What she meant by speaking to the vicar was a vigorous stirring of him
up to wrath; but you cannot stir up vicars if they are truly good. The
vicar was a pious and patient old man, practiced in forgiveness, in
overlooking, in waiting, in trying again. Always slow to anger, as the
years drew him more and more apart into the shadows of old age and he
watched from their clear coolness with an ever larger comprehension
the younger generations striving together in the heat, he grew at last
unable to be angered at all. The scriptural injunction not to let the
sun go down upon your wrath had no uses for him, for he possessed no
wrath for the sun to go down upon. He had that lovable nature that
sees the best in everything first, and then prefers to look no
further. He took for granted that people were at bottom good and
noble, and the assumption went a long way towards making them so.
Robin, for instance, was probably saved by his father's unclouded
faith in him. Mrs. Morrison, a woman who had much trouble with
herself, having come into the world with the wings of the angel in her
well glued down and prevented from spreading by a multitude of little
defects, had been helped without her knowing it by his example out of
many a pit of peevishness and passion. Who shall measure the influence
of one kind and blameless life? His wife, in her gustier moments,
thought it sheer weakness, this persistent turning away from evil,
this refusal to investigate and dissect, to take sides, to wrestle.
The evil was there, and it was making an ostrich or a vegetable of
one's self to go on being calm in the face of it. With the blindness
of wives, who are prevented from seeing clearly by the very closeness
of the object--the same remark exactly applies to husbands--she did
not see that the vicar was the candle shining in a naughty world, that
he was the leaven that leaveneth the whole lump. And just as leaven
leavens by its mere presence in the lump, by merely passively being
there, and will go on doing it so long as there is a lump to leaven,
so had the vicar, more than his hardworking wife, more than the
untiring Lady Shuttleworth, more than any district visitor, parish
nurse, or other holy person, influenced Symford by simply living in it
in a way that would have surprised him had he known. There is a great
virtue in sweeping out one's own house and trimming its lamps before
starting on the house and lamps of a neighbour; and since new dust
settles every day, and lamps, I believe, need constant trimming, I
know not when the truly tidy soul will have attained so perfect a
spotlessness as to justify its issuing forth to attack the private
dust of other people. And if it ever did, lo, it would find the
necessity no longer there. Its bright untiringness would
unconsciously have done its work, and every dimmer soul within sight
of that cheerful shining been strengthened and inspired to go and do
likewise.
But Mrs. Morrison, who saw things differently, was constantly trying
to stir up storms in the calm waters of the vicar's mind; and after
the episode in Mrs. Jones's front garden she made a very determined
effort to get him to rebuke Priscilla. Her own indignation was poured
out passionately. The vicar was surprised at her heat, he who was so
beautifully cool himself, and though he shook his head over Mrs.
Jones's rum he also smiled as he shook it. Nor was he more reasonable
about Robin. On the contrary, he declared that he would think mightily
little of a young man who did not immediately fall head over ears in
love with such a pretty girl.
"You don't mind our boy's heart being broken, then?" questioned his
wife bitterly; of her plans for Netta she had never cared to speak.
"My dear, if it is to be broken there is no young lady I would sooner
entrust with the job."
"You don't mind his marrying an adventuress, then?"
"My dear, I know of no adventuress."
"You rather like our old people to be tempted to drink, to have it
thrust upon them on their very dying beds?"
"Kate, are you not bitter?"
"Psha," said his wife, drumming her foot.
"Psha, Kate?" inquired the vicar mildly; and it is not always that
the saintly produce a soothing effect on their wives.
It really seemed as if the girl were to have her own way in Symford,
unchecked even by Lady Shuttleworth, whose attitude was entirely
incomprehensible. She was to be allowed to corrupt the little hamlet
that had always been so good, to lead it astray, to lure it down paths
of forbidden indulgence, to turn it topsy turvy to an extent not even
reached by the Dissenting family that had given so much trouble a few
years before. It was on the Sunday morning as the church bells were
ringing, that Mrs. Morrison, prayer-book in hand, looked in at Mrs.
Jones's on her way to service and discovered the five-pound note.
The old lady was propped up in bed with her open Bible on her lap and
her spectacles lying in it, and as usual presented to her visitor the
perfect realization of her ideal as to the looks and manners most
appropriate to ailing Christians. There was nowhere a trace of rum,
and the only glass in the room was innocently filled with the china
roses that flowered so profusely in the garden at Baker's Farm. But
Mrs. Morrison could not for all that dissemble the disappointment and
sternness of her heart, and the old lady glanced up at her as she came
in with a kind of quavering fearfulness, like that of a little child
who is afraid it may be going to be whipped, or of a conscientious dog
who has lapsed unaccountably from rectitude.
"I have come to read the gospel for the day to you," said Mrs.
Morrison, sitting down firmly beside her.
"Thank you mum," said Mrs. Jones with meekness.
"My prayer-book has such small print--give me your Bible."
A look of great anxiety came into Mrs. Jones's eyes, but the Bible was
drawn from between her trembling old hands, and Mrs. Morrison began to
turn its pages. She had not turned many before she came to the
five-pound note. "What is this?" she asked, in extreme surprise.
Mrs. Jones gave a little gasp, and twisted her fingers about.
"A five-pound note?" exclaimed Mrs. Morrison, holding it up. "How did
it come here?"
"It's mine, mum," quavered Mrs. Jones.
"Yours? Do you mean to say you have money hidden away and yet allow
Lady Shuttleworth to pay everything for you?"
"It's the first I ever 'ad, mum," faintly murmured the old lady, her
eyes following every movement of Mrs. Morrison's hands with a look of
almost animal anxiety.
"Where did it come from?"
"The young lady give it me yesterday, mum."
"The young lady?" Mrs. Morrison's voice grew very loud. "Do you mean
the person staying at the Pearces'?"
Mrs. Jones gulped, and feebly nodded.
"Most improper. Most wrong. Most dangerous. You cannot tell how she
came by it, and I must say I'm surprised at you, Mrs. Jones. It
probably is not a real one. It is unlikely a chit like that should be
able to give so large a sum away--" And Mrs. Morrison held up the note
to the light and turned it round and round, scrutinizing it from every
point of view, upside down, back to front, sideways, with one eye
shut; but it refused to look like anything but a good five-pound note,
and she could only repeat grimly "Most dangerous."
The old lady watched her, a terrible anxiety in her eyes. Her worst
fears were fulfilled when the vicar's wife folded it up and said
decidedly, "For the present I shall take care of it for you. You
cannot lie here with so much money loose about the place. Why, if it
got round the village you might have some one in who'd murder you.
People have been murdered before now for less than this. I shall speak
to the vicar about it." And she put it in her purse, shut it with a
snap, and took up the Bible again.
Mrs. Jones made a little sound between a gasp and a sob. Her head
rolled back on the pillow, and two tears dropped helplessly down the
furrows of her face. In that moment she felt the whole crushing misery
of being weak, and sick, and old,--so old that you have outlived your
claims to everything but the despotic care of charitable ladies, so
old that you are a mere hurdy-gurdy, expected each time any one in
search of edification chooses to turn your handle to quaver out tunes
of immortality. It is a bad thing to be very old. Of all the bad
things life forces upon us as we pass along it is the last and
worst--the bitterness at the bottom of the cup, the dregs of what for
many was after all always only medicine. Mrs. Jones had just enough of
the strength of fear left to keep quite still while the vicar's wife
read the Gospel in a voice that anger made harsh; but when she had
gone, after a parting admonition and a dreadful assurance that she
would come again soon, the tears rolled unchecked and piteous, and it
was a mercy that Priscilla also took it into her head to look in on
her way to church, for if she had not I don't know who would have
dried them for this poor baby of eighty-five. And I regret to say that
Priscilla's ideas of doing good were in such a state of crudeness that
she had no sooner mastered the facts brokenly sobbed out than she ran
to the cupboard and gave Mrs. Jones a tablespoonful of rum for the
strengthening of her body and then took out her purse and gave her
another five-pound note for the comforting of her soul. And then she
wiped her eyes, and patted her, and begged her not to mind. Such
conduct was, I suppose, what is called indiscriminate charity and
therefore blameworthy, but its effect was great. Priscilla went to
church with the reflection of the old lady's wonder and joy shining in
her own face. "Hide it," had been her last words at the door, her
finger on her lips, her head nodding expressively in the direction of
the vicarage; and by this advice she ranged herself once and for all
on the opposite side to Mrs. Morrison and the followers of obedience
and order. Mrs. Jones would certainly have taken her for an angel
working miracles with five-pound notes and an inexhaustible pocket if
it had not been for the rum; even in her rapture she did feel that a
genuine angel would be incapable of any really harmonious combination
with rum. But so far had she fallen from the kind of thinking that the
vicar's wife thought proper in a person so near her end that she
boldly told herself she preferred Priscilla.
Now this was the day of Priscilla's children's party, and though all
Symford had been talking of it for twenty-four hours the news of it
had not yet reached Mrs. Morrison's ears. The reason was that Symford
talked in whispers, only too sure that the authorities would consider
it wrong for it to send its children a-merrymaking on a Sunday, and
desperately afraid lest the forbidden cup should be snatched from its
longing lips. But the news did get to Mrs. Morrison's ears, and it got
to them in the porch of the church as she was passing in to prayer.
She had it from an overgrown girl who was waiting outside for her
father, and who was really much too big for children's parties but had
got an invitation by looking wistful at the right moment.
"Emma," said Mrs. Morrison in passing, "you have not returned the
book I lent you. Bring it up this afternoon."
"Please mum, I'll bring it to-morrow, mum," said the girl, curtseying
and turning red.
"No, Emma, you will do as I direct. One can never be too particular
about returning books. You have kept it an unconscionable time. You
will bring it to the vicarage at four o'clock."
"Please mum, I--I can't at four o'clock."
"And pray, Emma, what is to prevent you?"
"I--I'm going to Baker's, mum."
"Going to Baker's? Why are you going to Baker's, Emma?"
So it all came out.
The bells were just stopping, and Mrs. Morrison, who played the organ,
was forced to hurry in without having told Emma her whole opinion of
those who gave and those who attended Sunday parties, but the prelude
she played that day expressed the tumult of her mind very well, and
struck Tussie Shuttleworth, who had sensitive ears, quite cold. He was
the only person in the church acutely sensitive to sound, and it was
very afflicting to him, this plunging among the pedals, this angry
shrieking of stops no man ever yet had heard together. The very blower
seemed frightened, and blew in gasps; and the startled Tussie,
comparing the sounds to the clamourings of a fiend in pain, could not
possibly guess they were merely the musical expression of the state of
a just woman's soul.
Mrs. Morrison's anger was perfectly proper. It had been the
conscientious endeavour of twenty-five solid years of her life to make
of Symford a model parish, and working under Lady Shuttleworth, whose
power was great since all the cottages were her son's and were lived
in by his own labourers, it had been kept in a state of order so
nearly perfect as to raise it to the position of an example to the
adjoining parishes. The church was full, the Sunday-school well
attended, the Sabbath was kept holy, the women were one and all sober
and thrifty, the men were fairly satisfactory except on Saturday
nights, there was no want, little sickness, and very seldom downright
sin. The expression downright sin is Mrs. Morrison's own,--heaven
forbid that I should have anything to do with such an expression--and
I suppose she meant by it thieving, murder, and other grossnesses that
would bring the sinner, as she often told her awe-struck Dorcas class,
to infallible gallows, and the sinner's parents' grey hairs to
sorrowful graves. "Please mum, will the parents go too?" asked a girl
one day who had listened breathlessly, an inquiring-minded girl who
liked to get to the root of things.
"Go where, Bessie?"
"With the grey hairs, mum."
Mrs. Morrison paused a moment and fixed a searching gaze on Bessie's
face. Then she said with much dignity, "The parents, Bessie, will
naturally follow the hairs." And to a girl bred in the near
neighbourhood of Exmoor it sounded very sporting.
Into this innocent, frugal, well-managed hamlet Priscilla dropped
suddenly from nowhere, trailing with her thunder-clouds of impulsive
and childish ideas about doing good, and holding in her hands the
dangerous weapon of wealth. It is hard to stand by and see one's
life-work broken up before one's eyes by an irresponsible stranger, a
foreigner, a girl, a young girl, a pretty girl; especially hard if one
was born with an unbending character, tough and determined, ambitious
and vain. These are not reproaches being piled up on the vicar's wife;
who shall dare reproach another? And how could she help being born so?
We would all if we could be born good and amiable and beautiful, and
remain so perpetually during our lives; and she too was one of God's
children, and inside her soul, behind the crust of failings that
hindered it during these years from coming out, sat her bright angel,
waiting. Meanwhile she was not a person to watch the destruction of
her hopes without making violent efforts to stop it; and immediately
she had played the vicar into the vestry after service that Sunday she
left the congregation organless and hurried away into the churchyard.
There she stood and waited for the villagers to question them about
this unheard of thing; and it was bad to see how they melted away in
other directions,--out at unused gates, making detours over the grass,
visiting the long-neglected graves of relatives, anywhere rather than
along the ordinary way, which was the path where the vicar's wife
stood. At last came Mrs. Vickerton the postmistress. She was deep in
conversation with the innkeeper's wife, and did not see the figure on
the path in time to melt away herself. If she had she certainly would
have melted, for though she had no children but her grown-up son she
felt very guilty; for it was her son who had been sent the afternoon
before to Minehead by Priscilla with a list as long as his arm of the
cakes and things to be ordered for the party. "Oh Mrs. Morrison, I
didn't see you," she exclaimed, starting and smiling and turning red.
She was a genteel woman who called no one mum.
The innkeeper's wife slipped deftly away among graves.
"Is it true that the children are going to Baker's Farm this
afternoon?" asked Mrs. Morrison, turning and walking grimly by Mrs.
Vickerton.
"I did hear something about it, Mrs. Morrison," said Mrs. Vickerton,
hiding her agitation behind a series of smiles with sudden endings.
"All?"
"I did hear they pretty well all thought of it," said Mrs. Vickerton,
coughing. "Beautiful weather, isn't it, Mrs. Morrison."
"They are to have tea there?"
Mrs. Vickerton gazed pleasantly at the clouds and the tree-tops. "I
should think there might be tea, Mrs. Morrison," she said; and the
vision of that mighty list of cakes rising before her eyes made her
put up her hand and cough again.
"Have the parents lost their senses?"
"I couldn't say--I really couldn't say, Mrs. Morrison."
"Have they forgotten the commandments?"
"Oh I 'ope not, Mrs. Morrison."
"And the vicar's teaching? And the good habits of years?"
"Oh, Mrs. Morrison."
"I never heard of anything more disgraceful. Disgraceful to the giver
and to those who accept. Wicked, scandalous, and unscriptural."
"We all 'oped you'd see no harm in it, Mrs. Morrison. It's a fine day,
and they'll just have tea, and perhaps--sing a little, and they don't
get treats often this time of year."
"Why, it's disgraceful--disgraceful anywhere to have a treat on a
Sunday; but in a parish like this it is scandalous. When Lady
Shuttleworth hears of it I quite expect she'll give everybody notice
to quit."
"Notice to quit? Oh I hope not, Mrs. Morrison. And she do know about
it. She heard it last night. And Sir Augustus himself has promised the
young lady to go and help."
"Sir Augustus?"
"And we all think it so kind of him, and so kind of the young lady
too," said Mrs. Vickerton, gathering courage.
"Sir Augustus?" repeated Mrs. Morrison. Then a horrid presentiment
laid cold fingers on her heart. "Is any one else going to help?" she
asked quickly.
"Only the young lady's uncle, and--"
Mrs. Vickerton hesitated, and looked at the vicar's wife with a
slightly puzzled air.
"And who?"
"Of course Mr. Robin."