Scenes of Clerical Life Page 5

Later on in the evening, while John was removing the tea-things from the

  drawing-room, and brushing the crumbs from the table-cloth with an accompanying

  hiss, such as he was wont to encourage himself with in rubbing down Mr

  Bridmain's horse, the Rev. Amos Barton drew from his pocket a thin green-covered

  pamphlet, and, presenting it to the Countess, said,�

  "You were pleased, I think, with my sermon on Christmas Day. It has been printed

  in The Pulpit, and I thought you might like a copy."

  "That indeed I shall. I shall quite value the opportunity of reading that

  sermon. There was such depth in it!�such argument! It was not a sermon to be

  heard only once. I am delighted that it should become generally known, as it

  will be, now it is printed in The Pulpit."

  "Yes," said Milly innocently, "I was so pleased with the editor's letter." And

  she drew out her little pocket-book, where she carefully treasured the editorial

  autograph, while Mr Barton laughed and blushed, and said, "Nonsense, Milly!"

  "You see," she said, giving the letter to the Countess, "I am very proud of the

  praise my husband gets."

  The sermon in question, by the by, was an extremely argumentative one on the

  Incarnation; which, as it was preached to a congregation not one of whom had any

  doubt of that doctrine, and to whom the Socinians therein confuted were as

  unknown as the Arimaspians, was exceedingly well adapted to trouble and confuse

  the Sheppertonian mind.

  "Ah," said the Countess, returning the editor's letter, "he may well say he will

  be glad of other sermons from the same source. But I would rather you should

  publish your sermons in an independent volume, Mr Barton; it would be so

  desirable to have them in that shape. For instance, I could send a copy to the

  Dean of Radborough. And there is Lord Blarney, whom I knew before he was

  chancellor. I was a special favourite of his, and you can't think what sweet

  things he used to say to me. I shall not resist the temptation to write to him

  one of these days sans fa�on, and tell him how he ought to dispose of the next

  vacant living in his gift."

  Whether Jet the spaniel, being a much more knowing dog than was suspected,

  wished to express his disapproval of the Countess's last speech, as not

  accordant with his ideas of wisdom and veracity, I cannot say; but at this

  moment he jumped off her lap, and turning his back upon her, placed one paw on

  the fender, and held the other up to warm, as if affecting to abstract himself

  from the current of conversation.

  But now Mr Bridmain brought out the chessboard, and Mr Barton accepted his

  challenge to play a game, with immense satisfaction. The Rev. Amos was very fond

  of chess, as most people are who can continue through many years to create

  interesting vicissitudes in the game, by taking longmeditated moves with their

  knights, and subsequently discovering that they have thereby exposed their

  queen.

  Chess is a silent game; and the Countess's chat with Milly is in quite an

  under-tone�probably relating to women's matters that it would be impertinent for

  us to listen to; so we will leave Camp Villa, and proceed to Milby Vicarage,

  where Mr Farquhar has sat out two other guests with whom he has been dining at

  Mr Ely's, and is now rather wearying that reverend gentleman by his protracted

  small-talk.

  Mr Ely was a tall, dark-haired, distinguished-looking man of three-and-thirty.

  By the laity of Milby and its neighbourhood he was regarded as a man of quite

  remarkable powers and learning, who must make a considerable sensation in London

  pulpits and drawing-rooms on his occasional visits to the metropolis; and by his

  brother clergy he was regarded as a discreet and agreeable fellow. Mr Ely never

  got into a warm discussion; he suggested what might be thought, but rarely said

  what he thought himself; he never let either men or women see that he was

  laughing at them, and he never gave any one an opportunity of laughing at him.

  In one thing only he was injudicious. He parted his dark wavy hair down the

  middle; and as his head was rather flat than otherwise, that style of coiffure

  was not advantageous to him.

  Mr Farquhar, though not a parishioner of Mr Ely's, was one of his warmest

  admirers, and thought he would make an unexceptionable son-in-law, in spite of

  his being of no particular "family." Mr Farquhar was susceptible on the point of

  "blood,"�his own circulating fluid, which animated a short and somewhat flabby

  person, being, he considered, of very superior quality.

  "By the by," he said, with a certain pomposity counteracted by a lisp, "what an

  ath Barton makth of himthelf, about that Bridmain and the Counteth, ath she

  callth herthelf. After you were gone the other evening, Mithith Farquhar wath

  telling him the general opinion about them in the neighbourhood, and he got

  quite red and angry. Bleth your thoul, he believth the whole thtory about her

  Polish huthband and hith wonderful ethcapeth; and ath for her�why, he thinkth

  her perfection, a woman of motht refined feelingth, and no end of thtuff."

  Mr Ely smiled. "Some people would say our friend Barton was not the best judge

  of refinement. Perhaps the lady flatters him a little, and we men are

  susceptible. She goes to Shepperton church every Sunday�drawn there, let us

  suppose, by Mr Barton's eloquence."

  "Pshaw," said Mr Farquhar: "Now, to my mind, you have only to look at that woman

  to thee what she ith�throwing her eyth about when she comth into church, and

  drething in a way to attract attention. I should thay, she'th tired of her

  brother Bridmain, and looking out for another brother with a thtronger family

  likeneth. Mithith Farquhar ith very fond of Mithith Barton, and ith quite

  dithtrethed that she should athothiate with thuch a woman, tho she attacked him

  on the thubject purpothly. But I tell her it'th of no uthe, with a pig-headed

  fellow like him. Barton'th well-meaning enough, but tho contheited. I've left

  off giving him my advithe."

  Mr Ely smiled inwardly and said to himself, "What a punishment!" But to Mr

  Farquhar he said, "Barton might be more judicious, it must be confessed." He was

  getting tired, and did not want to develop the subject.

  "Why, nobody vithit-th them but the Bartonth," continued Mr Farquhar, "and why

  should thuch people come here, unleth they had particular reathonth for

  preferring a neighbourhood where they are not known? Pooh! it lookth bad on the

  very fathe of it. You called on them, now; how did you find them?"

  "O!�Mr Bridmain strikes me as a common sort of man, who is making an effort to

  seem wise and well-bred. He comes down on one tremendously with political

  information, and seems knowing about the king of the French. The Countess is

  certainly a handsome woman, but she puts on the grand air a little too

  powerfully. Woodcock was immensely taken with her, and insisted on his wife's

  calling on her, and asking her to dinner; but I think Mrs Woodcock turned

  restive after the first visit, and wouldn't invite her again."

  "Ha, ha! Woodcock hath alwayth a thoft place in hith heart for a pretty fathe.

  I
t 'th odd how he came to marry that plain woman, and no fortune either."

  "Mysteries of the tender passion," said Mr Ely. "I am not initiated yet, you

  know."

  Here Mr Farquhar's carriage was announced, and as we have not found his

  conversation particularly brilliant under the stimulus of Mr Ely's exceptionable

  presence, we will not accompany him home to the less exciting atmosphere of

  domestic life.

  Mr Ely threw himself with a sense of relief into his easiest chair, set his feet

  on the hobs, and in this attitude of bachelor enjoyment began to read Bishop

  Jebb's Memoirs.

  CHAPTER IV.

  I am by no means sure that if the good people of Milby had known the truth about

  the Countess Czerlaski, they would not have been considerably disappointed to

  find that it was very far from being as bad as they imagined. Nice distinctions

  are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to

  discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really

  belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good

  for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to

  modify that opinion.

  Besides, think of all the virtuous declamation, all the penetrating observation,

  which had been built up entirely on the fundamental position that the Countess

  was a very objectionable person indeed, and which would be utterly overturned

  and nullified by the destruction of that premiss. Mrs Phipps, the banker's wife,

  and Mrs Landor, the attorney's wife, had invested part of their reputation for

  acuteness in the supposition that Mr Bridmain was not the Countess's brother.

  Moreover, Miss Phipps was conscious that if the Countess was not a disreputable

  person, she, Miss Phipps, had no compensating superiority in virtue to set

  against the other lady's manifest superiority in personal charms. Miss Phipps's

  stumpy figure and unsuccessful attire, instead of looking down from a mount of

  virtue with an aur�ole round its head, would then be seen on the same level and

  in the same light as the Countess Czerlaski's Diana-like form and well-chosen

  drapery. Miss Phipps, for her part, didn't like dressing for effect�she had

  always avoided that style of appearance which was calculated to create a

  sensation.

  Then what amusing inuendoes of the Milby gentlemen over their wine would be

  entirely frustrated and reduced to nought, if you had told them that the

  Countess had really been guilty of no misdemeanours which need exclude her from

  strictly respectable society; that her husband had been the veritable Count

  Czerlaski, who had had wonderful escapes, as she said, and who, as she did not

  say, but as was said in certain circulars once folded by her fair hands, had

  subsequently given dancing lessons in the metropolis; that Mr Bridmain was

  neither more nor less than her half-brother, who, by unimpeached integrity and

  industry, had won a partnership in a silk manufactory, and thereby a moderate

  fortune, that enabled him to retire, as you see, to study politics, the weather,

  and the art of conversation, at his leisure. Mr Bridmain, in fact,

  quadragenarian bachelor as he was, felt extremely well pleased to receive his

  sister in her widowhood, and to shine in the reflected light of her beauty and

  title. Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is

  the slave of some woman or other. Mr Bridmain had put his neck under the yoke of

  his handsome sister, and though his soul was a very little one�of the smallest

  description indeed�he would not have ventured to call it his own. He might be

  slightly recalcitrant now and then, as is the habit of long-eared pachyderms,

  under the thong of the fair Countess's tongue; but there seemed little

  probability that he would ever get his neck loose. Still, a bachelor's heart is

  an outlying fortress that some fair enemy may any day take either by storm or

  stratagem; and there was always the possibility that Mr Bridmain's first

  nuptials might occur before the Countess was quite sure of her second. As it

  was, however, he submitted to all his sister's caprices, never grumbled because

  her dress and her maid formed a considerable item beyond her own little income

  of sixty pounds per annum, and consented to lead with her a migratory life, as

  personages on the debatable ground between aristocracy and commonalty, instead

  of settling in some spot where his five hundred a-year might have won him the

  definite dignity of a parochial magnate.

  The Countess had her views in choosing a quiet provincial place like Milby.

  After three years of widowhood, she had brought her feelings to contemplate

  giving a successor to her lamented Czerlaski, whose fine whiskers, fine air, and

  romantic fortunes had won her heart ten years ago, when, as pretty Caroline

  Bridmain, in the full bloom of five-and-twenty, she was governess to Lady

  Porter's daughters, whom he initiated into the mysteries of the pas de bas, and

  the lancer's quadrilles. She had had seven years of sufficiently happy matrimony

  with Czerlaski, who had taken her to Paris and Germany, and introduced her there

  to many of his old friends with large titles and small fortunes. So that the

  fair Caroline had had considerable experience of life, and had gathered

  therefrom, not, indeed, any very ripe and comprehensive wisdom, but much

  external polish, and certain practical conclusions of a very decided kind. One

  of these conclusions was, that there were things more solid in life than fine

  whiskers and a title, and that, in accepting a second husband, she would regard

  these items as quite subordinate to a carriage and a settlement. Now she had

  ascertained, by tentative residences, that the kind of bite she was angling for

  was difficult to be met with at watering-places, which were already preoccupied

  with abundance of angling beauties, and were chiefly stocked with men whose

  whiskers might be dyed, and whose incomes were still more problematic; so she

  had determined on trying a neighbourhood where people were extremely well

  acquainted with each other's affairs, and where the women were mostly

  ill-dressed and ugly. Mr Bridmain's slow brain had adopted his sister's views,

  and it seemed to him that a woman so handsome and distinguished as the Countess

  must certainly make a match that might lift himself into the region of country

  celebrities, and give him at least a sort of cousinship to the quarter-sessions.

  All this, which was the simple truth, would have seemed extremely flat to the

  gossips of Milby, who had made up their minds to something much more exciting.

  There was nothing here so very detestable. It is true, the Countess was a little

  vain, a little ambitious, a little selfish, a little shallow and frivolous, a

  little given to white lies. But who considers such slight blemishes, such moral

  pimples as these, disqualifications for entering into the most respectable

  society! Indeed, the severest ladies in Milby would have been perfectly aware

  that these characteristics would have created no wide distinction between the

  Countess Czerlaski and themselves; and since
it was clear there was a wide

  distinction�why, it must lie in the possession of some vices from which they

  were undeniably free.

  Hence it came to pass, that Milby respectability refused to recognise the

  Countess Czerlaski, in spite of her assiduous church-going, and the deep disgust

  she was known to have expressed at the extreme paucity of the congregations on

  Ash-Wednesdays. So she began to feel that she had miscalculated the advantages

  of a neighbourhood where people are well acquainted with each other's private

  affairs. Under these circumstances, you will imagine how welcome was the perfect

  credence and admiration she met with from Mr and Mrs Barton. She had been

  especially irritated by Mr Ely's behaviour to her; she felt sure that he was not

  in the least struck with her beauty, that he quizzed her conversation, and that

  he spoke of her with a sneer. A woman always knows where she is utterly

  powerless, and shuns a coldly satirical eye as she would shun a gorgon. And she

  was especially eager for clerical notice and friendship, not merely because that

  is quite the most respectable countenance to be obtained in society, but because

  she really cared about religious matters, and had an uneasy sense that she was

  not altogether safe in that quarter. She had serious intentions of becoming

  quite pious�without any reserves�when she had once got her carriage and

  settlement. Let us do this one sly trick, says Ulysses to Neoptolemus, and we

  will be perfectly honest ever after� all' edu gar toi ktema tes nikes labein

  tolma� dikaioi d'authis ekphanoumetha. The Countess did not quote Sophocles, but

  she said to herself, "Only this little bit of pretence and vanity, and then I

  will be quite good, and make myself quite safe for another world."

  And as she had by no means such fine taste and insight in theological teaching

  as in costume, the Rev. Amos Barton seemed to her a man not only of

  learning�that is always understood with a clergyman�but of much power as a

  spiritual director. As for Milly, the Countess really loved her as well as the

  preoccupied state of her affections would allow. For you have already perceived

  that there was one being to whom the Countess was absorbingly devoted, and to

  whose desires she made everything else subservient� namely, Caroline Czerlaski,

  n�e Bridmain.

  Thus there was really not much affectation in her sweet speeches and attentions

  to Mr and Mrs Barton. Still, their friendship by no means adequately represented

  the object she had in view when she came to Milby, and it had been for some time

  clear to her that she must suggest a new change of residence to her brother.

  The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way

  we have imagined to ourselves. The Countess did actually leave Camp Villa before

  many months were past, but under circumstances which had not at all entered into

  her contemplation.

  CHAPTER V.

  The Rev. Amos Barton, whose sad fortunes I have undertaken to relate, was, you

  perceive, in no respect an ideal or exceptional character, and perhaps I am

  doing a bold thing to bespeak your sympathy on behalf of a man who was so very

  far from remarkable,�a man whose virtues were not heroic, and who had no

  undetected crime within his breast; who had not the slightest mystery hanging

  about him, but was palpably and unmistakably commonplace; who was not even in

  love, but had had that complaint favourably many years ago. "An utterly

  uninteresting character!" I think I hear a lady reader exclaim�Mrs Farthingale,

  for example, who prefers the ideal in fiction; to whom tragedy means ermine

  tippets, adultery, and murder; and comedy, the adventures of some personage who

  is quite a "character."

  But, my dear madam, it is so very large a majority of your fellow-countrymen

  that are of this insignificant stamp. At least eighty out of a hundred of your