The Captain of the Parish

Front matter

New Six-Shilling Novels On the Face of the Waters By Flora A. Steel Flames By Robert Hichens The Man of Straw By Edwin Pugh The Spoils of Poynton By Henry Jamt'^ The Other House By Henry James Cottage Folk By Mrs. Comyns Can- Life the Accuser By E. F. Brooke McLeod of the Camerons By M. Hamilton Illumination By Harold Frederic Without Sin By Martin J. Pritchard Andria By Percy White London : Wm. Heinemann By John Quine " To unlock the treasures of the Island heart ; With loving feet to trace each hill and glen Arid snd the ore that is not for the mart Of commerce : this is all I ask." T. E. Brown (Fo'c's'le Tarns). London William Heinemann HISTORICAL NOTE At the period referred to in this volume, tbe more sinister aspects of ' Latter Day Saint ' religion were practically unknown ; — its 'peculiar institution ' as yet unrevea/ed to ordinary ' saints.

All rights reserved V CONTENTS Book I. — Arrosey Tops Chap. Page I. The Tops I //. Arrosey ......... 5 ///. Creg Awin II IV. Cairnmore 18 V. Ellen and Lizzie 26 VI. The Gossips 3° VII. The Bathe 35 VIII. The Revival 40 IX. Parson Ollikins 46 X. The Harbinger 49 Book II. — The Heir of Arrosey I. The Heirs Return 53 //. The Bath . 61 ///. At Arrosey Church 67 IV. The Cairn 72 V. The First Walk 77 VI. A Mountain Ride 80 VII. In Narradale 86 / 'III. Prowess 9° IX. 7 lie A lap 96 X. The Green Road 103 XI. The Sacrament no XII. Sorrow "5 XIII. Change "9 CONTENTS VI Book III. — The Dipper C/utf,. ''age I. Return of Enos 124 //. The Tynwald 129 ///. The Mortgage 136 IV. The Higher Gift 14° V. Lizzie's Room 144 VI. The Meadow 150 VII. Charlotte 157 VIII. Mr. and Mrs. Orson Pratt . . .161 IX. Mrs. Orson Pratt 165 X. Milvartin and Molroy 169 XI.

The Quarrel 173 XII. Nell Gawn 176 XIII. The Engagement 180 Book IV. — The School-Mistress of Arrosey Tops I. Molroy s Awakening . ..... 186 //. The Paroxysm ....... 192 ///. The Dipper Love-Feast ..... 203 IV. Mrs. Cannon 216 _". The " Ayre" ....... 221 VI. The Schoolmistress ...... 229 VII. The School 236 VIII. The Blow 239 IX. The Inn at Baldwin 244 Book V. — The Dipper Exodus I. Molroy and Ellen ...... 248 //. Arrosey's Disappointment ..... 260 ///. Enos and his Affairs ..... 263 IV. At the Waterfall 270 V. Arrosey Interposes ...... zyj CONTENTS \ n Chap. l,age VI. Ellen's Amulet 280 VI I. Lizzie and Enos ... . 284 VIII. The Dipper s Farewell 288 IX. The Thrashing-Mill 293 X. Farewell of Ellen 295 Book VI. — The Mistress of Arrosey I . Lizzie and Molroy ...... 303 //. The Wind Changes 306 ///.

Book I

— ARROSEY TOPS "That's the way with the kids, you know, And the years do come and the years do go ; And when you look back it's all like a puff, Happy and over and short enough." — T. E. B.

Chapter I The Toi's

The highroad north and south sweeps across the broad plateau of Arrosey Tops in one straight reach, white and firm with road-metal of broken quartz. At its southern end are a few cottages and a row of one-storied houses, all by the roadside facing the west. At its northern end are the cross-roads, the church, the parsonage, and the glebe-farm. Then you are on the northward slope, the hills to your right, the sea to your left, and the coast unfolded before you like a map. The row had been built by Curlat the " Steel-fist," an old Waterloo pensioner, farming a few acres of his own land. He had not actually fought at Waterloo, but at Quatre-Bras, where he had lost his right hand. On the day of Waterloo he was in hospital, but he claimed his share in its glory. To judge by his make, he must have been a terrible fellow — over six feet in height, and massive as the giants.

Curlat was clerk and sexton at Arrosey Church, and it may be inferred naturally that he was a man of peaceful disposition. Nevertheless there were occasions when he spoke of the days of the war. A Its horrors had left an impress on his brain, and the recollection excited him. His voice, his head, his hands trembled. Men rose to their feet ; the passions of slaughter and blood might be only asleep in him ; if they awoke, they might demand immediate victims. But it was the man rather than the soldier that manifested itself thus — the true soldier being manifested in quite other ways. Curlat's everyday dress was a red waistcoat with brass buttons, the body of a cast-off soldier's coat cut to fit, enlarged with a fustian band inserted down the back, and with dirty-white fustian sleeves attached.

Thus he dispensed with a coat. Every year when he went to Castletown to draw his pension, he brought home from the garrison some cast-off uniforms to be expanded into red sleeve waistcoats. His headgear was a top-hat. In the place of his right hand he had a heavy iron gauntlet— much as if he had knocked the neck and shoulders off a wine-bottle and thrust the stump of his wrist into the bottle. This was the steel-fist. The children of the locality believed that the steel-fist had been for the express purpose of fighting — to knock men down, to burst open castle doors, to deal blows irresistible and deadly. But none of them had the least fear of him. He was the kindliest and gentlest of men ; and as he marched along the highroad, dragging at a yard or two behind him his horse and cart, the rein within his elbow and the steel-fist close to his side, they clambered into the cart.

Curlat's horse was only a wretched nag. It followed the soldier with its head extended in a line with its neck and body. It moved one foot past the other only by force of being dragged along. Curlat lived in the end house of his own row, with a lean-to shed at the gable for the horse and cow, and in front a hay stack, a midden, and usually the cart tilted up on end. Curlat, pensioner, farmer, landlord of the row, clerk and sexton of Arrosey Church, was of course in religion a Churchman and in politics a Conservative. A drunken and lawless butcher was Curlat's tenant of the house at the other end of the row. He killed his pigs and sheep on a trestle frame before his door by the roadside. There were always traces of blood on the ground, and the water in the roadside channel had a tinge of blood.

This butcher, Corkle by name, was deemed really dangerous. Whether at home or abroad, he wore a leather belt round his waist, with his steel suspended from it. The children of the locality understood that this steel was for sticking pigs and people indifferently. For them, however, THE TOPS 3 the soldier's steel fist was a trusted antidote to the bloodthirsty steel of the butcher. The steel fist was an object of honour able respect and love. The fact was that Curlat was land lord, and Corkle had much to do to pay his rent. When the butcher had an ox to kill, the soldier was reputed to fell it with a blow of the steel fist. In actual fact he held the beast with his left hand by a rope through a ring, and the butcher felled it with an axe. The soldier's left hand, in dexterity as in strength, was equal to most men's two hands.

It was so massive that a sober doubt was felt by the country men-ser vants if Curlat could ever have inserted his finger within the trigger-guard of a musket. They confidently believed he must have had a big gun especially made for himself. Mrs. Curlat, the soldier's wife, was insignificant in physique as her husband was huge and brawny. By reason of their property, she ranked herself above some of her female neighbours, and on a level with farmers' wives. She was social, and especially fond of going out to tea, and in turn had little tea-parties of her own. It was understood that she had a rehearsal of her tea-table behaviour before a looking-glass prior to these social exchanges ; in any case, she had a positive reputation for being polite and mannerly. In the middle house of the row lived Nell Gawn, maiden lady, grocer and schoolmistress, and sister of Mrs. Curlat.

She lived under the ægis of the mighty soldier. She kept her grocer's shop in the parlour and her school in the kitchen. The parlour was, moreover, her bedroom. Two occasions pre sented themselves daily to gratify her vanity, in most other ways decayed : first, when a customer from one of the farms came to the shop, Nell sitting by the fire, spectacled, with Testament in one hand and peeled willow wand in the other, not affecting to notice the entrance of a spectator, struck the settle by her side and in magisterial voice showed how she kept school ; second, when she rose in the conscious dignity of grocer and impressively withdrew to the mysterious shop to weigh the tea or sugar. This impressed the children. It gave her an importance in their eyes that maintained dis cipline better than the willow wand.

She may have been guilty of favouritism to the children of customers. Good behaviour was certainly obtained by judicious bribery with Turkey nobs ; and besides, the children in this way brought home a good report of her. Nell Gawn was a Churchwoman, and socially a Conservative. She was in all points the pink of respectability and virtue. Being a spinster of fifty-five, she was also a gossip. She knew everybody's affairs, especially everybody's failings ; thus she was perhaps well fitted to train up the infant mind in the way it should go. It is the purpose of this book to relate the subsequent history of three little pupils of hers, who, along with a score or so of others, were in and about the year 1837 reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting the Testament on the forms in her kitchen.

Before proceeding further, it is well that the reader should be acquainted with Juan Paddy yn Tholt ; for no one knew more of the history in question than this self-same Juan Paddy. He lived in a thatched cottage by the roadside not a hundred paces from the row. Juan was a doubly lame old man, who nevertheless was a great pedestrian traveller. In this he had the energy and patience of a wounded hare. Juan had no visible means of subsistence. By his cottage was neither cowshed nor pigsty, neither poultry nor garden. It was just a bare cottage in a few square yards of waste open to the highroad, with two paths like the letter V between door and road. Juan was always on tramp, and seldom or ever was smoke seen on his chimney. He set out on long marches with no apparent aim. His gait might have suggested to Addison the hobbling march in the vision of Mirza.

His commonest journey was to the town of Inchport, where his ungainly shuffle and the dragging of his boots on the cobble paved streets made the children run after him with shouts of derision. His head hung down and swung from side to side with the regularity of a pendulum. Thus he glanced alternately at the shops and the people on either side of the street, never ceasing to hurry on as if on a journey. Juan's highest ambition was to be entrusted with a com mission to the town by people about Arrosey Tops, his sub stantial and sufficient reward a meal on his return. He may have conceived dimly a distant admiration for the great bare footed courier Tommy Vondy, who now and again passed over Arrosey Tops, traversing the island from south to north with his shoes on a stick over his shoulder. Tommy Vondy, the courier of the Governor, in passing through the country was a wonder — the rumour of his passing spread far and wide.

Juan Paddy, when he saw him pass, would stand swinging his head, and not stir till the courier was out of sight. Had Juan a dim dull longing for some such fame 1 It is not too much to suppose it. Tommy Vondy was a comet ; he came ARROSEY 5 from the vast and distant beyond of the south, and passed into the beyond, as distant and vast, of the wide north. Juan Paddy was a minor planet, with a limited and strictly local orbit ; but Juan had besides another function — call it rather profession. He picked up in his wanderings every scrap of current gossip and country news. To all the news he im parted a colour sombre, melancholy, tragic. He delighted in the death of man and of beast, in accidents, in offences, in wrongs and in sorrows ; and this news he retailed from house to house. This budget was his passport across every threshold, and to a seat on the settle by the door.

This was the commodity he exchanged for human intercourse and for his daily bread. " It's a fine day," was his overture to conversation. Saving the telling of his news in his own way, Juan evaded all questionings with one potent formula, " 'Deed I don't know," with the alternative variation, " I don't know indeed ! " In aspect he seemed little better than an idiot, blear-eyed and bald, with long straggling grey locks over his shoulders, and his bowed head swinging mechanically from side to side. But when he told his tale, he artfully picked up any and every scrap of fresh news inadvertently let fall in his hearing. He wore a dilapi dated top-hat, in which he carried a coloured handkerchief, a slouching square cut swallow-tailed coat of blue frieze, and a stick shod with an iron spike. Living solely on charity, and eating only when a meal was offered him, Juan was a vora cious eater.

It was the opinion of the people about Arrosey Tops, that in this matter it was much easier to start Juan than to stop him. For forty years had Juan been going on the houses, in other words, he had been a common mendicant, and for forty years Juan had been bringing "all the newses." As the Steel-fist used to say, " There's not much that'll escape Juan."

Chapter II

ARltOSEY As you ascend the Creg road from the south to cross Arrosey Tops, the farmhouse of Arrosey stands near the road on your right, rather more than half-way up the ascent. The fields of Arrosey farm extend in a broad band over the ridge from Arrosey brook on the west to the timber of Narradale Glen on the east. Mr. John Molroy had "heired" Arrosey from a line of Molroys extending back for a score of generations. He was known in the country simply as " Arrosey," and not uncommonly as "the big man," partly on account of his posi tion, partly on account of his stature and bulk. He was some years on the shady side of sixty, hale and vigorous in air and step, with a fresh and rosy bloom on his cheek, but his head was bald and a fringe of long white hair gracefully undulating flowed from under his top-hat.

Besides being a Member of the House of Keys, a body co-optative, conservative, and exclusive, he was Captain of the Parish, an almost sinecure distinction, that in earlier times had implied a military com mission. In religion Mr. Molroy was a Methodist — not, how ever, of the saintly type of the immortal Wesley's old-fashioned and modest people, living in the other world rather than in this : he was of a type of his own. His spirit tenaciously secu lar, "Arrosey" seldom or never quoted Scripture, though he did not hesitate to make it responsible in the aggregate for his own opinions, whatever they might be. " Even the Bible itself is saying that," was his manner of referring to it for support. He attended neither Methodist class-meeting nor Methodist prayer-meeting. " They were all right for them that went," was his general sanction of these institutions.

When a Methodist revival broke out, he barely condoned it, with the qualification that " as for himself he never went near them." Arrosey Chapel was built in his father's days, by the road side, on the edge of the ravine of Arrosey brook. " Arrosey's " father had persuaded a neighbour to give the site for the chapel on the corner of his land adjoining Arrosey boundary, so as to have the chapel under his own eye ; and " Arrosey " had succeeded to an exclusive prerogative in everything relat ing to the chapel. He was legal trustee ; there were other co-trustees, but he never consulted them, and they submis sively acquiesced in everything he did. He was de facto proprietor of the chapel; it was a sort of private chapel of his own. On Sunday mornings there was a Sunday-school in the chapel, and of this the big man was sole superin tendent.

There he presided, " raised " the tunes and led the singing, — that is, he hummed the tunes through his nose, and the children and teachers sang the hymns. His music was instrumental rather than vocal — a nasal bassoon playin<* the accompaniment. His range of tunes and metres was ARROSEY 7 limited, and he frequently repeated his favourites. instance, during the sunny months of spring and summer, when Sunday was the sunniest day of the week, he had one favourite hymn, dealing with the wickedness of men and boys wandering in the fields, when they ought to be at Sunday school. The hymn made no direct allusion to girls, but for them doubtless, as well as for the boys, this hymn had the effect of crushing out of their dear little hearts any sinful wish to wander by the hedges and streams after primroses and violets and buttercups and birds' nests.

At the Sundayafternoon preaching at the chapel, the big man sat by himself in a square box in one corner of which was the pulpit. The big man was the supreme, and the preacher the secondary functionary. Here again he " raised " the tunes, and sustained the singing with the accompaniment of his nasal bassoon. He never came out to the Sunday -evenin g preaching, inasmuch as it involved a prayer-meeting at the end of it. He accepted Methodism in the aggregate : he excepted from it its peculiar institutions. The big man entertained the preachers when they were worth it. Now and again there came an English preacher, now and again a big local from distant parts of the island, and these came invariably to dinner, tea, and supper at Arrosey House. They were the chief guests that ever came there. Meanwhile the common locals, miners, artisans, labourers, who came four Sundays out of five, got their hospitality elsewhere than at Arrosey House.

It was not a house for their stamp. There was no one to formulate a doubt of " Arrosey's " Methodism, much less to utter it. The big man tolerated no criticism of himself. Besides, he was the natural law giver, or more exactly law administrator in the region of the hills. On one side, to the law-abiding and religious he was head man at the chapel. That was sufficient. On the other side, among the lawless and irreligious, to whom Matt Hunthan's inn at the foot of the Creg was " just the same as a chapel to them," his friendly condescension secured their personal allegi ance. The big man, in fact, in passing Matt's occasionally stepped in for a pint of ale. He never condescended to sit down in Matt's, but stood in the middle of the floor with his top-hat good-naturedly pushed back off his forehead.

The floor was left clear to himself on these occasions, and the drinkers sat round the room giving him attention as long as he stayed. It was necessary for him to " read the Riot Act " to this company, as he informed them — that is to say, with reckless freedom of utterance he called them to account for any misbehaviours of theirs that had come to his know ledge, and a physical prowess far-famed of old made the men swallow his opinions of their iniquities in passive silence. He had one foot planted in the chapel and the other in the public-house. The big man freely abused Church parsons, from the Bishop down, but rather to their faces than behind their backs. The Reverend Mr. Ollikins, who was " on " the church at Arrosey Tops, commonly known as Parson Ollikits, came in for his share of the big man's freedom of speech.

"Arrosey" regarded him with a kindly contempt mingled with pity. He declared the parson "a touch of a High Churchman," mainly because he occasionally had a service on a week-day, though nobody ever came to it. When the big man heard the bell of Arrosey Church — " Bless my soul, if that fellow hasn't got the church open to-day again ! " If he met the parson, which he made an express point of doing, for he walked over Arrosey Tops for that purpose — " And what's up to-day, man 1 What's the church open for to-day , " " Well, Mr. Molroy, it's a saint's day ! " " Oh, d — n the saint's day ! Why, man, every day is a saint's day to me. They're all saints' days to me. I don't make any difference between one day and another. Even the Bible itself is saying that, man ! " " But it's the Church's order, Mr. Molroy."

" Oh, capers ! tomfoolery ! You're hard up for something to do, man ! Bless my soul ! if I didn't think you had more sense ! " Parson Cllikins had one compensation for many an un pleasantness in the dreary intercourse of his environment — one cherished and perpetual consolation : it was the distinction of being a gentleman. Inoffensive, kindly, timid, and poor, he clung tenaciously to this. It involved a double consolation. " Arrosey " was not a gentleman, and he was himself the sole representative of that order in the locality. "Arrosey" was a widower with an only child, a boy called after his father, and known indifferently as " young John " and " the heir." Young John Molroy had received the elements of his education at Nell Gawn's. There in her kitchen he had read ARROSEY 9 the Testament, and at twelve was the biggest boy and the most advanced scholar.

He was the leader of all their games. They played hockey on the long mile reach of highroad over the Tops ; but the butcher's open-air slaughter-house was a more sensational attraction. With his coat off, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, butcher-knife in hand, he joined Corkle in shaving a pig or skinning a sheep or " beef," while the school children, girls as well as boys, stood round in wonder, admiration, and envy, their little shoes stained with the ubiquitous blood. But at twelve a change came over the boy. After half a year at Latin with the parson, he was sent to Whitehaven School. His old associations were severed. The years went by of school in Whitehaven and holidays at Arrosey. The big man used to say he was bringing his son up to be a gentleman, unconsciously admitting the truth of the parson's unexpressed opinion, that " Arrosey " had not been brought up a gentleman himself.

The big man's way of fulfilling this aim was the best he knew. Young John was to have unlimited education anyway ; he was exempted from the necessity of doing a hand's turn when at home — to be absolutely master of his own time ; and finally, he would have two of the best farms in the country without a penny of mortgage. It was on the strength of this latter substantial fact that " Arrosey " mainly relied. Property was the body, the substance, the fact itself of a man's being a gentleman. " Arrosey's " avowed contempt for Ollikins was as confident as Ollikins' concealed contempt for "Arrosey." "The minute the breath is out of his mouth he hasn't a penny ; they'll be in the highroad." Mr. Ollikins had the garb without the substantial body; "Arrosey" had the body, and not without garment, which, if homely, was good against all weathers.

Thus his habitual term for the parson was " that scarecrow on the Tops there." But behind his avowed contempt was a secret respect. Parsons were gentlemen " in the face of everything, it didn't matter who they were ;" and " Arrosey," who was nothing if not thorough going, had a fairly well fixed idea of making his son a parson. Indeed, everybody in the locality had a notion that this was in the wind, partly because of young John's friendly acquaint ance with Parson Ollikins, often going to the parson's to tea when at home for the holidays, and going pretty regularly to Arrosey Church on Sundays ; partly because, when he was done with Whitehaven School, and was a strapping youth of eighteen or so, he was sent to college at Cambridge; and partly, or rather mainly, because of certain utterances of the soldier over a pint of ale with a parcel of them at Matt Hunthan's public-house.

For the soldier, Churchman as he was, was well known to be a frequent and privileged evening visitor in Arrosey kitchen, where he sat for hours at a stretch on the settle in the big chimney-corner, the confidant of the big man in all his affairs. The personal relations of father and son were peculiar. The son was conscious of his father's superiority to his neigh bours. He believed in a general way in the infallibility of his father's judgment and opinions. But the big man was reserved and distant to the boy; there was no relation at once formal and affectionate. The boy never accompanied his father about the farm, never in his chapel-going. Now and then he drove the big man in his gig to Inchport, to Douglas, or to a country fair. They saw most of each other out of doors over the breaking of a colt, the only work in which young Molroy was asked to give his assistance, and the only work in which he took whole-hearted interest ; and they saw little of each other indoors except at meal-times.

At Arrosey tea table there was no formality and little conversation ; at the parson's table there was an easy flow of talk, and conse quently young Molroy was oftener at tea at the parsonage than at Arrosey. The comparative value of money within the horizon of Arrosey fields was much greater than beyond it. The big man estimated money, as he did everything else with invin cible obstinacy, by standards of his own. On Arrosey farm, money was always coming in, but none was seen to go out. Naturally, therefore, the heir's education had made an unex ampled drain on the Arrosey treasury, or rather on one de partment of it. Besides Arrosey, the big man owned Sartal, nestled under the shadow of Sartal mountain, down Kirk Michael way. This had been the mother's place ; and true to creed, the rents of Sartal had always been set apart to accumulate for the son.

Nevertheless, a drain of a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred pounds a year for his son's education, was a sore subject. The big man was rather fond of ventilating it, though secretly as a matter of boast quite as much as pro fessedly a grievance. " The rent of Sartal won't more than half keep him, Curlat ! " " Aw well, man ! well, man ! You can well afford it, man ! " said the soldier, as he sat with the big man by the kitchen-fire, the confidant of his affairs. " Aw, honour bright, Curlat ; there has never a penny of the rent of Sartal gone into my own pocket since the day he was born." Despite grievance he never hesitated to pay. He never asked to see a college bill. He would have nothing but his son's word. If that was not right, nothing else was of any consequence to him. But finally, since the childhood of the boy there had been no mistress of Arrosey ; no divine presence of a wife to the father nor of mother to the son ; no gentle mediation of a woman's love, melting and fusing all hardness in the man, and maturing tenderness and filial sweetness in the boy ; and in that absence, there was in tho atmosphere of Arrosey house only a pathetic vacuum.

Chapter III Creg Awin

In the Whitehaven school period, when Molroy was home for the holidays, he used to see at Arrosey Church on Sundays a little girl just into her teens, who sat alone in her pew on the south side of the church under a narrow stained window. She was straight and shapely, with black rippling hair flowing over her shoulders, and the sun, shining through the colours of the window, fell on her hair with the solemn beauty of a rainbow. She had large dark eyes, fringed with jet black lashes, steady, penetrating, exquisitely pencilled ; always meet ing Molroy's look with smiling recognition and a softening of sweetness and wonder, so lovely that he sought their every glance; yet to all other eyes than his distant in recognition and forbidding in their firmness and indifference. . This was Ellen Molvurra, the daughter of old Charley Molvurra of Creg Awin, the next place below Arrosey down the Creg, who, when John Molroy had been at Nell Gawn's, a big boy of twelve, had also been there, a little thing of seven or eight.