Pastors and Masters quotes

Mr. Merry, a tall, thin man about fifty, leaned back in his chair, and fixed on his pupils his little, pale, screwed up eyes, to which he had the gift of imparting an alluring kindness.

His feelings towards them, affection, disgust, pride and despair, seemed to oust each other over his face.

“Yes, I am sick and tired of this sort of thing. I will not mince matters with you. And get to your seats without upsetting everything on your way, will you please? Oh, who would be a schoolmaster?

What was it, pray, that you had to say, of such importance that it could not wait for a second?”

Johnson, who had been observing that it was wise to ask for thankful hearts for such mercies, was silent.

“Now,” said Mr. Merry, preparing again to bend his head, “we will say grace again, and I hope nothing so humiliating will occur a second time. I shall not speak of the matter, Johnson.”

“Oh, well, Mother, I don’t know anything about the kitchen business and that. But if the marmalade is not right, let us have it right another time. That is all I mean.”

“I do not think you know what you mean, dear.”

“No, Mother, no; very likely I don’t.”

“Why, what is this? What can this be? Why, I do not understand this, boys.”

Miss Basden stepped forward and quickly cut the string, in the manner of one tying gunpowder to a friend at the stake.

“Oh, boys,” said Mrs. Merry. “Oh, boys! Oh, what is this? Oh, you should not spend your money on me. I had no expectation of anything like this. And the very thing that I needed! Some good fairy must have …”

After keeping myself free from seven in the morning, I am not allowed to have a cup of tea in peace. People will be coming in the middle of the night next. If there’s a thing I can’t bear, it’s want of consideration.”

Mr. Merry hastened up the stairs, and at the top caused his face to undergo a change, preparatory to whatever final one might be expedient.

“Oh, this is Mr. Merry! What a shame to call him away from his boys! But I can only stay a moment, so I shall not keep him.”

On his way back through the hall Mr. Merry passed Mr. Herrick without a word.

The quality of Mr. Merry’s that gained him his bread was never alluded to between them.

“Well, there is another one come and gone, Mother. Another ship in the night. One never knows if anything will come of it. And a third of what comes out of one more boy won’t overflow our coffers, will it?”

“This is a good room to come back to,” said Herrick. “That hall and the woman, and poor Merry shuffling up to do his duty! It made me shiver.”

“The sight of duty does make one shiver,” said Miss Herrick. “The actual doing of it would kill one, I think.”

Emily Herrick was a tall, dark woman of fifty, half-sister to Herrick, with a face that somehow recalled an attractive idol’s, iron-grey hair wound in plaits about her head, and a quick, deep voice.

William Masson was a tall, large man in late middle age, with loose limbs and loose clothes, and a weather-beaten, high-boned face.

He seemed an example of all the uneasinesses combined into ease.

His companion was a little, dark man about fifty-six, with eyes sunk deeply in a working face.

“How exacting you all are about your amount of life!” said Bumpus.

“But of course we are all of us too good to die.”

“Well, well, we shall go on, doing things it has been in us to do here, that we have not done,” said Herrick. “Ah, you do not think so, Emily. But this modern thought has you in its grip. You will grow out of it.”

“Well, well, we shall go on, doing things it has been in us to do here, that we have not done,” said Herrick. “Ah, you do not think so, Emily. But this modern thought has you in its grip. You will grow out of it.”

“That will be nice and flexible of me, to grow out of things at fifty. They say that unusual people do develop very late.”

“I can’t understand how people fear death,” said Herrick. “It seems to me the most usual, natural thing, the last thing to be feared.”

And I am not like Nicholas, who is really God’s equal, and not his child at all. I think it is better not to have God than to be like that with him.”

“It is rather empty for him not to be had,” said Bumpus. “He always seems to me a pathetic figure, friendless and childless and set up alone in a miserable way.”

“Yes, he has a touch of William in him,” said Emily. “But you know he isn’t childless. We give even our boys more advantages than that. Mrs. Merry gives it to them.”

I am never bound by convention; and the question arises in the case of any intimate relationship, however good. We could all have moulded ourselves differently.”

“We can’t change the stuff in the mould,” said Masson.

“And Emily is a woman with a good deal of the man in her,” said Bumpus.

“Surely everybody would want it,” said Emily. “I am sure it would be dreadful not to be one. Isn’t it, William?”

“Egotism is a gift, like anything else,” said Herrick.

“Then I grow prouder and prouder of you, darling,” said Emily. “An author and an egotist, and both of them such lovely things.”

“Yes, yes. A short novel,” said Herrick. “I hold no brief for long books, as I say.”

“Real books coming out of our own heads!” said Bumpus. “And not just printed unkindness to other people’s.”

“My first original piece of writing!” said Herrick. “That I should have to say it at seventy! Not just what Richard has said. Ah, I have felt that. Not that I have not done good work in that way.

“It is this that thirty years has brought us to,” said Bumpus.

“I⁠—I think it is a good thing to come to, to keep to,” said Masson, his voice going high. “I think it is the worst thing about intimacy, that it may blunt every edge.”

“Yes, yes. Edges are the only thing,” said Bumpus. “It is odd about Herrick, isn’t it? His writing a book.”

“Then the book must explain itself,” said Masson.

“I believe I am capable of any meanness,” said Bumpus suddenly, “short of actually cheating people of their own.”

“Is there much meanness short of some form of that,” said Masson.

“I think it is a beautiful result,” said Emily, who was a friend of Theresa’s.

“Fancy just not noticing grace after thirty years!”

“Being so free from nervous hurry at the least,” said Bumpus.

“Well, with a farewell sermon, that is just being open and above deceit,” said Emily.

“I shouldn’t trouble about it,” said Theresa. “The people who will hear it have never troubled about you.”

“I should denounce them at the last,” said Bumpus. “No, I should not. I should be very subtle and aloof.”

“There is a great deal of ritualism in the town,” said Miss Lydia, rolling the r. “A great deal. It is so much we have to fight against. But we must be so thankful that we are allowed to do something.”

“The other side seems to be allowed to do more,” said Theresa. “I hope they are more thankful.”

“Lyddie,” said Bumpus, “have you been told about Theresa’s being made on purpose without charity, because of the double share of Peter, with whom she was to become one?”

“I do it and get back before anyone else is out of his seat,” said Theresa.

“It is unworthy of you to expect people to be prompt,” said Bumpus. “Such a cold, self-esteeming thing to be.”

“I am cold and self-esteeming,” said Theresa.

“Be patient with me, my dear. I shall be older and wiser presently.”

“You will be older and not wiser. At our age people get less wise.”

“Yes, that is true, my dear. I shall do my best for you, when the time comes for you to consult me generally.”

“Well, but there is the other side to it all.”

“Of course there is my side. But Nicholas doesn’t see that. He is very thorough. He gives all his attention to one side.”

“You are very devoted to him?” said Theresa.

“No; but you might not miss him the less for that,” said Theresa.

“We miss what we give most to, the most.”

“I do not,” said Emily. “I should miss him the less for that. But I should miss him. That is why I want this book to come off, so as to give him a new start of life.

“Oh, no. For some people never know how nice it is to help,” said Miss Lydia. “We ought to be so sorry for them. Because it is so nice. It is so nice.”

“Perhaps the people are pretending distress out of kindness to you,” said Theresa.

“No. People are not so difficult in their kindness,” said Emily. “And they wouldn’t guess it was nice.”

“Of course, Lydia flirts with her men,” said Theresa. “She may not know it, but she does.”

“I wish I could do difficult things without knowing it,” said Emily. “I always know, when I do them, so clearly and conceitedly.”

“Well, that kind of thing must be at the bottom of most things,” said Mr. Fletcher. “It may as well be put to a good purpose, whether or not people know it.”

“Uncle Peter,” said Francis, “I thank you for your rebuke. One is so prone to get into the way of using lightly words that are to be used in a different spirit. Any check on that is very wholesome, and to me, very welcome.”

“I should not have thought that so many perfect people would be allowed to live together in one house,” said Bumpus.

“Yes, we have been allowed to live together for a long time,” said Miss Lydia, her voice dwelling on the agency. “It has been a happy, happy time. But the end of all good things will come. We must look for it.

“Isn’t it too much?” said Theresa.

“How good we all are at talking without ever saying anything we think!” said Bumpus.

“It is not always politic to say what we think,” said Miss Basden.

“It is not always politic to say what we think,” said Miss Basden.

“It is not so easy,” said Masson.

“Sometimes I suppose it is right to say it, whether or no we like it, and whether or no it is liked,” said Delia.