THE DISTRACTED PREACHER
CHAPTER I--HOW HIS COLD WAS CURED
Something delayed the arrival of the Wesleyan minister, and a young
man came temporarily in his stead. It was on the thirteenth of
January 183- that Mr. Stockdale, the young man in question, made his
humble entry into the village, unknown, and almost unseen. But when
those of the inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection
became acquainted with him, they were rather pleased with the
substitute than otherwise, though he had scarcely as yet acquired
ballast of character sufficient to steady the consciences of the
hundred-and-forty Methodists of pure blood who, at this time, lived
in Nether-Moynton, and to give in addition supplementary support to
the mixed race which went to church in the morning and chapel in the
evening, or when there was a tea--as many as a hundred-and-ten
people more, all told, and including the parish-clerk in the winter-
time, when it was too dark for the vicar to observe who passed up
the street at seven o'clock--which, to be just to him, he was never
anxious to do.
It was owing to this overlapping of creeds that the celebrated
population-puzzle arose among the denser gentry of the district
around Nether-Moynton: how could it be that a parish containing
fifteen score of strong full-grown Episcopalians, and nearly
thirteen score of well-matured Dissenters, numbered barely two-and-
twenty score adults in all?
The young man being personally interesting, those with whom he came
in contact were content to waive for a while the graver question of
his sufficiency. It is said that at this time of his life his eyes
were affectionate, though without a ray of levity; that his hair was
curly, and his figure tall; that he was, in short, a very lovable
youth, who won upon his female hearers as soon as they saw and heard
him, and caused them to say, 'Why didn't we know of this before he
came, that we might have gied him a warmer welcome!'
The fact was that, knowing him to be only provisionally selected,
and expecting nothing remarkable in his person or doctrine, they and
the rest of his flock in Nether-Moynton had felt almost as
indifferent about his advent as if they had been the soundest
church-going parishioners in the country, and he their true and
appointed parson. Thus when Stockdale set foot in the place nobody
had secured a lodging for him, and though his journey had given him
a bad cold in the head, he was forced to attend to that business
himself. On inquiry he learnt that the only possible accommodation
in the village would be found at the house of one Mrs. Lizzy
Newberry, at the upper end of the street.
It was a youth who gave this information, and Stockdale asked him
who Mrs. Newberry might be.
The boy said that she was a widow-woman, who had got no husband,
because he was dead. Mr. Newberry, he added, had been a well-to-do
man enough, as the saying was, and a farmer; but he had gone off in
a decline. As regarded Mrs. Newberry's serious side, Stockdale
gathered that she was one of the trimmers who went to church and
chapel both.
'I'll go there,' said Stockdale, feeling that, in the absence of
purely sectarian lodgings, he could do no better.
'She's a little particular, and won't hae gover'ment folks, or
curates, or the pa'son's friends, or such like,' said the lad
dubiously.
'Ah, that may be a promising sign: I'll call. Or no; just you go
up and ask first if she can find room for me. I have to see one or
two persons on another matter. You will find me down at the
carrier's.'
In a quarter of an hour the lad came back, and said that Mrs.
Newberry would have no objection to accommodate him, whereupon
Stockdale called at the house.
It stood within a garden-hedge, and seemed to be roomy and
comfortable. He saw an elderly woman, with whom he made
arrangements to come the same night, since there was no inn in the
place, and he wished to house himself as soon as possible; the
village being a local centre from which he was to radiate at once to
the different small chapels in the neighbourhood. He forthwith sent
his luggage to Mrs. Newberry's from the carrier's, where he had
taken shelter, and in the evening walked up to his temporary home.
As he now lived there, Stockdale felt it unnecessary to knock at the
door; and entering quietly he had the pleasure of hearing footsteps
scudding away like mice into the back quarters. He advanced to the
parlour, as the front room was called, though its stone floor was
scarcely disguised by the carpet, which only over-laid the trodden
areas, leaving sandy deserts under the bulging mouldings of the
table-legs, playing with brass furniture. But the room looked snug
and cheerful. The firelight shone out brightly, trembling on the
knobs and handles, and lurking in great strength on the under
surface of the chimney-piece. A deep arm-chair, covered with
horsehair, and studded with a countless throng of brass nails, was
pulled up on one side of the fireplace. The tea-things were on the
table, the teapot cover was open, and a little hand-bell had been
laid at that precise point towards which a person seated in the
great chair might be expected instinctively to stretch his hand.
Stockdale sat down, not objecting to his experience of the room thus
far, and began his residence by tinkling the bell. A little girl
crept in at the summons, and made tea for him. Her name, she said,
was Marther Sarer, and she lived out there, nodding towards the road
and village generally. Before Stockdale had got far with his meal,
a tap sounded on the door behind him, and on his telling the
inquirer to come in, a rustle of garments caused him to turn his
head. He saw before him a fine and extremely well-made young woman,
with dark hair, a wide, sensible, beautiful forehead, eyes that
warmed him before he knew it, and a mouth that was in itself a
picture to all appreciative souls.
'Can I get you anything else for tea?' she said, coming forward a
step or two, an expression of liveliness on her features, and her
hand waving the door by its edge.
'Nothing, thank you,' said Stockdale, thinking less of what he
replied than of what might be her relation to the household.
'You are quite sure?' said the young woman, apparently aware that he
had not considered his answer.
He conscientiously examined the tea-things, and found them all
there. 'Quite sure, Miss Newberry,' he said.
'It is Mrs. Newberry,' she said. 'Lizzy Newberry, I used to be
Lizzy Simpkins.'
'O, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Newberry.' And before he had occasion
to say more she left the room.
Stockdale remained in some doubt till Martha Sarah came to clear the
table. 'Whose house is this, my little woman,' said he.
'Mrs. Lizzy Newberry's, sir.'
'Then Mrs. Newberry is not the old lady I saw this afternoon?'
'No. That's Mrs. Newberry's mother. It was Mrs. Newberry who comed
in to you just by now, because she wanted to see if you was good-
looking.'
Later in the evening, when Stockdale was about to begin supper, she
came again. 'I have come myself, Mr. Stockdale,' she said. The
minister stood up in acknowledgment of the honour. 'I am afraid
little Marther might not make you understand. What will you have
for supper?--there's cold rabbit, and there's a ham uncut.'
Stockdale said he could get on nicely with those viands, and supper
was laid. He had no more than cut a slice when tap-tap came to the
door again. The minister had already learnt that this particular
rhythm in taps denoted the fingers of his enkindling landlady, and
the doomed young fellow buried his first mouthful under a look of
receptive blandness.
'We have a chicken in the house, Mr. Stockdale--I quite forgot to
mention it just now. Perhaps you would like Marther Sarer to bring
it up?'
Stockdale had advanced far enough in the art of being a young man to
say that he did not want the chicken, unless she brought it up
herself; but when it was uttered he blushed at the daring gallantry
of the speech, perhaps a shade too strong for a serious man and a
minister. In three minutes the chicken appeared, but, to his great
surprise, only in the hands of Martha Sarah. Stockdale was
disappointed, which perhaps it was intended that he should be.
He had finished supper, and was not in the least anticipating Mrs.
Newberry again that night, when she tapped and entered as before.
Stockdale's gratified look told that she had lost nothing by not
appearing when expected. It happened that the cold in the head from
which the young man suffered had increased with the approach of
night, and before she had spoken he was seized with a violent fit of
sneezing which he could not anyhow repress.
Mrs. Newberry looked full of pity. 'Your cold is very bad to-night,
Mr. Stockdale.'
Stockdale replied that it was rather troublesome.
'And I've a good mind'--she added archly, looking at the cheerless
glass of water on the table, which the abstemious minister was going
to drink.
'Yes, Mrs. Newberry?'
'I've a good mind that you should have something more likely to cure
it than that cold stuff.'
'Well,' said Stockdale, looking down at the glass, 'as there is no
inn here, and nothing better to be got in the village, of course it
will do.'
To this she replied, 'There is something better, not far off, though
not in the house. I really think you must try it, or you may be
ill. Yes, Mr. Stockdale, you shall.' She held up her finger,
seeing that he was about to speak. 'Don't ask what it is; wait, and
you shall see.'
Lizzy went away, and Stockdale waited in a pleasant mood. Presently
she returned with her bonnet and cloak on, saying, 'I am so sorry,
but you must help me to get it. Mother has gone to bed. Will you
wrap yourself up, and come this way, and please bring that cup with
you?'
Stockdale, a lonely young fellow, who had for weeks felt a great
craving for somebody on whom to throw away superfluous interest, and
even tenderness, was not sorry to join her; and followed his guide
through the back door, across the garden, to the bottom, where the
boundary was a wall. This wall was low, and beyond it Stockdale
discerned in the night shades several grey headstones, and the
outlines of the church roof and tower.
'It is easy to get up this way,' she said, stepping upon a bank
which abutted on the wall; then putting her foot on the top of the
stonework, and descending a spring inside, where the ground was much
higher, as is the manner of graveyards to be. Stockdale did the
same, and followed her in the dusk across the irregular ground till
they came to the tower door, which, when they had entered, she
softly closed behind them.
'You can keep a secret?' she said, in a musical voice.
'Like an iron chest!' said he fervently.
Then from under her cloak she produced a small lighted lantern,
which the minister had not noticed that she carried at all. The
light showed them to be close to the singing-gallery stairs, under
which lay a heap of lumber of all sorts, but consisting mostly of
decayed framework, pews, panels, and pieces of flooring, that from
time to time had been removed from their original fixings in the
body of the edifice and replaced by new.
'Perhaps you will drag some of those boards aside?' she said,
holding the lantern over her head to light him better. 'Or will you
take the lantern while I move them?'
'I can manage it,' said the young man, and acting as she ordered, he
uncovered, to his surprise, a row of little barrels bound with wood
hoops, each barrel being about as large as the nave of a heavy
waggon-wheel.
When they were laid open Lizzy fixed her eyes on him, as if she
wondered what he would say.
'You know what they are?' she asked, finding that he did not speak.
'Yes, barrels,' said Stockdale simply. He was an inland man, the
son of highly respectable parents, and brought up with a single eye
to the ministry; and the sight suggested nothing beyond the fact
that such articles were there.
'You are quite right, they are barrels,' she said, in an emphatic
tone of candour that was not without a touch of irony.
Stockdale looked at her with an eye of sudden misgiving. 'Not
smugglers' liquor?' he said.
'Yes,' said she. 'They are tubs of spirit that have accidentally
come over in the dark from France.'
In Nether-Moynton and its vicinity at this date people always smiled
at the sort of sin called in the outside world illicit trading; and
these little kegs of gin and brandy were as well known to the
inhabitants as turnips. So that Stockdale's innocent ignorance, and
his look of alarm when he guessed the sinister mystery, seemed to
strike Lizzy first as ludicrous, and then as very awkward for the
good impression that she wished to produce upon him.
'Smuggling is carried on here by some of the people,' she said in a
gentle, apologetic voice. 'It has been their practice for
generations, and they think it no harm. Now, will you roll out one
of the tubs?'
'What to do with it?' said the minister.
'To draw a little from it to cure your cold,' she answered. 'It is
so 'nation strong that it drives away that sort of thing in a jiffy.
O, it is all right about our taking it. I may have what I like; the
owner of the tubs says so. I ought to have had some in the house,
and then I shouldn't ha' been put to this trouble; but I drink none
myself, and so I often forget to keep it indoors.'
'You are allowed to help yourself, I suppose, that you may not
inform where their hiding-place is?'
'Well, no; not that particularly; but I may take any if I want it.
So help yourself.'
'I will, to oblige you, since you have a right to it,' murmured the
minister; and though he was not quite satisfied with his part in the
performance, he rolled one of the 'tubs' out from the corner into
the middle of the tower floor. 'How do you wish me to get it out--
with a gimlet, I suppose?'
'No, I'll show you,' said his interesting companion; and she held up
with her other hand a shoemaker's awl and a hammer. 'You must never
do these things with a gimlet, because the wood-dust gets in; and
when the buyers pour out the brandy that would tell them that the
tub had been broached. An awl makes no dust, and the hole nearly
closes up again. Now tap one of the hoops forward.'
Stockdale took the hammer and did so.
'Now make the hole in the part that was covered by the hoop.'
He made the hole as directed. 'It won't run out,' he said.
'O yes it will,' said she. 'Take the tub between your knees, and
squeeze the heads; and I'll hold the cup.'
Stockdale obeyed; and the pressure taking effect upon the tub, which
seemed, to be thin, the spirit spirted out in a stream. When the
cup was full he ceased pressing, and the flow immediately stopped.
'Now we must fill up the keg with water,' said Lizzy, 'or it will
cluck like forty hens when it is handled, and show that 'tis not
full.'
'But they tell you you may take it?'
'Yes, the SMUGGLERS: but the BUYERS must not know that the
smugglers have been kind to me at their expense.'
'I see,' said Stockdale doubtfully. 'I much question the honesty of
this proceeding.'
By her direction he held the tub with the hole upwards, and while he
went through the process of alternately pressing and ceasing to
press, she produced a bottle of water, from which she took
mouthfuls, conveying each to the keg by putting her pretty lips to
the hole, where it was sucked in at each recovery of the cask from
pressure. When it was again full he plugged the hole, knocked the
hoop down to its place, and buried the tub in the lumber as before.
'Aren't the smugglers afraid that you will tell?' he asked, as they
recrossed the churchyard.
'O no; they are not afraid of that. I couldn't do such a thing.'
'They have put you into a very awkward corner,' said Stockdale
emphatically. 'You must, of course, as an honest person, sometimes
feel that it is your duty to inform--really you must.'
'Well, I have never particularly felt it as a duty; and, besides, my
first husband--' She stopped, and there was some confusion in her
voice. Stockdale was so honest and unsophisticated that he did not
at once discern why she paused: but at last he did perceive that
the words were a slip, and that no woman would have uttered 'first
husband' by accident unless she had thought pretty frequently of a
second. He felt for her confusion, and allowed her time to recover
and proceed. 'My husband,' she said, in a self-corrected tone,
'used to know of their doings, and so did my father, and kept the
secret. I cannot inform, in fact, against anybody.'
'I see the hardness of it,' he continued, like a man who looked far
into the moral of things. 'And it is very cruel that you should be
tossed and tantalized between your memories and your conscience. I
do hope, Mrs. Newberry, that you will soon see your way out of this
unpleasant position.'
'Well, I don't just now,' she murmured.
By this time they had passed over the wall and entered the house,
where she brought him a glass and hot water, and left him to his own
reflections. He looked after her vanishing form, asking himself
whether he, as a respectable man, and a minister, and a shining
light, even though as yet only of the halfpenny-candle sort, were
quite justified in doing this thing. A sneeze settled the question;
and he found that when the fiery liquor was lowered by the addition
of twice or thrice the quantity of water, it was one of the
prettiest cures for a cold in the head that he had ever known,
particularly at this chilly time of the year.
Stockdale sat in the deep chair about twenty minutes sipping and
meditating, till he at length took warmer views of things, and
longed for the morrow, when he would see Mrs. Newberry again. He
then felt that, though chronologically at a short distance, it would
in an emotional sense be very long before to-morrow came, and walked
restlessly round the room. His eye was attracted by a framed and
glazed sampler in which a running ornament of fir-trees and peacocks
surrounded the following pretty bit of sentiment:-
'Rose-leaves smell when roses thrive,
Here's my work while I'm alive;
Rose-leaves smell when shrunk and shed,
Here's my work when I am dead.
'Lizzy Simpkins. Fear God. Honour the King.
'Aged 11 years.
''Tis hers,' he said to himself. 'Heavens, how I like that name!'
Before he had done thinking that no other name from Abigail to
Zenobia would have suited his young landlady so well, tap-tap came
again upon the door; and the minister started as her face appeared
yet another time, looking so disinterested that the most ingenious
would have refrained from asserting that she had come to affect his
feelings by her seductive eyes.
'Would you like a fire in your room, Mr. Stockdale, on account of
your cold?'
The minister, being still a little pricked in the conscience for
countenancing her in watering the spirits, saw here a way to self-
chastisement. 'No, I thank you,' he said firmly; 'it is not
necessary. I have never been used to one in my life, and it would
be giving way to luxury too far.'
'Then I won't insist,' she said, and disconcerted him by vanishing
instantly.
Wondering if she was vexed by his refusal, he wished that he had
chosen to have a fire, even though it should have scorched him out
of bed and endangered his self-discipline for a dozen days.
However, he consoled himself with what was in truth a rare
consolation for a budding lover, that he was under the same roof
with Lizzy; her guest, in fact, to take a poetical view of the term
lodger; and that he would certainly see her on the morrow.
The morrow came, and Stockdale rose early, his cold quite gone. He
had never in his life so longed for the breakfast hour as he did
that day, and punctually at eight o'clock, after a short walk, to
reconnoitre the premises, he re-entered the door of his dwelling.
Breakfast passed, and Martha Sarah attended, but nobody came
voluntarily as on the night before to inquire if there were other
wants which he had not mentioned, and which she would attempt to
gratify. He was disappointed, and went out, hoping to see her at
dinner. Dinner time came; he sat down to the meal, finished it,
lingered on for a whole hour, although two new teachers were at that
moment waiting at the chapel-door to speak to him by appointment.
It was useless to wait longer, and he slowly went his way down the
lane, cheered by the thought that, after all, he would see her in
the evening, and perhaps engage again in the delightful tub-
broaching in the neighbouring church tower, which proceeding he
resolved to render more moral by steadfastly insisting that no water
should be introduced to fill up, though the tub should cluck like
all the hens in Christendom. But nothing could disguise the fact
that it was a queer business; and his countenance fell when he
thought how much more his mind was interested in that matter than in
his serious duties.
However, compunction vanished with the decline of day. Night came,
and his tea and supper; but no Lizzy Newberry, and no sweet
temptations. At last the minister could bear it no longer, and said
to his quaint little attendant, 'Where is Mrs. Newberry to-day?'
judiciously handing a penny as he spoke.
'She's busy,' said Martha.
'Anything serious happened?' he asked, handing another penny, and
revealing yet additional pennies in the background.
'O no--nothing at all!' said she, with breathless confidence.
'Nothing ever happens to her. She's only biding upstairs in bed
because 'tis her way sometimes.'
Being a young man of some honour, he would not question further, and
assuming that Lizzy must have a bad headache, or other slight
ailment, in spite of what the girl had said, he went to bed
dissatisfied, not even setting eyes on old Mrs. Simpkins. 'I said
last night that I should see her to-morrow,' he reflected; 'but that
was not to be!'
Next day he had better fortune, or worse, meeting her at the foot of
the stairs in the morning, and being favoured by a visit or two from
her during the day--once for the purpose of making kindly inquiries
about his comfort, as on the first evening, and at another time to
place a bunch of winter-violets on his table, with a promise to
renew them when they drooped. On these occasions there was
something in her smile which showed how conscious she was of the
effect she produced, though it must be said that it was rather a
humorous than a designing consciousness, and savoured more of pride
than of vanity.
As for Stockdale, he clearly perceived that he possessed unlimited
capacity for backsliding, and wished that tutelary saints were not
denied to Dissenters. He set a watch upon his tongue and eyes for
the space of one hour and a half, after which he found it was
useless to struggle further, and gave himself up to the situation.
'The other minister will be here in a month,' he said to himself
when sitting over the fire. 'Then I shall be off, and she will
distract my mind no more! . . . And then, shall I go on living by
myself for ever? No; when my two years of probation are finished, I
shall have a furnished house to live in, with a varnished door and a
brass knocker; and I'll march straight back to her, and ask her
flat, as soon as the last plate is on the dresser!
Thus a titillating fortnight was passed by young Stockdale, during
which time things proceeded much as such matters have done ever
since the beginning of history. He saw the object of attachment
several times one day, did not see her at all the next, met her when
he least expected to do so, missed her when hints and signs as to
where she should be at a given hour almost amounted to an
appointment. This mild coquetry was perhaps fair enough under the
circumstances of their being so closely lodged, and Stockdale put up
with it as philosophically as he was able. Being in her own house,
she could, after vexing him or disappointing him of her presence,
easily win him back by suddenly surrounding him with those little
attentions which her position as his landlady put it in her power to
bestow. When he had waited indoors half the day to see her, and on
finding that she would not be seen, had gone off in a huff to the
dreariest and dampest walk he could discover, she would restore
equilibrium in the evening with 'Mr. Stockdale, I have fancied you
must feel draught o' nights from your bedroom window, and so I have
been putting up thicker curtains this afternoon while you were out;'
or, 'I noticed that you sneezed twice again this morning, Mr.
Stockdale. Depend upon it that cold is hanging about you yet; I am
sure it is--I have thought of it continually; and you must let me
make a posset for you.'
Sometimes in coming home he found his sitting-room rearranged,
chairs placed where the table had stood, and the table ornamented
with the few fresh flowers and leaves that could be obtained at this
season, so as to add a novelty to the room. At times she would be
standing on a chair outside the house, trying to nail up a branch of
the monthly rose which the winter wind had blown down; and of course
he stepped forward to assist her, when their hands got mixed in
passing the shreds and nails. Thus they became friends again after
a disagreement. She would utter on these occasions some pretty and
deprecatory remark on the necessity of her troubling him anew; and
he would straightway say that he would do a hundred times as much
for her if she should so require.
