I
Mr Lindley was first vicar of Aldecross. The cottages of this tiny
hamlet had nestled in peace since their beginning, and the country folk
had crossed the lanes and farm-lands, two or three miles, to the parish
church at Greymeed, on the bright Sunday mornings.
But when the pits were sunk, blank rows of dwellings started up beside
the high roads, and a new population, skimmed from the floating scum of
workmen, was filled in, the cottages and the country people almost
obliterated.
To suit the convenience of these new collier-inhabitants, a church must
be built at Aldecross. There was not too much money. And so the little
building crouched like a humped stone-and-mortar mouse, with two little
turrets at the west corners for ears, in the fields near the cottages
and the apple trees, as far as possible from the dwellings down the
high road. It had an uncertain, timid look about it. And so they
planted big-leaved ivy, to hide its shrinking newness. So that now the
little church stands buried in its greenery, stranded and sleeping
among the fields, while the brick houses elbow nearer and nearer,
threatening to crush it down. It is already obsolete.
The Reverend Ernest Lindley, aged twenty-seven, and newly married, came
from his curacy in Suffolk to take charge of his church. He was just an
ordinary young man, who had been to Cambridge and taken orders. His
wife was a self-assured young woman, daughter of a Cambridgeshire
rector. Her father had spent the whole of his thousand a year, so that
Mrs Lindley had nothing of her own. Thus the young married people came
to Aldecross to live on a stipend of about a hundred and twenty pounds,
and to keep up a superior position.
They were not very well received by the new, raw, disaffected
population of colliers. Being accustomed to farm labourers, Mr Lindley
had considered himself as belonging indisputably to the upper or
ordering classes. He had to be humble to the county families, but
still, he was of their kind, whilst the common people were something
different. He had no doubts of himself.
He found, however, that the collier population refused to accept this
arrangement. They had no use for him in their lives, and they told him
so, callously. The women merely said, “they were throng,” or else, “Oh,
it’s no good you coming here, we’re Chapel.” The men were quite
good-humoured so long as he did not touch them too nigh, they were
cheerfully contemptuous of him, with a preconceived contempt he was
powerless against.
At last, passing from indignation to silent resentment, even, if he
dared have acknowledged it, to conscious hatred of the majority of his
flock, and unconscious hatred of himself, he confined his activities to
a narrow round of cottages, and he had to submit. He had no particular
character, having always depended on his position in society to give
him position among men. Now he was so poor, he had no social standing
even among the common vulgar tradespeople of the district, and he had
not the nature nor the wish to make his society agreeable to them, nor
the strength to impose himself where he would have liked to be
recognized. He dragged on, pale and miserable and neutral.
At first his wife raged with mortification. She took on airs and used a
high hand. But her income was too small, the wrestling with tradesmen’s
bills was too pitiful, she only met with general, callous ridicule when
she tried to be impressive.
Wounded to the quick of her pride, she found herself isolated in an
indifferent, callous population. She raged indoors and out. But soon
she learned that she must pay too heavily for her outdoor rages, and
then she only raged within the walls of the rectory. There her feeling
was so strong, that she frightened herself. She saw herself hating her
husband, and she knew that, unless she were careful, she would smash
her form of life and bring catastrophe upon him and upon herself. So in
very fear, she went quiet. She hid, bitter and beaten by fear, behind
the only shelter she had in the world, her gloomy, poor parsonage.
Children were born one every year; almost mechanically, she continued
to perform her maternal duty, which was forced upon her. Gradually,
broken by the suppressing of her violent anger and misery and disgust,
she became an invalid and took to her couch.
The children grew up healthy, but unwarmed and rather rigid. Their
father and mother educated them at home, made them very proud and very
genteel, put them definitely and cruelly in the upper classes, apart
from the vulgar around them. So they lived quite isolated. They were
good-looking, and had that curiously clean, semi-transparent look of
the genteel, isolated poor.
Gradually Mr and Mrs Lindley lost all hold on life, and spent their
hours, weeks and years merely haggling to make ends meet, and bitterly
repressing and pruning their children into gentility, urging them to
ambition, weighting them with duty. On Sunday morning the whole family,
except the mother, went down the lane to church, the long-legged girls
in skimpy frocks, the boys in black coats and long, grey, unfitting
trousers. They passed by their father’s parishioners with mute, clear
faces, childish mouths closed in pride that was like a doom to them,
and childish eyes already unseeing. Miss Mary, the eldest, was the
leader. She was a long, slim thing with a fine profile and a proud,
pure look of submission to a high fate. Miss Louisa, the second, was
short and plump and obstinate-looking. She had more enemies than
ideals. She looked after the lesser children, Miss Mary after the
elder. The collier children watched this pale, distinguished procession
of the vicar’s family pass mutely by, and they were impressed by the
air of gentility and distance, they made mock of the trousers of the
small sons, they felt inferior in themselves, and hate stirred their
hearts.
In her time, Miss Mary received as governess a few little daughters of
tradesmen; Miss Louisa managed the house and went among her father’s
church-goers, giving lessons on the piano to the colliers’ daughters at
thirteen shillings for twenty-six lessons.