would do it.

  “We were just talking of you,” was the Rector’s greeting to Mr. Sale, as the curate came into the room. “Bring a chair to the front of the fire: Johnny, keep your seat. I’m sure it’s cold enough to make one wish to be in the fire to-day, instead of before it.”

  “What were you saying about me?” asked Mr. Sale, drawing forward the chair to sit down, as bidden, and giving me a nod in his short way.

  “Have you come to tell me your decision — to go or stay?” asked the Rector, neglecting to answer the question.

  “Not this morning. My decision is not yet made. I came to tell you how very ill Jael Batty is. I’m not at all sure that she will get over this bout.”

  “Oh,” said the Rector, in a slighting tone, as if Jael Batty had no right to intrude herself into more momentous conversation. “Jael Batty is careless and indifferent in her duties, anything but what she ought to be, and makes her deafness an excuse for not coming to church. I’ll try and get out to see her in the course of the day. She is always having these attacks. What we were speaking of was your friendship with Miss Rymer.”

  Herbert Tanerton, as I have said, meant to be kind, and I believe he had people’s welfare at heart; but he had a severe way of saying things that seemed to take all the kindness out of his words. He was a great stickler for “duty,” and if once he considered it was his duty to tell a fellow of his faults, tell he did, face to face, in the most uncompromising manner. He had decided that it was his duty to hold forth to Mr. Sale, and he plunged into the discourse without ceremony. The curate did not seem in the least put out, but talked back again, quietly and freely. I sat balancing the tongs over the fender and listening.

  “Miss Rymer is not my equal, you say,” observed Sale. “I don’t know that. Her father was a curate’s son: I am a curate’s son. Circumstances, it would seem, kept Mr. Rymer down in the world. Perhaps they will keep me down — I cannot tell.”

  “But you are a gentleman in position, a clergyman; Rymer served customers,” retorted Mr. Tanerton, harping upon that bête noire of his, the chemist’s shop. “Can’t you perceive the difference? A gentleman ought to be a gentleman.”

  “Thomas Rymer was a gentleman, as I hear, in mind and manners and conduct; educated, and courteous, and — —”

  “He was one of the truest gentlemen I ever met,” I could not help putting in, though it interrupted the curate. “For my part, when speaking with him I forgot the counter he served at.”

  “And a true Christian, I was about to say,” added Mr. Sale.

  There was a pause. Herbert Tanerton, who had been fidgeting in his chair, spoke:

  “Am I mistaken in assuming that your acceptance of this chaplaincy depends upon Miss Rymer?”

  “No, you are not mistaken,” said Sale, readily. “It does depend upon her. If she will go with me — my wife — I shall accept it; if she will not, I remain at home.”

  “Margaret is as nice as her father was; she is exactly like him,” I said. “Were I you, Mr. Sale, I should just take her out of the place and end it.”

  “But if she won’t come with me?” returned he, with a half-smile.

  “She is wanted at home,” observed Herbert Tanerton, casting a severe look at me with his cold light eyes. “That shop could not get on without her.” But Sale interrupted:

  “I cannot imagine why the son is not at home to attend to things. It is his place to be there doing it, not his sister’s. He is inclined to be wild, it is said, and given to roving.”

  “Wildness is not Benjamin Rymer’s worst fault, or roving either,” cried the Rector, in his hardest voice, though he dropped it to a low key. And forthwith he opened the ball, and told the unfortunate story in a very few words. I let the tongs fall with a rattle.

  “I would not have mentioned this,” pursued he, “but that I consider it lies in my duty to tell you of it. To any one else it would never be allowed to pass my lips; it never has passed them since Mr. Rymer disclosed it to me a day or two before he died. Margaret Rymer may be desirable in herself; but there’s her position, and — there’s this. It is for your own sake I have spoken, Mr. Sale.”

  Sale had sat still and quiet while he listened. There was nothing outward to show that the tale affected him, but instinct told me that it did. Just a question or two he put, as to the details, and then he rose to leave.

  “Will you not let it sway you?” asked the Rector, perseveringly, as he held out his hand to his curate. And I was sure he thought he had been doing him the greatest good in the world.

  “I cannot tell,” replied Mr. Sale.

  He went out, walked across the garden, and through the gate to the field, with his head down. A dreadful listlessness — as it seemed to me — had taken the place of his brisk bearing. Just for a minute I stood in the parlour where I was, feeling as though I had had a shower of ice thrown down upon me and might never be warm again. Saying a short good-morning, I rushed out after him, nearly upsetting Mrs. Tanerton in the hall, and a basin of soup she was carrying in on a plate. How cruel it seemed; how cruel! Why can’t people let one another alone? He was half-way across the field when I overtook him.

  “Mr. Sale, I want to tell you — I ought to tell you — that the story, as repeated to you by Mr. Tanerton, bears a worse aspect than the reality would warrant. It is true that Benjamin Rymer did change the note in the letter; but that was the best and the worst of it. He had become mixed up with some reckless men when at Tewkesbury, and they persuaded him to get the stolen note changed for a safe one. I am sure he repented of it truly. When he
came home later to his father’s, he had left all his random ways and bad companions behind him. Nobody could be steadier than he was; kind to Margaret, considerate to his father and mother, attentive to business, and reading hard all his spare time. It was only through an ill fellow coming here to hunt him up — one Cotton, who was the man that induced him to play the trick with the note — that he was disturbed again.”

  “How disturbed?”

  “He grew frightened, I mean, and went away. That fellow Cotton deserved hanging. When he found that Ben Rymer would have nothing more to do with him, or with the rest of the bad lot, he, in revenge, told Jelf, the landlord of the Plough and Harrow (where Cotton ran up a score, and decamped without paying), saying that it was Ben Rymer who had changed the note — for, you see, it had always remained a mystery to Timberdale. Jelf — he is dead now — was foolish enough to let Ben Rymer know what Cotton had said, and Ben made off in alarm. In a week’s time Mr. Rymer was dead. He had been ailing in mind and body for a long while, and the new fear finished him up.”

  A pause ensued. Sale broke it. “Did Miss Rymer know of this?”

  “Of Ben and the bank-note? I don’t believe she knows of it to this hour.”

  “No, I feel sure she does not,” added Sale, speaking more to himself than to me. “She is truth and candour itself; and she has repeatedly said to me she cannot tell why her brother keeps away; cannot imagine why.”

  “You see,” I went on, “no one knows of it, except myself, but Squire Todhetley and Mr. Tanerton. We should never, never think of bringing it up, any one of us; Mr. Tanerton only spoke of it, as he said, because he thought he ought to tell you; he will never speak of it again. Indeed, Mr. Sale, you need not fear it will be known. Benjamin Rymer is quite safe.”

  “What sort of a man is he, this Benjamin?” resumed Sale, halting at the outer gate of the field as we were going through it. “Like the father, or like the mother?”

  “Like the mother. But not as vulgar as she is. Ben has been educated; she was not; and though he does take after her, there’s a little bit of his father in him as well. Which makes a great difference.”

  Without another word, Mr. Sale turned abruptly off to the right, as though he were going for a country ramble. I shut the gate, and made the best of my way home, bearing back the message from the Rector and Grace — that they would come and help eat the codfish.

  The Reverend Isaac Sale was that day sorely exercised in mind. The story he had heard shook his equanimity to the centre. To marry a young lady whose brother stood a chance of being prosecuted for felony looked like a very black prospect indeed; but, on the other hand, Margaret at least was innocent, and he loved and respected her with his whole heart and soul. Not until the evening was his mind made up; he had debated the question with himself in all its bearings (seated on the stump of a snowy tree); and the decision he arrived at, was — to take Margaret all the same. He could not leave her.

  About nine o’clock he went to Mrs. Rymer’s. The shop was closed, and Mr. Sale entered by the private door. Margaret sat in the parlour alone, reading; Mrs. Rymer was out. In her soft black dress, with its white frilling at the throat, Margaret did not look anything like her nearly twenty years. Her mild brown eyes and tale-telling cheeks lighted up at the entrance of the curate. Letting her nervous little hand meet his strong one, she would have drawn a chair forward for him, but he kept her standing by him on the hearthrug.

  “I have come this evening to have some final conversation with you, Margaret, and I am glad your mother is out,” he began. “Will you hear me, my dear?”

  “You know I am always glad to hear you,” she said in low, timid tones. And Mr. Sale made no more ado, but turned and kissed her. Then he released her hand, sat down opposite to her on the other side of the hearth, and entered on his argument.

  It was no more, or other, than she had heard from him before — the whole sum and substance of it consisted of representations why he must accept this chaplaincy at the Bahamas, and why she must accompany him thither. In the midst of it Margaret burst into tears.

  “Oh, Isaac, why prolong the pain?” she said. “You know I cannot go: to refuse is as painful to me as to you. Don’t you see that I have no alternative but to remain here?”

  “No, I do not see it,” replied Mr. Sale, stoutly. “I think your mother could do without you. She is an active, bustling woman, hardly to be called middle-aged yet. It is not right that you should sacrifice yourself and your prospects in life. At least, it seems to me that it is not.”

  Margaret’s hand was covering her face; the silent tears were dropping. To see him depart, leaving her behind, was a prospect intensely bitter. Her heart ached when she thought of it: but she saw no hope of its being otherwise.

  “It is a week and a day since I told you that the promotion was at length offered me,” resumed Mr. Sale, “and we do not seem to be any nearer a decision than we were then. I have kept it to myself and said nothing about it abroad, waiting for you to speak to me, Margaret; and the Rector — to whom I at length spoke yesterday — is angry with me, and says I ought to have told him at once. In three days from this — on Thursday next — I must give an answer: accept the post, or throw it up.”

  Margaret took her hand from her face. Mr. Sale could see how great was the conflict at work within her.

  “There is nothing to wait for, Isaac. I wish there was. You must go by yourself, and leave me.”

  “I have told you that I will not. If you stay here, I stay.”

  “Oh, pray don’t do that! It would be so intense a disappointment to you to give it up.”

  “The greatest disappointment I have ever had in life,” he answered. “You must go with me.”

  “I wish I could! I wish I could! But it is impossible. My duty lies here, Isaac. I wish you could see that fact as strongly as I see it. My poor father always enjoined me to do my duty, no matter at what personal cost.”

  “It is your brother’s duty to be here, Margaret; not yours. Where is he?”

  “In London, I believe,” she replied, and a faint colour flew into her pale face. She put up her handkerchief to hide it.

  It had come to Margaret’s knowledge that during the past few months her mother had occasionally written to Benjamin. But Mrs. Rymer would not allow Margaret to write or give her his address. It chanced, however, that about a fortnight ago Mrs. Rymer incautiously left a letter on the table addressed to him, and her daughter saw it. When, some days subsequently, Mr. Sale received the offer of the chaplaincy, and laid it and himself before Margaret, urging her to accompany him, saying that he could not go without her, she took courage to write to Benjamin. She did not ask him to return and release her; she only asked him whether he had any intention of returning, and if so, when; and she gave him in simple words the history of her acquaintanceship with Mr. Sale, and said that he wanted her to go out with him to the Bahamas. To this letter Margaret had not received any answer. She therefore concluded that it had either not reached her brother, or else that he did not mean to return at all to Timberdale; and so she gave up all hopes of it.

  “Life is not very long, Margaret, and God has placed us in it to do the best we can in all ways; for Him first, for social obligations afterwards. But He has not meant it to be all trial, all self-denial. If you and I part now, the probability is that we part for ever. Amidst the world’s chances and changes we may never meet again, howsoever our wills might prompt it.”

  “True,” she faintly answered.

  “And I say that you ought not to enforce this weighty penance upon me and yourself. It is for your brother’s sake, as I look upon it, that you are making the sacrifice, and it is he, not you, who ought to be here. Why did he go away?”

  “I never knew,” said Margaret, lifting her eyes to her lover’s, and speaking so confidingly and earnestly that, had he needed proof to convince him she was ignorant of the story he had that day been regaled with, it would have amply afforded it. “Benjamin was at home, and so
steady and good as to be a comfort to papa; when quite suddenly he left without giving a reason. Papa seemed to be in trouble about it — it was only a few days before he died — and I have thought that perhaps poor Benjamin was unexpectedly called upon to pay some debt or other, and could not find the money to do it. He had not always been quite so steady.”

  “Well, Margaret, I think — —”

  A loud bang of the entrance-door, and a noisy burst into the room, proclaimed the return of Mrs. Rymer. Her mass of scarlet curls garnished her face on either side, and looked particularly incongruous with her widow’s cap and bonnet. Mr. Sale, rising to hand her a chair, broke off what he had been about to say to Margaret, and addressed Mrs. Rymer instead; simply saying that the decision, as to her going out with him, or not going, could no longer be put off, but must be made.

  “It has been made,” returned Mrs. Rymer, disregarding the offered chair, and standing to hold her boots, one after the other, to the fire. “Margaret can’t go, Mr. Sale; you know it.”

  “But I wish her to go, and she wishes it.”

  “It’s a puzzle to me what on earth you can see in her,” cried Mrs. Rymer, flinging her grey muff on the table, and untying her black bonnet-strings to tilt back the bonnet. “Margaret won’t have any money. Not a penny piece.”

  “I am not thinking about money,” replied the curate; who somehow could never keep his temper long in the presence of this strong-minded Amazon. “It is Margaret that I want; not money.”

  “And it’s Margaret, then, that you can’t have,” she retorted. “Who is to keep the shop on if she leaves it? — it can’t go to rack and ruin.”