Vera Nevill | Page 6

indolent. The
southern blood she inherited, the life of the Italian fine lady she had led,
made her languid and fond of inaction. To lie late in bed, to sip
chocolate, and open her letters before she rose; to be dressed and
re-dressed by a fashionable lady's maid; to recline in luxurious
carriages, and to listen lazily to the flattery and adulation that had
surrounded her--that had been Vera's life from morning till night ever
since she grew up.
How, with such antecedents, was she to enter suddenly into all the
activity of an English clergyman's home? There were the schools, and
the vestry meetings, and the sick and the destitute to be fretted after
from Monday morning till Saturday night--Eustace and Marion hardly
ever had a moment's respite or a leisure hour the whole week; whilst

Sunday, of course, was the hardest day's work of all.
But Vera could not turn her life into these things. She would not have
known how to set about them, and assuredly she had no desire to try.
So she wandered about the garden in the summer time, or sat dreamily
by the fire in winter. She gathered flowers and decorated the rooms
with them; she spoilt the children, she quarrelled with their
grandmother, but she did nothing else; and the righteous soul of
Eustace Daintree was disquieted within him on account of her. He felt
that her life was wasted, and the responsibility of it seemed, to his
over-sensitive conscience, to rest upon himself.
"The girl ought to be married," he would say to his wife, anxiously. "A
husband and a home of her own is what she wants. If she were happily
settled she would find occupation enough."
"I don't see whom she could marry, Eustace; men are so scarce, and
there are so many girls in the county."
"Well, she might have had Barry." Barry was a curate whom Vera had
lately scorned, and who had, in consequence of the crushed condition
of his affections, incontinently fled. "And then there is Gisburne. Why
couldn't she marry Gisburne? He is quite a catch, and a good young
man too."
"Yes, it is a pity; perhaps she may change her mind, and he will ask her
again after Christmas; he told me as much."
"You must try and persuade her to think better of it by then, my dear.
Now I must be off to old Abraham, and be sure you send round the port
to Mary Williams; and you will find the list for the blanket club on my
study table, love."
Her husband started on his morning rounds, and Marion, coming down
into the drawing-room, found old Mrs. Daintree haranguing Vera on
the same all-important topic.

"I am only speaking for your good, Vera; what other object could I
have?" she was saying, as she dived into the huge basket of undarned
socks on the floor before her, and extracted thereout a ragged specimen
to be operated upon. "It is sheer obstinacy on your part that you will not
accept such a good offer. And there was poor Mr. Barry, a most worthy
young man, and his second cousin a bishop, too, quite sure of a living, I
should say."
"Another clergyman!" said Vera, with a soft laugh, just lifting up her
hands and letting them fall down again upon her lap, with a little,
half-foreign movement of impatience. "Are there, then, no other men
but the clergy in this country?"
"And a very good thing if there were no others," glared the old lady,
defiantly, over her spectacles.
"I do not like them," said Vera, simply.
"Not like them! Considering that I am the daughter, the widow, and the
mother of clergymen, I consider that remark a deliberate insult to me!"
"Dear Mrs. Daintree, I am sure Vera never meant----" cried Marion,
trembling for fear of a fresh battle.
"Don't interrupt me, Marion; you ought to have more proper pride than
to stand by and hear the Church reviled."
"Vera only said she did not like them."
"No more I do, Marion," said Vera, stifling a yawn--"not when they are
young; when they are old, like Eustace, they are far better; but when
they are young they are all exactly alike--equally harmless when out of
the pulpit, and equally wearisome when in it!"
A few moments of offended silence on the part of the elder lady, during
which she tugs fiercely and savagely at the ragged sock in her
hands--then she bursts forth again.

"You may scorn them as much as you like, but let me tell you that the
life of a clergyman's wife--honoured, respected, and useful--is a more
profitable one than the idle existence which you lead, utterly
purposeless and lazy. You never do one single thing from morning till