THE TOWNSMAN'S SERMON TO THE GOWNSMAN.
One morning in February, a few days after this explosion, I was on the
point of starting to go to the dean's house about that weary list of
subscribers, which seemed destined never to be filled up, when my cousin
George burst in upon me. He was in the highest good spirits at having just
taken a double first-class at Cambridge; and after my congratulations,
sincere and hearty enough, were over, he offered to accompany me to that
reverend gentleman's house.
He said in an off-hand way, that he had no particular business there, but
he thought it just as well to call on the dean and mention his success, in
case the old fellow should not have heard of it.
"For you see," he said, "I am a sort of _protégé_, both on my own account
and on Lord Lynedale's--Ellerton, he is now--you know he is just married to
the dean's niece, Miss Staunton--and Ellerton's a capital fellow--promised
me a living as soon as I'm in priest's orders. So my cue is now," he went
on as we walked down the Strand together, "to get ordained as fast as ever
I can."
"But," I asked, "have you read much for ordination, or seen much of what a
clergyman's work should be?"
"Oh! as for that--you know it isn't one out of ten who's ever entered a
school, or a cottage even, except to light a cigar, before he goes into the
church: and as for the examination, that's all humbug; any man may cram it
all up in a month--and, thanks to King's College, I knew all I wanted to
know before I went to Cambridge. And I shall be three-and-twenty by Trinity
Sunday, and then in I go, neck or nothing. Only the confounded bore is,
that this Bishop of London won't give one a title--won't let any man into
his diocese, who has not been ordained two years; and so I shall be shoved
down into some poking little country-curacy, without a chance of making
play before the world, or getting myself known at all. Horrid bore! isn't
it?"
"I think," I said, "considering what London is just now, the bishop's
regulation seems to be one of the best specimens of episcopal wisdom that
I've heard of for some time."
"Great bore for me, though, all the same: for I must make a name, I
can tell you, if I intend to get on. A person must work like a horse,
now-a-days, to succeed at all; and Lynedale's a desperately particular
fellow, with all sorts of _outré_ notions about people's duties and
vocations and heaven knows what."
"Well," I said, "my dear cousin, and have you no high notions of a
clergyman's vocation? because we--I mean the working men--have. It's just
their high idea of what a clergyman should be, which makes them so furious
at clergymen for being what they are."
"It's a queer way of showing their respect to the priesthood," he answered,
"to do all they can to exterminate it."
"I dare say they are liable, like other men, to confound the thing with its
abuses; but if they hadn't some dim notion that the thing might be made a
good thing in itself, you may depend upon it they would not rave against
those abuses so fiercely." (The reader may see that I had not forgotten my
conversation with Miss Staunton.) "And," thought I to myself, "is it not
you, and such as you, who do so incorporate the abuses into the system,
that one really cannot tell which is which, and longs to shove the whole
thing aside as rotten to the core, and make a trial of something new?"
"Well, but," I said, again returning to the charge, for the subject was
altogether curious and interesting to me, "do you really believe the
doctrines of the Prayer-book, George?"
"Believe them!" he answered, in a tone of astonishment, "why not? I was
brought up a Churchman, whatever my parents were; I was always intended for
the ministry. I'd sign the Thirty-nine Articles now, against any man in
the three kingdoms: and as for all the proofs out of Scripture and Church
History, I've known them ever since I was sixteen--I'll get them all up
again in a week as fresh as ever."
"But," I rejoined, astonished in my turn at my cousin's notion of what
belief was, "have you any personal faith?--you know what I mean--I hate
using cant words--but inward experience of the truth of all these great
ideas, which, true or false, you will have to preach and teach? Would you
live by them, die for them, as a patriot would for his country, now?"
"My dear fellow, I don't know anything about all those Methodistical,
mystical, Calvinistical, inward experiences, and all that. I'm a Churchman,
remember, and a High Churchman, too; and the doctrine of the Church is,
that children are regenerated in holy baptism; and there's not the least
doubt, from the authority both of Scripture and the fathers, that that's
the--"
"For Heaven's sake," I said, "no polemical discussions! Whether you're
right or wrong, that's not what I'm talking about. What I want to know is
this:--you are going to teach people about God and Jesus Christ. Do you
delight in God? Do you love Jesus Christ? Never mind what I do, or think,
or believe. What do you do, George?"
"Well, my dear fellow, if you take things in that way, you know, of
course"--and he dropped his voice into that peculiar tone, by which all
sects seem to think they show their reverence; while to me, as to most
other working men, it never seemed anything but a symbol of the separation
and discrepancy between their daily thoughts and their religious ones--"of
course, we don't any of us think of these things half enough, and I'm sure
I wish I could be more earnest than I am; but I can only hope it will come
in time. The Church holds that there's a grace given in ordination; and
really--really, I do hope and wish to do my duty--indeed, one can't help
doing it; one is so pushed on by the immense competition for preferment; an
idle parson hasn't a chance now-a-days."
"But," I asked again, half-laughing, half-disgusted, "do you know what your
duty is?"
"Bless you, my good fellow, a man can't go wrong there. Carry out the
Church system; that's the thing--all laid down by rule and method. A man
has but to work out that--and it's the only one for the lower classes I'm
convinced."
"Strange," I said, "that they have from the first been so little of that
opinion, that every attempt to enforce it, for the last three hundred
years, has ended either in persecution or revolution."
"Ah! that was all those vile puritans' fault. They wouldn't give the Church
a chance of showing her powers."
"What! not when she had it all her own way, during the whole eighteenth
century?"
"Ah! but things are very different now. The clergy are awakened now to the
real beauty of the Catholic machinery; and you have no notion how much is
doing in church-building and schools, and societies of every sort and kind.
It is quite incredible what is being done now for the lower orders by the
Church."
"I believe," I said, "that the clergy are exceedingly improved; and I
believe, too, that the men to whom they owe all their improvement are the
Wesleys and Whitfields--in short, the very men whom they drove one by one
out of the Church, from persecution or disgust. And I do think it strange,
that if so much is doing for the lower classes, the working men, who form
the mass of the lower classes, are just those who scarcely feel the effects
of it; while the churches seem to be filled with children, and rich and
respectable, to the almost entire exclusion of the adult lower classes. A
strange religion this!" I went on, "and, to judge by its effects, a very
different one from that preached in Judea 1800 years ago, if we are to
believe the Gospel story."
"What on earth do you mean? Is not the Church of England the very purest
form of Apostolic Christianity?"
"It may be--and so may the other sects. But, somehow, in Judea, it was
the publicans and harlots who pressed into the kingdom of heaven; and it
was the common people who heard Christ gladly. Christianity, then, was a
movement in the hearts of the lower order. But now, my dear fellow, you
rich, who used to be told, in St. James's time, to weep and howl, have
turned the tables upon us poor. It is _you_ who are talking, all day long,
of converting _us_. Look at any place of worship you like, orthodox and
heretical.--Who fill the pews?--the outcast and the reprobate? No! the
Pharisees and the covetous, who used to deride Christ, fill His churches,
and say still, 'This people, these masses, who know not the Gospel are
accursed.' And the universal feeling, as far as I can judge, seems to be,
not 'how hardly shall they who have,' but how hardly shall they who have
_not_, 'riches, enter into the kingdom of heaven!'"
"Upon my word," said he, laughing, "I did not give you credit for so much
eloquence: you seem to have studied the Bible to some purpose, too. I
didn't think that so much Radicalism could be squeezed out of a few texts
of Scripture. It's quite a new light to me. I'll just mark that card, and
play it when I get a convenient opportunity. It may be a winning one in
these democratic times."
And he did play it, as I heard hereafter; but at present he seemed to
think that the less that was said further on clerical subjects the better,
and commenced quizzing the people whom we passed, humorously and neatly
enough; while I walked on in silence, and thought of Mr. Bye-Ends, in the
"Pilgrim's Progress." And yet I believe the man was really in earnest. He
was really desirous to do what was right, as far as he knew it; and all
the more desirous, because he saw, in the present state of society, what
was right would pay him. God shall judge him, not I. Who can unravel the
confusion of mingled selfishness and devotion that exists even in his own
heart, much less in that of another?
The dean was not at home that day, having left town on business. George
nodded familiarly to the footman who opened the door.
"You'll mind and send me word the moment your master comes home--mind now!"
The fellow promised obedience, and we walked away.
"You seem to be very intimate here," said I, "with all parties?"
"Oh! footmen are useful animals--a half-sovereign now and then is not
altogether thrown away upon them. But as for the higher powers, it is very
easy to make oneself at home in the dean's study, but not so much so as
to get a footing in the drawing-room above. I suspect he keeps a precious
sharp eye upon the fair Miss Lillian."
"But," I asked, as a jealous pang shot through my heart, "how did you
contrive to get this same footing at all? When I met you at Cambridge, you
seemed already well acquainted with these people."
"How?--how does a hound get a footing on a cold scent? By working and
casting about and about, and drawing on it inch by inch, as I drew on them
for years, my boy; and cold enough the scent was. You recollect that day
at the Dulwich Gallery? I tried to see the arms on the carriage, but there
were none; so that cock wouldn't fight."
"The arms! I should never have thought of such a plan."
"Dare say you wouldn't. Then I harked back to the doorkeeper, while you
were St. Sebastianizing. He didn't know their names, or didn't choose to
show me their ticket, on which it ought to have been; so I went to one of
the fellows whom I knew, and got him to find out. There comes out the value
of money--for money makes acquaintances. Well, I found who they were.--Then
I saw no chance of getting at them. But for the rest of that year at
Cambridge, I beat every bush in the university, to find some one who
knew them; and as fortune favours the brave, at last I hit off this Lord
Lynedale; and he, of course, was the ace of trumps--a fine catch in
himself, and a double catch because he was going to marry the cousin. So I
made a dead set at him; and tight work I had to nab him, I can tell you,
for he was three or four years older than I, and had travelled a good deal,
and seen life. But every man has his weak side; and I found his was a sort
of a High-Church Radicalism, and that suited me well enough, for I was
always a deuce of a radical myself; so I stuck to him like a leech, and
stood all his temper, and his pride, and those unpractical, windy visions
of his, that made a common-sense fellow like me sick to listen to; but I
stood it, and here I am."
"And what on earth induced you to stoop to all this--" meanness I was on
the point of saying. "Surely you are in no want of money--your father could
buy you a good living to-morrow."
"And he will, but not the one I want; and he could not buy me reputation,
power, rank, do you see, Alton, my genius? And what's more, he couldn't buy
me a certain little tit-bit, a jewel, worth a Jew's eye and a half, Alton,
that I set my heart on from the first moment I set my eye on it."
My heart beat fast and fierce, but he ran on--
"Do you think I'd have eaten all this dirt if it hadn't lain in my way to
her? Eat dirt! I'd drink blood, Alton--though I don't often deal in strong
words--if it lay in that road. I never set my heart on a thing yet, that
I didn't get it at last by fair means or foul--and I'll get her! I don't
care for her money, though that's a pretty plum. Upon my life, I don't. I
worship her, limbs and eyes. I worship the very ground she treads on. She's
a duck and a darling," said he, smacking his lips like an Ogre over his
prey, "and I'll have her before I've done, so help me--"
"Whom do you mean?" I stammered out.
"Lillian, you blind beetle."
I dropped his arm--"Never, as I live!"
He started back, and burst into a horse-laugh.
"Hullo! my eye and Betty Martin! You don't mean to say that I have the
honour of finding a rival in my talented cousin?"
I made no answer.
"Come, come, my dear fellow, this is too ridiculous. You and I are very
good friends, and we may help each other, if we choose, like kith and kin
in this here wale. So if you're fool enough to quarrel with me, I warn you
I'm not fool enough to return the compliment. Only" (lowering his voice),
"just bear one little thing in mind--that I am, unfortunately, of a
somewhat determined humour; and if folks will get in my way, why it's not
my fault if I drive over them. You understand? Well, if you intend to be
sulky, I don't. So good morning, till you feel yourself better."
And he turned gaily down a side-street and disappeared, looking taller,
handsomer, manfuller than ever.
I returned home miserable; I now saw in my cousin not merely a rival, but a
tyrant; and I began to hate him with that bitterness which fear alone can
inspire. The eleven pounds still remained unpaid. Between three and four
pounds was the utmost which I had been able to hoard up that autumn, by
dint of scribbling and stinting; there was no chance of profit from my book
for months to come--if indeed it ever got published, which I hardly dare
believe it would; and I knew him too well to doubt that neither pity nor
delicacy would restrain him from using his power over me, if I dared even
to seem an obstacle in his way.
I tried to write, but could not. I found it impossible to direct my
thoughts, even to sit still; a vague spectre of terror and degradation
crushed me. Day after day I sat over the fire, and jumped up and went into
the shop, to find something which I did not want, and peep listlessly into
a dozen books, one after the other, and then wander back again to the
fireside, to sit mooning and moping, starting at that horrible incubus of
debt--a devil which may give mad strength to the strong, but only paralyses
the weak. And I was weak, as every poet is, more or less. There was in me,
as I have somewhere read that there is in all poets, that feminine vein--a
receptive as well as a creative faculty--which kept up in me a continual
thirst after beauty, rest, enjoyment. And here was circumstance after
circumstance goading me onward, as the gadfly did Io, to continual
wanderings, never ceasing exertions; every hour calling on me to do, while
I was only longing to be--to sit and observe, and fancy, and build freely
at my own will. And then--as if this necessity of perpetual petty exertion
was not in itself sufficient torment--to have that accursed debt--that
knowledge that I was in a rival's power, rising up like a black wall before
me, to cripple, and render hopeless, for aught I knew, the very exertions
to which it compelled me! I hated the bustle--the crowds; the ceaseless
roar of the street outside maddened me. I longed in vain for peace--for one
day's freedom--to be one hour a shepherd-boy, and lie looking up at the
blue sky, without a thought beyond the rushes that I was plaiting! "Oh!
that I had wings as a dove!--then would I flee away, and be at rest!"--
And then, more than once or twice either, the thoughts of suicide crossed
me; and I turned it over, and looked at it, and dallied with it, as a last
chance in reserve. And then the thought of Lillian came, and drove away
the fiend. And then the thought of my cousin came, and paralysed me again;
for it told me that one hope was impossible. And then some fresh instance
of misery or oppression forced itself upon me, and made me feel the awful
sacredness of my calling, as a champion of the poor, and the base cowardice
of deserting them for any selfish love of rest. And then I recollected how
I had betrayed my suffering brothers.--How, for the sake of vanity and
patronage, I had consented to hide the truth about their rights--their
wrongs. And so on through weary weeks of moping melancholy--"a
double-minded man, unstable in all his ways?"
At last, Mackaye, who, as I found afterwards, had been watching all along
my altered mood, contrived to worm my secret out of me. I had dreaded, that
whole autumn, having to tell him the truth, because I knew that his first
impulse would be to pay the money instantly out of his own pocket; and my
pride, as well as my sense of justice, revolted at that, and sealed my
lips. But now this fresh discovery--the knowledge that it was not only in
my cousin's power to crush me, but also his interest to do so--had utterly
unmanned me; and after a little innocent and fruitless prevarication, out
came the truth with tears of bitter shame.
The old man pursed up his lips, and, without answering me, opened his table
drawer, and commenced fumbling among accounts and papers.
"No! no! no! best, noblest of friends! I will not burden you with the
fruits of my own vanity and extravagance. I will starve, go to gaol sooner
than take your money. If you offer it me I will leave the house, bag and
baggage, this moment." And I rose to put my threat into execution.
"I havena at present ony sic intention," answered he, deliberately, "seeing
that there's na necessity for paying debits twice owre, when ye ha' the
stampt receipt for them." And he put into my hands, to my astonishment and
rapture, a receipt in full for the money, signed by my cousin.
Not daring to believe my own eyes, I turned it over and over, looked at
it, looked at him--there was nothing but clear, smiling assurance in his
beloved old face, as he twinkled, and winked, and chuckled, and pulled
off his spectacles, and wiped them, and put them on upside-down; and then
relieved himself by rushing at his pipe, and cramming it fiercely with
tobacco till he burst the bowl.
Yes; it was no dream!--the money was paid, and I was free! The sudden
relief was as intolerable as the long burden had been; and, like a prisoner
suddenly loosed from off the rack, my whole spirit seemed suddenly to
collapse, and I sank with my head upon the table to faint even for
gratitude.
* * * * *
But who was my benefactor? Mackaye vouchsafed no answer, but that I "suld
ken better than he." But when he found that I was really utterly at a
loss to whom to attribute the mercy, he assured me, by way of comfort,
that he was just as ignorant as myself; and at last, piecemeal, in his
circumlocutory and cautious Scotch method, informed me, that some six weeks
back he had received an anonymous letter, "a'thegither o' a Belgravian cast
o' phizog," containing a bank note for twenty pounds, and setting forth the
writer's suspicions that I owed my cousin money, and their desire that Mr.
Mackaye, "o' whose uprightness and generosity they were pleased to confess
themselves no that ignorant," should write to George, ascertain the sum,
and pay it without my knowledge, handing over the balance, if any, to me,
when he thought fit--"Sae there's the remnant--aucht pounds, sax shillings,
an' saxpence; tippence being deduckit for expense o' twa letters anent the
same transaction."
"But what sort of handwriting was it?" asked I, almost disregarding the
welcome coin.
"Ou, then--aiblins a man's, aiblins a maid's. He was no chirographosophic
himsel--an' he had na curiosity anent ony sic passage o' aristocratic
romance."
"But what was the postmark of the letter?"
"Why for suld I speired? Gin the writers had been minded to be beknown,
they'd ha' sign't their names upon the document. An' gin they didna sae
intend, wad it be coorteous o' me to gang speiring an' peering ower covers
an' seals?"
"But where is the cover?"
"Ou, then," he went on, with the same provoking coolness, "white paper's o'
geyan use, in various operations o' the domestic economy. Sae I just tare
it up--aiblins for pipe-lights--I canna mind at this time."
"And why," asked I, more vexed and disappointed than I liked to
confess--"why did you not tell me before?"
"How wad I ken that you had need o't? An' verily, I thocht it no that bad
a lesson for ye, to let ye experiment a towmond mair on the precious balms
that break the head--whereby I opine the Psalmist was minded to denote the
delights o' spending borrowed siller."
There was nothing more to be extracted from him; so I was fain to set to
work again (a pleasant compulsion truly) with a free heart, eight pounds in
my pocket, and a brainful of conjectures. Was it the dean? Lord Lynedale?
or was it--could it be--Lillian herself? That thought was so delicious
that I made up my mind, as I had free choice among half a dozen equally
improbable fancies, to determine that the most pleasant should be the true
one; and hoarded the money, which I shrunk from spending as much as I
should from selling her miniature or a lock of her beloved golden hair.
They were a gift from her--a pledge--the first fruits of--I dare not
confess to myself what.
Whereat the reader will smile, and say, not without reason, that I was fast
fitting myself for Bedlam; if, indeed, I had not proved my fitness for it
already, by paying the tailors' debts, instead of my own, with the ten
pounds which Farmer Porter had given me. I am not sure that he would not be
correct; but so I did, and so I suffered.