Mr. Surtees sat aghast, with his mouth open, and knew not how to say a word. Doctor Nupper rubbed his red nose. Reginald Morton attempted some suggestion about the wine which fell wretchedly flat. John Morton ventured to tell his friend that he did not understand the subject. “I shall be most happy to be instructed,” said the Senator.
“Understand it!” said the rector, almost rising in his chair to rebuke the insolence of his guest—“He understands nothing about it, and yet he ventures to fall foul with unmeasured terms on an establishment which has been brought to its present condition by the fostering care of perhaps the most pious set of divines that ever lived, and which has produced results with which those of no other Church can compare!”
“Have I represented anything untruly?” asked the Senator.
“A great deal, sir.”
“Only put me right, and no man will recall his words more readily. Is it not the case that livings in the Church of England can be bought and sold?”
“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.”
XLIII
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 stepdaughter 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.
“I suppose she means it?” asked Larry.
“I can’t say to you but what she does, Twentyman. As far as I know her she isn’t a girl that would ever say anything that she didn’t mean.”
“I was sure of that. When I got it and read it, it was just as though someone had come behind me and hit me over the head with a wheel-spoke. I couldn’t have ate a morsel of breakfast if I knew I wasn’t to see another bit of food for four-and-twenty hours.”
“I knew you would feel it, Larry.”
“Feel it! Till it came to this I didn’t think of myself but what I had more strength. It has knocked me about till I feel all over like drinking.”
“Don’t do that, Larry.”
“I won’t answer for myself what I’ll do. A man sets his heart on a thing—just on one thing—and has grit enough in him to be
