There was no very great difficulty in the matter. Jared Pellet, under
protest, wrote a note to the Rev. John Gray, the vicar, telling him that
a friend--he haggled a great deal over that word "friend"--would be glad
to undertake the duties of pew-opener in the place of the defunct Mrs
Nimmer; and the vicar mentioned the matter to his friend Mr Timson,
churchwarden and tea-dealer, and both agreed that they would be most
happy to oblige Mr Jared Pellet in the matter.
Then Mr Timson had an interview with Jared, and told him personally he
would be glad to give his weight to the matter, if Jared's friend was a
worthy suitable woman.
Now there came a hitch in the smoothness, for Jared went home and told
his wife that that red-faced old humbug Purkis had played double; and,
in fact, he had gone head-dabbing into the presence of the vicar and
churchwarden to tell them he should be glad if the post lately occupied
by Mrs Nimmer could be conferred upon a friend of his.
But explanations followed: the two principal candidates were found to be
one and the same; and Mrs Tim Ruggles was duly appointed to a post, for
whose proper filling she seemed to have been specially manufactured by
Dame Nature.
She, that is to say Mrs Tim Ruggles, glided, as it were, into the
correct rut upon the very first Sunday--coming to St Runwald's in a
mournful-hued dress--a shot putty and soot, while a tightly-fitting cap
crowned her head--a cap like a white sarcenet raised pie, all tiny bows
and tuckers--none of your fly-away servant-girl style of headdress, but
firmly tied beneath her chin with silken strings. Then, too, a
prim-white muslin handkerchief encircled her neck, with ends pinned
across, and descending to be hidden away and protected by exceedingly
stiff, dark-coloured jean stays, whose presence was manifested to the
ear of the world at large by divers creaking cracklings, when, by rare
chance, Mrs Ruggles slightly bent her fierce body--to the eye, by a
little peephole, afforded where one hook in the back of the dress had an
antipathy to its kindred loop.
She might have been pew-opener for twenty years from the way in which
she performed her duties, even trenching upon Mr Purkis's dominion by
frowning at small boys. It was a sight to see the way in which she
performed her task, pouncing upon dubious-looking strangers who stood
tasting their hats just inside the doors, and, as she could tell in a
moment whether or not they were disposed to be generous, placing them in
comfortably cushioned seats, where such miserable sinners could not fail
to be eased in their consciences. Sometimes she morally took the poor
things into custody, and then, like some savage warder, shut them up in
cold wooden cells--in corners where it was dark, in black places just
below the galleries, in spots beneath the organ, where they sat with a
sensation as of liquid thunder being poured upon their heads, or behind
pillars where they could not catch a glimpse of the reading-desk, and
had to look round the corner at the pulpit. A select few she treated
worse than all the rest, shutting them up in the great churchwarden's
pew, where they were completely out of sight, Mr Timson monopolising all
the hassocks so as to peep over the edge.
A very moral hedgehog was Mrs Ruggles, treating the congregation as if
they were so many little Pines intrusted to her charge, and evidently
annoyed that she was not allowed, like Mr Purkis, a cane to use _ad
libitum_. Had she been in office at a ritualistic church, brawlers
would have paused ere they attempted to desecrate the structure. If you
went into the church, she looked at you sidewise, and calculated your
value in an instant; when, if you obeyed the glance of her eye, well; if
not, she held up a finger at you, as if to say, "Come here, sir!" and
then--stay away if you dared.
Why! the pew doors never screaked and scrawked when she opened them.
She never shut in your coat-tails, or the voluminous folds of a lady's
dress; but she punished you severely if ever you attended St Runwald's
without books; for she would glide along the aisle like a religious
ghost, and thrust a dreadful liver-coloured, dog's-eared, S.P.C.K.
prayer-book under your nose, so that you were obliged to take it, and
then pay her sixpence as you went out for what you would rather not have
had. For, if you had been accustomed all your life to a delicately
bound diamond edition, it was not pleasant to stand up in good society
holding the sore-edged, workhouse-looking book, while you dared not
thrust it out of sight, for she was sure, in that case, to bring you
another, to your lasting shame and confusion. It was almost a wonder
that people so served ever entered the church again; and the
probabilities are that they never would have done so, had not Jared
Pellet drawn them thither with his music.
The best way to meet Mrs Ruggles was to be prepared with a pocket
edition of the liturgy, when, if it were your custom to stand with hands
joined and resting upon the pew-edge, under the impression that you were
quite at home in the service, down she would come, for a certainty, her
crackling stays heralding her approach. Then the plan was to be ready
for her, and, as she rigidly made a thrust at you with the most
disreputable book in her collection, ward off her attack with one of
Jarkins & Potto's little bijous.
The assertion cannot be authenticated, but it was said that Mrs Ruggles,
soon after her appointment, went round to the bookstalls in Holywell
Street, and bought up the old prayer-books out of the tea-chests,
labelled, "All these at twopence;" and these brutal, loose-leaved,
mildewed affairs she used to keep in a box in a corner pew ready to
hand, making pounds out of them in the course of the year--a sort of
private church-rate of her own.
It was almost startling to hear her, when it had grown too late for
fresh comers, when the church was completely filled, and a portion of
the congregation was sitting in aisle and nave upon camp-stools and
chairs fetched out of the vestry. She would join then in litany and
communion, startling the clerk, and getting right before him, so that
the congregation would turn and look at her, in admiration or otherwise,
but without ruffling in the least the perfect calm of her demeanour.
If a douceur was given to old Purkis, he bent a little, or touched his
cocked-hat, or in some way gave you to understand that he was grateful;
but not so Mrs Ruggles: she seemed to demand the money of you as a
right, and you paid it under protest, feeling somehow obliged to do so,
although, when she took it, she seemed to ignore you and your coin at
one and the same time. Some people said that she must have paid fees to
physicians in her day, and so have learned something of their ways; but
how she ever continued to get the sixpences and shillings into her
pocket, remains one of the great unsolved mysteries, for she never bent
in the slightest degree.
Mr Purkis never took to her, for he declared her to be a woman without a
soul for music, since she seemed to make a point of leaving all the dust
and cobwebs she could about the organ loft, neglecting it shamefully;
which the beadle said was not the thing, seeing who had been the means
of getting her the post.
Volume 1, Chapter XVIII.