“You will make him a present of the living instead,” Jack said grimly.
“I do not know why he should get it,” the rector answered, with a frown, “more than any one else.”
“It is the common report that he will,” Jack retorted. “As for that, however——”
But why follow him through all the resources of his art? He put forth every effort—perhaps against his own better judgment, for a man will do for his friend what he will not do for himself—to persuade the rector to recall his decision. And he failed. He succeeded, indeed, in wringing the young clergyman’s heart and making him wince at the thought of his barren future and his curate’s triumph; but there his success ended. He made no progress toward inducing him to change his mind; and presently he found that all the arguments he advanced were met by a set formula, to which the rector seemed to cling as in self-defence.
“It is no good, Jack,” he answered—and if he said it once, he said it half a dozen times—“it is no good! I cannot take any one’s advice on this subject. The responsibility is mine, and I cannot shift it! I must try to do right according to my own conscience!”
Jack did not know that the words were Kate’s, and that every time the rector repeated them he had Kate in his mind. But he saw that they were unanswerable; and when he had listened to them for the sixth time he took up his hat in a huff. “Well, have our own way!” he said. “After all, you are right. It is your business and not mine. Give Clode the living if you like!”
CHAPTER XXIII. THE CURATE HEARS THE NEWS.
Seldom, if ever, had the curate passed a week so harassing as that which was ushered in by the bazaar, and was destined to end—though he did not know this—in the colliery accident. During these seven days he managed to run through a perfect gamut of feelings. He rose each day in a different mood. One day he was hopeful, confident, assured of success; the next fearful, despondent, inclined to give up all for lost. One day he went about telling himself that the rector would not resign; that he would not resign himself in his place; that people were mad to say he would; that men do not resign livings so easily; that the very circumstances of the case must compel the rector to stand his ground. The next he saw everything in a different light. He appreciated the impossibility of a man attacked on so many sides maintaining his position for any length of time. One hour he bitterly regretted that he had cut himself off from his chief, the next he congratulated himself as sincerely on being untrammelled by any but a formal bond. Why, people might even have expected him, had he strongly supported the rector, to refuse the living!