The Reverend Henry Lambent was born when his mother was in very bad
health, and the consequence was that he had to be brought up "by hand,"
which in those days meant by spoon, and, as the reader is most probably
in utter ignorance of the process, it shall be described, as even the
wisest may have something to learn, and there is always a possibility
that information, however small, may some day be of service.
In bringing up by hand--i.e. by spoon--take a moderate portion of rusks,
tops and bottoms, nursery biscuits, captain's biscuits, or similar
highly-baked farinaceous preparation, boil soft, add milk and sugar to
suit baby's taste--for babies have taste, and can appreciate sweets and
show disgust at bitters as well as the best of us--then mix and beat to
the consistency of cream, and by testing on the lips get it to the right
heat--just moderately warm. Next, take the baby, lay it softly upon its
back; coo, simmer, and talk soft broken English to it while a diaper bib
is placed neatly beneath its chin, tightly, so as to confine the arms
and fists as well; then take the preparation, about half a small
teaspoonful at a time, make believe to eat it yourself by putting it in
your mouth, and taking it out again, so as to be certain that it will
not burn, and then apply it to the baby's lips.
[_Note_.--This placing in the feeder's own mouth has been objected to on
the plea that it will drive an observant baby frantic, making it imagine
that it is about to be robbed of its rights; but the plan is to be
commended on the ground of safety.]
Do not be in a hurry, nor yet be appalled at the difficulty and slowness
of the operation, for as a rule seven-eighths of the preparation gets
spread over baby's cheeks and chin, portions even reaching to the
wrinkles of the neck; for here is where a clever feeder shines in the
deft management of the spoon, which is inserted here, drawn there, and
all with the delicacy of a barber with a keen razor, till every moist
portion has been scraped away, and has disappeared through the little
pink buttonhole-like apology for a gate which leads to the road to
digestion. Keep up the cooing and repeat.
This is the genuine old-fashioned way, dating from a very early year
after the world's creation. In fact, it seems evident from the
discovery of bone spoons, roughly fashioned, in caverns, that some of
the cave-dwellers practised it, the preparation used for nurturing the
very early baby being most probably marrow out of an auroch's leg-bone,
or, maybe, the brains of the megatherium, which may account for the
wisdom that has come down from our ancestors, who knew everything, while
we are ignorant in the extreme.
Now we have changed all that, as the French say, and the very modern
babe is supplied with somebody's patent infants' food, out of which
everything noxious has been eliminated. Such preparations are
advertised by the dozen, and when cooked there is no more old-fashioned
spoon, but the food is placed in a peculiarly shaped bottle fitted with
hose and branch like a small fire-engine, from the indiarubber tube of
which baby imbibes health very seldom. For what with neglect in
cleaning the apparatus, putrescent particles of milk, fermenting yeasty
paste, and the like, the infant becomes an infant prodigy if it manages
to escape the many disorders incidental to early childhood, and can be
exhibited as a specimen brought up by the bottle, which slays as many as
that effected by people of larger growth.
No unwashed feeding-bottle slew the Reverend Henry Lambent, for your
modern hookah-pattern food imbiber had not been invented when he was
born. He was reared as aforesaid, honestly by hand, but his nurse must
have made a mistake in the packets from which she obtained his supplies,
and in place of biscuit, ground arrowroot, or semolina, have gone in the
dark and used the starch with an effect that lasted even unto manhood.
Stiffness is a mild way of expressing the rigidity of the Vicar's
person. Rude boys made remarks about him, suggesting that he had
swallowed the poker, that he was as stiff as a yard of pump-water, and
the like. Certainly he seemed to have come of an extremely stiff-necked
generation, as he stalked--he never used to walk--down the High Street
towards the schools.
The Reverend Henry Lambent had been taking seidlitz powders every
morning since the school feast. Not that he had feasted and made
himself ill, for his refreshment on that day had consisted of one cup of
tea and a slice of bread-and-butter--that was all at the feast; but
since then he had been nervous, hot-blooded, and strange. He had had
symptoms of the ailment before the day of the school-treat, but they had
been more mild; now they had assumed an aggravated form, and the
seidlitz powders brought him no relief.
And yet he had tried them well, telling himself that he was only a
little feverish, and had been studying a little too hard. He had taken
a seidlitz powder according to the direction for use as printed upon the
square, flat box--that is to say, he had mixed the contents of the blue
paper in a tumbler of cold spring water, waited till it dissolved, then
emptied in the contents of the white paper, stirred, and drunk while in
a state of effervescence. He had dissolved the contents of the blue
paper in one glass of water and the contents of the white paper in
another glass of water, poured one into the other, and drunk while in a
state of effervescence. He had dissolved the contents of the papers
again separately, and drunk first one and then the other, allowing the
effervescence to take place _not_ in the tumbler. Still he was no
better, and he almost felt tempted to follow the example of the Eastern
potentate who took the whole of the contents of the blue papers first,
and then swallowed the contents of all the white papers afterwards; but
history tells that this monarch did not feel any better after the dose,
so that the Reverend Henry Lambent was not encouraged to proceed.
He was not seriously bad, and yet he was, if this paradoxical statement
can be accepted. He was mentally ill for the first time in his life of
the complaint from which he suffered, and he was trying hard to make
himself believe that his ailment was bodily and of a nervo-febrile cast.
The Reverend Henry Lambent's attack came on with the visible appearance
of a face before his eyes. If he sat down to read, it gazed up at him
from the book, like a beautiful illustration that filled every page. He
turned over, and it was there; he turned over again, and it was still
there. Leaf after leaf did he keep turning, and it was always before
him.
He set to work at his next week's sermons, and the manuscript paper
became illustrated as well with the same sweet pensive face, and when he
read prayers morning and evening, it seemed to him that he was making
supplication for that face alone. He preached on Sundays, and the
congregation seemed to consist of one--the owner of that face, and to
her he addressed himself morning and afternoon. If he sat and thought
it was of that face; if he went out for a constitutional, that face was
with him; and when at least a dozen times he set off, as he felt in duty
bound, to visit the schools, he turned off in another direction--he
dared not go for fear of meeting the owner of that face.
At meal-times, when he ate but little, it seemed to be that face that
was opposite to him, instead of the thin, handsome features of his
sister Rebecca; and if he turned his gaze to the right there was the
face again instead of the pale, refined, high-bred Beatrice. He went to
bed, and lay turning from side to side, with that countenance
photographed upon his brain, and when at last toward morning he fell
asleep, it was to dream always of that pensive countenance.
The Reverend Henry Lambent grew alarmed. He could not understand it.
He had never given much thought to such a matter as marriage on his own
account. He knew that people were married, because he had joined them
together scores of times, and he knew that generally people were
well-dressed, looked very weak and foolish, and that the bride shed
tears and wrote her name worse than ever she had written it before. But
that had nothing to do with him. He stood on a cold, stony pedestal,
which raised him high above such human weaknesses--weaknesses that
belonged to his people, not to him.
At last he told himself that it was his duty to resist temptation, and
that by resistance it would be overcome. He realised that his ailment
was really mental, and after severe examination determined to quell it
by bold endeavour, for the more he fled from the cause the worse he
seemed to be. It was absurd! It was ridiculous! It was a kind of
madness, he told himself; and again he walked over to the schools,
determined to be firm and severe. Then he told himself this feeling of
enchantment would pass away, for he should see Hazel Thorne as she
really was, and not through the _couleur de rose_ glasses of his
imagination.
He started then, and walked stiffly and severely down to the schools,
his chin in the air and a condescending bow ready for any one who would
touch his hat; but instead of going, as he had intended, straight to the
girls, he turned in and surprised Mr Chute reading a novel at his desk
while the boys were going on not quite in accordance with a clerical
idea of discipline.
The result was a severe snubbing to Mr Chute, and the vicar stalked
across the floor to go into the girls' school; but just then he heard a
sweetly modulated voice singing the first bars of a simple school
ballad, and he stopped to listen.
He had heard the song hundreds of times, but it had never sounded like
that before, and he stood as if riveted to the spot as the sweet, dear
voice gained strength, and he knew now that just at the back of Mr
Chute's desk one of the shutters had been left slightly open, so that if
he pleased that gentleman could peer into the girls' school.
The vicar did not know how it was, but an angry pang shot through him,
and a longing came over him to send Mr Chute far away and take his
place, teaching the boys, and--keeping that shutter slightly down--
listening always to the singing of that sweet, simple lay.
And then he stood and listened, and the boys involuntarily listened too,
while their master failed to urge them on, as he too stood and forgot
all but the fact that was being lyrically told of how--
"Down in a green and shady bed,
A modest violet grew;
Its stalk was bent, it hung its head
As if to hide from view."
And, as they both listened, the Reverend Henry Lambent and Samuel Chute
felt that Hazel Thorne was in some way identified with that modest
violet hiding from view down in shady Plumton All Saints, diffusing a
sweet perfume of good works, as the song went on to tell in a way that
went straight to both their hearts.
Then their eyes met.
Directly after the sweet tones ceased, and the tune was commenced again
in chorus by the singing class, the modest violet now becoming
identified with the strident voice of Miss Feelier Potts who absolutely
yelled.
The vicar went straight out, turning to the left as he reached the path
instead of to the right, for he could not visit the girls' school then;
and he walked home, telling himself that the disenchantment was
complete--there was that open shutter--his strange feelings for Hazel
Thorne were at an end--and he paced his study all the evening, his
bedroom half the night, with the sweet air and words of that simple
school song repeating themselves for ever in his ears.
"Why, Henry, what is the matter?" cried Beatrice Lambent the next
morning, as she came upon her brother in the dining-room, waiting for
her to make his coffee.
"Matter?" he said, flushing scarlet like a girl. "Matter?"
"Yes! you singing? I never heard you sing before in your life."
"Was I--was I singing?" he said huskily.
"Yes, that stupid, hackneyed violet song, that the children shriek at
the schools."
"Was I? Dear me, how strange! To be sure--yes. The children were
singing it while I was talking to Mr Chute yesterday. We could hear it
through the partition."