The Reverend Cleveland Hutton girded himself in the spirit and faced his lot. They lay before him — the darkened years, empty of the presence of Dolores. Well, he would struggle through them as Dolores would have had him struggle. He would rise each day with the resolve to live its hours as a tribute to her; he would enter each year with the resolve to live its days as a tribute to her. In that future time — poor Cleveland Hutton! there was a part of him which his sorrow had left untouched, — when he should have dedicated a pamphlet to his bishop — after, of course, he had written it; and preferment should have resulted from it, or rather from its dedication; and he should look from an elevation in the Establishment upon the Reverend James presiding yet over the spiritual interests of a country parish — a prospect in which he felt a strong fraternal confidence and a stronger fraternal satisfaction, — he would look back on all he had excellently done, and feel that the having lived the years as though Dolores were at his side, almost brought Dolores back to him.
And the heritage she deemed as greatest — the opening lives she had nurtured — here indeed was a daily thing to be done — the bringing her lisping son to fairness of manhood, and the honouring his mother in his words and deeds.… And the nine-year-old Dolores, with her mother’s voice, and her mother’s face, and her fitting part in her mother’s name of sorrows! — he bowed his head over a breast that heaved; it was yet too soon for the comfort that but proved his loss.
Chapter II
The parsonage lies the same in autumn sunshine. The creeper on the porch is the same in autumn blushing. The oak on the grass stands the same in stirring silence.
But the oak stands the same after its acorns are strewn for many seasons.
Were the tombs so many in the churchyard when last you saw it? — were the familiar ones so grey and lichen-grown? Was the moss so close on the wall which marks its bound? Was the creeper on the porch of the parsonage framing its windows with many-tinted falls? From porch to sill, and from sill to casement, it has crept through its ten years’ journey.
A figure is walking through the churchyard towards the parsonage. A glance is knowledge. It is the figure of the Reverend Cleveland Hutton.
Perhaps it causes surprise that he should still be expending on the village of Millfield his ecclesiastical qualities, when it is remembered that he held the steps to preferment in his hands, in his literary and dedicatory powers. It certainly caused himself surprise; not to speak of bitterness of spirit, and a tendency towards the heretical opinion — more worthy, as it is very justly observed, of a Dissenter — that the Establishment was no better than ordinary, unestablished institutions, in its blundering location of its dignities. And from certain points of view it can hardly seem judicious in Providence, and that foremost of her handmaids, the Establishment, to neglect the advance of a reverend gentleman who has written three pamphlets and dedicated two to his bishop, and not failed to write to the latter on each of the last occasions to request his permission to evince his regard in this manner. It seems so less, when she elevates to a deanery his brother, who has merely printed a booklet entitled “Some Simple Sermons on Great Subjects”—of which attributes, only the former, as the Reverend Cleveland had observed, was to be referred to himself in his creative rather than selective aspect, that is, the aspect in which he was rightly assumed to consider himself revealed — without dedicating it to any one. The folly is clearer, when the former brother has five children and the latter none; though it should perhaps be said in justice to Providence, that study of her dealings suggests, that possession of children appears to her compensation for lack of possession in other respects.
The Reverend Cleveland’s somewhat morose and heavy countenance was more morose than usual, as he wended his way up the sloping path through the churchyard to the parsonage. He was returning from seeing off at the station his brother, the Very Reverend James — a courtesy rendered compulsory by the rarity of meeting resulting from the removal to the deanery. He was also suffering the emotions following the fraternal office of intimating to the latter, that he was aware of the source of the chief ideas in his booklet — some volumes which had been at their joint disposal in boyhood — without reward in signs of incision in the armour of gracious complacence, protecting a very reverend gentleman, taking leave of his barely reverend brother.
But there creeps a change to his face, as he passes to the side of the churchyard which skirts the parsonage garden, and creeps at a moment when change is meet. Yes; it lies in his sight — the tombstone whose writing opens memory’s floodgates—“In remembrance of Dolores, beloved wife of Cleveland Hutton, Vicar of this Parish, who died in the thirty-sixth year of her age.”
But do we forget what was said of the Reverend Cleveland Hutton? He is not a man apart. Do we pity a sorrow hard in time-begotten silence? Let us mark his eyes — the eyes of one fearful of breaking memory’s sleep. Some random words recur; and your thought is a thought you will not voice. But it is a thought which carries truth. There is another mistress at the parsonage.
No; let us check the words which tremble on our lips. Let us not say them. Let us not say, “Poor human love, that it can lightly bury its dead!” Let us hold our peace, and pass on.
Mr Hutton unlatched the gate which led to his garden from the churchyard, and walked up the gravel path to the parsonage. The voice of Mrs Hutton, who stood on the steps awaiting him — a mellowed, mature voice; for the Reverend Cleveland was not a man to succumb with improvidence to earlier maidenhood — greeted him as he came within hearing.
“Well, dear, so you have parted from the Dean? How do you support the thought of six months in the darkness of his absence? You seem to be bearing up fairly well. Did you ever see such popish pomposity? I wonder what would be the result if they made him a bishop?”
The Reverend Cleveland made no reply for a moment. He was not averse to laughing at his very reverend brother; but contingencies are sometimes broached, which hardly call for sanction even in jest.
“I cannot see — from what 1 can gather from James — that a dean’s life is any more arduous or responsible than an ordinary vicar’s,” he observed, with an accent of bitterness, as he walked into his study.
“Well, I certainly never saw James looking in better condition,” said Mrs Hutton; “not that his appearance has ever suggested his wearing himself out with toil.” The Reverend Cleveland readily saw his brother’s ampleness of frame a ground for smiling. “I wonder if he will use his leisure to write another booklet. Perhaps this time it will be ‘Great Sermons on Simple Subjects.’” The Very Reverend James’s isolated literary effort was a recognised subject in Mill-field Parsonage for spare ironic talent.