My New Curate | Page 4

his boots glistened and winked in
the lamplight.
"You'll take something?" I said. "You have had a long drive."
"If not too much trouble," he said, "I'll have a cup of tea."
I rang the bell.
"Get a cup of tea, Hannah," I said.
"A cup of wha--at?" queried Hannah. She had the usual feminine
contempt for men that drink tea.
"A cup of tea," I said decisively, "and don't be long."
"Oyeh!" said Hannah. But she brought in a few minutes later the tea
and hot cakes that would make an alderman hungry, and two poached
eggs on toast. I was awfully proud of my domestic arrangements. But I
was puzzled. Hannah was not always so courteous. She explained next
day.
"I didn't like him at all, at all," she said, "but whin I came out and saw
his portmanty all brass knobs, and took up his rug, whew! it was that
soft and fine it would do to wrap up the Queen, I said to myself, 'this is
a gintleman, Hannah; who knows but he's the Bishop on his tower.'"
"I hope you like your tea?" I said.
"It's simply delicious," he answered.

He ate heartily. Poor fellow, he was hungry after a long drive; but he
chewed every morsel as a cow would chew the cud on a lazy summer
afternoon, without noise or haste, and he lifted my poor old china cup
as daintily as if it were Sèvres. Then we fell to talking.
"I am afraid," I said tentatively, "that you'll find this place dull after
your last mission. But have you been on the mission before?"
"Oh yes, Father," he said, "I thought the Bishop might have written to
you."
"Well," I said, "I had reason to know you were coming; but the Bishop
is rather laconic in his epistles. He prides himself on his virtue of
reticence."
I said this, because it would never do to let him suppose that the Bishop
would send me a curate without letting me know of it. And I thought I
was using select language, an opinion which, after the nine years and
more of Horace, I have no reason to alter.
[Illustration: "You will take something?" I said. "You have had a long
drive."]
"My only mission hitherto," he said, "has been in Manchester, at St.
Chad's. It was a populous mission, and quite full of those daily trials
and contingencies that make life wearisome to a priest. I confess I was
not sorry to have been called home."
"But you had society," I interjected, "and unless you wish to spend an
hour at the constabulary barracks, you must seek your society here in
an occasional conversazione with some old woman over her cross-door,
or a chat with the boys at the forge--"
"But I have got my books, Father," he said, "and I assure you I want
some time to brush up the little I have ever read. I haven't opened a
serious book for seven years."
This was candid; and it made me warm towards him.

"Then," I said, "there's no use in preaching fine English sermons, they
won't be understood. And you must be prepared for many a night call to
mountain cabins, the only access to which is through a bog or the bed
of a mountain stream; and your income will reach the princely sum of
sixty pounds per annum. But," I added hastily, "you'll have plenty of
turf, and oats and hay for your horse, an occasional pound of butter,
and you'll have to export all the turkeys you'll get at Christmas."
"You have painted the lights and shadows, Father," he said cheerily,
"and I am prepared to take them together. I am sure I'll like the poor
people. It won't be my fault."
Then my heart rose up to this bright, cheery, handsome fellow, who
had no more pride in him than a barelegged gossoon; and who was
prepared to find his pleasure amongst such untoward surroundings. But
I didn't like to let myself out as yet. I had to keep up some show of
dignity.
My education commenced next morning. He had served my mass, and
said his own in my little oratory; and he came down to breakfast, clean,
alert, happy. I asked him how he had slept.
"Right well," he said, "I never woke till I heard some far off bell in the
morning."
"The six o'clock bell at the great house," I replied. "But where are you
going?"
"Nowhere, Sir," said he, "I understood I was to remain over Sunday."
"But you're shaved?" said I.
"Oh yes," he said, with the faintest ripple of a smile. "I couldn't think of
sitting down to breakfast, much less of celebrating the Holy Sacrifice,
without shaving."
"And you have a