Fanny absolutely stared. "You go, don't you, Rachel? How we used to wish
for it!"
"You have wished and we have tried," said Rachel, with a sigh.
"Yes, Rachel," said Grace; "but with all drawbacks, all disappointments
in ourselves, it is a great blessing. We would not be without it."
"I could not be satisfied in relinquishing it voluntarily," said Rachel,
"but I am necessarily one of the idle. Were I one of the occupied,
laborare est orare would satisfy me, and that poor governess ought to
feel the same. Think of the physical reaction of body on mind, and tell
me if you could have the barbarity of depriving that poor jaded thing
of an hour's sleep, giving her an additional walk, fasting, in all
weathers, and preparing her to be savage with the children."
"Perhaps it refreshes her, and hinders her from being cross."
"Maybe she thinks so; but if she have either sense or ear, nothing
would so predispose her to be cross as the squeaking of Mr. Touchett's
penny-whistle choir."
"Poor Mr. Touchett," sighed Mrs. Curtis; "I wish he would not make such
ambitious attempts."
"But you like the choral service," said Fanny, feeling as if everything
had turned round. "When all the men of a regiment chant together you
cannot think how grand it is, almost finer than the cathedral."
"Yes, where you can do it," said Rachel, "but not where you can't."
"I wish you would not talk about it," said Grace.
"I must, or Fanny will not understand the state of parties at
Avonmouth."
"Parties! Oh, I hope not."
"My dear child, party spirit is another word for vitality. So you
thought the church we sighed for had made the place all we sighed to see
it, and ourselves too. Oh! Fanny is this what you have been across the
world for?"
"What is wrong?" asked Fanny, alarmed.
"Do you remember our axiom? Build your church, and the rest will take
care of itself. You remember our scraping and begging, and how that good
Mr. Davison helped us out and brought the endowment up to the needful
point for consecration, on condition the incumbency was given to him.
He held it just a year, and was rich, and could help out his bad health
with a curate. But first he went to Madeira, and then he died, and
there we are, a perpetual curacy of £70 a year, no resident gentry but
ourselves, a fluctuating population mostly sick, our poor demoralized
by them, and either crazed by dissent, or heathenized by their former
distance from church. Who would take us? No more Mr. Davisons! There was
no more novelty, and too much smartness to invite self-devotion. So
we were driven from pillar to post till we settled down into this Mr.
Touchett, as good a being as ever lived, working as hard as any two, and
sparing neither himself nor any one else."