The World in the Church. Second edition

Front matter

THE WORLD IN THE CHURCH. B_ I. G. TRAFFORD, AUTHOB OP " THE MOORS AND TFCE FENS," " TOO MUCH ALONE," AND "CITY AND SUBURB." IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. J&MonB lEBittott. LONDON : CHARLES J. SKEET, PUBLISHER, 10, KING- WILLIAM STREET, CHARING CROSS. 1863. The Right of Translati-m is reserved. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER PAGB I. Swarston Royal ..... 1 II. Mima's Prospects ..... 18 III. A New Acquaintance .... 39 IV. The Cousins 70 V. Setting a Trap ...... 8G VI. Casting Back .109 VII. Still Casting Back 131 VIII.. Good Advice 157 IX. Mima's Affianced 172 X. Swarston Moor 193 XI. Mima Developing 211 XII. Church at Swarston 228 XIII. The New Curate . . . . .245 XIV. Diplomacy 267 XV. Tavering Farm 284 XVI. Variety

Chapter I. Swarston Royal

Par away in Staffordshire, thirty miles or thereabouts from Birmingham, there stood, some years back, a small country town, called Swarston Royal. It stands there still, indeed, for that matter, but enlarged, and known by another name; for early in the year 1854, capitalists went down from London, and taking possession of ground in the neighbourhood, reared mills and factories, built workers' houses, and managers and clerks' houses, and great mansions for themselves, and at the same time re-christened the place — leaving Swarston Royal proper still standing, it is true, but merely as a suburb to the new town. The Trent Valley line first brought Swarston Royal VOL. I. B before the public, and raised it from the rank of a small country, to that of a large manufacturing town ; but prior to the opening of that branch of the London and North Western Railway, it Was a very insignificant place, four miles distant from a station, with only one post in and one post out in the day, numbering a population of little more than two thousand, exclusive, however, of the neighbouring gentry, who were numerous and wealthy.

In Swarston Royal, as in most other towns, there was a good quarter, and there was a bad — a wholly respectable and semi-genteel West End, where resided maiden ladies, medical men, widows with daughters, widows with sons, a gentleman who kept a school, a lady who kept ditto, and shopkeepers who did a com fortable, steady, family trade, and had money at their bankers. Of trade, in the ordinary acceptation of the word ; of business, in its vulgar and deteriorating sense ; of com mercial activity, of speculative changes, Swarston Royal was innocent as the precincts of a court. So far as trade tended to supply them with teas, sugars and spices at Birmingham prices, the Swarston inhabitants smiled upon, and liked it — were affable to bowing shop keepers, and asked after their wives and children : but against business as it was conducted in Birmingham, in great warehouses, and huge factories, and gigantic workshops, Swarston was irreconcilable.

SWARSTON ROYAL. 3 " It is all very well to talk about commerce," said Swarston, pointing majestically towards the north ; " but look at the mines" — which nobody who could help it ever did, for the mines were not at all desirable places to look at, whilst the people who worked in them, and who populated the east end of Swarston, were less desirable still. A wilder and more ignorant race were never reared in any part of the black country than the miners of Swarston. They were as bad as the inhabitants of Dudley Woodside fifty years since. They earned wages dangerously, and spent them recklessly ; they married wives, and maltreated them ; they begat children, and left them to drag up through the same mire and filth they themselves had wallowed in. Whilst civdization — comparative civilization, I mean — had spread to other parts of the shire, Swarston Moor had escaped its touch.

Whilst missionaries sailed for New Zealand, Africa, and the furthest islands, the Swar ston miners remained in a state of heathenism. The part of the town where they lived was eschewed by common consent. They had their own shops, their own roads, across a moor, worn with the passage of many feet, strewed with coal, and black with coal-dust. They had their own laws — if they amened to any — and their own church, which was the nearest public house. They worked like beasts of burden, they earned high wages hardly — they lived under the shadow of death contiiub ally, and they came up out of their pits to enjoy them selves upon the earth as devils might have done. It was not the fashion at Swarston to speak of the miners ; they were accepted as necessary evils, but still as people, who, keeping themselves to themselves in their sorrows and their viceSj could safely be left alone.

Occasionally, indeed, some philanthropist, more kindly than wise, penetrated into their haunts, but he was soon glad enough to beat an ignominious retreat ; whilst all that religion essayed was to drop tracts near their dwellings, or on the moor, which tracts were either made the subjects of profane jests, or used as pipe lights. Christian charity, strict law, pure religion undefiled, kept their skirts from touching the miners of Swarston. Heaven knows it was well when daylight was let in on the deeds that had been done there, to sweep the name of Swarston Moor off the earth; for until within the last fifteen years it might have been truly said of it, as was said of another place, for a different reason ; " Wotton under Wever, Where God came never." Man-forsaken, and God-forsaken, the moor indeed seemed a valley of desolation by day, a pandemonium by. night, which the respectabilities of Swarston never tra versed — which the clergyman did not include in his SWxVRSTON ROYAL. 5 parish — which Satan and his imps had for a kingdom for themselves.

To the north stretched this moor, cold, bleak, and grimy ; whilst to the south lay smiling fields, and red tiled farm-houses, and woods, and lawns, and gardens. Swarston to the north was Pandemonium — to the south, Eden ; and the south side of the town was its genteel quarter, where the gentlemen and ladies I have before mentioned resided. People of the same means, tastes, and rank, live in every little town throughout the kingdom — people who like the importance which attaches itself to each member of a small community — who have a certain station, albeit a very humble one, in the locality they have chosen — who can calculate within a sovereign what their yearly expenses will be — to whom low rents are a necessity — who are great and notable amongst the minnows of village society — but who would be swallowed up, and forget their own identity, amongst the great multitude of fishes that crowd the metropolitan sea.

Rents were, as I have said, very low in that part of the world, and perhaps it might have been for the sake of its low rent that Mrs. Cameron selected Rose Cot tage as her permanent abode. She was not wealthy — even Swarston Royal, though not accustomed to widows with large jointures, called her poor, and was content to let her alone, and leave her without the inexpressible advantage of its acquaintance, though she did visit with the Edfords, and walk into church every Sunday clad in the deepest of widow's weeds. And Mrs. Cameron felt very thankful to Swarston Royal for its pains. Prom the sympathy and kindness of the world she hoped nothing, she wanted nothing ; neglect was the best boon Swarston could grant her ; the story of her life had been played out before she ever set foot in the town, and she knew that no line of interest might ever be added to it more.

She had loved, and she had lost — she had been proud, and she was humbled ; she had aspired to wealth and station, and behold, the Dead Sea apples crumbled to ashes in her hands ; she had sinned, and the punishment had rushed down upon her head. Throughout all the years of her life, let it be long, or let it be short, she knew there remained for her but repentance and sorrow, and so she closed the door between herself and the outside world, and clothed her soul in sackcloth, and poured ashes on her head — that once proud and haughty head, which was now bowed in meekness before the anger she had provoked. There was no mystery about the woman save her sorrow, and of that the world knew nothing. Even in it she was just like the rest of us — holding a secret in her heart with the joy or bitterness of which man had no right to meddle.

She was what she professed to be — the poor widow of a poor man, who had sufficient, nevertheless, for all her wants, and who could pay her way as regularly as any of her neighbours. She was as good a tenant as landlord ever tried to keep in good temper; she made no dilapidations, she effected some few repairs ; she had her little luxury of glorious flowers, and planted and sowed till the place was in the summer a mass of brilliant colour — of drooping branch and twining tendril. She had good furniture, too, and about her rooms were scattered many of those elegant trifles which women instinctively gather around them ; not costly, for they had been collected during the days of her long widowhood, but still sufficiently graceful to stamp the house with a certain refinement it had always lacked in the reigns of other tenants.

Spite of her plain dress, too, there was a something about her face and figure which arrested attention ; she was, though far from young, still a woman of a stately presence, bearing herself like a proud lady of gentle blood, and moving as though she had never needed to hurry her step for mortal. Her hair was combed back from her forehead, and contrasting against her widow's cap, without the relief of band, or braid, or curl, her pale face appeared absolutely ghastly; but her grey eyes still looked from under her dark eye brows with a fire which neither time nor sorrow had been able to quench ; and her lips, albeit there was on occasions a dropping at the corners of her mouth indi cative of a weakened will and a broken heart, still met together firmly, telling of that long past of cruel pride and obstinacy when they had closed over determined sentences that had since borne bitter fruit.

But when the white face had been" scanned, it was still to her eyes and forehead that a stranger's glance almost un wittingly returned ; to those eyes which having once commanded had since entreated vainly ; to those eyes which had a light and a trouble looking" out of them ; that had wept till they had no more tears to shed ; that had kept watch through nights of misery for mornings of woe ; that had been unwomanly, unpitying eyes once ; that had never turned heavenwards till forsaken by earth. And her forehead — it was not the form nor the beauty of it, though phrenologists and connoisseurs of female loveliness might have admired both — that was so peculiar, it was the strange manner in which the lines were drawn across it, three of them so straight, so regular, and so deep, that at first glance it almost seemed as though the brow were marble, and that the furrows had been chiselled by art, and not traced by nature.

In their depth, and length, and regularity, those lines told more powerfully of the strength of the eharacter which had struggled, and of the fierceness of the foe which had vanquished it, than any words could have done. Pride and temper, and worldliness and ambi tion, and unscrupulousness and obstinacy on the one side, and sorrow, sudden and enduring, remorse and disappointment, and the sharp stings of conscience on the other. These had waged war together, and left their traces; across the heart they had scored slines deep, and sharp, and ineffaceable as those they had left on her brow; through and through the hard, stony worldly nature they had cut their way till they came to flesh and blood, and then severing the trembling nerves and throbbing veins, they left them to quiver and bleed on to death.

A hard and cruel fate, say you ? A sore punish ment for any error, for any crime ; perhaps so — but there are some sins which nature avenges swiftly, and, as we may think, unduly ; there are some souls that cannot be brought home save through sharp and pro longed suffering ; and there are some who, as they cannot enter heaven whole, are taken there, by God's mercy, maimed and stricken. Such an one, at all events, was Mrs. Cameron; she had been a bad woman, as all hard, cold women would be, if they were tried. She had not stolen, or forged, or mur dered, or broken any of the Commandments, except, indeed, the first — but that she had violated by setting up other gods than the Lord for her idolatry, and kneel ing down before and worshipping and offering them human sacrifice. She had conformed to the world, and thought much of its maxims and its opinions ; she had valued money, and the position, and the luxuries, and the power money can confer; she had served Mammon in all things, save her own marriage, from the days of her youth upwards ; and in return for that service she had earned bread of bitterness and drink of tears — years of loneliness, of poverty, and repent ance.

She had left herself poor in love and in hope, for the sake of money and the pomps and vanities of this world ; and the end of it all — of all the long slavery and the hard unscrupulousness — was ample competence — indeed ; but competence which she flung from her with a cry — which year after year was proffered to her, but which she refused to touch — which came to her as a cruel punishment regularly, with a stern, unflinching justice, from an avenger who held out her wages peremptorily with one hand, while raising the other to curse her for having earned them. Surely as the day came round, twice in the year, she had the privilege of refusing to receive her due — wealth was nothing to her, position was still less — and so time went by; and of all the visions of her youth and middle age, not one remained — only a reality which she had never pictured— Rose Cottage for a home, and Mr. Edfords for socity.

A man she hated and yet endured — who spared her ten minutes every now and then — to whom her secret was known — who would have bettered her position had it been possible to do so, and who liked to see his niece leaving his own great house and all her own amusements and occupations, to sit with the widow, and relieve for a time the monotony of that objectless life. Scarcely a day, indeed, passed that Mima Trennier did not show her bright face in Rose Cottage ; she was drawn there by an attraction she could not have de fined — by a sympathy she found it difficult to account for — by a great pity which she sometimes longed to burst out with and explain — by the liking that two strong natures generally feel for one another, even though they be dissimilar in their strength — by the sorrow she sometimes saw written in that remarkable face — by the trouble she had battled through herself.

She was young, and it seemed to be a hard thing to be old ; she was gay, and it seemed to her a sad lot to have care for an abiding companion; she was of so volatile and happy a temperament herself, that the nature of a grief capable of producing an abiding sorrow puzzled her curiosity ; for to say that Mima Trennier was of a happy disposition, would be to use a most in adequate expression concerning her. She was light-hearted as a bird on the wing. She took pleasure out of everything — out of the sunshine and the rain — out of the breeze and the calm — out of excitement, and out of repose. She was gay, not from any want of feeling, but simply because her spirits were so high that she could never remain melancholy when once a trouble was lifted off her shoulders. In the presence of care, she bowed, and wept, and mourned as much, perhaps more, than her neighbours ; but once the door of the past closed between her and a grief, it was a necessity of her existence to be happy in the present, and take the good the gods sent her.

I presume that to be gay as a child, or a kitten, or a squirrel, three conditions are necessary : first, perfect bodily health ; second, a temperament capable of being pleased and amused with the merest trifles ; and third, a heart free from ambitious longings, guileless of an evil desire, wishing no ill to man, and de pending but little upon him. To be happy, the soul must be free — from sin, from sorrow, and from anxiety ; and at nineteen, Mima Trennier, an orphan, homeless and penndess, was free by the grace of God. Por He had dowered her more richly than an earthly father can dower a favourite child, though he store up wealth, and bequeath her a famous name and an ancient lineage. He had blessed her with a warm heart and a contented spirit — with the power of winning love, and the capability of retaining it.

No words could describe the atmosphere of gaiety in wliich she lived. Where other people found trouble, she found amusement ; she always seemed in such a state of effervescence, that strangers — ay, and friends too — sometimes enquiredconfidentiallyif shewere always the same — if there were never a reaction. Just at first it was difficult to understand her — difficult to believe that womanhood, or even girlhood, could retain so much childish freshness — that any descendant of Eve could pass through so many years of life floating on the white wings of innocence — free from soil of her own causing — and gay, not because she thought it nice and novel to be bright and sunshiny, but because it was as natural to her to be happy, as to the birds to sing. People could not comprehend her on a casual ac quaintance, and no wonder — for there is so much affec tation in this world, that most of us cannot recognise nature when we see it ; but after her light, which was not as the hght of other girls, Miss Trennier was as natural as a woman knows how to be.

Life to her was not a sandy desert, a howling wilderness — it was a boon direct from God — a journey through a land He had blessed, where flowers sprang by the roadside, and birds sang in the trees overhead — where streams rippled, and fountains played, and the earth bore fruit abundantly, and joy came with the wind, and the rain, and the sunshine, and the snow — and there was no darkness in the winter sky, no oppression under the summer sun. It is not often that existence wears such an aspect to any one. Young and old, rich and poor, we most of us gaze at the changing seasons and the shifting pageantry passing by, through eyes dim with sorrow, or wearied with pain — we look at nature's feast as a sick man looks at a banquet, and we marvel to meet any one who can sit down to it with hunger.

And yet it is a great pleasure to see young people thoroughlyand completely enjoying existence — regarding life, and health, and happiness, as the rule — and death, and sorrow, and sickness, as the exception — feeling that there is so much more of joy than of pain in the round of dady duties, that it would be a very rebellion against the Lord and Ruler of all to call His world miserable — His work imperfect. Mima Trennier enjoyed existence in this w7ay, at any rate ; she was not sentimental, she was not melancholy — she did not think life a burden — she thanked God for having created her, and given her of all things richly to enjoy — she could not bear to hear any one speaking of the world as " weary" — of their journey as " sorrowful" — of the land as " barren." " I am sure there is no sin in being happy," she re marked one day to a lady, who was reproving her for high spirits, for undue mirth — and who had gone the length of likening her laughter to the crackling of thorns under a pot.

" I am sure there is no sin in being happy, and no virtue in being miserable ; if you are so unhappy on earth, what do you want to stay here for ? You know if any one told you you were going to die, you would be very sorry — you would give anything to live. I have no doubt but that heaven will be a great deal better than earth ; but we shall not get to it any the sooner by making ourselves miserable on the earth. My father, while he was with me, always said I ought to try to be happy as long as I could ; when he was very ill, he told me trouble came soon enough, with out our going half way to meet it ; and I shall neither go back nor forward to meet it, to please anybody," she finished vehemently, yet with a half sob. It was just the same with her religion ; she liked to look at it through sunshine — it was natural to her age, and her grateful, thankful, rejoicing temperament, to prefer thanksgiving to lamentation, praise to supplica tion.

It was natural ; for though she had lost, and grieved, and moaned, she had never known what it was to writhe in mortal agony — never felt the hand of the Lord laid upon her in wrath ; and so the clear young voice rang out its glad bells of thanksgiving, and the young girl, standing in the full sunlight of health and beauty, mocked at, and derided, and refused to credit the creed, that " man was made to mourn." And how grateful to mourning man such a com panion proves, we all know ; we have all at one time or another seen some bright smile which had a virtue in it ; and though we feared the dark days must come when the brightness would depart, and the smile be clouded, we have still turned to look, and felt that there was a blessing in them, and our hearts opened and expanded in the sunshine of a human face.

Mima Trennier's was not an angel's face ; she had no wealth of golden hair clustering around a fair fore head and pure pink and white cheeks. Her eyes were not blue, neither was the expression that abode in them calm and mild as that in those of a Madonna — no, Mima was called by some a brunette, and by others a gipsey, both of which propositions she declined to en dorse, feeling, doubtless, (as was natural) that she was something superior to both. For her complexion was rather a peculiar white than a decided brown. I have seen a foreign flower — some kind of lily, I think — which in its satiny softness, in its creamy transparency, wore just the tint of Mima's cheek. Then as to her eyes, while they danced occa sionally with something of a child's glee in them, they never flashed with the evil fire which blazes out every now and then in the Gitana Race; they were dark enough and bright enough, but they had a softness in them which a gipsey's never revealed.

She had a mass of black curls which fell over and veiled her face — curls long, and beautiful, and silky — curls so soft and flowing, that they resembled a child's tresses floating free and un confined. There was no art or concealment about her; she looked all she met straight in the face, and let them read down, down, to the lowermost depths of her heart — she held no one thing in it she wanted to hide ; she left no one sentence unspoken because she was afraid or ashamed to utter it. The windows of her soul were left wide open, and whosoever wished might gaze in ; for as yet she really disliked no one — envied no one — loved no one. If the waters of her life had been moved, it was but by the angel passing over her — for into the depths of her nature no messenger from God had ever descended with trouble and healing on his wing. c VOL. I.

Chapter II

mima's PROSPECTS. It was this young lady, then, who, one snowy De cember afternoon, entered Mrs. Cameron's drawing room, shaking the white flakes from her hair, and brushing them from her shawl ; and who, in answer to her friend's enquiry of — " What in the world, my dear Mima, brought you out such a day as this ?" replied that she came from two reasons. " One, because I knew I should be glad to see you ; and another, that I thought you would be glad to see me." " You know I am always glad to see you ; but I am afraid of your venturing out in such weather — you must be wet through." " Not quite. My shawl — yes, thank you, I will have it dried. Now please sit down, and let me ring for Ann myself — there !" And having given her bonnet and shawl to the servant, Mima Trennier smoothed down. first one side of her hair and then the other, and set tling herself in an arm-chair, declared she was comfort able.

"And how have you been this age?" she asked Mrs. Cameron. " I tried yesterday and the day before to get here, but could not ; and so this afternoon I said to the weather — ' Whether you snow, or whether you do not, I will go to Rose Cottage,' and it cleared up a little immediately." " It really was very kind of you, Mima, but I wish you had not ventured. You ought to consider yourself sometimes." " I do consider myself at all times," was the reply. " I wanted to come, and so I am here. I should not like to declare it in .the market-place ; but for a per manence, Margery is very dull company ; and when uncle is from home, and the weather wet, and we tete a-tete, we exhaust each other." " When does your uncle return ?" " Ah ! that is just what I came to tell you : we ex pect him to-night ; and as you seemed anxious to know last time I was here, I thought I would run down to tell you."

" Then it was on my account solely you came, after all ?" said Mrs. Cameron. " You have lightened many a dark hour for me, child, and God will bless you for it." c There was something very earnest and sad in the way the elder woman uttered this ; and Mima an swered — " He has blessed me, Mrs. Cameron, of His great mercy — but I look for no blessing for doing what pleases myself. I like to come to you ; I should like to make all your dark hours light ; talking to you is a very pleasant change — feeling myself useful, pleasanter still." . You are a good girl to say so." " No, I am not good; I am just like my neighbours — good when I can get my own way, cross when I can not ' gang mine ain gait.' I should caU myself very good indeed if I walked some distance every day to see Margery — but then, you know I should not do that, and that is the fact.'' " Yes, you would, if you thought it your duty."

" No, Mrs. Cameron, I should not — at least, I never should think it my duty to make myself uncomfortable. I do not believe in duty, and I do not think I ever shall." " How do you mean ? I scarcely understand." " Why, I mean this — I think, ' to perform one's duty,' as the phrase goes, must be either a pain or a pleasure ; if it be a pleasure, it ceases to be a duty ; if it be a pain, one is not bound to inflict that on oneself." " Then, at that rate," said Mrs. Cameron, rsmiling, " honesty is either a pain or a pleasure ; and, according to your reasoning — " " Stop," interposed Mima, eagerly, " honesty in volves right and wrong. Now it is always a pleasure to do right — I mean what we are taught to be right as little children. When I spoke of duty I did not think of duty in great things, but in little ; what I meant was duty in little pottering things, such as visiting disagreeable people ; making one's side ache with working at clothes for school-children, who ought to be able to make for themselves ; walking miles to see somebody who does not want to see you, and whom you don't want to see, merely because it seems right to mortify the flesh and the spirit.