Vicar's wife

“ And although we laugh at Moses and his gross of green spectacles, and the manner in which the Vicar's wife and daughter are imposed on by Miss Wilhelmina Skeggs and Lady Blarney, with their lords and ladies and their tributes to virtue, there is no laughter demanded of us when we find the simplicity and moral dignity of the Vicar meeting and beating the jeers and taunts of the abandoned wretches in the prison. ”

“ The worthy Vicar, deserted by wife and child—beset by an intriguing woman—sinks down before his writing-desk and buries his face in his hands. After a few seconds of silent agony he rises, straightens himself—like a man determined to bear his burden with unbent back—and strides from the room. ”

“ The Vicar’s wife was a clairvoyante, noted for miles around. Cheriton also confessed to powers in this occult science. The Vicar’s wife was only permitted to perform one feat, because the Vicar declared that if she attempted more than one in an evening it excited her so much that she never slept all night. The task allotted to her was that she should take the ribbon from Ponto’s neck and tie it around Goose’s finger. The feat was performed with such exemplary ease that Muffin felt sure that she could do something. Her task was the elementary one of giving Miss Burden a kiss. ”

“ It is impossible to avoid that reflection. Yet let ladies in their turn ask themselves if they are over-scrupulous in their treatment of one man when their affections are set upon another.
He showed Miss Gilletson all the family tombs. He escorted her from the church. Under renewed vows of secrecy he induced her to enter Scarsmoor. Once in the gardens, the good lady was lost. They had no such roses at Nab Grange! Lynborough insisted on sending an enormous bouquet to the Vicar’s wife in Miss Gilletson’s name—and Miss Gilletson grew merry as she pictured the mystification of the Vicar’s wife. ”

“ Vicar drew out her purse.
“There, Mrs. Gummidge,” she said in her tired voice, “I hope this will help you with your rent.” Mrs. Gummidge got up, made a curtsy, and took the coin into her grimy palm.
“Mrs. Vicar, yer proves me an hupholder of the truth, for I says to Mrs. Jones—'I ain't the woman to go round a beggin' and a whimperin' over me 'ardships, but Mrs. Vicar's a lidy. She knows our wants afore we says a word. It's 'er hinstinkt. There, Lizzie, kiss the kind lidy!”
Lizzie put up her pale and pepperminty face, and Mrs. Vicar bent down and performed the task required of her. ”

“ How astonished your people will be! I can see the Vicar reading your letter announcing the news through his double eyeglass, and then handing it over to little Constance and exclaiming, 'Won-derful!' And Constance with her large solemn gray eyes, and her pert nose, and her fresh little mouth; Constance, whom I used to call 'my little wife' when I was grinding away with the Vicar in those jolly days--ah what a glorious old fellow he is!--won't she be surprised when she finds I've got a real wife! And you,--you'll be left alone in chambers, Charley, old boy ”

“ Dale, the Vicar, had in his younger days been a military man, and even in the army had the reputation of being fast. Indeed, so fast had he been, that it was as a ruined spendthrift that he addressed the handsome, but imprudent young widow, who later became his wife. We fear that in the eyes of the admiring lover the lady’s jointure was by no means the least of her attractions. “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” was his watchword, and in less than six weeks from the commencement of their acquaintance the happy pair entered into the bliss of the honey-moon. Matrimony somewhat sobers a man. ”

“ Perhaps the words, “Cast your bread upon the waters,” occurred to her in that moment of intense gratitude to the Power which had led her to this rough, simple woman. She got up, and the tears stood burning in her eyes. Mrs. Gummidge looked up at her, and a shrewd smile twisted the lined face.
“It may be pert, Mrs. Vicar,” she said, “but I'm an hold woman, and I says to you—go 'ome. You and your 'usband looks as though you wanted one another.” Eileen laughed brokenly. ”

“ The Curate's wife and her two daughters and Mrs Jehoram were still playing at tennis on the lawn behind the Vicar's study, playing keenly and talking in gasps about paper patterns for blouses. But the Vicar forgot and came in that way.
They saw the Vicar's hat above the rhododendrons, and a bare curly head beside him. "I must ask him about Susan Wiggin," said the Curate's wife. She was about to serve, and stood with a racket in one hand and a ball between the fingers of the other. "He really ought to have gone to see her—being the Vicar. Not George. I——Ah!" ”

“ I’ve been here a week, and am already endorsing the theory that you can never really know a person until you have lived together beneath the same roof. Before I came, I thought the Vicar as nearly perfect a husband as a man could be, and Delphine about as unsatisfactory a wife. ”

“ Gummidge opened her eyes wide.
“That I will,” she said highly flattered. “That there slattern down-stairs ain't no good. I knows.” The vicar sprang up. His eyes flashed with the energy and eagerness of the “smart young man,” whom he thought had died out of him years ago.
“We'll clear out all this hideous stuff,” he said with a wave in the direction of the plush chairs. “We'll have it all re-papered—a pretty paper with roses. She loves roses. Everything must be fresh and clean. New carpets, new chairs, flowers everywhere. Come this afternoon and we'll begin turning out.” ”

“ A devoted, submissive, and worshipful wife, she modified her worship by considering herself the Vicar’s guardian angel. A parish busybody and tyrant, she never spared herself and could show true womanly kindness to such of her husband’s parishioners as were not of “a froward spirit.”
Unluckily, she had not the power of conciliating, but had, on the contrary, a grand talent for raising up antagonism in unregenerate minds like those of the unfortunate Mabin. ”

“ As the presentation timepiece chimed the hour from the drawing-room chimneypiece, there was a full muster of Mrs. Arbuthnot's dinner guests: the Vicar and his wife, looking rather pinched and formal, their invariable attitude towards public life, yet the Vicar wearing a somewhat worldly pair of shoes of patent leather and equally worldly mauve socks and rather short trousers; Miss Laura Glendinning, our local Diana, who looked horse and talked horse and who would doubtless have eaten horse had it been in the menu ”

“ Mr. Vicar, 'e sends for me and 'e says, 'Mrs. Gummidge, my wife may come back soon, and I wants things made fine for 'er—d'yer understand?—fit for 'er. None of this hold 'eathenish gear. You're a clever woman, Mrs. Gummidge, and I wants you to 'elp me make it hall prutty.' Well, I was doddering with them roomatics, but 'e's a kindly gentleman, so I 'elped 'im. We chose the d'intiest paipers you hever saw—hall roses—and wot with our two 'eads together we've made the place fit for a doochess! And the flowers!” Mrs. ”

“ Captain Arnold obeyed, though unwillingly.
“I don't see any one,” he said as the boat bumped against the ground, “except an ugly old washerwoman and an ugly child in need of washing. I don't suppose those are friends—”
But Eileen had already sprung ashore and was running toward the despised pair with a delighted cry of “Mrs. Gummidge—Lizzie!” Mrs. Gummidge, who had just rescued the too venturesome Lizzie from a watery grave, gave such a start of surprise that she nearly fell in herself.
“Lawks! If it ain't Mrs. Vicar 'erself!” ”

“ Their wives interfered a little too, or rather the one wife who only could do so—the wife of the vicar, who came in beneficently at once, and took poor little Mary, in her first desolation, out of the melancholy house. Mrs Vicar did this without any hesitation, knowing very well that, in all probability, Lady Mary had made no will, and consequently that the poor girl was destitute. A great deal is said about the hardness of the world, and the small consideration that is shown for a destitute dependent in such circumstances. ”

“ A gentleman, who is blessed with a beautiful and lewdly disposed wife, has long been very unhappy and disappointed at the results of his endeavours to become a parent. But returning home from the City, very unexpectedly, the other morning, he caught the Vicar of the parish gamahuching his spouse. ”

“ Nobody can help liking them, but as a Vicar and Vicaress of a respectable country parish I don't quite see them."
"Oh, I do," she said. "He is just one big loving heart, and he hasn't time to think about all the little things that most of us make such a fuss about. And she has thrown herself into it all because she loves him. But she's just like anybody else, and she'll keep him in order."
"Do you know the story of their marriage?" ”

“ So far from shutting the Vicarage door in the young man's face, the Vicar was, positively he was, inclined to open it. He couldn't stand the idea of other people marrying since he wasn't really married himself, and couldn't be as long as Robina persisted in being alive (thus cruelly was he held up by that unscrupulous and pitiless woman) and the idea of any of his daughters marrying was peculiarly disagreeable to him. ”

“ At this the vicar held his peace in despair.
'I'd be a gipsy queen,' chimed in Deborah's treble voice. 'Dost not love the gipsies, Master Vicar? When I am a woman grown I'll run off and travel over the world—I will! Charlie does not love Latin; no more do I love Dame Marjory's lessons.' And forgetting her fear, she nestled up to the vicar's side and gazed up with her laughing dauntless eyes. ”

“ The talk drifted to church and parish matters, and, as soon as he decently could, the curate took his leave, looking very much more depressed and anxious than ever. As he raised the latch of the Vicarage gate, a voice, whose sound he knew only too well, called to him by name; and, turning, he beheld Miss Caroline Cope, the Vicar’s daughter, pursuing him skittishly down the garden path. Miss Caroline was not young, neither was she amiable, and her appearance was quite remarkably unattractive. ”

“ She will be too much for the Vicar. She will marry that man in the end. And if he don't use her properly, she'll hate him as much as she loves him now. She is more like an Italian than an English girl. ”

“ As the time for dinner crept on and no Angel appeared the Vicar's imagination began to trouble him. "He will come in to dinner, surely," said the Vicar, caressing his chin, and beginning to fret about the house upon inconsiderable errands, as his habit was when anything occurred to break his routine. The sun set, a gorgeous spectacle, amidst tumbled masses of purple cloud. The gold and red faded into twilight; the evening star gathered her robe of light together from out the brightness of the sky in the West. ”

“ Only Mary amongst them all sat now with heart and mind attentive to what he said, pursuing not the meaning he intended to convey, but a train of thought, the sudden illumination of an idea which yet she dared not find words in her consciousness to express.
"We must think of her," the Vicar continued, "as a woman passing through the hours of her travail. ”

“ The Trouble of the Barbed Wire.
XXXVIII.
So, ingloriously, ended the Angel's first and last appearance in Society. Vicar and Angel returned to the Vicarage; crestfallen black figures in the bright sunlight, going dejectedly. The Angel, deeply pained that the Vicar was pained. The Vicar, dishevelled and desperate, intercalating spasmodic remorse and apprehension with broken explanations of the Theory of Etiquette. "They do not understand," said the Vicar over and over again. "They will all be so very much aggrieved. ”

“ But my mother lived, and the Vicar, like the King, had come to his own again: and I was five feet eleven in my stockings, and there was urgent need that I should set about pushing my way and putting money in my purse; for our lands had not returned with the King, and there was no more incoming than would serve to keep my mother and sisters in the style of gentlewomen.
"And on that matter," observed the Vicar, stroking his nose with his forefinger, as his habit was in moments of perplexity, "Betty Nasroth's prophecy is of small service. ”

“ She swept round upon the rigid girls. "Come!" The Vicar opened and shut his voiceless mouth. The world hummed and spun about him. There was a whirling of zephyr skirts, four impassioned faces sweeping towards the open door of the passage that ran through the Vicarage. ”

“ The Vicar stood aghast, with his smoking gun in his hand. It was no bird at all, but a youth with an extremely beautiful face, clad in a robe of saffron and with iridescent wings, across whose pinions great waves of colour, flushes of purple and crimson, golden green and intense blue, pursued one another as he writhed in his agony. Never had the Vicar seen such gorgeous floods of colour, not stained-glass windows, not the wings of butterflies, not even the glories of crystals seen between prisms, no colours on earth could compare with them. ”

“ While at the Manor House all was bliss, life dawdled on comfortably enough at the Vicarage, where the good, easy-tempered, hard-working Vicar had begun to be reconciled to the idea that his only son was to be an idler all his life ”

“ The garments, indeed, made quite a terrestrial thing of him; the trousers were puckered transversely, and the shoes a size or so too large.
He was charmingly affable and quite ignorant of the most elementary facts of civilisation. Eating came without much difficulty, and the Vicar had an entertaining time teaching him how to take tea. "What a mess it is! What a dear grotesque ugly world you live in!" said the Angel. "Fancy stuffing things into your mouth! We use our mouths just to talk and sing with. Our world, you know, is almost incurably beautiful. ”