From Langona church tower you see nothing of the Atlantic but a wedge
between two cliffs of a sandy creek. The cottages--thirty in all,
perhaps--huddle in a semicircle of the hills about a spring of clear
water, which overflows and leaps as from a platform into the hollow
coombe, its conduit down to the sands. But Langona Church stands out
more boldly, on a high grassy meadow thrust forward like a bastion over
the stream's right flank. It has no tree, no habitation between it and
the ocean: it breaks the northerly gales for the cottages behind and
under its lee, and these gales have given its tamarisk hedge and even
its gravestones so noticeable a slant inland that, by a trick of
eyesight, the church itself seems tilted perilously forward.
Forward, in fact--that is to say, seaward--the tower does lean; though
but by a foot or so, and now not perilously; the salt winds, impotent
against its masonry, having bitten with more effect into the earth
around its base. But the church has been restored, the mischief
arrested, and the danger no longer haunts its vicar as it haunted the
Rev. John Flood on a bright September morning in 1885.
He sat on a thyme-covered hummock by the valley stream, with knees drawn
up and palms pressed against his aching head: sat as he had been sitting
for half an hour past, a shovel beside him and an empty sack, which he
had brought down to fill with clean river-sand. A chaffinch, fresh from
his bath, flitted incessantly between the rail of the footbridge, a
dozen yards below, and the boughs of a tamarisk beside it. He paid no
attention to Parson Jack. Few living creatures ever did.
Even his parishioners--those who knew of it--felt no great concern that
Parson Jack had been drunk again last night. There was no harm in the
man. "He had this failing, to be sure: with a little liquor he talked
silly, though not so silly as you might suppose. Let him alone, and
he'll find his way home somehow. Scandalous? Oh, no doubt! But you
might easily go farther and find a worse parson than Flood."
It never occurred to them that he felt any special remorse. His agonies
were private, and his chance of redemption lay in this, that they
neither ceased nor eased with time; perhaps in this, too, that he wasted
no breath in apologetics or self-pity, but blamed himself squarely like
a man.
Yet a sentimentalist in his place might have run up a long and tearful
account against Providence, fate, circumstances--whatever
sentimentalists choose to arraign rather than themselves.
Five-and-twenty years before, Jack Flood had been a rowdy
undergraduate of Brasenose College, Oxford; in his third year of
residence, with more than a fair prospect of being ploughed--or, in the
language of that generation, "plucked"--at the end of it; a member of
the Phoenix Wine Club, owner of a brute which he not only called a
"hunter" but made to do duty for one at least twice a week; and debtor
among various Oxford tradesmen to the tune of something like 500 pounds.
At this point his father--a Berkshire rector--died suddenly of a
paralytic stroke, leaving Jack and his elder brother Lionel (then abroad
in the new Indian Civil Service) to realise and divide an estate of 1200
pounds.
Six hundred pounds is a fair equipment for starting a young man in life;
but not when he already owes five hundred, and has few brains, no
decided bent, and only a little of the most useless learning.
Jack surrendered two-thirds of his patrimony to his pressing creditors,
sold his hunter, read hard for a term, scrambled into his degree, and
was received, a month or two later, into Holy Orders. His father had
sent him to Brasenose College as a step to this, and Jack had looked
forward to being a parson some day--a sporting parson, be it understood.
For the moment, however, he was almost penniless; and he had answered in
vain some dozen advertisements of curacies, when a college friend came
to the rescue and prevailed on a distant kinsman to offer him the living
of Langona, with a net annual stipend of 51 pounds eighteen shillings
and sixpence. There are such "livings."
It was offered, of course, and accepted, merely as a stopgap.
But twenty-five years had passed, and at Langona Parson Flood remained.
It had cost him twenty of these to wipe off his Oxford debts, with
interest; but he had managed to retain the small remnant of his capital,
and this with his benefice yielded an income better than a day
labourer's. That he was still a bachelor goes without saying.
In the summer he fished; in the winter he followed, afoot, a pack of
harriers kept by his patron, Sir Harry Vyell of Carwithiel. These were
his recreations. He could not afford to travel, and cared little for
reading. His library consisted of his Bible, two or three small
Divinity Handbooks, a _Pickwick, Stonehenge on the Dog_, and a couple of
"Handley Cross" novels, with coloured illustrations by John Leech.
Twice a year or thereabouts a letter reached him from his brother in
Calcutta, who was apparently prospering, and had a wife and three
children--though for some years the letters had brought no news of them.
"Something was wrong," Parson Jack decided after a while, finding that
his messages to them met with no answer; and he felt a delicacy in
asking questions. He believed that the children had been sent home to
England--he did not know where--and would have liked to pay them a
visit. But for him a journey was out of the question. So he lived on,
alone and forgotten.
On Sundays he wore a black suit, which had lasted him for ten years, and
would have to last for another five at least. On week-days he dressed
in blue guernsey and corduroys, and smoked a clay pipe. His
broad-brimmed clerical hat alone distinguished him from the
farm-labourers in his parish; but when at work upon the church--patching
its shingle roof, or pouring mortar into its gaping wounds--he discarded
this for a maroon-coloured cap, not unlike a biretta, which offered less
surface to the high winds.
He knew nothing of architecture: could not, in fact, distinguish Norman
work from Perpendicular; and at first had taken to these odd jobs of
masonry as a handy way of killing time. He had wit enough, however, to
learn pretty soon that the whole fabric was eaten with rot and in danger
from every gale; and by degrees (he could not explain how) the ruin had
set up a claim on him. In his worst dreams he saw it toppling, falling;
during the winter gales he lay awake listening, imagining the throes and
shudders of its old beams, and would be abroad before daybreak, waiting
for the light to assure him that it yet stood. A casual tourist,
happening on him at work, some summers before, had mistaken him for a
hired mason, and discoursed learnedly on the beauties of the edifice and
the pity of its decay. "That's a vile job you have in hand, my friend--
a bit of sheer vandalism," said the tourist; "but I suppose the Parson
who employs you knows no better." Parson Jack had been within an ace of
revealing himself, but now changed his mind and asked humbly enough what
was amiss. Whereupon the tourist pulled out a pencil and an old
envelope, and explained. "But there," he broke off, "it would take me a
week to go into these matters, and you a deal longer to understand.
I'd enjoy twenty minutes' talk with your Parson. The church wants
restoration from beginning to end, and by a first-class man.
It deserves no less, for it's interesting throughout; in some points
unique." "That would cost money now?" suggested Parson Jack, pitching
his voice to the true Langona sing-song. "Two thousand pounds would go
a long way."--The tourist scanned the waggon-roof critically, and
lowering his eyes, at length observed the Parson's smile. "Ah, I see! a
sum that would take some collecting hereabouts. Parson's none too well
off, eh?" "Fifty pounds a year or so." "Scandalous! Who's the lay
impropriator?" He was told. "Well, but wouldn't he help?" Parson Jack
shook his head; he had never asked a penny from Sir Harry Vyell, who was
a notorious Gallio in all that concerned religion. He had a further
reason, too. He suspected that Sir Harry chafed a little in a careless
way at his continuing to hold the living, and would be glad to see him
replaced by an incumbent with private means and no failings to be
apologised for with a shrug of the shoulders. Sir Harry, he knew, was
aware of these hateful lapses, though too delicate to allude to them,
and far too charitable to use them (unless under compulsion) as a lever
for getting rid of him. And this knowledge was perhaps the worst of his
shame. Yet what could he do? since to surrender Langona was to starve.
"Your Parson might at least make a beginning," pursued the tourist.
"A box, now, inviting donations--that would cost nothing, and might
relieve a visitor here and there of a spare sovereign. He could put up
a second box for himself: it's quite a usual thing in churches when the
parish priest is poor. You might make the suggestion, if he's not too
proud."
"I will," said Parson Jack, and after the tourist had gone he thought
much of these two boxes. Indeed, he made and fixed up the first that
same week, though he labelled it "For Church Repairs," fighting shy of
"Restoration" as too magniloquent. The second cost him long searchings
of heart, and he walked over and laid the case before Parson Kendall,
Rector of the near parish of St. Cadox, a good Christian and a good
fellow, with whom he sometimes smoked a pipe. "Why not?" answered
Parson Kendall; "it's the most ordinary thing in the world." "But Sir
Harry may not like it." The Rector chuckled. "If he doesn't, he'll
consult me; and I shall ask him why he hunts a pack by subscription."
So the second box was nailed beside the first, and excited little
discussion. Indeed, the pair hung in so obscure a corner--behind the
font--that at the first service only Parson Jack and the Widow Copping
were aware of them. The Parson stumbled and hesitated so badly over the
prayers that one or two worshippers felt sure he had been drinking;
which was not the fact. The Widow Copping took no interest in
collecting-boxes; and, besides, she could not read. So the innovation
missed fire. Moreover, it suggested neither popery nor priestcraft, and
only a fool would suspect Parson Flood of either.
The "Parson's Box" remained, provoking no criticism. He himself had a
little plan for its contents. He would spend the money on a journey to
his nephew and nieces, if they were anywhere in England. He would find
out. There was no hurry, he told himself, with a queer smile.
There was not. The box provoked neither ill-criticism nor effusive
charity. On Trinity Sunday, when he opened it and counted out one
shilling in silver and sevenpence in coppers, Parson Jack pulled a wry
face and then laughed aloud.