Scenes of Clerical Life Page 2

stick to's text; and every now and then he flounders about like a sheep as has

  cast itself, and can't get on'ts legs again. You wouldn't like that, Mrs Patten,

  if you was to go to church now?"

  "Eh, dear," said Mrs Patten, falling back in her chair, and lifting up her

  little withered hands, "what 'ud Mr Gilfil say, if he was worthy to know the

  changes as have come about i' the church these last ten years? I don't

  understand these new sort o' doctrines. When Mr Barton comes to see me, he talks

  about nothing but my sins and my need o' marcy. Now, Mr Hackit, I've never been

  a sinner. From the fust beginning, when I went into service, I al'ys did my duty

  by my emplyers. I was a good wife as any's in the county�never aggravated my

  husband. The cheese-factor used to say my cheese was al'ys to be depended on.

  I've known women, as their cheeses swelled a shame to be seen, when their

  husbands had counted on the cheese-money to make up their rent; and yet they'd

  three gowns to my one. If I'm not to be saved, I know a many as are in a bad

  way. But it's well for me as I can't go to church any longer, for if th' old

  singers are to be done away with, there'll be nothing left as it was in Mr

  Patten's time; and what's more, I hear you've settled to pull the church down

  and build it up new?"

  Now the fact was that the Rev. Amos Barton, on his last visit to Mrs Patten, had

  urged her to enlarge her promised subscription of twenty pounds, representing to

  her that she was only a steward of her riches, and that she could not spend them

  more for the glory of God than by giving a heavy subscription towards the

  rebuilding of Shepperton church�a practical precept which was not likely to

  smooth the way to her acceptance of his theological doctrine. Mr Hackit, who had

  more doctrinal enlightenment than Mrs Patten, had been a little shocked by the

  heathenism of her speech, and was glad of the new turn given to the subject by

  this question, addressed to him as churchwarden and an authority in all

  parochial matters.

  "Ah," he answered, "the parson's boddered us into it at last, and we're to begin

  pulling down this spring. But we haven't got money enough yet. I was for waiting

  till we'd made up the sum, and, for my part, I think the congregation's fell off

  o' late; though Mr Barton says that's because there's been no room for the

  people when they've come. You see, the congregation got so large in Parry's

  time, the people stood in th' aisles; but there's never any crowd now, as I can

  see."

  "Well," said Mrs Hackit, whose good-nature began to act now that it was a little

  in contradiction with the dominant tone of the conversation, "I like Mr Barton.

  I think he's a good sort o' man, for all he's not overburthen'd i' th' upper

  story; and his wife's as nice a lady-like woman as I'd wish to see. How nice she

  keeps her children! and little enough money to do't with; and a delicate

  creatur'�six children, and another a-coming. I don't know how they make both

  ends meet, I'm sure, now her aunt has left 'em. But I sent 'em a cheese and a

  sack o' potatoes last week; that's something towards filling the little mouths."

  "Ah!" said Mr Hackit, "and my wife makes Mr Barton a good stiff glass o'

  brandy-and-water, when he comes in to supper after his cottage preaching. The

  parson likes it; it puts a bit o' colour into 's face, and makes him look a deal

  handsomer."

  This allusion to brandy-and-water suggested to Miss Gibbs the introduction of

  the liquor decanters, now that the tea was cleared away; for in bucolic society

  five-and-twenty years ago, the human animal of the male sex was understood to be

  perpetually athirst, and "something to drink" was as necessary a "condition of

  thought" as Time and Space.

  "Now, that cottage preaching," said Mr Pilgrim, mixing himself a strong glass of

  'cold without,' "I was talking about it to our Parson Ely the other day, and he

  doesn't approve of it at all. He said it did as much harm as good to give a too

  familiar aspect to religious teaching. That was what Ely said�it does as much

  harm as good to give a too familiar aspect to religious teaching."

  Mr Pilgrim generally spoke with an intermittent kind of splutter; indeed, one of

  his patients had observed that it was a pity such a clever man had a "'pediment"

  in his speech. But when he came to what he conceived the pith of his argument or

  the point of his joke, he mouthed out his words with slow emphasis; as a hen,

  when advertising her accouchement, passes at irregular intervals from pianissimo

  semiquavers to fortissimo crotchets. He thought this speech of Mr Ely's

  particularly metaphysical and profound, and the more decisive of the question

  because it was a generality which represented no particulars to his mind.

  "Well, I don't know about that," said Mrs Hackit, who had always the courage of

  her opinion, "but I know, some of our labourers and stockingers as used never to

  come to church, come to the cottage, and that's better than never hearing

  anything good from week's end to week's end. And there's that Track Society as

  Mr Barton has begun �I've seen more o' the poor people with going tracking, than

  all the time I've lived in the parish before. And there'd need be something done

  among 'em; for the drinking at them Benefit Clubs is shameful. There's hardly a

  steady man or steady woman either, but what's a dissenter."

  During this speech of Mrs Hackit's, Mr Pilgrim had emitted a succession of

  little snorts, something like the treble grunts of a guinea-pig, which were

  always with him the sign of suppressed disapproval. But he never contradicted

  Mrs Hackit �a woman whose "pot luck" was always to be relied on, and who on her

  side had unlimited reliance on bleeding, blistering, and draughts.

  Mrs Patten, however, felt equal disapprobation, and had no reasons for

  suppressing it.

  "Well," she remarked, "I've heared of no good from interfering with one's

  neighbours, poor or rich. And I hate the sight o' women going about trapesing

  from house to house in all weathers, wet or dry, and coming in with their

  petticoats dagged and their shoes all over mud. Janet wanted to join in the

  tracking, but I told her I'd have nobody tracking out o' my house; when I'm

  gone, she may do as she likes. I never dagged my petticoats in my life, and I've

  no opinion o' that sort o' religion."

  "No," said Mr Hackit, who was fond of soothing the acerbities of the feminine

  mind with a jocose compliment, "you held your petticoats so high, to show your

  tight ankles: it isn't everybody as likes to show her ankles."

  This joke met with general acceptance, even from the snubbed Janet, whose ankles

  were only tight in the sense of looking extremely squeezed by her boots. But

  Janet seemed always to identify herself with her aunt's personality, holding her

  own under protest.

  Under cover of the general laughter, the gentlemen replenished their glasses, Mr

  Pilgrim attempting to give his the character of a stirrup-cup by observing that

  he "must be going." Miss Gibbs seized this opportunity of telling Mrs Hackit

  that she suspected Betty, the dairymaid, of frying the
best bacon for the

  shepherd, when he sat up with her to "help brew;" whereupon Mrs Hackit replied,

  that she had always thought Betty false; and Mrs Patten said, there was no bacon

  stolen when she was able to manage. Mr Hackit, who often complained that he

  "never saw the like to women with their maids�he never had any trouble with his

  men," avoided listening to this discussion, by raising the question of vetches

  with Mr Pilgrim. The stream of conversation had thus diverged; and no more was

  said about the Rev. Amos Barton, who is the main object of interest to us just

  now. So we may leave Cross Farm without waiting till Mrs Hackit, resolutely

  donning her clogs and wrappings, renders it incumbent on Mr Pilgrim also to

  fulfil his frequent threat of going.

  CHAPTER II.

  It was happy for the Rev. Amos Barton that he did not, like us, overhear the

  conversation recorded in the last chapter. Indeed, what mortal is there of us,

  who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the

  picture he presents to himself of his own doings, with the picture they make on

  the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the

  air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty

  us of that windy self-subsistence! The very capacity for good would go out of

  us. For, tell the most impassioned orator, suddenly, that his wig is awry, or

  his shirt-lap hanging out, and that he is tickling people by the oddity of his

  person, instead of thrilling them by the energy of his periods, and you would

  infallibly dry up the spring of his eloquence. That is a deep and wide saying,

  that no miracle can be wrought without faith�without the worker's faith in

  himself, as well as the recipient's faith in him. And the greater part of the

  worker's faith in himself is made up of the faith that others believe in him.

  Let me be persuaded that my neighbour Jenkins considers me a blockhead, and I

  shall never shine in conversation with him any more. Let me discover that the

  lovely Phoebe thinks my squint intolerable, and I shall never be able to fix her

  blandly with my disengaged eye again.

  Thank heaven, then, that a little illusion is left to us, to enable us to be

  useful and agreeable� that we don't know exactly what our friends think of

  us�that the world is not made of looking-glass, to show us just the figure we

  are making, and just what is going on behind our backs! By the help of dear

  friendly illusion, we are able to dream that we are charming�and our faces wear

  a becoming air of self-possession; we are able to dream that other men admire

  our talents�and our benignity is undisturbed; we are able to dream that we are

  doing much good�and we do a little.

  Thus it was with Amos Barton on that very Thursday evening, when he was the

  subject of the conversation at Cross Farm. He had been dining at Mr Farquhar's,

  the secondary squire of the parish, and, stimulated by unwonted gravies and port

  wine, had been delivering his opinion on affairs parochial and otherwise with

  considerable animation. And he was now returning home in the moonlight�a little

  chill, it is true, for he had just now no greatcoat compatible with clerical

  dignity, and a fur boa round one's neck, with a waterproof cape over one's

  shoulders, doesn't frighten away the cold from one's legs; but entirely

  unsuspicious, not only of Mr Hackit's estimate of his oratorical powers, but

  also of the critical remarks passed on him by the Misses Farquhar as soon as the

  drawing-room door had closed behind him. Miss Julia had observed that she never

  heard any one sniff so frightfully as Mr Barton did�she had a great mind to

  offer him her pocket-handkerchief; and Miss Arabella wondered why he always said

  he was going for to do a thing. He, excellent man! was meditating fresh pastoral

  exertions on the morrow; he would set on foot his lending library, in which he

  had introduced some books that would be a pretty sharp blow to the

  dissenters�one especially, purporting to be written by a working man who, out of

  pure zeal for the welfare of his class, took the trouble to warn them in this

  way against those hypocritical thieves, the dissenting preachers. The Rev. Amos

  Barton profoundly believed in the existence of that working man, and had

  thoughts of writing to him. Dissent, he considered, would have its head bruised

  in Shepperton, for did he not attack it in two ways? He preached Low-Church

  doctrine�as evangelical as anything to be heard in the Independent Chapel; and

  he made a High-Church assertion of ecclesiastical powers and functions. Clearly,

  the Dissenters would feel that "the parson" was too many for them. Nothing like

  a man who combines shrewdness with energy. The wisdom of the serpent, Mr Barton

  considered, was one of his strong points.

  Look at him as he winds through the little churchyard! The silver light that

  falls aslant on church and tomb, enables you to see his slim black figure, made

  all the slimmer by tight pantaloons, as it flits past the pale gravestones. He

  walks with a quick step, and is now rapping with sharp decision at the vicarage

  door. It is opened without delay by the nurse, cook, and housemaid, all at

  once�that is to say, by the robust maid-of-all-work, Nanny; and as Mr Barton

  hangs up his hat in the passage, you see that a narrow face of no particular

  complexion�even the small-pox that has attacked it seems to have been of a

  mongrel, indefinite kind�with features of no particular shape, and an eye of no

  particular expression, is surmounted by a slope of baldness gently rising from

  brow to crown. You judge him, rightly, to be about forty. The house is quiet,

  for it is half-past ten, and the children have long been gone to bed. He opens

  the sitting-room door, but instead of seeing his wife, as he expected, stitching

  with the nimblest of fingers by the light of one candle, he finds her dispensing

  with the light of a candle altogether. She is softly pacing up and down by the

  red firelight, holding in her arms little Walter, the year-old baby, who looks

  over her shoulder with large wide-open eyes, while the patient mother pats his

  back with her soft hand, and glances with a sigh at the heap of large and small

  stockings lying unmended on the table.

  She was a lovely woman�Mrs Amos Barton; a large, fair, gentle Madonna, with

  thick, close chestnut curls beside her well-rounded cheeks, and with large,

  tender, short-sighted eyes. The flowing lines of her tall figure made the

  limpest dress look graceful, and her old frayed black silk seemed to repose on

  her bust and limbs with a placid elegance and sense of distinction, in strong

  contrast with the uneasy sense of being no fit, that seemed to express itself in

  the rustling of Mrs Farquhar's gros de Naples. The caps she wore would have been

  pronounced, when off her head, utterly heavy and hideous�for in those days even

  fashionable caps were large and floppy; but surmounting her long arched neck,

  and mingling their borders of cheap lace and ribbon with her chestnut curls,

  they seemed miracles of successful millinery. Among strangers she was shy and

  tremulo
us as a girl of fifteen; she blushed crimson if any one appealed to her

  opinion; yet that tall, graceful, substantial presence was so imposing in its

  mildness, that men spoke to her with an agreeable sensation of timidity.

  Soothing, unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood! which supersedes all

  acquisitions, all accomplishments. You would never have asked, at any period of

  Mrs Amos Barton's life, if she sketched or played the piano. You would even

  perhaps have been rather scandalised if she had descended from the serene

  dignity of being to the assiduous unrest of doing. Happy the man, you would have

  thought, whose eye will rest on her in the pauses of his fireside reading�whose

  hot aching forehead will be soothed by the contact of her cool soft hand�who

  will recover himself from dejection at his mistakes and failures in the loving

  light of her unreproaching eyes! You would not, perhaps, have anticipated that

  this bliss would fall to the share of precisely such a man as Amos Barton, whom

  you have already surmised not to have the refined sensibilities for which you

  might have imagined Mrs Barton's qualities to be destined by pre-established

  harmony. But I, for one, do not grudge Amos Barton this sweet wife. I have all

  my life had a sympathy for mongrel ungainly dogs, who are nobody's pets; and I

  would rather surprise one of them by a pat and a pleasant morsel, than meet the

  condescending advances of the loveliest Skye-terrier who has his cushion by my

  lady's chair. That, to be sure, is not the way of the world: if it happens to

  see a fellow of fine proportions and aristocratic mien, who makes no faux pas,

  and wins golden opinions from all sorts of men, it straightway picks out for him

  the loveliest of unmarried women, and says, There would be a proper match! Not

  at all, say I: let that successful, well-shapen, discreet and able gentleman put

  up with something less than the best in the matrimonial department; and let the

  sweet woman go to make sunshine and a soft pillow for the poor devil whose legs

  are not models, whose efforts are often blunders, and who in general gets more

  kicks than halfpence. She�the sweet woman �will like it as well; for her sublime

  capacity of loving will have all the more scope; and I venture to say, Mrs

  Barton's nature would never have grown half so angelic if she had married the

  man you would perhaps have had in your eye for her �a man with sufficient income

  and abundant personal �clat. Besides, Amos was an affectionate husband, and, in

  his way, valued his wife as his best treasure.

  But now he has shut the door behind him, and said, "Well, Milly!"

  "Well, dear!" was the corresponding greeting, made eloquent by a smile.

  "So that young rascal won't go to sleep! Can't you give him to Nanny?"

  "Why, Nanny has been busy ironing this evening; but I think I'll take him to her

  now." And Mrs Barton glided towards the kitchen, while her husband ran up-stairs

  to put on his maize-coloured dressing-gown, in which costume he was quietly

  filling his long pipe when his wife returned to the sitting-room. Maize is a

  colour that decidedly did not suit his complexion, and it is one that soon

  soils; why, then, did Mr Barton select it for domestic wear? Perhaps because he

  had a knack of hitting on the wrong thing in garb as well as in grammar.

  Mrs Barton now lighted her candle, and seated herself before her heap of

  stockings. She had something disagreeable to tell her husband, but she would not

  enter on it at once.

  "Have you had a nice evening, dear?"

  "Yes, pretty well. Ely was there to dinner, but went away rather early. Miss

  Arabella is setting her cap at him with a vengeance. But I don't think he's much

  smitten. I've a notion Ely's engaged to some one at a distance, and will

  astonish all the ladies who are languishing for him here, by bringing home his

  bride one of these days. Ely's a sly dog; he'll like that."