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The Curate Of Poltons
by
“Were we?” asked Trix with a start. “Good gracious! Where was mamma, Mr. Wynne?”
“On the lawn–watch in hand.”
Miss Trix went slowly upstairs, and there is not the least doubt that something serious passed between her and her mother, for both of them were in the most atrocious of humors that evening; fortunately the curate was not there. He had a Bible class.
The next day Lord Newhaven arrived. I found him on the lawn when I strolled up, after a spell of letter-writing, about four o’clock. Lawn-tennis was the order of the day, and we were all in flannels.
“Oh, here’s Mark,” cried Dora, seeing me.
“Now, Mark, you and Mr. Ives had better play against Trix and Lord Newhaven. That’ll make a very good set.”
“No, no, Mrs. Polton,” said Jack Ives. “They wouldn’t have a chance. Look here, I’ll play with Miss Queenborough against Lord Newhaven and Wynne.”
Newhaven–whose appearance, by the way, though hardly distinguished, was not quite so unornamental as the curate had led us to expect–looked slightly displeased, but Jack gave him no time for remonstrance. He whisked Trix off, and began to serve all in a moment. I had a vision of Lady Queenborough approaching from the house with face aghast. The set went on; and, owing entirely to Newhaven’s absurd chivalry in sending all the balls to Jack Ives instead of following the well-known maxim to “pound away at the lady,” they beat us. Jack wiped his brow, strolled up to the tea-table with Trix, and remarked in exultant tones:
“We make a perfect couple, Miss Queenborough; we ought never to be separated.”
Dora did not ask the curate to dinner that night, but he dropped in about nine o’clock to ask her opinion as to the hymns on Sunday; and finding Miss Trix and Newhaven in the small drawing-room he sat down and talked to them. This was too much for Trix; she had treated him very kindly and had allowed him to amuse her; but it was impossible to put up with presumption of that kind. Difficult as it was to discourage Mr. Ives, she did it, and he went away with a disconsolate, puzzled expression. At the last moment, however, Trix so far relented as to express a hope that he was coming to tennis to-morrow, at which he brightened up a little. I do not wish to be uncharitable–least of all to a charming young lady–but my opinion is that Miss Trix did not wish to set the curate altogether adrift. I think, however, that Lady Queenborough must have spoken again, for when Jack did come to tennis, Trix treated him with the most freezing civility and a hardly disguised disdain, and devoted herself to Lord Newhaven with as much assiduity as her mother could wish. We men, over our pipes, expressed the opinion that Jack Ives’s little hour of sunshine was passed, and that nothing was left to us but to look on at the prosperous uneventful course of Lord Newhaven’s wooing. Trix had had her fun (so Algy Stanton bluntly phrased it) and would now settle down to business.
“I believe, though,” he added, “that she likes the curate a bit, you know.”
During the whole of the next day–Wednesday–Jack Ives kept away; he had, apparently, accepted the inevitable, and was healing his wounded heart by a strict attention to his parochial duties. Newhaven remarked on his absence with an air of relief; and Miss Trix treated it as a matter of no importance; Lady Queenborough was all smiles; and Dora Polton restricted herself to exclaiming, as I sat by her at tea, in a low tone and a propos of nothing in particular, “Oh, well–poor Mr. Ives!”
But on Thursday there occurred an event, the significance of which passed at the moment unperceived, but which had, in fact, most important results. This was no other than the arrival of little Mrs. Wentworth, an intimate friend of Dora’s. Mrs. Wentworth had been left a widow early in life; she possessed a comfortable competence; she was not handsome, but she was vivacious, amusing, and, above all, sympathetic. She sympathized at once with Lady Queenborough in her maternal anxieties, with Trix on her charming romance, with Newhaven on his sweet devotedness, with the rest of us in our obvious desolation–and, after a confidential chat with Dora; she sympathized most strongly with poor Mr. Ives on his unfortunate attachment. Nothing would satisfy her, so Dora told me, except the opportunity of plying Mr. Ives with her soothing balm; and Dora was about to sit down and write him a note, when he strolled in through the drawing-room window, and announced that his cooks mother was ill, and that he should be very much obliged if Mrs. Polton would give him some dinner that evening. Trix and Newhaven happened to enter by the door at the same moment, and Jack darted up to them, and shook hands with the greatest effusion. He had evidently buried all unkindness–and with it, we hoped, his mistaken folly. However that might be, he made no effort to engross Trix, but took his seat most docilely by his hostess–and she, of course, introduced him to Mrs. Wentworth. His behavior, was, in fact, so exemplary, that even Lady Queenborough relaxed her severity, and condescended to cross-examine him on the morals and manners of the old women of the parish. “Oh, the Vicar looks after them,” said Jack; and he turned to Mrs. Wentworth again.