Mr. Clavering hunted no more, and probably smoked a greater number of cigars in consequence. He had an increased amount of time at his disposal, but did not, therefore, give more time to his duties. Alas! what time did he give to his duties? He kept a most energetic curate, whom he allowed to do almost what he would with the parish. Everyday services he did prohibit, declaring that he would not have the parish church made ridiculous; but in other respects his curate was the pastor. Once every Sunday he read the service, and once every Sunday he preached, and he resided in his parsonage ten months every year. His wife and daughters went among the poor—and he smoked cigars in his library. Though not yet fifty, he was becoming fat and idle—unwilling to walk, and not caring much even for such riding as the bishop had left to him. And, to make matters worse—far worse, he knew all this of himself, and understood it thoroughly. “I see a better path, and know how good it is, but I follow ever the worse.” He was saying that to himself daily, and was saying it always without hope.
And his wife had given him up. She had given him up, not with disdainful rejection, nor with contempt in her eye, or censure in her voice, not with diminution of love or of outward respect. She had given him up as a man abandons his attempts to make his favourite dog take the water. He would fain that the dog he loves should dash into the stream as other dogs will do. It is, to his thinking, a noble instinct in a dog. But his dog dreads the water. As, however, he has learned to love the beast, he puts up with this mischance, and never dreams of banishing poor Ponto from his hearth because of this failure. And so it was with Mrs. Clavering and her husband at the rectory. He understood it all. He knew that he was so far rejected; and he acknowledged to himself the necessity for such rejection.
“It is a very serious thing to decide upon,” he said, when his son had spoken to him.
“Yes; it is serious—about as serious a thing as a man can think of; but a man cannot put it off on that account. If I mean to make such a change in my plans, the sooner I do it the better.”
“But yesterday you were in another mind.”
“No, father, not in another mind. I did not tell you then, nor can I tell you all now. I had thought that I should want my money for another purpose for a year or two; but that I have abandoned.”
“Is the purpose a secret, Harry?”
“It is a secret, because it concerns another person.”
“You were going to lend your money to someone?”
“I must keep it a secret, though you know I seldom have any secrets from you. That idea, however, is abandoned, and I mean to go over to Stratton tomorrow, and tell Mr. Burton that I shall be there after Christmas. I must be at St. Cuthbert’s on Tuesday.”
Then they both sat silent for a while, silently blowing out their clouds of smoke. The son had said all that he cared to say, and would have wished that there might then be an end of it; but he knew that his father had much on his mind, and would fain express, if he could express it without too much trouble, or without too evident a need of self-reproach, his own thoughts on the subject. “You have made up your mind, then, altogether that you do not like the church as a profession,” he said at last.
“I think I have, father.”
“And on what grounds? The grounds which recommend it to you are very strong. Your education has adapted you for it. Your success in it is already ensured by your fellowship. In a great degree you have entered it as a profession already, by taking a fellowship. What you are doing is not choosing a line in life, but changing one already chosen. You are making of yourself a rolling stone.”
“A stone should roll till it has come to the spot that suits it.”
“Why not give up the school if it irks you?”
“And become a Cambridge Don, and practise deportment among the undergraduates.”
“I don’t see that you need do that. You need not
