"Timotheus placed on high
Among the tuneful choir,
With flying fingers touched the lyre."
_Dryden_.
On the first of October the new beginning was to be made. The new
curate, Mr Harford, arrived, and spent his first few days at Greenhow,
while looking out for a lodging at Downhill, for he was to be shared
between the two parishes as before, and Mr Atkins still undertook to
assist on Sundays. Mr Harford looked very young, almost a boy, and was
small and thin, but not in the least delicate. He had only worked off
his superfluous flesh in study and parish cares at Oxford, and he was
likely to do the same in his new home. He looked on it as likely to be
his residence for a long time, for, as the President had already told
Mrs Carbonel, he was engaged to a young lady, whose father would not
consent to her marriage till he had a living worth 500 pounds a year,
and there were a good many fellows senior to him.
He seemed to have no fears of any amount of work, and the first thing he
thought of was how to arrange for Uphill to have two services on Sunday,
as he thought could be contrived by giving the Downhill people, who
mostly lived near the church, their second service in the evening
instead of the morning; and, as Mr Atkins would thus have more to do,
he gave up to that gentleman the addition to his stipend, which the
President had offered to himself. The boon was great to the Greenhow
family, who had often been hindered by weather from getting to Downhill.
Moreover, he had plans for one service and sermon in the week, and for
a cottage lecture at a distant hamlet.
Also, in the first fortnight of his stay, he had called at every house,
alike in Downhill and Uphill, to the great surprise of some of the
families, who had not in the memory of man seen a parson cross their
threshold. Some did not like it, such as old Dame Verdon, who, though
she could hardly get out of bed, was very sore about the new school; and
when her friends came to see her, told them wonderful stories which she
had picked up--or Lizzie had from some hawker--that the gentlefolks
thought there were too many children for the rates and taxes, and they
were going to get them all into the school, and make an end of them.
Sometimes she said it was by "giving of them all the cowpox," as Dame
Spurrell called vaccination as the fashion was in those parts, sometimes
it was by sending them all out to Botany Bay.
And as Mrs Carbonel had prevailed on the new gardener's wife to have
her baby vaccinated, and George Hewlett's and Mrs Mole's children had
been thence treated by her own hands, this was believed the more,
although none of the children were visibly the worse for it after the
first few days; but some of the women, and almost all the children
believed the story, and many of the little ones were in fits of terror
about the school, so that there was a falling off even with the Sunday
School. The new school was only an additional room to a good-sized
cottage, with a couple of windows and a brick floor, fitted with forms
without backs, but which had at least good firm legs to stand upon, pegs
for the cloaks and head-gear round the walls, and a single desk, likely
to be quite sufficient for the superior few who were to learn writing
and summing. The stock, obtained from the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, consisted of a dozen copies of Mrs Trimmer's
Abridgment of the Old Testament, the same number of the lady's work on
the New Testament, a packet of little paper books of the Sermon on the
Mount, the Parables and the Miracles, and another packet of little
books, where the alphabet led the way upwards from ba, bo, etcetera, to
"Our cat can kill a rat; can she not?" Also the broken Catechism, and
Sellon's Abridgment of instruction on the Catechism. There were a
housewife full of needles, some brass thimbles, and a roll of calico
provided, and this was the apparatus with which most village schools
would commence.
Mrs Thorpe arrived with her two little girls, the neatest of creatures,
still wearing her weeds, as indeed widows engaged in any business used
to do for life as a sort of protection. Under her crape borders showed
the smoothest of hair, and her apron was spotlessly white. The two
little girls were patterns, with short cut hair, spotted blue frocks and
checkered pinafores in the week, lilac frocks on Sundays; white capes on
that same day, and bonnets of coarse straw, tied down with green ribbon,
over little bonnet caps with plain net frilling, the only attempt at
luxury apparent in their dress. Their names were Jane and Mary, and
they looked very pretty and demure, though there was a little mischief
in Mary's eyes. Nothing could look nicer or more promising in the eyes
of the sisters when they took her to her cottage, nor could any one be
better pleased than she to work under her own young ladies, and to have
so peaceful a home for her little daughters. She was introduced to her
future scholars on Sunday in the wash-house, and very shy and awkward
did they look, nor were the numbers as large as usual.
Mr Harford came to open the school on Monday morning, and the ladies
met him there. The room was in beautiful order, and presently the
younger Moles, the George Hewletts, the Seddons, the Pucklechurch
grandchildren, and about half-a-dozen more dropped in; but no one else
appeared, and these stood handling their pennies and looking sheepish.
Mr Harford, after looking out to see whether any one else was coming,
addressed them in words a little too fine for their comprehension, and
then read a few prayers, after which he and Mrs Carbonel went away,
taking the unwilling Sophy to her lessons, but leaving Dora to follow
when she had heard the names called over, and inaugurated the work; and
their journey was enlivened by meeting a child with flying hair and
ragged garments rushing headlong, so as to have only just time to turn
off short over a gap in a field where some men who were ploughing called
out, "Run, little one, run; she'll catch thee!" with a great shouting
laugh, and at the same moment appeared, with a big stick in her hand,
Nancy Morris in full chase, her cap on the back of her head, and looking
not much less wild than her offspring.
However, she drew up at the sight of the clergyman and the lady, pulled
her cap forward and her apron to the middle, curtsied low, and in a
voice of conscious merit, though out of breath, explained that she was
"arter Elizabeth," who was _that_ terrifying and _contrary_ that she
would not go to school.
Mr Harford, not quite accustomed to the popular use of the verb to
terrify, began to ask what the child had done to alarm her mother so
much and Nancy, understanding him as little, said, "'Tis all along of
Dame Verdon, ma'am. She be for to say that the new governess will beat
them and send them off to Minsterham, as sure as they're alive; and I
told Bet not to believe no such stuff, but her won't listen to I--"
Mr Harford was the more mystified. Why should she send them to
Minsterham? And what was the child afraid of? Mrs Carbonel had more
notion. Minsterham was the assize town, and going thither was a polite
form of mentioning the being before a court of justice.
"Elizabeth need have no fears of a prison," she said. "She is a silly
child to be frightened; but when she sees that the other children like
school, and that nothing happens to them, she will know better. Don't
beat her, it will only frighten her more."
"If it is your will, ma'am, I'll let her off; but I'll give her the
stick another time, as sure as she is alive, the little toad."
"Hopeful," said the lady and gentleman to each other, as soon as she was
out of sight, and they could laugh.
It was indeed uphill work in every sense that was before Mrs Thorpe,
but the effect was visible in much improvement in the general demeanour
of the children. A chair was found for her where she sat among them at
church, and prevented the outrageous misconduct that the ladies had been
unable effectively to check; and the superior readers were gradually
acquiring a very cheap form of Prayer-book, with only Matins and
Evensong and the Collects, besides the Psalms.
But that the children sat on the chancel steps, and that kneeling in
church was unknown to them, never occurred as an irreverence to any of
the party, though as Mr Harford read the ante-Communion service from
the altar instead of disrobing himself of his surplice in the pulpit
just before the sermon, he had to walk through the whole school, making
those in his way stand up to let him pass.
The singers, on the establishment of a double service, began to absent
themselves at least once on a Sunday, so Mr Harford and the ladies
tried to arrange for the singing of the children instead. He had no
knowledge of music, which was then thought a rather doubtful
accomplishment for a young man, and Mrs Thorpe had, if possible, less,
so all that could be done was for Dora to train the children by ear; and
she found that their thin, shrill notes were held as painful by all save
a few doting mothers, her sisters, and herself. The captain laughed at
her, and finally promised her a grinding organ. It came; it could play
four tunes, and all the singers were naturally offended. But on the
first Sunday there was a great catastrophe, for when once set on it
would not stop, but went on playing its four tunes long after the Old
Hundredth was finished. Mr Harford waited to begin the Prayer for King
George till it had finished, hoping that it would stop, if not at the
end of the second tune at least at the fourth; but, behold, it started
off with the Old Hundredth again, upon which Captain Carbonel emerged
from his pew, and, with the help of Master Pucklechurch, bore it out
into the churchyard, where it continued to play till after the service,
when there was time to check its pertinacity by adjustment of the
machinery. At its best, the singers--even George Hewlett--were much
hurt, and the compromise was made that it never should uplift its voice
when they were present in full force with bass, flute, and viol, but
should only draw forth its four tunes when there were only the children
to need the accompaniment.
Even then, Dan Hewlett, who unluckily had the best voice of all, swore
that he would never come to church again while "they had that there
horgin to buzz away like a big bumbledore;" and he kept his word.
"You see, ma'am, he has his feelings," said Molly.
He would fain have made all his family join in the secession; but
Johnnie would not be kept away from Sunday School; and Molly had heard
rumours of penny clubs and of prizes at Christmas so, though the other
children were very irregular, she kept them on after a fashion.