Chapter V
The Rector
BEFORE twelve o'clock there had been some heavy storms of rain,
and the water lay in deep gutters on the sides of the gravel walks
in the garden of Broxton Parsonage; the great Provence roses had
been cruelly tossed by the wind and beaten by the rain, and all
the delicate-stemmed border flowers had been dashed down and
stained with the wet soil. A melancholy morning--because it was
nearly time hay-harvest should begin, and instead of that the
meadows were likely to be flooded.
But people who have pleasant homes get indoor enjoyments that they
would never think of but for the rain. If it had not been a wet
morning, Mr. Irwine would not have been in the dining-room playing
at chess with his mother, and he loves both his mother and chess
quite well enough to pass some cloudy hours very easily by their
help. Let me take you into that dining-room and show you the Rev.
Adolphus Irwine, Rector of Broxton, Vicar of Hayslope, and Vicar
of Blythe, a pluralist at whom the severest Church reformer would
have found it difficult to look sour. We will enter very softly
and stand still in the open doorway, without awaking the glossy-
brown setter who is stretched across the hearth, with her two
puppies beside her; or the pug, who is dozing, with his black
muzzle aloft, like a sleepy president.
The room is a large and lofty one, with an ample mullioned oriel
window at one end; the walls, you see, are new, and not yet
painted; but the furniture, though originally of an expensive
sort, is old and scanty, and there is no drapery about the window.
The crimson cloth over the large dining-table is very threadbare,
though it contrasts pleasantly enough with the dead hue of the
plaster on the walls; but on this cloth there is a massive silver
waiter with a decanter of water on it, of the same pattern as two
larger ones that are propped up on the sideboard with a coat of
arms conspicuous in their centre. You suspect at once that the
inhabitants of this room have inherited more blood than wealth,
and would not be surprised to find that Mr. Irwine had a finely
cut nostril and upper lip; but at present we can only see that he
has a broad flat back and an abundance of powdered hair, all
thrown backward and tied behind with a black ribbon--a bit of
conservatism in costume which tells you that he is not a young
man. He will perhaps turn round by and by, and in the meantime we
can look at that stately old lady, his mother, a beautiful aged
brunette, whose rich-toned complexion is well set off by the
complex wrappings of pure white cambric and lace about her head
and neck. She is as erect in her comely embonpoint as a statue of
Ceres; and her dark face, with its delicate aquiline nose, firm
proud mouth, and small, intense, black eye, is so keen and
sarcastic in its expression that you instinctively substitute a
pack of cards for the chess-men and imagine her telling your
fortune. The small brown hand with which she is lifting her queen
is laden with pearls, diamonds, and turquoises; and a large black
veil is very carefully adjusted over the crown of her cap, and
falls in sharp contrast on the white folds about her neck. It
must take a long time to dress that old lady in the morning! But
it seems a law of nature that she should be dressed so: she is
clearly one of those children of royalty who have never doubted
their right divine and never met with any one so absurd as to
question it.
"There, Dauphin, tell me what that is!" says this magnificent old
lady, as she deposits her queen very quietly and folds her arms.
"I should be sorry to utter a word disagreeable to your feelings."
"Ah, you witch-mother, you sorceress! How is a Christian man to
win a game off you? I should have sprinkled the board with holy
water before we began. You've not won that game by fair means,
now, so don't pretend it."
"Yes, yes, that's what the beaten have always said of great
conquerors. But see, there's the sunshine falling on the board,
to show you more clearly what a foolish move you made with that
pawn. Come, shall I give you another chance?"
"No, Mother, I shall leave you to your own conscience, now it's
clearing up. We must go and plash up the mud a little, mus'n't
we, Juno?" This was addressed to the brown setter, who had jumped
up at the sound of the voices and laid her nose in an insinuating
way on her master's leg. "But I must go upstairs first and see
Anne. I was called away to Tholer's funeral just when I was going
before."
"It's of no use, child; she can't speak to you. Kate says she has
one of her worst headaches this morning."
"Oh, she likes me to go and see her just the same; she's never too
ill to care about that."
If you know how much of human speech is mere purposeless impulse
or habit, you will not wonder when I tell you that this identical
objection had been made, and had received the same kind of answer,
many hundred times in the course of the fifteen years that Mr.
Irwine's sister Anne had been an invalid. Splendid old ladies,
who take a long time to dress in the morning, have often slight
sympathy with sickly daughters.
But while Mr. Irwine was still seated, leaning back in his chair
and stroking Juno's head, the servant came to the door and said,
"If you please, sir, Joshua Rann wishes to speak with you, if you
are at liberty."
"Let him be shown in here," said Mrs. Irwine, taking up her
knitting. "I always like to hear what Mr. Rann has got to say.
His shoes will be dirty, but see that he wipes them Carroll."
In two minutes Mr. Rann appeared at the door with very deferential
bows, which, however, were far from conciliating Pug, who gave a
sharp bark and ran across the room to reconnoitre the stranger's
legs; while the two puppies, regarding Mr. Rann's prominent calf
and ribbed worsted stockings from a more sensuous point of view,
plunged and growled over them in great enjoyment. Meantime, Mr.
Irwine turned round his chair and said, "Well, Joshua, anything
the matter at Hayslope, that you've come over this damp morning?
Sit down, sit down. Never mind the dogs; give them a friendly
kick. Here, Pug, you rascal!"
It is very pleasant to see some men turn round; pleasant as a
sudden rush of warm air in winter, or the flash of firelight in
the chill dusk. Mr. Irwine was one of those men. He bore the
same sort of resemblance to his mother that our loving memory of a
friend's face often bears to the face itself: the lines were all
more generous, the smile brighter, the expression heartier. If
the outline had been less finely cut, his face might have been
called jolly; but that was not the right word for its mixture of
bonhomie and distinction.
"Thank Your Reverence," answered Mr. Rann, endeavouring to look
unconcerned about his legs, but shaking them alternately to keep
off the puppies; "I'll stand, if you please, as more becoming. I
hope I see you an' Mrs. Irwine well, an' Miss Irwine--an' Miss
Anne, I hope's as well as usual."
"Yes, Joshua, thank you. You see how blooming my mother looks.
She beats us younger people hollow. But what's the matter?"
"Why, sir, I had to come to Brox'on to deliver some work, and I
thought it but right to call and let you know the goins-on as
there's been i' the village, such as I hanna seen i' my time, and
I've lived in it man and boy sixty year come St. Thomas, and
collected th' Easter dues for Mr. Blick before Your Reverence come
into the parish, and been at the ringin' o' every bell, and the
diggin' o' every grave, and sung i' the choir long afore Bartle
Massey come from nobody knows where, wi' his counter-singin' and
fine anthems, as puts everybody out but himself--one takin' it up
after another like sheep a-bleatin' i' th' fold. I know what
belongs to bein' a parish clerk, and I know as I should be wantin'
i' respect to Your Reverence, an' church, an' king, if I was t'
allow such goins-on wi'out speakin'. I was took by surprise, an'
knowed nothin' on it beforehand, an' I was so flustered, I was
clean as if I'd lost my tools. I hanna slep' more nor four hour
this night as is past an' gone; an' then it was nothin' but
nightmare, as tired me worse nor wakin'."
"Why, what in the world is the matter, Joshua? Have the thieves
been at the church lead again?"
"Thieves! No, sir--an' yet, as I may say, it is thieves, an' a-
thievin' the church, too. It's the Methodisses as is like to get
th' upper hand i' th' parish, if Your Reverence an' His Honour,
Squire Donnithorne, doesna think well to say the word an' forbid
it. Not as I'm a-dictatin' to you, sir; I'm not forgettin' myself
so far as to be wise above my betters. Howiver, whether I'm wise
or no, that's neither here nor there, but what I've got to say I
say--as the young Methodis woman as is at Mester Poyser's was a-
preachin' an' a-prayin' on the Green last night, as sure as I'm a-
stannin' afore Your Reverence now."
"Preaching on the Green!" said Mr. Irwine, looking surprised but
quite serene. "What, that pale pretty young woman I've seen at
Poyser's? I saw she was a Methodist, or Quaker, or something of
that sort, by her dress, but I didn't know she was a preacher."
"It's a true word as I say, sir," rejoined Mr. Rann, compressing
his mouth into a semicircular form and pausing long enough to
indicate three notes of exclamation. "She preached on the Green
last night; an' she's laid hold of Chad's Bess, as the girl's been
i' fits welly iver sin'."
"Well, Bessy Cranage is a hearty-looking lass; I daresay she'll
come round again, Joshua. Did anybody else go into fits?"
"No, sir, I canna say as they did. But there's no knowin' what'll
come, if we're t' have such preachin's as that a-goin' on ivery
week--there'll be no livin' i' th' village. For them Methodisses
make folks believe as if they take a mug o' drink extry, an' make
theirselves a bit comfortable, they'll have to go to hell for't as
sure as they're born. I'm not a tipplin' man nor a drunkard--
nobody can say it on me--but I like a extry quart at Easter or
Christmas time, as is nat'ral when we're goin' the rounds a-
singin', an' folks offer't you for nothin'; or when I'm a-
collectin' the dues; an' I like a pint wi' my pipe, an' a
neighbourly chat at Mester Casson's now an' then, for I was
brought up i' the Church, thank God, an' ha' been a parish clerk
this two-an'-thirty year: I should know what the church religion
is."
"Well, what's your advice, Joshua? What do you think should be
done?"
"Well, Your Reverence, I'm not for takin' any measures again' the
young woman. She's well enough if she'd let alone preachin'; an'
I hear as she's a-goin' away back to her own country soon. She's
Mr. Poyser's own niece, an' I donna wish to say what's anyways
disrespectful o' th' family at th' Hall Farm, as I've measured for
shoes, little an' big, welly iver sin' I've been a shoemaker. But
there's that Will Maskery, sir as is the rampageousest Methodis as
can be, an' I make no doubt it was him as stirred up th' young
woman to preach last night, an' he'll be a-bringin' other folks to
preach from Treddles'on, if his comb isn't cut a bit; an' I think
as he should be let know as he isna t' have the makin' an' mendin'
o' church carts an' implemen's, let alone stayin' i' that house
an' yard as is Squire Donnithorne's."
"Well, but you say yourself, Joshua, that you never knew any one
come to preach on the Green before; why should you think they'll
come again? The Methodists don't come to preach in little
villages like Hayslope, where there's only a handful of labourers,
too tired to listen to them. They might almost as well go and
preach on the Binton Hills. Will Maskery is no preacher himself,
I think."
"Nay, sir, he's no gift at stringin' the words together wi'out
book; he'd be stuck fast like a cow i' wet clay. But he's got
tongue enough to speak disrespectful about's neebors, for he said
as I was a blind Pharisee--a-usin' the Bible i' that way to find
nick-names for folks as are his elders an' betters!--and what's
worse, he's been heard to say very unbecomin' words about Your
Reverence; for I could bring them as 'ud swear as he called you a
'dumb dog,' an' a 'idle shepherd.' You'll forgi'e me for sayin'
such things over again."
"Better not, better not, Joshua. Let evil words die as soon as
they're spoken. Will Maskery might be a great deal worse fellow
than he is. He used to be a wild drunken rascal, neglecting his
work and beating his wife, they told me; now he's thrifty and
decent, and he and his wife look comfortable together. If you can
bring me any proof that he interferes with his neighbours and
creates any disturbance, I shall think it my duty as a clergyman
and a magistrate to interfere. But it wouldn't become wise people
like you and me to be making a fuss about trifles, as if we
thought the Church was in danger because Will Maskery lets his
tongue wag rather foolishly, or a young woman talks in a serious
way to a handful of people on the Green. We must 'live and let
live,' Joshua, in religion as well as in other things. You go on
doing your duty, as parish clerk and sexton, as well as you've
always done it, and making those capital thick boots for your
neighbours, and things won't go far wrong in Hayslope, depend upon
it."
"Your Reverence is very good to say so; an' I'm sensable as, you
not livin' i' the parish, there's more upo' my shoulders."
"To be sure; and you must mind and not lower the Church in
people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for a little
thing, Joshua. I shall trust to your good sense, now to take no
notice at all of what Will Maskery says, either about you or me.
You and your neighbours can go on taking your pot of beer soberly,
when you've done your day's work, like good churchmen; and if Will
Maskery doesn't like to join you, but to go to a prayermeeting at
Treddleston instead, let him; that's no business of yours, so long
as he doesn't hinder you from doing what you like. And as to
people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that,
any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about
it. Will Maskery comes to church every Sunday afternoon, and does
his wheelwright's business steadily in the weekdays, and as long
as he does that he must be let alone."
"Ah, sir, but when he comes to church, he sits an' shakes his
head, an' looks as sour an' as coxy when we're a-singin' as I
should like to fetch him a rap across the jowl--God forgi'e me--
an' Mrs. Irwine, an' Your Reverence too, for speakin' so afore
you. An' he said as our Christmas singin' was no better nor the
cracklin' o' thorns under a pot."
"Well, he's got a bad ear for music, Joshua. When people have
wooden heads, you know, it can't be helped. He won't bring the
other people in Hayslope round to his opinion, while you go on
singing as well as you do."
"Yes, sir, but it turns a man's stomach t' hear the Scripture
misused i' that way. I know as much o' the words o' the Bible as
he does, an' could say the Psalms right through i' my sleep if you
was to pinch me; but I know better nor to take 'em to say my own
say wi'. I might as well take the Sacriment-cup home and use it
at meals."
"That's a very sensible remark of yours, Joshua; but, as I said
before----"
While Mr. Irwine was speaking, the sound of a booted step and the
clink of a spur were heard on the stone floor of the entrance-
hall, and Joshua Rann moved hastily aside from the doorway to make
room for some one who paused there, and said, in a ringing tenor
voice,
"Godson Arthur--may he come in?"
"Come in, come in, godson!" Mrs. Irwine answered, in the deep
half-masculine tone which belongs to the vigorous old woman, and
there entered a young gentleman in a riding-dress, with his right
arm in a sling; whereupon followed that pleasant confusion of
laughing interjections, and hand-shakings, and "How are you's?"
mingled with joyous short barks and wagging of tails on the part
of the canine members of the family, which tells that the visitor
is on the best terms with the visited. The young gentleman was
Arthur Donnithorne, known in Hayslope, variously, as "the young
squire," "the heir," and "the captain." He was only a captain in
the Loamshire Militia, but to the Hayslope tenants he was more
intensely a captain than all the young gentlemen of the same rank
in his Majesty's regulars--he outshone them as the planet Jupiter
outshines the Milky Way. If you want to know more particularly
how he looked, call to your remembrance some tawny-whiskered,
brown-locked, clear-complexioned young Englishman whom you have
met with in a foreign town, and been proud of as a fellow-
countryman--well-washed, high-bred, white-handed, yet looking as
if he could deliver well from 'the left shoulder and floor his
man: I will not be so much of a tailor as to trouble your
imagination with the difference of costume, and insist on the
striped waistcoat, long-tailed coat, and low top-boots.
Turning round to take a chair, Captain Donnithorne said, "But
don't let me interrupt Joshua's business--he has something to
say."
"Humbly begging Your Honour's pardon," said Joshua, bowing low,
"there was one thing I had to say to His Reverence as other things
had drove out o' my head."
"Out with it, Joshua, quickly!" said Mr. Irwine.
"Belike, sir, you havena heared as Thias Bede's dead--drownded
this morning, or more like overnight, i' the Willow Brook, again'
the bridge right i' front o' the house."
"Ah!" exclaimed both the gentlemen at once, as if they were a good
deal interested in the information.
"An' Seth Bede's been to me this morning to say he wished me to
tell Your Reverence as his brother Adam begged of you particular
t' allow his father's grave to be dug by the White Thorn, because
his mother's set her heart on it, on account of a dream as she
had; an' they'd ha' come theirselves to ask you, but they've so
much to see after with the crowner, an' that; an' their mother's
took on so, an' wants 'em to make sure o' the spot for fear
somebody else should take it. An' if Your Reverence sees well and
good, I'll send my boy to tell 'em as soon as I get home; an'
that's why I make bold to trouble you wi' it, His Honour being
present."
"To be sure, Joshua, to be sure, they shall have it. I'll ride
round to Adam myself, and see him. Send your boy, however, to say
they shall have the grave, lest anything should happen to detain
me. And now, good morning, Joshua; go into the kitchen and have
some ale."
"Poor old Thias!" said Mr. Irwine, when Joshua was gone. "I'm
afraid the drink helped the brook to drown him. I should have
been glad for the load to have been taken off my friend Adam's
shoulders in a less painful way. That fine fellow has been
propping up his father from ruin for the last five or six years."
"He's a regular trump, is Adam," said Captain Donnithorne. "When
I was a little fellow, and Adam was a strapping lad of fifteen,
and taught me carpentering, I used to think if ever I was a rich
sultan, I would make Adam my grand-vizier. And I believe now he
would bear the exaltation as well as any poor wise man in an
Eastern story. If ever I live to be a large-acred man instead of
a poor devil with a mortgaged allowance of pocket-money, I'll have
Adam for my right hand. He shall manage my woods for me, for he
seems to have a better notion of those things than any man I ever
met with; and I know he would make twice the money of them that my
grandfather does, with that miserable old Satchell to manage, who
understands no more about timber than an old carp. I've mentioned
the subject to my grandfather once or twice, but for some reason
or other he has a dislike to Adam, and I can do nothing. But
come, Your Reverence, are you for a ride with me? It's splendid
out of doors now. We can go to Adam's together, if you like; but
I want to call at the Hall Farm on my way, to look at the whelps
Poyser is keeping for me."
"You must stay and have lunch first, Arthur," said Mrs. Irwine.
"It's nearly two. Carroll will bring it in directly."
"I want to go to the Hall Farm too," said Mr. Irwine, "to have
another look at the little Methodist who is staying there. Joshua
tells me she was preaching on the Green last night."
"Oh, by Jove!" said Captain Donnithorne, laughing. "Why, she
looks as quiet as a mouse. There's something rather striking
about her, though. I positively felt quite bashful the first time
I saw her--she was sitting stooping over her sewing in the
sunshine outside the house, when I rode up and called out, without
noticing that she was a stranger, 'Is Martin Poyser at home?' I
declare, when she got up and looked at me and just said, 'He's in
the house, I believe: I'll go and call him,' I felt quite ashamed
of having spoken so abruptly to her. She looked like St.
Catherine in a Quaker dress. It's a type of face one rarely sees
among our common people."
"I should like to see the young woman, Dauphin," said Mrs. Irwine.
"Make her come here on some pretext or other."
"I don't know how I can manage that, Mother; it will hardly do for
me to patronize a Methodist preacher, even if she would consent to
be patronized by an idle shepherd, as Will Maskery calls me. You
should have come in a little sooner, Arthur, to hear Joshua's
denunciation of his neighbour Will Maskery. The old fellow wants
me to excommunicate the wheelwright, and then deliver him over to
the civil arm--that is to say, to your grandfather--to be turned
out of house and yard. If I chose to interfere in this business,
now, I might get up as pretty a story of hatred and persecution as
the Methodists need desire to publish in the next number of their
magazine. It wouldn't take me much trouble to persuade Chad
Cranage and half a dozen other bull-headed fellows that they would
be doing an acceptable service to the Church by hunting Will
Maskery out of the village with rope-ends and pitchforks; and
then, when I had furnished them with half a sovereign to get
gloriously drunk after their exertions, I should have put the
climax to as pretty a farce as any of my brother clergy have set
going in their parishes for the last thirty years."
"It is really insolent of the man, though, to call you an 'idle
shepherd' and a 'dumb dog,'" said Mrs. Irwine. "I should be
inclined to check him a little there. You are too easy-tempered,
Dauphin."
"Why, Mother, you don't think it would be a good way of sustaining
my dignity to set about vindicating myself from the aspersions of
Will Maskery? Besides, I'm not so sure that they ARE aspersions.
I AM a lazy fellow, and get terribly heavy in my saddle; not to
mention that I'm always spending more than I can afford in bricks
and mortar, so that I get savage at a lame beggar when he asks me
for sixpence. Those poor lean cobblers, who think they can help
to regenerate mankind by setting out to preach in the morning
twilight before they begin their day's work, may well have a poor
opinion of me. But come, let us have our luncheon. Isn't Kate
coming to lunch?"
"Miss Irwine told Bridget to take her lunch upstairs," said
Carroll; "she can't leave Miss Anne."
"Oh, very well. Tell Bridget to say I'll go up and see Miss Anne
presently. You can use your right arm quite well now, Arthur,"
Mr. Irwine continued, observing that Captain Donnithorne had taken
his arm out of the sling.
"Yes, pretty well; but Godwin insists on my keeping it up
constantly for some time to come. I hope I shall be able to get
away to the regiment, though, in the beginning of August. It's a
desperately dull business being shut up at the Chase in the summer
months, when one can neither hunt nor shoot, so as to make one's
self pleasantly sleepy in the evening. However, we are to
astonish the echoes on the 30th of July. My grandfather has given
me carte blanche for once, and I promise you the entertainment
shall be worthy of the occasion. The world will not see the grand
epoch of my majority twice. I think I shall have a lofty throne
for you, Godmamma, or rather two, one on the lawn and another in
the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon us like an
Olympian goddess."
"I mean to bring out my best brocade, that I wore at your
christening twenty years ago," said Mrs. Irwine. "Ah, I think I
shall see your poor mother flitting about in her white dress,
which looked to me almost like a shroud that very day; and it WAS
her shroud only three months after; and your little cap and
christening dress were buried with her too. She had set her heart
on that, sweet soul! Thank God you take after your mother's
family, Arthur. If you had been a puny, wiry, yellow baby, I
wouldn't have stood godmother to you. I should have been sure you
would turn out a Donnithorne. But you were such a broad-faced,
broad-chested, loud-screaming rascal, I knew you were every inch
of you a Tradgett."
"But you might have been a little too hasty there, Mother," said
Mr. Irwine, smiling. "Don't you remember how it was with Juno's
last pups? One of them was the very image of its mother, but it
had two or three of its father's tricks notwithstanding. Nature
is clever enough to cheat even you, Mother."
"Nonsense, child! Nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a
mastiff. You'll never persuade me that I can't tell what men are
by their outsides. If I don't like a man's looks, depend upon it
I shall never like HIM. I don't want to know people that look
ugly and disagreeable, any more than I want to taste dishes that
look disagreeable. If they make me shudder at the first glance, I
say, take them away. An ugly, piggish, or fishy eye, now, makes
me feel quite ill; it's like a bad smell."
"Talking of eyes," said Captain Donnithorne, "that reminds me that
I've got a book I meant to bring you, Godmamma. It came down in a
parcel from London the other day. I know you are fond of queer,
wizardlike stories. It's a volume of poems, 'Lyrical Ballads.'
Most of them seem to be twaddling stuff, but the first is in a
different style--'The Ancient Mariner' is the title. I can hardly
make head or tail of it as a story, but it's a strange, striking
thing. I'll send it over to you; and there are some other books
that you may like to see, Irwine--pamphlets about Antinomianism
and Evangelicalism, whatever they may be. I can't think what the
fellow means by sending such things to me. I've written to him to
desire that from henceforth he will send me no book or pamphlet on
anything that ends in ISM."
"Well, I don't know that I'm very fond of isms myself; but I may
as well look at the pamphlets; they let one see what is going on.
I've a little matter to attend to, Arthur," continued Mr. Irwine,
rising to leave the room, "and then I shall be ready to set out
with you."
The little matter that Mr. Irwine had to attend to took him up the
old stone staircase (part of the house was very old) and made him
pause before a door at which he knocked gently. "Come in," said a
woman's voice, and he entered a room so darkened by blinds and
curtains that Miss Kate, the thin middle-aged lady standing by the
bedside, would not have had light enough for any other sort of
work than the knitting which lay on the little table near her.
But at present she was doing what required only the dimmest light--
sponging the aching head that lay on the pillow with fresh
vinegar. It was a small face, that of the poor sufferer; perhaps
it had once been pretty, but now it was worn and sallow. Miss
Kate came towards her brother and whispered, "Don't speak to her;
she can't bear to be spoken to to-day." Anne's eyes were closed,
and her brow contracted as if from intense pain. Mr. Irwine went
to the bedside and took up one of the delicate hands and kissed
it, a slight pressure from the small fingers told him that it was
worth-while to have come upstairs for the sake of doing that. He
lingered a moment, looking at her, and then turned away and left
the room, treading very gently--he had taken off his boots and put
on slippers before he came upstairs. Whoever remembers how many
things he has declined to do even for himself, rather than have
the trouble of putting on or taking off his boots, will not think
this last detail insignificant.
And Mr. Irwine's sisters, as any person of family within ten miles
of Broxton could have testified, were such stupid, uninteresting
women! It was quite a pity handsome, clever Mrs. Irwine should
have had such commonplace daughters. That fine old lady herself
was worth driving ten miles to see, any day; her beauty, her well-
preserved faculties, and her old-fashioned dignity made her a
graceful subject for conversation in turn with the King's health,
the sweet new patterns in cotton dresses, the news from Egypt, and
Lord Dacey's lawsuit, which was fretting poor Lady Dacey to death.
But no one ever thought of mentioning the Miss Irwines, except the
poor people in Broxton village, who regarded them as deep in the
science of medicine, and spoke of them vaguely as "the
gentlefolks." If any one had asked old Job Dummilow who gave him
his flannel jacket, he would have answered, "the gentlefolks, last
winter"; and widow Steene dwelt much on the virtues of the "stuff"
the gentlefolks gave her for her cough. Under this name too, they
were used with great effect as a means of taming refractory
children, so that at the sight of poor Miss Anne's sallow face,
several small urchins had a terrified sense that she was cognizant
of all their worst misdemeanours, and knew the precise number of
stones with which they had intended to hit Farmer Britton's ducks.
But for all who saw them through a less mythical medium, the Miss
Irwines were quite superfluous existences--inartistic figures
crowding the canvas of life without adequate effect. Miss Anne,
indeed, if her chronic headaches could have been accounted for by
a pathetic story of disappointed love, might have had some
romantic interest attached to her: but no such story had either
been known or invented concerning her, and the general impression
was quite in accordance with the fact, that both the sisters were
old maids for the prosaic reason that they had never received an
eligible offer.
Nevertheless, to speak paradoxically, the existence of
insignificant people has very important consequences in the world.
It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of
wages, to call forth many evil tempers from the selfish and many
heroisms from the sympathetic, and, in other ways, to play no
small part in the tragedy of life. And if that handsome,
generous-blooded clergyman, the Rev. Adolphus Irwine, had not had
these two hopelessly maiden sisters, his lot would have been
shaped quite differently: he would very likely have taken a comely
wife in his youth, and now, when his hair was getting grey under
the powder, would have had tall sons and blooming daughters--such
possessions, in short, as men commonly think will repay them for
all the labour they take under the sun. As it was--having with
all his three livings no more than seven hundred a-year, and
seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother and his sickly
sister, not to reckon a second sister, who was usually spoken of
without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as became their birth
and habits, and at the same time providing for a family of his
own--he remained, you see, at the age of eight-and-forty, a
bachelor, not making any merit of that renunciation, but saying
laughingly, if any one alluded to it, that he made it an excuse
for many indulgences which a wife would never have allowed him.
And perhaps he was the only person in the world who did not think
his sisters uninteresting and superfluous; for his was one of
those large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that never know a
narrow or a grudging thought; Epicurean, if you will, with no
enthusiasm, no self-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have
seen, of a sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying
tenderness for obscure and monotonous suffering. It was his
large-hearted indulgence that made him ignore his mother's
hardness towards her daughters, which was the more striking from
its contrast with her doting fondness towards himself; he held it
no virtue to frown at irremediable faults.
See the difference between the impression a man makes on you when
you walk by his side in familiar talk, or look at him in his home,
and the figure he makes when seen from a lofty historical level,
or even in the eyes of a critical neighbour who thinks of him as
an embodied system or opinion rather than as a man. Mr. Roe, the
"travelling preacher" stationed at Treddleston, had included Mr.
Irwine in a general statement concerning the Church clergy in the
surrounding district, whom he described as men given up to the
lusts of the flesh and the pride of life; hunting and shooting,
and adorning their own houses; asking what shall we eat, and what
shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?--careless of
dispensing the bread of life to their flocks, preaching at best
but a carnal and soul-benumbing morality, and trafficking in the
souls of men by receiving money for discharging the pastoral
office in parishes where they did not so much as look on the faces
of the people more than once a-year. The ecclesiastical
historian, too, looking into parliamentary reports of that period,
finds honourable members zealous for the Church, and untainted
with any sympathy for the "tribe of canting Methodists," making
statements scarcely less melancholy than that of Mr. Roe. And it
is impossible for me to say that Mr. Irwine was altogether belied
by the generic classification assigned him. He really had no very
lofty aims, no theological enthusiasm: if I were closely
questioned, I should be obliged to confess that he felt no serious
alarms about the souls of his parishioners, and would have thought
it a mere loss of time to talk in a doctrinal and awakening manner
to old "Feyther Taft," or even to Chad Cranage the blacksmith. If
he had been in the habit of speaking theoretically, he would
perhaps have said that the only healthy form religion could take
in such minds was that of certain dim but strong emotions,
suffusing themselves as a hallowing influence over the family
affections and neighbourly duties. He thought the custom of
baptism more important than its doctrine, and that the religious
benefits the peasant drew from the church where his fathers
worshipped and the sacred piece of turf where they lay buried were
but slightly dependent on a clear understanding of the Liturgy or
the sermon. Clearly the rector was not what is called in these
days an "earnest" man: he was fonder of church history than of
divinity, and had much more insight into men's characters than
interest in their opinions; he was neither laborious, nor
obviously self-denying, nor very copious in alms-giving, and his
theology, you perceive, was lax. His mental palate, indeed, was
rather pagan, and found a savouriness in a quotation from
Sophocles or Theocritus that was quite absent from any text in
Isaiah or Amos. But if you feed your young setter on raw flesh,
how can you wonder at its retaining a relish for uncooked
partridge in after-life? And Mr. Irwine's recollections of young
enthusiasm and ambition were all associated with poetry and ethics
that lay aloof from the Bible.
On the other hand, I must plead, for I have an affectionate
partiality towards the rector's memory, that he was not
vindictive--and some philanthropists have been so; that he was not
intolerant--and there is a rumour that some zealous theologians
have not been altogether free from that blemish; that although he
would probably have declined to give his body to be burned in any
public cause, and was far from bestowing all his goods to feed the
poor, he had that charity which has sometimes been lacking to very
illustrious virtue--he was tender to other men's failings, and
unwilling to impute evil. He was one of those men, and they are
not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by following
them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit,
entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with
which they speak to the young and aged about their own
hearthstone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday
wants of everyday companions, who take all their kindness as a
matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric.
Such men, happily, have lived in times when great abuses
flourished, and have sometimes even been the living
representatives of the abuses. That is a thought which might
comfort us a little under the opposite fact--that it is better
sometimes NOT to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the
threshold of their homes.
But whatever you may think of Mr. Irwine now, if you had met him
that June afternoon riding on his grey cob, with his dogs running
beside him--portly, upright, manly, with a good-natured smile on
his finely turned lips as he talked to his dashing young companion
on the bay mare, you must have felt that, however ill he
harmonized with sound theories of the clerical office, he somehow
harmonized extremely well with that peaceful landscape.
See them in the bright sunlight, interrupted every now and then by
rolling masses of cloud, ascending the slope from the Broxton
side, where the tall gables and elms of the rectory predominate
over the tiny whitewashed church. They will soon be in the parish
of Hayslope; the grey church-tower and village roofs lie before
them to the left, and farther on, to the right, they can just see
the chimneys of the Hall Farm.
