Scenes of Clerical Life Read online

said,�

  "If I don't come home to-night, I shall send back the pony-chaise, and you'll

  know I'm wanted there."

  "Yes, yes."

  It was a bright frosty day, and by the time Mrs Hackit arrived at the Vicarage,

  the sun was near its setting. There was a carriage and pair standing at the

  gate, which she recognised as Dr Madeley's, the physician from Rotherby. She

  entered at the kitchen door, that she might avoid knocking, and quietly question

  Nanny. No one was in the kitchen, but, passing on, she saw the sitting-room door

  open, and Nanny, with Walter in her arms, removing the knives and forks, which

  had been laid for dinner three hours ago.

  "Master says he can't eat no dinner," was Nanny's first word. "He's never tasted

  nothin' sin' yesterday mornin', but a cup o' tea."

  "When was your missis took worse?"

  "O' Monday night. They sent for Dr Madeley i' the middle o' the day yisterday,

  an' he's here again now."

  "Is the baby alive?"

  "No, it died last night." The children's all at Mrs Bond's. She come and took

  'em away last night, but the master says they must be fetched soon. He's

  up-stairs now, wi' Dr Madeley and Mr Brand."

  At this moment Mrs Hackit heard the sound of a heavy, slow foot, in the passage;

  and presently Amos Barton entered, with dry despairing eyes, haggard and

  unshaven. He expected to find the sitting-room as he left it, with nothing to

  meet his eyes but Milly's work-basket in the corner of the sofa, and the

  children's toys overturned in the bow-window. But when he saw Mrs Hackit come

  towards him with answering sorrow in her face, the pent-up fountain of tears was

  opened; he threw himself on the sofa, hid his face, and sobbed aloud.

  "Bear up, Mr Barton," Mrs Hackit ventured to say at last, "bear up, for the sake

  o' them dear children."

  "The children," said Amos, starting up. "They must be sent for. Some one must

  fetch them. Milly will want to. ..."

  He couldn't finish the sentence, but Mrs Hackit understood him, and said, "I'll

  send the man with the pony-carriage for 'em."

  She went out to give the order, and encountered Dr Madeley and Mr Brand, who

  were just going.

  Mr Brand said: "I am very glad to see you are here, Mrs Hackit. No time must be

  lost in sending for the children. Mrs Barton wants to see them."

  "Do you quite give her up, then?"

  "She can hardly live through the night. She begged us to tell her how long she

  had to live; and then asked for the children."

  The pony-carriage was sent; and Mrs Hackit, returning to Mr Barton, said she

  should like to go up-stairs now. He went up-stairs with her and opened the door.

  The chamber fronted the west; the sun was just setting, and the red light fell

  full upon the bed, where Milly lay with the hand of death visibly upon her. The

  feather-bed had been removed, and she lay low on a mattress with her head

  slightly raised by pillows. Her long fair neck seemed to be struggling with a

  painful effort; her features were pallid and pinched, and her eyes were closed.

  There was no one in the room but the nurse, and the mistress of the free school,

  who had come to give her help from the beginning of the change.

  Amos and Mrs Hackit stood beside the bed, and Milly opened her eyes.

  "My darling, Mrs Hackit is come to see you."

  Milly smiled and looked at her with that strange, far-off look which belongs to

  ebbing life.

  "Are the children coming?" she said, painfully.

  "Yes, they will be here directly."

  She closed her eyes again.

  Presently the pony-carriage was heard; and Amos, motioning to Mrs Hackit to

  follow him, left the room. On their way down stairs, she suggested that the

  carriage should remain to take them away again afterwards, and Amos assented.

  There they stood in the melancholy sitting-room �the five sweet children, from

  Patty to Chubby� all, with their mother's eyes�all, except Patty, looking up

  with a vague fear at their father as he entered. Patty understood the great

  sorrow that was come upon them, and tried to check her sobs as she heard her

  papa's footsteps.

  "My children," said Amos, taking Chubby in his arms, "God is going to take away

  your dear mamma from us. She wants to see you to say good-by. You must try to be

  very good and not cry."

  He could say no more, but turned round to see if Nanny was there with Walter,

  and then led the way up-stairs, leading Dickey with the other hand. Mrs Hackit

  followed with Sophy and Patty, and then came Nanny with Walter and Fred.

  It seemed as if Milly had heard the little footsteps on the stairs, for when

  Amos entered her eyes were wide open, eagerly looking towards the door. They all

  stood by the bedside�Amos nearest to her, holding Chubby and Dickey. But she

  motioned for Patty to come first, and clasping the poor pale child by the hand,

  said,�

  "Patty, I'm going away from you. Love your papa. Comfort him; and take care of

  your little brothers and sisters. God will help you."

  Patty stood perfectly quiet, and said, "Yes, mamma."

  The mother motioned with her pallid lips for the dear child to lean towards her

  and kiss her; and then Patty's great anguish overcame her, and she burst into

  sobs. Amos drew her towards him and pressed her head gently to him, while Milly

  beckoned Fred and Sophy, and said to them more faintly,�

  "Patty will try to be your mamma when I am gone, my darlings. You will be good,

  and not vex her."

  They leaned towards her, and she stroked their fair heads, and kissed their

  tear-stained cheeks. They cried because mamma was ill and papa looked so

  unhappy; but they thought, perhaps next week things would be as they used to be

  again.

  The little ones were lifted on the bed to kiss her. Little Walter said, "Mamma,

  mamma," and stretched out his fat arms and smiled; and Chubby seemed gravely

  wondering; but Dickey, who had been looking fixedly at her, with lip hanging

  down, ever since he came into the room, now seemed suddenly pierced with the

  idea that mamma was going away somewhere; his little heart swelled and he cried

  aloud.

  Then Mrs Hackit and Nanny took them all away. Patty at first begged to stay at

  home and not go to Mrs Bond's again; but when Nanny reminded her that she had

  better go to take care of the younger ones, she submitted at once, and they were

  all packed in the pony-carriage once more.

  Milly kept her eyes shut for some time after the children were gone. Amos had

  sunk on his knees, and was holding her hand while he watched her face. By-and-by

  she opened her eyes, and, drawing him close to her, whispered slowly,�

  "My dear�dear�husband�you have been� very�good to me. You�have�made me�very

  �happy."

  She spoke no more for many hours. They watched her breathing becoming more and

  more difficult, until evening deepened into night, and until midnight was past.

  About half-past twelve she seemed to be trying to speak, and they leaned to

  catch her words.

  "Music�music�didn't you hear it?"

  Amos knelt by the bed and held her hand in his. He did not believe in his <
br />
  sorrow. It was a bad dream. He did not know when she was gone. But Mr Brand,

  whom Mrs Hackit had sent for before twelve o'clock, thinking that Mr Barton

  might probably need his help, now came up to him and said,�

  "She feels no more pain now. Come, my dear sir, come with me."

  "She isn't dead?" shrieked the poor desolate man, struggling to shake off Mr

  Brand, who had taken him by the arm. But his weary, weakened frame was not equal

  to resistance, and he was dragged out of the room.

  CHAPTER IX.

  They laid her in the grave�the sweet mother with her baby in her arms�while the

  Christmas snow lay thick upon the graves. It was Mr Cleves who buried her. On

  the first news of Mr Barton's calamity, he had ridden over from Tripplegate to

  beg that he might be made of some use, and his silent grasp of Amos's hand had

  penetrated like the painful thrill of life-recovering warmth to the poor

  benumbed heart of the stricken man.

  The snow lay thick upon the graves, and the day was cold and dreary; but there

  was many a sad eye watching that black procession as it passed from the vicarage

  to the church, and from the church to the open grave. There were men and women

  standing in that churchyard who had bandied vulgar jests about their pastor, and

  who had lightly charged him with sin; but now, when they saw him following the

  coffin, pale and haggard, he was consecrated anew by his great sorrow, and they

  looked at him with respectful pity.

  All the children were there, for Amos had willed it so, thinking that some dim

  memory of that sacred moment might remain even with little Walter, and link

  itself with what he would hear of his sweet mother in after years. He himself

  led Patty and Dickey; then came Sophy and Fred; Mr Brand had begged to carry

  Chubby, and Nanny followed with Walter. They made a circle round the grave while

  the coffin was being lowered. Patty alone of all the children felt that mamma

  was in that coffin, and that a new and sadder life had begun for papa and

  herself. She was pale and trembling, but she clasped his hand more firmly as the

  coffin went down, and gave no sob. Fred and Sophy, though they were only two and

  three years younger, and though they had seen mamma in her coffin, seemed to

  themselves to be looking at some strange show. They had not learned to decipher

  that terrible handwriting of human destiny, illness and death. Dickey had

  rebelled against his black clothes, until he was told that it would be naughty

  to mamma not to put them on, when he at once submitted; and now, though he had

  heard Nanny say that mamma was in heaven, he had a vague notion that she would

  come home again to-morrow, and say he had been a good boy, and let him empty her

  work-box. He stood close to his father, with great rosy cheeks, and wide open

  blue eyes, looking first up at Mr Cleves and then down at the coffin, and

  thinking he and Chubby would play at that, when they got home.

  The burial was over, and Amos turned with his children to re-enter the house�the

  house where, an hour ago, Milly's dear body lay, where the windows were

  half-darkened, and sorrow seemed to have a hallowed precinct for itself, shut

  out from the world. But now she was gone; the broad snow-reflected daylight was

  in all the rooms; the Vicarage again seemed part of the common working-day

  world, and Amos, for the first time, felt that he was alone�that day after day,

  month after month, year after year, would have to be lived through without

  Milly's love. Spring would come, and she would not be there; summer, and she

  would not be there; and he would never have her again with him by the fireside

  in the long evenings. The seasons all seemed irksome to his thoughts; and how

  dreary the sunshiny days that would be sure to come! She was gone from him; and

  he could never show her his love any more, never make up for omissions in the

  past by filling future days with tenderness.

  O the anguish of that thought, that we can never atone to our dead for the

  stinted affection we gave them, for the light answers we returned to their

  plaints or their pleadings, for the little reverence we showed to that sacred

  human soul that lived so close to us, and was the divinest thing God had given

  us to know.

  Amos Barton had been an affectionate husband, and while Milly was with him, he

  was never visited by the thought that perhaps his sympathy with her was not

  quick and watchful enough; but now he re-lived all their life together, with

  that terrible keenness of memory and imagination which bereavement gives, and he

  felt as if his very love needed a pardon for its poverty and selfishness.

  No outward solace could counteract the bitterness of this inward woe. But

  outward solace came. Cold faces looked kind again, and parishioners turned over

  in their minds what they could best do to help their pastor. Mr Oldinport wrote

  to express his sympathy, and enclosed another twenty-pound note, begging that he

  might be permitted to contribute in this way to the relief of Mr Barton's mind

  from pecuniary anxieties, under the pressure of a grief which all his

  parishioners must share; and offering his interest towards placing the two

  eldest girls in a school expressly founded for clergymen's daughters. Mr Cleves

  succeeded in collecting thirty pounds among his richer clerical brethren, and,

  adding ten pounds himself, sent the sum to Amos, with the kindest and most

  delicate words of Christian fellowship and manly friendship. Miss Jackson forgot

  old grievances, and came to stay some months with Milly's children, bringing

  such material aid as she could spare from her small income. These were

  substantial helps, which relieved Amos from the pressure of his money

  difficulties; and the friendly attentions, the kind pressure of the hand, the

  cordial looks he met with everywhere in his parish, made him feel that the fatal

  frost which had settled on his pastoral duties, during the Countess's residence

  at the Vicarage, was completely thawed, and that the hearts of his parishioners

  were once more open to him.

  No one breathed the Countess's name now; for Milly's memory hallowed her

  husband, as of old the place was hallowed on which an angel from God had

  alighted.

  When the spring came, Mrs Hackit begged that she might have Dickey to stay with

  her, and great was the enlargement of Dickey's experience from that visit. Every

  morning he was allowed� being well wrapt up as to his chest, by Mrs Hackit's own

  hands, but very bare and red as to his legs�to run loose in the cow and poultry

  yard, to persecute the turkey-cock by satirical imitations of his gobble-gobble,

  and to put difficult questions to the groom as to the reasons why horses had

  four legs, and other transcendental matters. Then Mr Hackit would take Dickey up

  on horseback when he rode round his farm, and Mrs Hackit had a large plumcake in

  cut, ready to meet incidental attacks of hunger. So that Dickey had considerably

  modified his views as to the desirability of Mrs Hackit's kisses.

  The Miss Farquhars made particular pets of Fred and Sophy, to whom they

  undertook to give lessons twice a-week in writi
ng and geography; and Mrs

  Farquhar devised many treats for the little ones. Patty's treat was to stay at

  home, or walk about with her papa; and when he sat by the fire in an evening,

  after the other children were gone to bed, she would bring a stool, and placing

  it against his feet, would sit down upon it and lean her head against his knee.

  Then his hand would rest on that fair head, and he would feel that Milly's love

  was not quite gone out of his life.

  So the time wore on till it was May again, and the church was quite finished and

  reopened in all its new splendour, and Mr Barton was devoting himself with more

  vigour than ever to his parochial duties. But one morning�it was a very bright

  morning, and evil tidings sometimes like to fly in the finest weather�there came

  a letter for Mr Barton, addressed in the Vicar's handwriting. Amos opened it

  with some anxiety�some-how or other he had a presentiment of evil. The letter

  contained the announcement that Mr Carpe had resolved on coming to reside at

  Shepperton, and that, consequently, in six months from that time Mr Barton's

  duties as curate in that parish would be closed.

  O, it was hard! Just when Shepperton had become the place where he most wished

  to stay� where he had friends who knew his sorrows� where he lived close to

  Milly's grave. To part from that grave seemed like parting with Milly a second

  time; for Amos was one who clung to all the material links between his mind and

  the past. His imagination was not vivid, and required the stimulus of actual

  perception.

  It roused some bitter feeling, too, to think that Mr Carpe's wish to reside at

  Shepperton was merely a pretext for removing Mr Barton, in order that he might

  ultimately give the curacy of Shepperton to his own brother-in-law, who was

  known to be wanting a new position.

  Still, it must be borne; and the painful business of seeking another curacy must

  be set about without loss of time. After the lapse of some months, Amos was

  obliged to renounce the hope of getting one at all near Shepperton, and he at

  length resigned himself to accepting one in a distant county. The parish was in

  a large manufacturing town, where his walks would lie among noisy streets and

  dingy alleys, and where the children would have no garden to play in, no

  pleasant farmhouses to visit.

  It was another blow inflicted on the bruised man.

  CHAPTER X.

  At length the dreaded week was come, when Amos and his children must leave

  Shepperton. There was general regret among the parishioners at his departure:

  not that any one of them thought his spiritual gifts pre-eminent, or was

  conscious of great edification from his ministry. But his recent troubles had

  called out their better sympathies, and that is always a source of love. Amos

  failed to touch the spring of goodness by his sermons, but he touched it

  effectually by his sorrows; and there was now a real bond between him and his

  flock.

  "My heart aches for them poor motherless children," said Mrs Hackit to her

  husband, "a-goin' among strangers, an' into a nasty town, where there's no good

  victuals to be had, and you must pay dear to get bad 'uns."

  Mrs Hackit had a vague notion of a town life as a combination of dirty

  backyards, measly pork, and dingy linen.

  The same sort of sympathy was strong among the poorer class of parishioners. Old

  stiff-jointed Mr Tozer, who was still able to earn a little by gardening "jobs,"

  stopped Mrs Cramp, the charwoman, on her way home from the Vicarage, where she

  had been helping Nanny to pack up the day before the departure, and inquired

  very particularly into Mr Barton's prospects.

  "Ah, poor mon," he was heard to say, "I'm surry fur 'un. He hedn't much here,

  but he'll be wuss off theer. Half a loaf's better nor ne'er'un."

  The sad good-byes had all been said before that last evening; and after all the

  packing was done and all the arrangements were made, Amos felt the oppression of

  that blank interval in which one has nothing left to think of but the dreary

  future �the separation from the loved and familiar, and the chilling entrance on