'Verts; or, the Three creeds. A novel

Book I

—FKOM ELSIE'S DIARY. CHAP. PAGE I. ZOAR 1 II. A CLERK OF OXENFORD .... ... 46 III. MY EVANGELICAL AUNTS 88 IV. MY PROTESTANT COUSIN 129 V. MR. MODDLE 169 VI. UNCLE SAM 212 VII. THE TORN PAGE IN THE DIARY 'VERTS

BOOK I

-FKOM ELSIE'S DIAKY.

Chapter I. Zoar

S I have some idea of one day writing a story, I shall employ these blank pages in my interleaved diary, for the purpose of collecting a few preliminary facts. I was much struck with a remark of Mr. Moddle the other day (of course I shall explain who Mr. Moddle is, all in good time). He said that the most uneventful life, if properly described, would possess all the interest of a three-volume novel. I am not sure he meant this as a compliment, because he depreciates works of fiction. I VOL. I. ' Verts. 2 adore them. At the same time as Mr. Moddle made that remark, he said some thing to me quietly about my possessing the creative faculty. I did not quite catch what he said ; and if I had been clear as to the words, I should not have felt certain that he was not poking fun at me. Mr. Moddle is very satirical.

My Cousin Percy was by, and said — " Don't talk such nonsense to that girl, Moddle ; you'll be turning her head, and inducing her to write her autobiography in three volumes. We have a good many queer people in Zoar, small as it is ; but I hope we shan't disgrace ourselves so far as to number a lady-novelist among the popu lation at the next census." I had never thought of such a thing before, but I there and then resolved that I would write a novel in three volumes, and moreover, that it should be autobiographical, but not, I hope, an illustration of Mr. Moddle's remark, because I do not mean my life to be uneventful if I can help it. I Zoar 3 project for myself a stirring career. I have outgrown the period when I thought I should like to marry a pirate or a bandit, provided only he were dark and pictu resquely dressed.

I begin even to see through officers — not that there are many to cross our orbit in Zoar. It is a small cathedral town — the smallest in England I believe -, that is why I give it the pseudonym of Zoar. There are reasons for my thoughts taking a Scriptural turn. I mean to devote the opening chapter to myself and my surroundings. But, dear me, what a time it must take to write a three-volume novel ! I have not got to the end of my second side of foolscap, and I reckon I shall have to write thirtyfive for each chapter. It seems like cutting the first sod for a railway, or laying the first brick for a cathedral. Of course this is all inartistic — a sort of peg on which to hang my subsequent story, and not by any means the story itself. The plan that I shall adopt, then, is first 1—2 ' Verts. to pose myself before the looking-glass, and try to write an honest unflattering pen-and ink sketch of myself.

I wonder whether a woman can do this. Artists have painted their own pictures ; why should not authors describe themselves ? I had thought of heading my opening chapter "Veluti in speculum." Mr. Moddle taught me Latin ; but perhaps it would be pedantic to adopt a classical title. I hate pedantry. Mr. Moddle is very clever, but he never " shows off," as the boys say. I am tall ; there can be no doubt of that. I am also thin ; of that there can be equally little question. As I survey my reflected self, I have a considerable sensation of legs. Honestly I don't believe I am a very good person for a heroine : but I have not the slightest imagination to invent another — though Mr, Moddle does say I am creative. I must be egotistical, or I am nothing. Let me proceed. I am very pale, and my face, I grieve to add, is freckled.

My eyes, which are deep set, are of no colour in particular, Zoar, 5 which I regret ; but — so somebody tells me — my hands are nice — very long, thin, and white, my hair golden, and I wear persis tently one long curl over my shoulder. I have a reason for doing that. I am not yet so ancient as to be afraid to own that my age is three-and-twenty. I look that age, but my manner is younger. I have the reputation of gushing with my friends, but am exceedingly reserved before strangers. So much for myself at present. " Elsie," said Cousin Percy, a day or two after Mr. Moddle's remark about my creative faculty, " you are not letting yourself be influenced by what that old ass Moddle said, I hope. I notice you have been a good deal in 3rour room lately, and I have reason to believe your use of pen and ink is more habitual than of old.

I don't care to have that dear finger of yours ebon-tipped, ivory though it be." I said nothing in reply, but simply pulled my hand away and looked fierce. He did not seem to mind. He pays compliments ' Verts. 6 much as one would enunciate a proposition of Euclid (I learnt Euclid of Mr. Moddle). He has no right to play with my hand — at least not yet. Besides, Mr. Moddle is cer tainly not an ass, and not very old. "Percy," I continued, " what is the popu lation of Zoar ?" " 0, it's a guide-book we are compiling, is it ? That's better than a frivolous love story. Well, Zoar, in and out " " What do you mean by ' in and out ?' ' " The city and surroundings — would num ber between five and six thousand." " No more ? And yet we have that big cathedral, into which we could put all the population at a pinch, yet to which not half a dozen ever go on weekdays ; besides which we have St. Hilda's and your church."

" Will you excuse me for remarking that I am not an inquiring stranger, about to study the city and environs. Be quiet, there's a good girl. I want to finish the Record, and send it off by post to London ; I share it with Uncle Samuel." Zoar, 7 So I came upstairs and wrote again. Certainly Zoar is one of the quaintest and coziest of bijou cities ; and as you look down upon it from the hills with which it is surrounded, you become conscious how clever those old monks and friars were in their choice of site. It rains nearly every day in Zoar, but as nobody has anything very particular to do, or which could not be put off until to-morrow, it does not much matter. Of course the Dean and Canon in residence have to go to cathedral twice a day, and a Dean in canonicals being conveyed across the green by a verger who holds an umbrella over him instead of carrying a mace in front, is not picturesque.

But Zoar is very tranquil, and we soon get to look upon umbrellas and waterproofs as the normal conditions of existence. We residents often cry out about the dulness of Zoar ; but I find when any of us go out into the big world, we are always very glad to get back to Zoar again. I wonder whether I shall ever feel this sensation. It is, I suppose, very irreverent, but I can- Verts 8 not help comparing the dean and chapter and numerous clergy, who constitute the upper crust of Zoar society, to the jackdaws that haunt the cathedral. They are so black and sleek and shiny, and seem so thoroughly a part of the budding ; and when one dies — either a daw or a dignitary — another equally black and shiny comes and takes his place so naturally that one does not feel the transition in the least, though I suppose the bird or the clergyman does.

To me it seems as though there were a sort of clerical anima mundi in Zoar, and the canons and jackdaws were simply different embodied modicums of this. I read the Fourth Book of the Georgics with Mr. Moddle. I suppose it will detract from the interest of my story, should these rough notes ever expand into one, when I confess that my family does not belong to the upper stratum of the Zoar formation (I have dabbled a little in natural science, still with Mr. Moddle). My father keeps a shop, a very respectable place, established I am Zoar. 9 afraid to say how many years ago, but still an unmitigated shop nevertheless, where he sells hats and coats to the sleek canons while alive, and from whence he issues with hat bands, plumes, and scarves to inter them when their vital spark rejoins the common stock.

In this way I am enabled to hang on to the skirts of clerical life, though at a very respectful, and I fear not quite a respectable, distance. I have an idea that this commercial element is a great trial to my Uncle Edward, who is a solicitor and secretary to the Bishop, and has married a little deaf wife supposed to be genteel. Percy, whom I call my Protestant cousin, is his only son, and Incumbent of St. Simon Magus, in Zoar. He is very young, and some people wonder at his rapid preferment. He was ordained deacon and priest on consecutive days, and popped at once into the living of St. Simon Magus, which fell vacant very opportunely. Scandal said that the Bishop was "hard up," and my Uncle Edward "accommodated" 'Verts. him ; but being such a small and religious place, I need scarcely say Zoar is great at gossip.

I thought at the time that Percy's rapid promotion was only a recognition by the Bishop of his surpassing merits. I may as well confess at once that I have been always led to consider Percy as possessed of all the cardinal virtues, and to look upon him as my future husband. He is only a year or two my senior ; and when we were boy and girl together, the arrangement suited us admirably. When first we found out we were no longer boy and girl but man and woman, that is, when Percy, after taking his B.A. and passing the Voluntary, came to Zoar for Deacon's Orders, it became necessary to make some reference to this matrimonial arrangement, and the way it was done will afford an insight into Percy's plain, practical, business-like character, and also into the state of my affections. I am not quite clear about the latter myself just at this moment ; and possibly may not be inclined to make a full and unreserved con- Zoar, 11 session, even of what is patent to myself.

Why should I ? you are not a Father Con fessor, good reader, are you ? Percy is a very decided Evangelical, principally, I fancy, for the reason that all the dignitaries at Zoar are mildly Puseyite -, and he takes this opportunity of showing that he felt no obligation for his promotion, and of resenting their not asking him to their resi dence dinners. They never do ; and I know Percy feels it acutely, and fancies they do it on account of my father being in business, though he pretends to think it is because he is a Simeonite. But I am digressing. I always feel a tendency to wander. This is what Percy said — " Well, Elsie, are you prepared to sign, seal, and deliver the contract between us made?" and he kissed me in a very cold cousin-like kind of way, not in the least like that he used to adopt when he caught me under the mistletoe, or occasionally without that excuse.

Percy, I should add, was articled to his father before going to Cam- ' Verts. bridge, which would account for the legal phraseology he adopted. " Of course I am, Percy, if " " 0 if you are going into ' ifs,' going to introduce reservations or conditions, or any thing of that sort, it will take us a very long time to settle a very simple matter." " I thought it was all settled for us already," I replied. " I have never swerved from my engagement" — I very nearly said 'agreement,' because we really never have been formally engaged. " I only thought that, as you had been a good deal out in the world, while I had been staying at Zoar, you might have seen somebody you liked better." " Leaving me to understand by implication that, if you had not been prisoned in Zoar, but had enjoyed the opportunity of going out into the world too, you might have seen somebody you liked better than me."

"It is possible, is it not?" What girl could resist the temptation of saying so much as that ? " But you are very cross ; or Zoar 13 no, I will not say that — the horrid Arch deacon has been bothering you with his long examination, perhaps." " That doesn't bother me," replied Percy, with ineffable contempt. " The Bishop dares not reject me. I sent in blank papers on several subjects just to see whether they would even speak to me about them." As a fact they did not ; and Percy not only passed his examination, but had to read the Gospel, a compliment always shown to the candidate whose answers have been most satisfactory. I felt very proud of him when I went into one of those large pews, irreve rently called " horseboxes," at the cathedral. My Evangelical Aunt Phillis, and my great aunt Rachel, were with me, and Percy's father, my Uncle Edward, was in official attendance on the Bishop.

He looked proud indeed as he stood there in the voluminous dress-coat which he wore on all occasions, and saw his only son kneel and receive from the Bishop imposition of hands, together with a twopenny New Testament sold under cost Verts price by a religious society, with a discount on taking a number. Percy is not altogether handsome, and perhaps a certain morose appearance, which he even then possessed, has grown upon him of late : but it was the first time I had seen him in his surplice, the white of which contrasted beautifully with his almost olive complexion and black curling hair. His father, my Uncle Edward, bears the most ridiculous resemblance to Charles James Fox, and though he is a Conserva tive in politics, he is exceedingly proud of the likeness. Percy has uow been some time Incumbent of St. Simon Magus, but I am glad to say does not urge the fulfilment of my matri monial engagement.

Of course it will have to be carried out one of these days, we both know that ; but in the interim I have a little " affaire" on hand, and so — I happen to know in the most irregular way possible — has Percy. If ever he should find out anything about Alec, and speak to me, as he is sure to do, I shall twit him with Mary Baker. She Zoar. 15 is the prima donna in his choir at St. Simon Magus, and certainly the prettiest girl in Zoar. Her mother is a poor widow woman who makes believe to keep a dressmaker's shop in the High Street, only some three or four doors above our house ; but I fancy she has hardly any business ; and how they manage to exist I cannot guess, for the children are always respectable, and Mary herself dresses, if anything, too smartly. Percy, I know, only gives her a mere pittance for singing at St. Simon's. He always was an excellent man of business, which my Uncle Edward says is the rarest thing among the clergy, and he has so much to do with them that he certainly ought to know.

He thought a little drilling in a lawyer's office would be the best means of enabling Percy to get on in the Church. " The Law first and then the Gospel, my dear," he said to me in reference to this sub ject. " When your prospective husband has one of the richest livings in the diocese, and, besides that, you have your Aunt Phillis's ' Verts. money and possibly the Welsh estates, he will want all his business tact to manage so large a fortune." " 0, Uncle Edward," I replied, for I was in my gushing mood then, " I don't want to be rich. St. Simon's would be quite enough for me." " Don't hint at such a thing, child. Percy wont stop at St. Simon's to be snubbed by the palace and the deanery, and as long as that shop remains in the High Street, so long he will be snubbed. He must exchange for a country living before you can be married ; but I don't want him to hurry.

He may make a good bargain if he finds some country incumbent anxious to bask in the light of the Bishop." Nobody seems to want to hurry, which is very nice for Alec and myself under the cir stances. I am going to confess, not perhaps quite all, but a good deal about Alec in due course of time, but I must do it in my own desultory fashion or not at all. Mr. Moddle says I have not a logical mind, but then he Zoar. 17 goes on to add, when had a woman ever a logical mind ? Mr. Moddle can be as great a misogynist as Euripides himself when he likes, though sometimes he can be quite the reverse. St. Simon Magus' church is on the out skirts of Zoar, at the extreme east end of the town, and in one of its least eligible suburbs, if it is possible to predicate suburban ap pendages of so very tiny a place.

By going out at one of the side doors of the church, and crossing the fields, you can avoid the ineligible street, and passing by a large piece of water called the Fishponds — on the lucus a non lucendo principle, I fancy, for there are no fish — you get into a lonely picturesque lane, at the end of which you emerge into a high road leading past the Bishop's palace, and eventually into the market-place of Zoar. In this lonely and picturesque lane Alec and I had been taking an evening walk; and quite forgetting that it was practice night at St. Simon Magus, we omitted to part as we usually did before coming to the vol. i. 'Verts. 18 Fishpond fields. We were just going to emerge from the gloom of the overhanging trees when Alec pulled me back and said — " Your cousin Percy, look !" Sure enough there he was at the stile leading from the fields into the lane, and with him was Mary Baker.

They could not see us, though we were so close that we could not only see but hear them. I was asto nished, but not indignant, to observe that when Mary came to the stile and as he lifted her over, he gave her not one, two, or three, but twenty kisses at least — quite unlike the cousinly dabs he gives me, and as she trotted down the lane he said, " Good night, darling," and stopped watching her until she turned a corner out of sight. He then went slowly back through the fields to the church and home by the street I suppose, for, as John Bunyan says, " I saw him no more." I am saving up Alec for my next chapter, therefore I shall not say much about him now, except that after what we have seen I Zoai 19 feel less compunction than before in walking out with him ; and such is the force of example that he at once imitated Cousin Percy by kissing me more than twenty times before I sped down the lane ; indeed he would insist upon coming further with me than he had ever done before, running the most tremendous risks of meeting folks, for this was a favourite evening walk with the inhabitants of Zoar, and if one of them had seen us it would have been published all over the place that night.

How Percy could risk being seen with Mary Baker I cannot guess ; but perhaps he dreads the Bishop taking away his gown as little as he did his plucking him for Orders. He used to say he could never be sufficiently grateful to my Uncle Edward for accommodating his lordship, and thus putting the screw on him, though he thought his father ought to double the interest on account of the old prig not asking Percy or himself to dinner at the palace. " I've piled it on as heavily as I can, o /> nl .". Verts. 20 Percy," my uncle replied ; " but after all, you cannot wonder that the Bishop and Dean don't ask us to dinner as long as that shop disfigures the High Street. Not only so, but William'' — that was my father - — " is ruining his business and dragging us down a step lower than before, if that were possible, in the social scale by joining the Dissenters and flitting about from sect to sect.

Our family name is Llewellyn, on the strength of which we are of course claimed as kindred by all who hail from the Princi pality ; but it is a most humiliating thing to have to confess that our family tree does not strike root deeper than my grandfather; or, if it does, it is so profoundly buried in the soil that no ordinary heraldry -can bring it to light. My grandfather might have been as autocthonous as Topsy herself. As regards his antecedents he was as mysterious as Melchizedek. From the date when our shop was established, there ought to have been a long lineal descent of Llewellyns ; but perhaps it had changed Zoar. 21 hands. Suffice it to say, I know nothing about my grandfather beyond the fact, that he was a fine greyheaded old gentleman, much respected by his fellow-townsmen, and that he died some years ago.

Towards the close of his life, he was in a low desponding condition, for which most people held Mr. Moddle responsible — unjustly so, I think ; but although my uncle favoured this opinion, it did not interrupt his good fellowship with Mr. Moddle. I was young at the time; but I remember it struck me that after my grandfather's death, my uncle seemed on better terms with Mr. Moddle than before. He certainly encouraged his visits to High Street, though pretending to dislike dissent, and as a rule Mr. Moddle breakfasts with us every Saturday morning, and dines at least once a week. I remember when he used to jump me in his arms ; but that was, of course, before my legs were a tithe of their present length. It sometimes strikes me, that he is dandling me mentally still. He treats me as though I were a grown-up ' Verts. baby.

I have once or twice asked him how it was my grandfather left the Topaz Farm equally divided between my father, my two uncles, and my Aunt Phillis. " I thought it was only left to my grand father for his lifetime, and to descend to my father at his death." "Did you, indeed, my young Portia? Why don't you put your ideas in more legal phraseology ?" " Never mind the phraseology ; let us stick to the idea, and talk sense." "W'ith which the law has nothing in common, you mean." "I should not like Uncle Edward or Cousin Percy to hear me say so ; but yes, I do mean that. Is it not a fact that old Mrs. Susanna Dash, who left the Topaz Farm to my grandfather, personally disliked my Uncle Edward, and said Samuel was a snivel ler, but liked my father, as she did my grandfather ?" " There's your dear old Aunt Rachel, who never tires of talking on this subject, and Zoar. 23 who will moreover enlighten you as to your Welsh estates, too.

Why do you consult me, an outsider, on family matters ?" " Nonsense about Aunt Rachel. To whom shall I speak, if not to you, Mr. Moddle ?" " Your Aunt Phillis, your Uncle Edward himself. Why not ?" " Mention the subject in their presence, and they collapse forthwith. If they would only tell me to hold my tongue, or say something more impertinent still, I should resent it ; but their stolid taciturnity gives me no chance." "Then speak to your father." " Dear good-natured old man, I try to get him on the topic, for I do not think he has been justly dealt by ; but there is no keeping him to it. He is as warm as I am — almost as sanguine as I am — one moment. He takes a pinch of snuff, and that seems to change his whole nature. 0, I wish I were a man instead of a woman. What can I do ?" " Write to Uncle Sam." 'Verts.

" Do you know, it's a dreadful thing to say, but I cordially endorse old Susanna Dash's appraisement of Uncle Sam. If she had included by anticipation his wife, my Aunt Patty, in the same category, I don't think she would have been far wrong. They both snivel." " Really, Miss Elsie, you take stock of your belongings in a very merciless manner. WThat does your mother say ?" " You know well enough my mother would lie down any moment for the Juggernaut car of family respectability and peace to pass over her mutilated body." " Percy?" " The most difficult of all ; for he shuts me up by saying that we shall be married directly, and our interests identified. I have tried to pump Aunt Rachel as you suggest, but she has got the Topaz Farm so mixed up with the Welsh estates, which I believe to be simple castles in Spain — and she bothers her poor head so to find out the unpronounceable name of Zoar 25 that inheritance, and is generally so old and imbecile that I can do nothing with her."

Then Mr. Moddle subsides into his paper, with a look which says as plainly as words, "J am not to be pumped, Miss;" and I go into a brown study, and wonder whether I am really the victim of a conspiracy, got up by the uncles and aunts against my good natured, but rather weak-minded papa, and whether that is the meaning of their being so anxious to marry me to Percy. Most of all do I wonder whether, if such be the case, Mr. Moddle knows all about it. If so he is a capital actor. I have a notion that as long as the Saturday breakfasts and weekly dinners come round regularly, Mr. Moddle will let things take their course. If they failed, or the port wine grew inferior, I should not like to reckon on that gen tleman's fidelity. And yet Zoar is a dear dreamy old place, and the more I abuse it the better I like it, just as we do with our most intimate friends.

We feel an inward conviction that they are ' Verts. stupid, and cherish it as one of the greatest privileges of our association that we are able to tell them so point blank, and let them see by a hundred instinctive acts every day of our lives what our estimate of them is. I have not the slightest doubt that Orestes and Pylades bored one another sometimes, and that each was not only conscious of the fact, but made it perfectly obvious to the other that he was so. It is just the same with Zoar. When I hear my lackadaisical young-lady friends inveigh against its dul ness, I sympathize with them verbally, and really fancy for the moment that I have a fellow-feeling in my heart. But if I ask myself here, over my diary, or when I am taking long country walks, solitary or other wise (especially otherwise), whether I should like to say good-by to Zoar, I am quite determined that I should not.

I have grown up in Zoar and become acclimatized ; and very much doubt whether, when the inevitable exodus comes, I shall flourish so well anywhere else. When I see Cockney tourists or visitors Zoar. 27 of an}- kind " doing" Zoar, guide-book in hand, mooning about the cathedral green, or staring into the moat round the Bishop's palace, I know they are saying to themselves that it is a very picturesque old place, but that there must be a deal of still life in it. So there is ; but there is a good deal of life that is not still too. I confess that my experience in Zoar is to a certain degree exceptional. Shop keeper's daughter though I am, and mixed up, against my will, with influences that run counter to the received traditions among the ton of our cathedral city, I am treated as a lady by, and am actually on almost familiar terms with, those very dignitaries whom my clerical cousin and aspiring uncle with the genteel wife affect quite in vain.