'He has nae mair sense o' humour than an owl, and a' aye haud
that a man withoot humour sudna be allowed intae a poopit.'
--IAN MACLAREN.
The arrival of Sibyl at Wilderleigh was the occasion of many anxious
surmises at the little Vicarage on the part of the young Vicar and his
young and adoring wife.
It had long been a great grief to them that Mr. Loftus only came to
church once on Sunday. It was vaguely understood that he had yielded
himself to doubts on religious subjects, which alone could account for
this 'laxity'--doubts which the young Vicar felt could not have shaken
himself or Mrs. Gresley, and which he was convinced he could dispel. But
he could never obtain an opportunity to wage war against these ghostly
enemies, for though he had preached during Lent a course of sermons
calculated to pulverize the infidel tendencies of the age, which his
wife had pronounced to be all-conclusive and to place the whole affair
in a nutshell--it certainly did that--unfortunately the person for whose
spiritual needs they were concocted did not hear them.
Mr. Gresley had several times called upon Mr. Loftus with a view to
giving the conversation a deeper turn, but when he was actually in his
presence, and Mr. Loftus's steel-gray attentive eye was upon him, the
younger man found it difficult, not to say impossible, to force
conversation on subjects which Mr. Loftus had no intention to discuss.
'If he would only meet me in fair argument!' Mr. Gresley said on his
return from a futile attempt to approach Mr. Loftus on the subject of
public worship; 'but when I had thoroughly explained my own views on the
importance of regular attendance at both services on Sunday, he only
said that those being my opinions, he considered that I was fully
justified in having daily services as well. If he would only meet me
fairly and hear reason,' said the young clergyman; 'but he won't. The
other day when I pressed him on the subject of the devil--I know he is
lax on the devil--I said: "But, Mr. Loftus, do you not believe in him?"
If he had only owned what I am sure was the case--namely, that he did
not believe in him--I could have confuted him in a moment. I was quite
ready. But he slipped out of it by saying, "Believe in him! I would not
trust him for a moment." There is no arguing with a man who scoffs or is
silent.'
'My dear,' said Mrs. Gresley, 'infidels are all like that, and their
only refuge is to be silent or profane. Don't you remember when that
professor from Oxford, whom we met at Dr. Pearson's, said something
about history and the Bible--I forget what, but it was perfectly
unorthodox--and Dr. Pearson was so interested, and you spoke up at once,
and he made no reply whatever, and then asked me the name of our
Virginia creeper, and talked about flowers. I often think of that, and
how he had to turn the subject.'
'But he was not convinced,' said Mr. Gresley, frowning; 'that is the odd
part of it. He brought out a book on the Bible with things in it much
worse than what he said in my presence, and which I positively refuted.
And it went through six editions, and the Bishop actually read it.'
'You see,' said Mrs. Gresley, with the acumen which pervades the
atmosphere of so many country vicarages, 'a man like the professor does
not _want_ to be convinced, or his books would not be read, any more
than Mr. Loftus wants to be convinced he ought to come to church
regularly, because then he would have no excuse for staying away. But
perhaps his wife may be a Christian, James. They say she is quite a
young girl, and that her aunt has brought her up well.'
And when Sibyl's sweet face and black velvet hat, and a wonderful
flowing gown of white and lilac, appeared in the carved Wilderleigh
pew beside Mr. Loftus's familiar profile, the Gresleys hoped many
things; though Mrs. Gresley expressed herself, after service, as much
shocked at the bride's style of dress, which she pronounced to be too
showy. Mrs. Gresley's views on dress were exclusively formed at the two
garden-parties and the one private ball to which she went in the course
of the year. The Gresleys thought it wrong to go to public balls,
and--which was quite another matter--they thought it wrong for other
clergymen and their wives to go also.
It was fortunate that Mr. Loftus admired his wife's style of dress, as
he had always admired Sibyl herself, from her graceful, fringeless head
to her slender, low-heeled shoes. She pleased his fastidious taste as
perhaps no other woman could have done. She was one of the few
Englishwomen who can wear French gowns as if they are part of them, and
not put on for the occasion.
After a becoming interval Mr. and Mrs. Gresley called, and this time
Mrs. Gresley was somewhat mollified by what she called the very
'suitable' costume of brown holland in which Sibyl received them. Mr.
Loftus did not appear, and in the course of conversation the young
couple were further pleasantly impressed with the perfect orthodoxy and
sound Church teaching of the bride, whose natural gift of platitude was
enhanced by the subject under discussion.
They also made the discovery that Mr. Loftus was, in his wife's opinion,
infallible. And Mrs. Gresley looked with some astonishment at a bride
who actually entertained towards a 'layman' the unique sentiments
which she did for her apostolic James.
'She is a nice young creature,' said Mrs. Gresley, half an hour later,
as, with her hands full of orchids, she accompanied her lord back to the
Vicarage, 'and her views, James, are beautiful--just what I think
myself. She agreed with everything we said. She must have been very well
brought up. But I can't understand her infatuation for Mr. Loftus.
Really, from the way she spoke of him, and how he knew best, one might
have supposed he was priest as well as squire here. It almost made one
smile.'
Mr. Loftus and Crack had, in the meanwhile, remained in the gardens, he
leaning back in a long deck-chair, looking dreamily up into the
perspective of moving green above him, while Crack, who had only just
arrived from Scotland, snapped mournfully at the English flies, which
tasted very much the same as those of Strathspey, so few new things are
there under the sun.
Sibyl had wished to bring Peter, the poodle, also to Wilderleigh, but
nothing would induce Mr. Loftus to invite him. He told Sibyl that he
himself hoped to replace Peter in her affections, and he had certainly
succeeded.
She returned to him now, and sat down on a low stool at his feet. In
these early days she was much addicted to footstools and the lowest of
seats, provided they were properly placed. They were in harmony with her
sentiments, and facilitated an upward gaze.
'They were so pleasant. I wish you had come in,' she said.
'I find the clergy as fatiguing as Anderson's beetle found cleanliness,'
said Mr. Loftus, his eyes dwelling on her. 'But that is not their fault.
It is because I happen to be a beetle.'
'I was a little tired, too,' said Sibyl hastily. 'They stayed rather
long.'
'And did you like them?'
'Yes; I thought them very nice. And I am glad they are High Church. I
think it is so much nicer, don't you?'
'Do you mean to tell me, now that we are married and it is too late to
go back, that you are High Church?'
'Oh, not very high!' said Sibyl anxiously, yet reassured by his look of
amusement. 'Which are you?'
'I am the same as Mr. Gresley,' said Mr. Loftus slowly, 'with a
difference.'
'I thought you were different,' said Sibyl, gratified at her own
powers of observation.
'I know,' continued Mr. Loftus, 'that he thinks I have no principles at
all, because he believes they are not the same as his; but in reality
they are very much the same as his, only they are carried further
afield, and he loses sight of them, while he has a neat little
ring-fence round his own. I like Mr. Gresley very much. He is an
exemplary young man. But some people become very narrow by walking in
the narrow path, and I fear he is one of them. Remember this, my Sibyl,
that there is no barrier in your own character against which someone,
sooner or later, will not stumble to his hurt. No boundary in ourselves
will serve to shut God in, as this good young man thinks, but every
boundary will at last shut out some fellow-creature from us, and be to
one, whom perhaps we might have helped, an occasion of stumbling. And
now let us show Crack the brook. I am afraid he will think but little of
it after the Spey, but he will be too polite to say so. As he only
arrived yesterday, it is premature to put it into words, but I have an
intuition that Crack and I shall become friends. If I had any influence
over him, I would encourage him to bathe in the brook, for he brought
into the house with him this morning an odour that convinced me that we
were on the eve of some great chemical discovery.'
So they wandered down by the brook, across the lengthening shadows. A
cock pheasant was clearing his throat in the wood near the gardens. The
low sun had become entangled in the rookery. A pair of sandpipers were
balancing their slender selves on a tiny beach of sand. A little black
and white water-ousel darted upstream with rapid, bee-like flight. Crack
followed, gravely investigating the bank point by point, as if on the
look-out for some fallacy in it.
And Sibyl registered the conclusion in her own mind that one must be
'wide,' like Mr. Loftus, not narrow, like Mr. Gresley. After this
conversation she always spoke of her religious convictions as 'wide.'