Vera Nevill | Page 6

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 night."
"What shall I do? Shall I help you to darn Eustace's socks?" reaching at one of them out of the basket.
Mrs. Daintree wrenched it angrily from her hand.
"Good gracious! as if you could! What a bungle it would be. Why, I never saw you with a piece of work in your hand in my life. I dare say you could not even thread a needle."
"I am quite sure I have never threaded one yet," laughed Vera, lazily. "I might try; but you see you won't let me be useful, so I had better resign myself to idleness." And then she rose and took her hat, and went out through the French window, out among the fallen yellow leaves, leaving the other women to discuss the vexed problem of her existence.
She discussed it to herself as she walked dreamily along under the trees in the lane beyond the garden, her head bent, and her eyes fixed upon the ground; she swung her hat idly in her hand, for it was warm for the time of year, and the gold-brown leaves fluttered down about her head and rustled under the