The Minister's Charge Part 15

"Barker might feel that he was disgraced," said the minister, "but I don't believe that a whole system of ethics would make him suspect that he needed to be reclaimed."

"He makes me suspect that _I_ need to be reclaimed," said Miss Vane, "when he looks at me with those beautiful honest eyes of his."

Mrs. Sewell asked, "Has he seen the decorations yet?"

"Not at all. They are to steal upon him when he comes in to-night. The gas is to be turned very low, and he is to notice everything gradually, so as not to get the impression that things have been done with a design upon him." She laughed in reporting these ideas, which were plainly those of the young girl. "s.h.!.+" she whispered at the end.

A tall girl, with a slim vase in her hand, drifted in upon their group like an apparition. She had heavy black eyebrows with beautiful blue eyes under them, full of an intensity unrelieved by humour.

"Aunty!" she said severely, "have you been telling?"

"Only Mr. and Mrs. Sewell, Sibyl," said Miss Vane. "_Their_ knowing won't hurt. He'll never know it."

"If he hears you laughing, he'll know it's about him. He's in the kitchen, now. He's come in the back way. Do be quiet." She had given her hand without other greeting in her preoccupation to each of the Sewells in turn, and now she pa.s.sed out of the room.

XI.

"What makes Lemuel such a gift," said Miss Vane, in a talk which she had with Sewell a month later, "is that he is so supplementary."

"Do you mean just in the supplementary sense of the term?"

"Well, not in the fifth-wheel sense. I mean that he supplements us, all and singular--if you will excuse the legal exactness."

"Oh, certainly," said Sewell; "I should like even more exactness."

"Yes; but before I particularise I must express my general satisfaction in him as a man-body. I had no idea that man bodies in a house were so perfectly admirable."

"I've sometimes feared that we were not fully appreciated," said Sewell.

"Well?"

"The house is another thing with a man-body in it. I've often gone without little things I wanted, simply because I hated to make Sarah bring them, and because I hated still worse to go after them, knowing we were both weakly and tired. Now I deny myself nothing. I make Lemuel fetch and carry without remorse, from morning till night. I never knew it before, but the man-body seems never to be tired, or ill, or sleepy."

"Yes," said Sewell, "that is often the idea of the woman-body. I'm not sure that it's correct."

"Oh, _don't_ attack it!" implored Miss Vane. "You don't _know_ what a blessing it is. Then, the man-body never complains, and I can't see that he expects anything more in an order than the clear understanding of it.

He doesn't expect it to be accounted for in any way; the fact that you say you want a thing is enough. It is very strange. Then the moral support of the presence of a man-body is enormous. I now know that I have never slept soundly since I have kept house alone--that I have never pa.s.sed a night without hearing burglars or smelling fire."

"And now?"

"And now I shouldn't mind a legion of burglars in the house; I shouldn't mind being burned in my bed every night. I feel that Lemuel is in charge, and that nothing can happen."

"Is he really so satisfactory?" asked Sewell, exhaling a deep relief.

"He is, indeed," said Miss Vane. "I couldn't, exaggerate it."

"Well, well! Don't try. We are finite, after all, you know. Do you think it can last?"

"I have thought of that," answered Miss Vane. "I don't see why it shouldn't last. I have tried to believe that I did a foolish thing in coming to your rescue, but I can't see that I did. I don't see why it shouldn't last as long as Lemuel chooses. And he seems perfectly contented with his lot. He doesn't seem to regard it as domestic service, but as domestication, and he patronises our inefficiency while he spares it. His common-sense is extraordinary--it's exemplary; it almost makes one wish to have common-sense one's-self." They had now got pretty far from the original proposition, and Sewell returned to it with the question, "Well, and how does he supplement you singularly?"

"Oh! oh, yes!" said Miss Vane. "I could hardly tell you without going into too deep a study of character."

"I'm rather fond of that," suggested the minister.

"Yes, and I've no doubt we should all work very nicely into a sermon as ill.u.s.trations; but I can't more than indicate the different cases. In the first place, Jane's forgetfulness seems to be growing upon her, and since Lemuel came she's abandoned herself to ecstasies of oblivion."

"Yes?"

"Yes. She's quite given over remembering _any_thing, because she knows that he will remember _every_thing."

"I see. And you?"

"Well, you have sometimes thought I was a little rash."

"A little? Did I think it was a little?"

"Well, a good deal. But it was all nothing to what I've been since Lemuel came. I used to keep some slight check upon myself for Sibyl's sake; but I don't now. I know that Lemuel is there to temper, to delay, to modify the effect of every impulse, and so I am all impulse now. And I've quite ceased to rule my temper. I know that Lemuel has self-control enough for all the tempers in the house, and so I feel perfectly calm in my wildest transports of fury."

"I understand," said Sewell. "And does Sibyl permit herself a similar excess in her fancies and ambitions?"

"Quite," said Miss Vane. "I don't know that she consciously relies upon Lemuel to supplement her, any more than Jane does; but she must be unconsciously aware that no extravagance of hers can be dangerous while Lemuel is in the house."

"Unconsciously aware is good. She hasn't got tired of reforming him yet?"

"I don't know. I sometimes think she wishes he had gone a little farther in crime. Then his reformation would be more obvious."

"Yes; I can appreciate that. Does she still look after his art and literature?"

"That phase has changed a little. She thinks now that he ought to be stimulated, if anything--that he ought to read George Eliot. She's put _Middlemarch_ and _Romola_ on his shelf. She says that he looks like t.i.to Malemma."

Sewell rose. "Well, I don't see but what your supplement is a very demoralising element. I shall never dare to tell Mrs. Sewell what you've said."

"Oh, she knows it," cried Miss Vane. "We've agreed that you will counteract any temptation that Lemuel may feel to abuse his advantages by the ferociously self-denying sermons you preach at him every Sunday."

"Do I preach at him? Do you notice it?" asked Sewell nervously.

"Notice it?" laughed Miss Vane. "I should think your whole congregation would notice it. You seem to look at n.o.body else."

"I know it! Since he began to come, I can't keep my eyes off him. I do deliver my sermons at him. I believe I write them at him! He has an eye of terrible and exacting truth. I feel myself on trial before him. He holds me up to a standard of sincerity that is killing me. Mrs. Sewell was bad enough; I was reasonably bad myself; but this! Couldn't you keep him away? Do you think it's exactly decorous to let your man-servant occupy a seat in your family pew? How do you suppose it looks to the Supreme Being?"

Miss Vane was convulsed. "I had precisely those misgivings! But Lemuel hadn't. He asked me what the number of our pew was, and I hadn't the heart--or else I hadn't the face--to tell him he mustn't sit in it. How could I? Do you think it's so very scandalous?"

"I don't know," said Sewell. "It may lead to great abuses. If we tacitly confess ourselves equal in the sight of G.o.d, how much better are we than the Roman Catholics?"

Miss Vane could not suffer these ironies to go on.