Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “In Staffordshire, I think,” said Miss Deveen, with hesitation, not being sure of her memory. “He is a baronet, I believe; but I forget his name.”

  “All the same, ma’am: there’s no more chance for poor Lake with him than with the Lord Chancellor,” returned Dr. Galliard. “Private patrons are worse beset, when a piece of preferment falls in, than even public ones.”

  “Suppose the parish were to get up a petition, setting forth Mr. Lake’s merits and claims, and present it to the patron?” suggested Mrs. Jonas. “Not, I dare say, that it would be of much use.”

  “Not the slightest use; you may rely upon that,” spoke the doctor, in his decisive way. “Lake’s best chance is to get taken on by the new man, and stand out for a higher salary.”

  Certainly it seemed to be his best and only chance of getting any good out of the matter. But it was just as likely he would be turned adrift.

  The next day we met Mrs. Jonas in the King’s Road. She had rather a down look as she accosted Miss Deveen.

  “No one seems willing to bestir themselves about a petition; they say it is so very hopeless. And there’s a rumour abroad that the living is already given away.”

  “To whom is it given?” asked Miss Deveen.

  “Well, not to a Very Reverend Dean, as Miss Cattledon suggested last night, but to some one as bad — or good: one of the Canons of St. Paul’s. I dare say it’s true. How hard it is on Mr. Lake! How hard it must seem to him!”

  “He may stay here as curate, then.”

  “Never you expect that,” contended Mrs. Jonas, her face reddening with her zeal. “These cathedral luminaries have invariably lots of their own circle to provide for.”

  “Do you not think it will seem hard on Mr. Lake?” I said to Miss Deveen, as we left the little widow, and walked on.

  “I do, Johnny Ludlow. I do think he ought to have it; that in right and justice no one has so great a claim to it as he,” she impressively answered. “But, as Dr. Galliard says, ‘oughts’ go for nothing in Church patronage. William Lake is a good, earnest, intellectual man; he has grown grey in the service of the parish, and yet, now that the living is vacant, he has no more chance of it than that silly young Chisholm has — not half as much, I dare say, if the young fellow were only in priest’s orders. It is but a common case: scores of curates who have to work on, neglected, to their lives’ end could testify to it. Here we are, Johnny. This is Mrs. Topcroft’s.”

  Knocking at the house-door — a small house standing ever so far back from the road — we were shown by a young servant into a pleasant parlour. Emma Topcroft, a merry, bright, laughing girl, of eighteen or nineteen, sat there at work with silks and black velvet. If I had the choice given me between her and Miss Cattledon, thought I, as Mr. Lake seems to have, I know which of the two I should choose.

  “Mamma is making a rice-pudding in the kitchen,” she said, spreading her work out on the table for Miss Deveen to see.

  “You are doing it very nicely, Emma. And I have brought you the fresh silks. I could not get them before: they had to send the patterns into town. Is the other screen begun?”

  “Oh yes; and half done,” answered Emma, briskly, as she opened the drawer of a-work-table, and began unfolding another square of velvet from its tissue paper. “I do the sober colours in both screens first, and leave the bright ones till last. Here’s the mother.”

  Mrs. Topcroft came in, turning down her sleeves at the wrist; a little woman, quite elderly. I liked her the moment I saw her. She was homely and motherly, with the voice and manners of a lady.

  “I came to bring Emma the silks, and to see how the work was getting on,” said Miss Deveen as she shook hands. “And what a grievous thing this is about Mr. Selwyn!”

  Mrs. Topcroft lifted her hands pityingly. “It has made Mr. Lake quite ill,” she answered; “I can see it. And” — dropping her voice— “they say there will be little, or nothing, for Mrs. Selwyn and the children.”

  “Yes, there will; though perhaps not much,” corrected Miss Deveen. “Mrs. Selwyn has two hundred a-year of her own. I happen to know it.”

  “I am very thankful to hear that: we were fearing the worst. I wonder,” added Mrs. Topcroft, “if this will take Mr. Lake from us?”

  “Probably. We cannot tell yet. People are saying he ought to have the living if it went by merit: but there’s not any hope of that.”

  “Not any,” acquiesced Mrs. Topcroft, shaking her head. “It does seem unjust: that a clergyman should wear out all his best days toiling for a church, and be passed over at last as not worth a consideration.”

  “It is the way of the world.”

  “No one knows his worth,” went on Mrs. Topcroft, “So patient, so good, so self-denying; and so anxious for the poor and sick, and for all the ill-doers who seem to be going wrong. I don’t believe there are many men in this world so good as he. All he can scrape and save out of his narrow income he gives away, denying himself necessaries to be able to do it: Mr. Selwyn, you know, has given nothing. It has been said he grudged even the communion money.”

  That was Mrs. Topcroft’s report of Mr. Lake; and she ought to know. He had boarded with her long enough. He had the bedroom over the best parlour; and the little den of a back-parlour was given over to his own use, in which he saw his parishioners and wrote his sermons.

  “They come from the same village in the West of England,” said Miss Deveen to me as we walked homewards. “Mr. Lake’s father was curate of the place, and Mrs. Topcroft’s people are the doctors: her brothers are in practice there now. When she was left a widow upon a very slender income, and settled down in this little house, Mr. Lake came to board with her. He pays a guinea a-week only; but Mrs. Topcroft has told me that it pays her amply, and she could not have got along without it. The housekeeping is, of necessity, economical: and that suits the pocket on both sides.”

  “I like Mrs. Topcroft. And she seems quite a lady, though she is poor.”

  “She is quite a lady, Johnny. Her husband was a civil engineer, very clever: but for his early death he might have become as renowned as his master, Sir John Rennie. The son; he is several years older than Emma; is in the same profession, steady and diligent, and he gains a fair salary now, which of course helps his mother. He is at home night and morning.”

  “Do you suppose that Mr. Lake thinks of Emma?”

  Miss Deveen laughed — as if the matter were a standing joke in her mind. “I do not suppose it, Johnny. I never saw the smallest cause to lead me to suppose it: she is too much of a child. Such a thing never would have been thought of but for the jealous suspicions of the parish — I mean of course our young ladies in it. Because Emma Topcroft is a nice-looking and attractive girl, and because Mr. Lake lives in her companionship, these young women must needs get up the notion. And they despise the Topcrofts accordingly, and turn the cold shoulder on them.”

  It had struck me that Emma Topcroft must be doing those screens for Miss Deveen. I asked her.

  “She is doing them for me in one sense, Johnny,” was the answer. “Being an individual of note, you see” — and Miss Deveen laughed again— “that is, my income being known to be a good one, and being magnified by the public into something fabulous, I have to pay the penalty of greatness. Hardly a week passes but I am solicited to become the patroness of some bazaar, not to speak of other charities, or at least to contribute articles for sale. So I buy materials and get Emma Topcroft to convert them into nicknacks. Working flowers upon velvet for banner-screens, as she is doing now; or painting flowers upon cardboard for baskets or boxes, which she does nicely, and various other things. Two ends are thus served: Emma makes a pretty little income, nearly enough for her clothes, and the bazaars get the work when it is finished, and sell it for their own benefit.”

  “It is very good of you, Miss Deveen.”

  “Good! Nay, don’t say that, Johnny,” she continued, in a reproving tone. “Those whom Heaven has blessed with ample means must remember that they w
ill have to render an account of their stewardship. Trifles, such as these, are but odds and ends, not to be thought of, beside what I ought to do — and try to do.”

  That same evening Mr. Lake came in, unexpectedly. He called to say that the funeral was fixed for Saturday, and that a portion of the burial-service would be read in the church here, before starting for the cemetery: Mrs. Selwyn wished it so.

  “I hear that the parish began to indulge a hope that you would be allowed to succeed Mr. Selwyn,” Miss Deveen observed to him as he was leaving; “but — —”

  “I!” he exclaimed, interrupting her in genuine surprise, a transient flush rising to his face. “What, succeed to the living! How could any one think of such a thing for a moment? Why, Miss Deveen, I do not possess any interest: not the slightest in the world. I do not even know Sir Robert Tenby. It is not likely that he has ever heard my name.”

  “Sir Robert Tenby!” I cried, pricking up my ears. “Is Sir Robert Tenby the patron?”

  “Yes. His seat is in Worcestershire?”

  “Do you know him, Johnny?” asked Miss Deveen.

  “A little; not much. Bellwood is near Crabb Cot. I used often to see his wife when she was Anne Lewis: we were great friends. She was a very nice girl.”

  “A girl, Johnny! Is she younger than he is?”

  “Young enough to be his daughter.”

  “But I was about to say,” added Miss Deveen to the curate, “that I fear there can be no chance for you, if this report, that the living is already given away, be correct. I wish it had been otherwise.”

  “There could be no chance for me in any case, dear Miss Deveen; there’s no chance for any one so unknown and obscure as I am,” he returned, suppressing a sigh as he shook her hand. “Thank you all the same for your kind wishes.”

  How long I lay awake that night I don’t care to recall. An extraordinary idea had taken possession of me. If some one would only tell Sir Robert Tenby of the merits of this good man, he might be so impressed as to give him the living. We were not sure about the Canon of St. Paul’s: he might be a myth, as far as our church went.

  Yes, these ideas were all very well; but who would presume to do it? The mice, you know, wanted to bell the cat, but none of them could be got to undertake the task.

  Down I went in the morning to Mr. Brandon as soon as breakfast was over. I found him in his sitting-room at his breakfast: dry toast, and tea without milk; a yellow silk handkerchief thrown cornerwise over his head, and his face looking green. He had a bilious attack coming on, he said, and thought he had taken a slight cold.

  Now I don’t want to disparage Mr. Brandon’s merits. In some things he was as good as gold. But when he fell into these fanciful attacks he was not practically worth a rush. It was hardly a propitious moment for the scheme I had in my head; but, unfortunately, there was no time to lose: I must speak then, or not at all. Down I sat, and told my tale. Old Brandon, sipping his tea by spoonfuls, listened, and stared at me with his little eyes.

  “And you have been getting up in your brain the Utopian scheme that Sir Robert Tenby would put this curate into the living! and want me to propose it to him! Is that what you mean, young man?”

  “Yes, sir. Sir Robert would listen to you. You are friendly with him, and he is in town. Won’t you, please, do it?”

  “Not if I know it, Johnny Ludlow. Solicit Robert Tenby to give the living to a man I never heard of: a man I know nothing about! What notions you pick up!”

  “Mr. Lake is so good and so painstaking,” I urged. “He has been working all these years — —”

  “You have said all that before,” interrupted old Brandon, shifting the silk handkerchief on his head more to one side. “I can’t answer for it, you know. And, if I could, I should not consider myself justified in troubling Sir Robert.”

  “What I thought was this, sir: that, if he got to know all Mr. Lake is, he might be glad to give him the living: glad of an opportunity to do a good and kind act. I did not think of your asking him to give the living; only to tell him of Mr. Lake, and what he has done, and been. He lives only in Upper Brook Street. It would not be far for you to go, sir.”

  “I should not go if he lived here at the next door, Johnny Ludlow: should not be justified in going on such an errand. Go yourself.”

  “I don’t like to, sir.”

  “He wouldn’t eat you; he’d only laugh at you. Robert Tenby would excuse in a silly lad what he might deem impertinence from me. There, Johnny; let it end.”

  And there it had to end. When old Brandon took up an idea he was hard as adamant.

  I stood at the hotel door, wishing I could screw up courage to call at Sir Robert’s, but shrinking from it terribly. Then I thought of poor Mr. Lake, and that there was no one else to tell about him; and at last I started, for Upper Brook Street.

  “Is Lady Tenby at home?” I asked, when I got to the door.

  “Yes, sir.” And the man showed me into a room where Lady Tenby sat, teaching her little boy to walk.

  She was just the same kind and simple-mannered woman that she had been as Anne Lewis. Putting both her hands into mine, she said how glad she was to see me in London, and held out the child to be kissed. I explained my errand, and my unwillingness to come; saying I could venture to tell her all about it better than I could tell Sir Robert.

  She laughed merrily. “He is not any more formidable than I am, Johnny; he is not the least bit so in the world. You shall see whether he is” — opening the door of the next room. “Robert,” she called out in glee, “Johnny Ludlow is here, and is saying you are an ogre. He wants to tell you something, and can’t pluck up courage to do it.”

  Sir Robert Tenby came in, the Times in his hand, and a smile on his face: the same kind, rugged, homely face that I knew well. He shook hands with me, asking if I wanted his interest to be made prime-minister.

  And somehow, what with their kindness and their thorough, cordial homeliness, I lost my fears. In two minutes I had plunged into the tale, Sir Robert sitting near me with his elbow on the table, and Anne beside him, her quiet baby on her knee.

  “I thought it so great a pity, sir, that you should not hear about Mr. Lake: how hard he has worked for years, and what a good and self-denying man he is,” I concluded at last, after telling what Miss Deveen thought of him, and what Mrs. Topcroft said. “Not, of course, that I could presume to suggest such a thing, sir, as that you should bestow upon him the living — only to let you know there was a man so deserving, if — if it was not given already. It is said in the parish that the living is given.”

  “Is this Mr. Lake a good preacher?” asked Sir Robert, when I paused.

  “They say he is one of the best and most earnest of preachers, sir. I have not heard him; Mr. Selwyn generally preached.”

  “Does he know of your application to me?”

  “Why, no, Sir Robert, of course not! I could not have had the face to tell any one I as much as wished to make it. Except Mr. Brandon. I spoke to him because I wanted him to come instead of me.”

  Sir Robert smiled. “And he would not come, I suppose?”

  “Oh dear, no: he asked me whether I thought we lived in Utopia. He said I might come if I chose — that what would be only laughed at in a silly boy like me, might be deemed impertinence in him.”

  The interview came to an end. Anne said she hoped I should dine with them while I was in town — and Mr. Brandon also, Sir Robert added; and with that I came out. Came out just as wise as I had gone in; for never a word of hope did Sir Robert give. For all he intimated to the contrary, the living might be already in the hands of the Canon of St. Paul’s.

  Two events happened the next day, Saturday. The funeral of the Rector, and the departure of Miss Cattledon for Chelmsford, in Essex. An aunt of hers who lived there was taken dangerously ill, and sent for her by telegram. Mr. Brandon came up to dine with us in the evening —— But that’s neither here nor there.

  I sat in Miss Deveen’s pew at church with herse
lf on the Sunday morning; she wore black silk out of respect to the late Rector. Mr. Lake and the young deacon, who had a luxuriant crop of yellow hair, had put on black gloves. The church was full; all the world and his wife seemed to have come to it; and the parsons’ surplices stood on end with starch.

  Mr. Lake was in the reading-desk; it caused, I think, some surprise — could that yellow-haired nonentity of a young dandy be going to preach? He stood at the communion-table, looking interesting, and evidently suffering from a frightful cold: which cold, as we found later, was the reason that Mr. Lake took nearly all the service himself.

  What a contrast they were! The simpering, empty-faced young deacon, who was tall and slender as a lamp-post, and had really not much more brains than one; and the thoughtful, earnest, middle-aged priest, with the sad look on his gentle face. Nothing could be more impressive than his reading of the prayers; they were prayed, not read: and his voice was one of those persuasive, musical voices you don’t often hear. If Sir Robert Tenby could but hear this reading! I sighed, as Mr. Lake went through the Litany.

  Hardly had the thought crossed my mind, when some commotion in the church caused most of us to turn round: a lady was fainting. But for that, I might never have seen what I did see. In the next pew, right behind ours, sat Sir Robert and Lady Tenby. So surprised was I that I could not for the moment believe my eyes, and simply stared at them. Anne caught the look, and smiled at me.

  Was it a good omen? I took it to be one. If Sir Robert had no thought of Mr. Lake, or if the living was already given to that canon, why should he have come all this way to hear him? I recalled the Sunday, years ago now, when Sir Robert had sat in his own pew at Timberdale, listening attentively to Herbert Tanerton’s reading and preaching, deliberating within his mind — I know I thought so then — whether he should bestow upon him the living of Timberdale, or not; whether Herbert was worthy of it. Sir Robert did give it to him: and I somehow took it for an earnest that he might give this one to Mr. Lake.