Dr Thorne

CHAPTER XXXII

MR ORIEL

I must now, short­ly–as short­ly as it is in my pow­er to do it–in­tro­duce a new char­ac­ter to my read­er. Men­tion has been made of the rec­to­ry of Gre­shams­bury; but, hith­er­to, no op­por­tu­ni­ty has of­fered it­self for the Rev Caleb Oriel to come up­on the boards.

Mr Oriel was a man of fam­ily and for­tune, who, hav­ing gone to Ox­ford with the usu­al views of such men, had be­come in­oc­ulat­ed there with very High-​Church prin­ci­ples, and had gone in­to or­ders in­flu­enced by a feel­ing of en­thu­si­as­tic love for the priest­hood. He was by no means an as­cetic–such men, in­deed, sel­dom are–nor was he a devo­tee. He was a man well able, and cer­tain­ly will­ing to do the work of a parish cler­gy­man; and when he be­came one, he was ef­fi­ca­cious in his pro­fes­sion. But it may per­haps be said of him, with­out speak­ing slan­der­ous­ly, that his orig­inal call­ing, as a young man, was rather to the out­ward and vis­ible signs of re­li­gion than to its in­ward and spir­itu­al graces.

He de­light­ed in lecterns and cre­dence-​ta­bles, in ser­vices at dark hours of win­ter morn­ings when no one would at­tend, in high waist­coats and nar­row white neck­ties, in chant­ed ser­vices and in­toned prayers, and in all the para­pher­na­lia of An­gli­can for­mal­ities which have giv­en such of­fence to those of our brethren who live in dai­ly fear of the scar­let la­dy. Many of his friends de­clared that Mr Oriel would soon­er or lat­er de­liv­er him­self over body and soul to that la­dy; but there was no need to fear for him: for though suf­fi­cient­ly en­thu­si­as­tic to get out of bed at five am on win­ter morn­ings–he did so, at least, all through his first win­ter at Gre­shams­bury–he was not made of that stuff which is nec­es­sary for a staunch, burn­ing, self-​deny­ing con­vert. It was not in him to change his very sleek black coat for a Ca­puchin’s filthy cas­sock, nor his pleas­ant par­son­age for some dirty hole in Rome. And it was bet­ter so both for him and oth­ers. There are but few, very few, to whom it is giv­en to be a Huss, a Wick­liffe, or a Luther; and a man gains but lit­tle by be­ing a false Huss, or a false Luther,–and his neigh­bours gain less.

But cer­tain lengths in self-​pri­va­tion Mr Oriel did go; at any rate, for some time. He es­chewed mat­ri­mo­ny, imag­in­ing that it be­came him as a priest to do so. He fast­ed rig­or­ous­ly on Fri­days; and the neigh­bours de­clared that he scourged him­self.

Mr Oriel was, it has been said, a man of for­tune; that is to say, when he came of age he was mas­ter of thir­ty thou­sand pounds. When he took it in­to his head to go in­to the Church, his friends bought for him the next pre­sen­ta­tion to the liv­ing at Gre­shams­bury; and, a year af­ter his or­di­na­tion, the liv­ing falling in, Mr Oriel brought him­self and his sis­ter to the rec­to­ry.

Mr Oriel soon be­came pop­ular. He was a dark-​haired, good-​look­ing man, of pol­ished man­ners, agree­able in so­ci­ety, not giv­en to monk­ish aus­ter­ities–ex­cept in the mat­ter of Fri­days–nor yet to the Low-​Church sever­ity of de­meanour. He was thor­ough­ly a gen­tle­man, good-​hu­moured, in­of­fen­sive, and so­cia­ble. But he had one fault: he was not a mar­ry­ing man.

On this ground there was a feel­ing against him so strong as al­most at one time to throw him in­to se­ri­ous dan­ger. It was not on­ly that he should be sworn against mat­ri­mo­ny in his in­di­vid­ual self–he whom fate had made so able to sus­tain the weight of a wife and fam­ily; but what an ex­am­ple he was set­ting! If oth­er cler­gy­men all around should de­clare against wives and fam­ilies, what was to be­come of the coun­try? What was to be done in the ru­ral dis­tricts? The re­li­gious ob­ser­vances, as re­gards wom­en, of a Brigham Young were hard­ly so bad as this!

There were around Gre­shams­bury very many un­mar­ried ladies–I be­lieve there gen­er­al­ly are so round must such vil­lages. From the great house he did not re­ceive much an­noy­ance. Beat­rice was then on­ly just on the verge of be­ing brought out, and was not per­haps in­clined to think very much of a young cler­gy­man; and Au­gus­ta cer­tain­ly in­tend­ed to fly at high­er game. But there were the Miss Athelings, the daugh­ters of a neigh­bour­ing cler­gy­man, who were ready to go all lengths with him in High-​Church mat­ters, ex­cept as that one tremen­dous­ly pa­pal step of celiba­cy; and the two Miss Hes­ter­wells, of Hes­ter­well Park, the younger of whom bold­ly de­clared her pur­pose of civ­iliz­ing the sav­age; and Mrs Opie Green, a very pret­ty wid­ow, with a very pret­ty join­ture, who lived in a very pret­ty house about a mile from Gre­shams­bury, and who de­clared her opin­ion that Mr Oriel was quite right in his view of a cler­gy­man’s po­si­tion. How could a wom­an, sit­uat­ed as she was, have the com­fort of a cler­gy­man’s at­ten­tion if he were to be re­gard­ed just as any oth­er man? She could now know in what light to re­gard Mr Oriel, and would be able with­out scru­ple to avail her­self of his zeal. So she did avail her­self of his zeal,–and that with­out any scru­ple.

And then there was Miss Gush­ing,–a young thing. Miss Gush­ing had a great ad­van­tage over the oth­er com­peti­tors for the civ­iliza­tion of Mr Oriel, name­ly, in this–that she was able to at­tend his morn­ing ser­vices. If Mr Oriel was to be reached in any way, it was prob­able that he might be reached in this way. If any­thing could civ­ilize him, this would do it. There­fore, the young thing, through all one long, te­dious win­ter, tore her­self from her warm bed, and was to be seen–no, not seen, but heard–en­ter­ing Mr Oriel’s church at six o’clock. With in­de­fati­ga­ble as­siduity the re­spons­es were made, ut­tered from un­der a close bon­net, and out of a dark cor­ner, in an en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly fem­inine voice, through the whole win­ter.

Nor did Miss Gush­ing al­to­geth­er fail in her ob­ject. When a cler­gy­man’s dai­ly au­di­ence con­sists of but one per­son, and that per­son is a young la­dy, it is hard­ly pos­si­ble that he should not be­come per­son­al­ly in­ti­mate with her; hard­ly pos­si­ble that he should not be in some mea­sure grate­ful. Miss Gush­ing’s re­spons­es came from her with such fer­vour, and she begged for ghost­ly ad­vice with such ea­ger long­ing to have her scru­ples sat­is­fied, that Mr Oriel had noth­ing for it but to give way to a cer­tain amount of civ­iliza­tion.

By de­grees it came to pass that Miss Gush­ing could nev­er get her fi­nal prayer said, her shawl and boa ad­just­ed, and stow away her nice new Prayer Book with the red let­ters in­side, and the cross on the back, till Mr Oriel had been in­to his vestry and got rid of his sur­plice. And then they met at the church-​porch, and nat­ural­ly walked to­geth­er till Mr Oriel’s cru­el gate­way sep­arat­ed them. The young thing did some­times think that, as the par­son’s civ­iliza­tion pro­gressed, he might have tak­en the trou­ble to walk with her as far as Mrs Yates Um­ble­by’s hall door; but she had hope to sus­tain her, and a firm re­solve to mer­it suc­cess, even though she might not at­tain it.

‘It is not ten thou­sand pities,’ she once said to him, ‘that none here should avail them­selves of the in­es­timable priv­ilege which your com­ing has con­ferred up­on us? Oh, Mr Oriel, I do so won­der at it! To me it is so de­light­ful! The morn­ing ser­vice in the dark church is so beau­ti­ful, so touch­ing!’

‘I sup­pose they think it a bore get­ting up so ear­ly,’ said Mr Oriel.

‘Ah, a bore!’ said Miss Gush­ing, in an en­thu­si­as­tic tone of de­pre­ci­ation. ‘How in­sen­sate they must be! To me it gives a new charm to life. It qui­ets one for the day; makes one so fit­ter for one’s dai­ly tri­als and dai­ly trou­bles. Does it not, Mr Oriel?’

‘I look up­on morn­ing prayer as an im­per­ative du­ty, cer­tain­ly.’

‘Oh, cer­tain­ly, a most im­per­ative du­ty; but so de­li­cious at the same time. I spoke to Mrs Um­ble­by about it, but she said she could not leave the chil­dren.’

‘No: I dare say not,’ said Mr Oriel.

‘And Mr Um­ble­by said busi­ness kept him up so late at night.’

‘Very prob­ably. I hard­ly ex­pect the at­ten­dance of men of busi­ness.’

‘But the ser­vants might come, mightn’t they, Mr Oriel?’

‘I fear that ser­vants sel­dom can have time for dai­ly prayers in church.’

‘Oh, ah, no; per­haps not.’ And then Miss Gush­ing be­gan to be­think her­self of whom should be com­posed the con­gre­ga­tion which it must be pre­sumed that Mr Oriel wished to see around him. But on this mat­ter he did not en­light­en her.

Then Miss Gush­ing took to fast­ing on Fri­days, and made some fu­tile at­tempts to in­duce her priest to give her the com­fort of con­fes­sion­al ab­so­lu­tion. But, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the zeal of the mas­ter waxed cool as that of the pupil waxed hot; and, at last, when the young thing re­turned to Gre­shams­bury from an au­tumn ex­cur­sion which she made with Mrs Um­ble­by to We­st­on-​su­per-​Mare, she found that the de­li­cious morn­ing ser­vices had died a nat­ural death. Miss Gush­ing did not on that ac­count give up the game, but she was bound to fight with no par­tic­ular ad­van­tage in her favour.

Miss Oriel, though a good Church­wom­an, was by no means a con­vert to her broth­er’s ex­trem­ist views, and per­haps gave but scanty cred­it to the Gush­ings, Athelings, and Opie Greens for the sin­cer­ity of their re­li­gion. But, nev­er­the­less, she and her broth­er were staunch friends; and she still hoped to see the day when he might be in­duced to think that an En­glish par­son might get through his parish work with the as­sis­tance of a wife bet­ter than he could do with­out such fem­inine en­cum­brance. The girl whom she se­lect­ed for his bride was not the young thing, but Beat­rice Gre­sham.

And at last it seemed prob­able to Mr Oriel’s near­est friends that he was in a fair way to be over­come. Not that he had be­gun to make love to Beat­rice, or com­mit­ted him­self by the ut­ter­ance of any opin­ion as to the pro­pri­ety of cler­ical mar­riages; but he dai­ly be­came loos­er about his pe­cu­liar tenets, raved less im­mod­er­ate­ly than hereto­fore as to the atroc­ity of the Gre­shams­bury church pews, and was ob­served to take some op­por­tu­ni­ties of con­vers­ing alone with Beat­rice. Beat­rice had al­ways de­nied the im­pu­ta­tion–this had usu­al­ly been made by Mary in their hap­py days–with the ve­he­ment as­sev­er­ations of anger; and Miss Gush­ing had tit­tered, and ex­pressed her­self as sup­pos­ing that great peo­ple’s daugh­ters might be as barefaced as they pleased.

All this had hap­pened pre­vi­ous to the great Gre­shams­bury feud. Mr Oriel grad­ual­ly got him­self in­to a way of saun­ter­ing up to the great house, saun­ter­ing in­to the draw­ing-​room for the pur­pose, as I am sure he thought, of talk­ing with La­dy Ara­bel­la, and then of saun­ter­ing home again, hav­ing usu­al­ly found an op­por­tu­ni­ty for say­ing a few words to Beat­rice dur­ing the vis­it. This went on all through the feud up to the pe­ri­od of La­dy Ara­bel­la’s ill­ness; and then one morn­ing, about a month be­fore the date fixed for Frank’s re­turn, Mr Oriel found him­self en­gaged to Miss Beat­rice Gre­sham.

From the day that Miss Gush­ing heard of it–which was not how­ev­er for some con­sid­er­able time af­ter this–she be­came an In­de­pen­dent Methodist. She could no longer, she said at first, have any faith in any re­li­gion; and for an hour or so she was al­most tempt­ed to swear that she could no longer have any faith in any man. She had near­ly com­plet­ed a worked cov­er for a cre­dence-​ta­ble when the news reached her, as to which, in the young en­thu­si­asm of her heart, she had not been able to re­main silent; it had al­ready been promised to Mr Oriel; that promise she swore should not be kept. He was an apos­tate, she said, from his prin­ci­ples; an ut­ter per­vert; a false, de­sign­ing man, with whom she would nev­er have trust­ed her­self alone on dark morn­ings had she known that he had such grov­el­ling, world­ly in­cli­na­tions. So Miss Gush­ing be­came an In­de­pen­dent Methodist; the cre­dence-​ta­ble cov­er­ing was cut up in­to slip­pers for the preach­er’s feet; and the young thing her­self, more hap­py in this di­rec­tion than she had been in the oth­er, be­came the ar­biter of that preach­er’s do­mes­tic hap­pi­ness.

But this lit­tle his­to­ry of Miss Gush­ing’s fu­ture life is pre­ma­ture. Mr Oriel be­came en­gaged de­mure­ly, nay, al­most silent­ly, to Beat­rice, and no one out of their own im­me­di­ate fam­ilies was at the time in­formed of the mat­ter. It was ar­ranged very dif­fer­ent­ly from those oth­er two match­es–em­bryo, or not em­bryo, those, name­ly, of Au­gus­ta with Mr Mof­fat, and Frank with Mary Thorne. All Barset­shire had heard of them; but that of Beat­rice and Mr Oriel was man­aged in a much more pri­vate man­ner.

‘I do think you are a hap­py girl,’ said Pa­tience to her one morn­ing.

‘In­deed I am.’

‘He is so good. You don’t know how good he is as yet; he nev­er thinks of him­self, and thinks so much of those he loves.’

Beat­rice took her friend’s hand in her own and kissed it. She was full of joy. When a girl is about to be mar­ried, when she may law­ful­ly talk of love, there is no mu­sic in her ears so sweet as the prais­es of her lover.

‘I made up my mind from the first that he should mar­ry you.’

‘Non­sense, Pa­tience.’

‘I did, in­deed. I made up my mind that he should mar­ry; and there were on­ly two to choose from.’

‘Me and Miss Gush­ing,’ said Beat­rice, laugh­ing.

‘No; not ex­act­ly Miss Gush­ing. I had not many fears for Caleb there.’

‘I de­clare she is very pret­ty,’ said Beat­rice, who could af­ford to be good-​na­tured. Now Miss Gush­ing cer­tain­ly was pret­ty; and would have been very pret­ty had her nose not turned up so much, and could she have part­ed her hair in the cen­tre.

‘Well, I am very glad you chose me;–if it was you who chose,’ said Beat­rice, mod­est­ly; hav­ing, how­ev­er, in her own mind a strong opin­ion that Mr Oriel had cho­sen for him­self, and had nev­er any doubt in the mat­ter. ‘And who was the oth­er?’

‘Can’t you guess?’

‘I won’t guess any more; per­haps Mrs Green.’

‘Oh, no; cer­tain­ly not a wid­ow. I don’t like wid­ows mar­ry­ing. But of course you could guess if you would; of course it was Mary Thorne. But I soon saw Mary would not do, for two rea­sons; Caleb would nev­er have liked her well enough nor would she have ev­er liked him.’

‘Not like him! oh I hope she will; I do so love Mary Thorne.’

‘So do I dear­ly; and so does Caleb; but he could nev­er have loved her as he loves you.’

‘But, Pa­tience, have you told Mary?’

‘No, I have told no one, and shall not with­out your leave.’

‘Ah, you must tell her. Tell it her with my best, and kind­est, warmest love. Tell her how hap­py I am, and how I long to talk to her. Tell that I will have her for my brides­maid. Oh! I do hope that be­fore that all this hor­rid quar­rel will be set­tled.

Pa­tience un­der­took the com­mis­sion, and did tell Mary; did give her al­so the mes­sage which Beat­rice had sent. And Mary was re­joiced to hear it; for though, as Pa­tience had said of her, she had nev­er her­self felt any in­cli­na­tion to fall in love with Mr Oriel, she be­lieved him to be one in whose hands her friend’s hap­pi­ness would be se­cure. Then, by de­grees, the con­ver­sa­tion changed from the loves of Mr Oriel and Beat­rice to the trou­bles of Frank Gre­sham and her­self.

‘She says that let what will hap­pen you shall be one of her brides­maids.’

‘Ah, yes, dear Trichy! that was set­tled be­tween us in auld lang syne; but those set­tle­ments are all un­set­tled now, and must be bro­ken. No, I can­not be her brides­maid; but I shall yet hope to see her once be­fore her mar­riage.’

‘And why not be her brides­maid? La­dy Ara­bel­la will hard­ly ob­ject to that.’

‘La­dy Ara­bel­la!’ said Mary, curl­ing up her lip with deep scorn. ‘I do not care that for La­dy Ara­bel­la,’ and she let her sil­ver thim­ble fall from her fin­gers on­to the ta­ble. ‘If Beat­rice in­vit­ed me to her wed­ding, she might man­age as to that; I should ask no ques­tion as to La­dy Ara­bel­la.’

‘Then why not come to it?’

She re­mained silent for a while, and then bold­ly an­swered. ‘Though I do not care for La­dy Ara­bel­la, I do care for Mr Gre­sham:–and I do care for his son.’

‘But the squire al­ways loved you.’

‘Yes, and there­fore I will not be there to vex his sight. I will tell you the truth, Pa­tience. I can nev­er be in that house again till Frank Gre­sham is a mar­ried man, or till I am about to be a mar­ried wom­an. I do not think they have treat­ed me well, but I will not treat them ill.’

‘I am sure you will not do that,’ said Miss Oriel.

‘I will en­deav­our not to do so; and, there­fore, will go to none of their fetes! No, Pa­tience.’ And then she turned her head to the arm of the so­fa, and silent­ly, with­out au­di­ble sobs, hid­ing her face, she en­deav­oured to get rid of the tears un­seen. For one mo­ment she had all but re­solved to pour out the whole truth of her love in­to her friend’s ears; but sud­den­ly she changed her mind. Why should she talk of her own un­hap­pi­ness? Why should she speak of her own love when she was ful­ly de­ter­mined not to speak of Frank’s promis­es.

‘Mary, dear Mary.’

‘Any­thing, but pity, Pa­tience; any­thing but that,’ said she, con­vul­sive­ly, swal­low­ing her sobs, and rub­bing away her tears. ‘I can­not bear that. Tell Beat­rice from me, that I wish her ev­ery hap­pi­ness; and, with such a hus­band, I am sure she will be hap­py. I wish her ev­ery joy; give her my kind­est love; but tell her that I can­not be at her mar­riage. Oh, I should like to see her; not there, you know, but here, in my own room, where I still have lib­er­ty to speak.’

‘But why should you de­cide now? She is not to be mar­ried yet, you know.’

‘Now, or this day twelve­month, can make no dif­fer­ence. I will not go in­to that house again, un­less–but nev­er mind; I will not go in­to it all; nev­er, nev­er again. If I could for­give her for my­self, I could not for­give her for my un­cle. But tell me, Pa­tience, might not Beat­rice now come here? It is so dread­ful to see her ev­ery Sun­day in church and nev­er to speak to her, nev­er to kiss her. She seems to look away from me as though she too had cho­sen to quar­rel with me.’

Miss Oriel promised to do her best. She could not imag­ine, she said, that such a vis­it could be ob­ject­ed to on such an oc­ca­sion. She would not ad­vise Beat­rice to come with­out telling her moth­er; but she could not think that La­dy Ara­bel­la would be so cru­el as to make any ob­jec­tion, know­ing, as she could not but know, that her daugh­ter, when mar­ried, would be at lib­er­ty to choose her own friends.

‘Good-​bye, Mary,’ said Pa­tience. ‘I wish I knew how to say more to com­fort you.’

‘Oh, com­fort! I don’t want com­fort. I want to be let alone.’

‘That’s just it: you are so fe­ro­cious in your scorn, so un­bend­ing, so de­ter­mined to take all the pun­ish­ment that comes in your way.’

‘What I do take, I’ll take with­out com­plaint,’ said Mary; and then they kissed each oth­er and part­ed.