Volume I Part 2 (1/2)

”Many such interesting letters were received from our self-sacrificing countrywoman up to the death of her husband and fellow-worker. The sad end of the mission to King M'Bongo has been narrated in the body of this work. But Mrs. Rees was loth to leave her sphere in Africa, and is now happily married to Alonzo P. Jones, an energetic coloured Baptist minister, of Cape Coast Castle.”

There was a universal sigh of relief.

”I wonder whether she wears the ear-rings?” remarked the elder Miss Sleek pertly.

”Perhaps they were the attraction to Alonzo P. Jones,” suggested her sister, as she triumphantly folded and smoothed her second completed towel.

”It's always the way with them,” sighed Miss Grains, who suffered from a complication of romantic tendency and very tight stays. ”It's the money that attracts them, and possibly Mrs. Rees might have been Mrs. Rees to the end of the chapter, if it hadn't been for the ear-rings and the sale of her old clothes for countless flocks and herds.”

”Doubtless Miss Grains speaks from painful experience, my dears,”

retorted Mrs. Dodd, with a severe look at her victim; ”but you may be quite certain that the acquisition of the ear-rings and the sale of the clothes were but the blessed means to an end, a mere spoiling of the Egyptians, that _the work_ might progress.”

”In fact, a robbing of Peter to pay Paul,” suggested Lucy Warrender, but without raising her eyes from her work.

The needle of the archdruidress broke, as she shook her head viciously at the scoffer. ”Ah, my dear, you shouldn't laugh at sacred things,”

said the elder lady.

”But I don't look upon Mrs. Rees as a sacred thing,” cried Lucy, not to be intimidated.

”A person no one would wish to know,” chimed in Miss Sleek.

”Ah, but think how she loved the blacks, and gave herself up to them,”

cooed the vicaress, in a tone intended at the same time to convey instruction and reproof.

”Nasty thing,” retorted Lucy, with biting sarcasm. ”I suppose it was because she loved the blacks and gave herself up to them, that she married the energetic negro ranter with the dreadful name.”

This proved too much for Mrs. Dodd. ”I am surprised and ashamed, Lucy Warrender, at your attempt to depreciate the n.o.ble self-immolation of dear Mrs. Jones. Of course it is a great privilege to be married to a clergyman, a very precious privilege, but when he is a negro and a Baptist--hum--I suppose I must say clergyman, then a woman's life must be indeed a martyrdom.”

”I suppose he beats her?” asked one of the draper's daughters of the experienced Mrs. Wurzel.

”I sincerely trust he does,” broke in the irreverent Lucy.

Just at this moment the door was hurriedly opened, and the Reverend John Dodd entered the room. He was a stout man, his princ.i.p.al characteristics being an intense pleasure in ladies' society, and an obliviousness of the fact that he was no longer the pale slim young curate of earlier days. A life of almost absolute inactivity, which was forced upon him by his wife's jealousy of the rest of the s.e.x, had rendered the muscular young Dodd of Oriel a perfect Daniel Lambert. Little irreverent boys from the village corners were in the habit of shouting ”Jumbo” at the poor vicar. He was accustomed to pursue them, but in vain; a stern chase is proverbially a long chase, and poor Mr. Dodd's futile efforts to capture his persecutors had become a bye-word. But the Reverend John Dodd's weak point, the red rag to the bull, the bee in his bonnet, was his devotion to the fair s.e.x. Handsome Jack Dodd, as he had been once called, in his undergraduate and curate days, had been accustomed to find his attentions very highly appreciated. The habit grew on him, love-sick maidens sighed, and love-sick maidens wept, but all in vain.

Handsome Jack Dodd, a very clerical b.u.t.terfly, flitted from flower to flower. His admiration was freely, openly, ardently expressed for every variety of female beauty. Was Jack Dodd a flirt? Not a bit of it; he was merely a fancier, just as there are pigeon fanciers and poultry fanciers; so Handsome Jack Dodd was a fancier, an admirer, a wors.h.i.+pper of the entire female s.e.x: that is to say, the select specimens of it.

What he could have seen in Canon Drivel's daughter who can say? though, when he married Cecilia Drivel, she was a well-known light of London.

She it was who, in the severity of her cla.s.sic and rather imperial beauty, had posed to Mahlstick, R.A., for his well-known picture of Judith with the head of Holofernes. Alas! for poor Jack Dodd, he had a.s.sisted at the numerous sittings. He it was who had had the honour of sitting (that is to say lying p.r.o.ne on a bedstead of the period) for the headless trunk of Holofernes. To lie p.r.o.ne on a bedstead of any period, and have nothing to do for two mortal hours but gaze on the cla.s.sic proportions of any lady--for Mahlstick was a strict disciplinarian and discouraged conversation--is enough to seal the fate of any man, even if he were of a less inflammable type than Handsome Jack. Miss Drivel was her father's only daughter, and ambitious; but four seasons, during which she was much admired, but never once received a serious offer, had warned the waning beauty not to neglect her opportunities. Miss Drivel was a lady of no imagination and strong will; the interest of her father, a notorious pluralist, was very great: Cecilia Drivel was determined to marry Dodd. She did so, and her victim became her obedient slave, and was duly inducted to the fat living of King's Warren. In all things Jack Dodd, as the weaker vessel, yielded to his wife. He had but one drawback in her eyes, he retained his pa.s.sion, his innocent pa.s.sion, for the fair s.e.x. At the shrine of beauty he remained a constant and ecstatic wors.h.i.+pper. This was Mrs. Dodd's cross, and she had to bear it.

An idle life at King's Warren Parsonage, and frequent dinner parties, for the Reverend John Dodd was a popular man, had caused Handsome Jack to expand into a very Falstaff. Alas, anxiety had had precisely the reverse effect upon the vicar's wife. The once statuesque ”Judith” had disappeared, and Mrs. Dodd's characteristics were now high principle and bone.

”Busy as usual, my dear,” said the vicar to his wife, as he proceeded to welcome each member of the female bevy in turn, devoting perhaps a little more time than was necessary to handsome Miss Warrender and her cousin.

Mrs. Dodd closed the thick black book with a slap. ”I suppose work is over now for the day; you really should not intrude on our Dorcas, John,” she said in a severe tone.

”My dear, it is my duty to encourage my paris.h.i.+oners in good works, nay, it is my pleasure,” replied the parson.

”No one doubts it, Mr. Dodd,” said the vicaress in an icy manner.

But Mrs. Dodd was evidently in a minority. The ladies crowded round their popular vicar. It is easy to spoil a man, and the Reverend John Dodd had been much spoilt by his paris.h.i.+oners, and seemed to like the process.

And now a whispered conference took place between the Misses Sleek.