The Clever Woman of the Family [30]
of her life. They seemed to have a sort of natural desire to rub their minds one against the other, and Rachel could not rest without Miss Williams's opinion of all that interested her-- paper, essay, book, or event; but often, when expecting to confer a favour by the loan, she found that what was new to her was already well known in that little parlour, and even the authorship no mystery. Ermine explained this by her correspondence with literary friends of her brother's, and country-bred Rachel, to whom literature was still an oracle unconnected with living agencies, listened, yes, absolutely listened to her anecdotes of sayings and doings, far more like clever memoirs than the experiences of the banks of the Avon. Perhaps there was this immediate disadvantage, that hearing of a more intellectual tone of society tended to make Rachel less tolerant of that which surrounded her, and especially of Mr. Touchett. It was droll that, having so long shunned the two sisters under the impression that they were his protegees and worshippers, she found that Ermine's point of view was quite the rectorial one, and that to venerate the man for his office sake was nearly as hard to Ermine as to herself, though the office was more esteemed. Alison, the reserved, had held her tongue on his antecedents; but Ermine was drawn into explaining that his father had been a minor canon, who had eked out his means with a combination of chaplaincies and parts of curacies, and by teaching at the school where his son was educated. Indignant at the hack estimation in which his father had been held, the son, far more justly viewing both the dignity and duty of his office, was resolved to be respected; but bred up in second rate society, had neither weight, talent, nor manners to veil his aggressive self-assertion, and he was at this time especially trying to the Curtises. Cathedral music had been too natural to him for the endurance of an unchoral service, and the prime labour of his life was to work up his choir; but he was musical by education rather than nature, and having begun his career with such mortal offence to the native fiddlers and singers as to impel them into the arms of dissent, he could only supply the loss from the school by his own voice, of which he was not chary, though using it with better will than taste. The staple of his choir were Rachel's scholars. Her turn had always been for boys, and her class on Sunday mornings and two evenings in the week had long been in operation before the reign of Mr. Touchett. Then two lads, whose paternal fiddles had seceded to the Plymouth Brethren, were suspended from all advantages by the curate, and Rachel was with difficulty withheld from an explosion; but even this was less annoying than the summons at the class-room door every Sunday morning, that, in the midst of her lesson, carried off the chief of her scholars to practise their chants. Moreover, the blame of all imperfect lessons was laid on the "singing for the parson," and all faults in the singing by the tasks for Miss Rachel; and one night, the excellent Zack excused his failure in geography by saying that Mr. Touchett had thrown away his book, and said that it was no better than sacrilege, omitting, however, to mention that he had been caught studying it under his surplice during the lessons. At last, with his usual fatality, the curate fixed the grand practice for the Saturday evenings that were Rachel's great days for instruction in the three R's, and for a sort of popular lecture. Cricket was to succeed the singing, and novelty carried the day, but only by the desertion of her scholars did Rachel learn the new arrangement, and she could hardly credit the assertion that the curate was not aware that it was her day. In fact, it was the only one when the fisher lads were sure not to be at sea, and neither party would yield it. Mr. Touchett was determined not to truckle to dictation from the great house; so when Rachel declared she would have nothing to do with the boys