The Vicar of Langthwaite ... New edition

Preface

. This story was not written with any intention of embodying a reUgious polemic in fiction. Such an attempt would be open to at least three ob jections : it would certainly be inartistic, and it would probably be both dull and unconvincing. The author's first and last desire has been to tell her tale rather than to point a moral. She has, therefore, simply tried to sketch, with fidelity, some aspects of English life which have, as a rule, been ignored by novelists, or deemed only worthy of caricature, and which may yet be found to possess an imaginative charm and pathos of their own. September, 1897. The following letter from Mr. Gladstone is given in full (with the exception of two minor and per sonal references), because no extract would convey a just idea of its purport as a whole. The author wishes to express her gratitude, both for the letter itself and for the permission now given to make use of it.

" Mr. Gladstone . . . feels unwilling to pass by in silence his perusal of a work written with so high an aim, and with such evident and entire integrity of intention. "He ventures a little to regret the title,* because it conveys the idea that the Vicar is the hero of the book. . . . " The dominant sentiment, however, in Mr. Gladstone's mind is one of satisfaction at the pub lication of a work, written with ability and in an attractive manner, which exhibits from a favouring point of view the social, moral, and spiritual facts of English Non-conforming life. It was high time, he thinks, that this should be done ; as he believes that in previous publications by others Noncon formity has received less than justice. The characters of Mr. Hawthorne, of Estelle, and of Miss Yorke, are especially agreeable to him.

" Having thus frankly recorded his principal im pression, he will not scruple to add those which are secondary. As an octogenarian member of * The original title was "The Professor's Daughter," but at the last moment it was found necessary to change it for reasons of copyright. the historic Church of his country he is of course unable to accept the position that the acceptance of its claims can only end with con sistency in junction with the Roman communion. The authoress has been able to glorify or commend in their several degrees the Noncon forming, the Broad, and the Roman Catholic. She may herself feel that the share of honour awarded, in England, to Anglicanism is some what meagre. The error of Mr. Carfax in his conduct to Estelle is, however, so gross as to indicate a man capable of any other error not at variance with pure intention.

" But these reserves on Mr. Gladstone's part (which may be selfish) in no way detract from that dominant sentiment of satisfaction which he expressed earlier in this letter. He begs the authoress to excuse the freedom with which he has written." Hawarden, September 14, 1894. The Vicar of Langthwaite.

Chapter I

Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. Shakespeare. Few people have gone far into life without at one time or another encountering the experience of a long railway journey, with a perfectly new and untried phase of existence awaiting them at the further end. There is something unique about such a journey. The thoughts vainly strive to fix themselves upon the novel or newspaper in hand ; the monotonous rush of an express train, inevitable and remorseless as Fate, through the landscape, fails to divert the mind, as the old coaching stages must have diverted it, from the absorbing question, " What shall I find in this new life to which I am going ? " Perchance the touch of awe, never absent from such speculations, may be due to a dim unconscious forecast of the one last journey all must take into a future more wonderful and mysterious than any earthly change.

Some such thoughts as these were flitting through the mind of a clergyman as he covertly observed his only fellow-traveller in the further corner of a first class carriage on the North Central Railway. It was a lovely spring day ; but the young lady was The Vicar or Langthwaite. not enjoying her journey. On the contrary, she was leaning forward with a set unsmiling face turned towards the landscape that evidently she did not see. A novel had dropped neglected upon her lap, and she was to all appearance lost in thought of no very pleasing description, for she sighed more than once, and her brows contracted. The Rev. Bernard Carfax had had considerable ex perience in judging of character from countenance during the ten years of his clerical life, and he was accustomed, whenever he detected the least sign of trouble, to cast about within himself in search of means to relieve it.

For the minor reasons also that his book was uninteresting and his companion's dark eyes were attractive, he found himself trying to divine the cause of the mingled vexation and reflection that evidently occupied her mind. " Leaving home, perhaps, for the first time," he conjectured. " She is not in mourning ; her dress does not look as if she were going to a situation ; but something untried and disagreeable is certainly before her. I wonder what it is ! " He was not destined to wonder as long as might have been the case under ordinary circumstances. The express was just slackening speed to draw into a road side junction of no great size or importance, where country folk were collected on the platform in a little crowd, waiting for a local train. They stolidly eyed the carriages from London, and the travellers returned the gaze, speculating, perhaps, what on earth people could do with their lives in an out-of-the-way place like this, at which only the slowest of trains were wont to stop.

Suddenly, as the express was about to move on, such reflections were abruptly cut short by the vision of the rustic faces, all scared and transformed, turning in the same direction, ahead of the engine. What were they staring at ? and what were the exclamations that arose? They shaped themselves from a confused clamour to the travellers' ears, " Eh ! look there ! A collision ! There'll be a collision ! Get out ! " The young lady sprang to her feet, white with terror. She was in the corner furthest from the door, and made a rush at it to obey the outcry from the platform. But the train was now moving backwards, faster and faster ; the horror-stricken faces and beckoning hands were passing from view. She would have opened the door, notwithstanding, and leapt blindly down, had not her fellow-traveller, also springing to his feet, seized and held her firmly.

" Keep calm," he cried, " it will be all right ! There is no reason for alarm." " Did you not hear? They said it was a collision! I must get out ! Are we to stay here and be killed ? " panted Miss Vaughan, making a vain effort to dis engage one hand and open the door. " There is no question of being killed ; but there will be if you jump out while the train is moving," retorted the clergyman, in kind and authoritative tones. Even as he spoke there came a shock and jar ; then the hissing rush of steam mingled -with the exclamations of many voices, and the train gradually slackened to a standstill. " All is over. You are not hurt, and I don't think any one else is," said Mr. Carfax, relinquishing his hold. Gertrude Vaughan sat down and trembled. She was not a coward, nor given to fainting and hysterics, but the horror of a railway accident, even in imagination, was too much for her to face with equanimity.

The clergyman, having satisfied himself by a glance that she was not going to swoon, looked out of the window, and saw men, women, and children, all with faces blanched to a uniform hue, struggling down from the train on to the rails beneath. It was a lonely and desolate region ; a network of lines, apparently inextric able, stretched around, and a few coal trucks stood upon a siding. " I wonder if I am an equal wreck," he reflected, viewing the terror-stricken crowd. Bernard Carfax was never florid ; an ascetic life had paled and thinned his clean-shaven cheek, but the firm and vigorous lines of his face and his keen blue eye did not look as though he were an easy prey to fear. Yet he oould hardly think unmoved of possible torture and death for others beside himself. He demanded of one and another what was the matter ; but beyond the words " a runaway train " nobody seemed able to offer any explanation.

" May I not get out now ? " Gertrude asked, with unwonted docility. " Why ? " inquired her companion. " There is nothing to attract you here, and some officials are just coming up and ordering the people back into the carriages. You had better sit still where you are." Perhaps the clerical garb, of the very " highest " cut, lent some force to Mr. Carfax's assumption of authority ; perhaps the antiquated theory is true that women like to obey when they find some one, whoever he may be, who can command rationally ; at all events, Ger trude Vaughan was grateful, rather than resentful, at being treated hke a child. She sat still, trying to recover from her fright, until the train had moved back into the junction, and the doors were flung open by the porters, as an indication that the passengers were expected to alight.

" If you will go to the waiting-room, I will find out what has happened, and come and tell you," said Mr. Carfax. This was not an easy promise to redeem. Crowds were thronging round every official, and in front of the train, a little way down the line, was piled a huge mass ■of wreckage. It was only too evident that the pas sengers would be delayed for some hours before that grim obstacle could be removed. Abeady practical illustrations of the ease and swift ness of the growth of legend had begun to offer them selves to any traveller of a moralising disposition. When the accretions of romance had been cleared away from the core of fact, this seemed to be as follows. A score of trucks, with a guard's break, standing on a siding at the top of an incline four miles distant, had somehow been set in motion, and proceeded with a rapidly increasing momentum, until they dashed into the station and hurled themselves upon another empty goods train, standing on lines parallel to the path of the express.

By the force of the impact the empty trucks, together with the runaways, crashed over into the very place where the passenger train would have been had not the driver, seeing what was imminent, backed from the platform. The buffers of his engine were broken off, and his passengers got a shaking and fright ; but, thanks to his forethought, nothing worse. No one was hurt save the poor guard of the runaway train, whose escape from death was more wonderful than the injured condition in which he had been picked up after the accident. He had been already conveyed to the nearest hospital. What an experience must have been his during the four miles of ever-increasing speed, during which he vainly tried to apply his brake ! How the horror of his doom must have grown upon him with each instant of that mad rush upon fate !

The heavy trucks lay one upon another, literally splintered hke crushed match-boxes, and their ruin conveyed to the spectators, who had thronged to the spot, a terrible sense of the force of such a collision. The Rev. Bernard Carfax had never seen anything of the kind before, and, as he looked on the wreckage, he recalled the white cheeks and wild eyes of his companion with an added sense of compassion. " Poor girl ! it was no wonder that she was terrified. I hope I was not too hard on her," he meditated. Then he learnt from a porter that it would be at least three hours before the breakdown gang who had been summoned could clear the line for further traffic. Such a delay in the present day of swift journeys and calculated hours seems a dire and dreadful calamity, for " Leisure," whose decease George Eliot laments so pleasantly, is no longer known in modern goings out and comings in.

Great was the concern and consternation among the passengers ; yet the timely escape from what might have been a hideous fate restrained their complaints in some degree. The popular attention was now divided between the telegraph office and the engine-driver, whose sensible behaviour was rightly considered to merit reward. The centre of a little group, he was declaiming with much native energy, while shillings and half-crowns were freely administered. His grimy face lit up with joy and surprise at the present of half a sovereign from the clergyman, who did not stay to hear his thanks. " Intelligence in the British working-man is so rare a trait that it deserves recognition," reflected the Con servative, as he approached his late fellow-traveller. She looked strangely out of place, with her air of grace and refinement, her dainty grey frock and hat, in the bare and ugly waiting-room, where, obedient to his suggestion, she was patiently sitting on the hard wooden bench.

He told her as briefly as possible the history of the accident. " We may be detained here three hours," he said in conclusion. " Will you allow me to wire for you any where ? Then I will get you some tea." " You are very good," replied Miss Vaughan, grate fully. " I ought to send a message to Dr. Yorke, Underwood, Langthwaite, near Milnerbridge, saying why I am delayed so long." She did not observe — for Mr. Carfax was not demonstrative — what a shock of surprise her words occasioned. "Dr. Yorke, Langthwaite, Milnerbridge. Shall I word it for you ? And would you hke anything added by way of further explanation ? " he inquired. " Many thanks. Please add my name — Gertrude Vaughan." He had thought rather of some supplementary message touching her own well-being, and decided at once that she was not bound by links of strong affec tion or tenderness to Dr. Yorke, of Langthwaite, Milnerbridge.

" Otherwise she would have wanted to frame the message herself, or at least she would have thought of his probable anxiety, and let him know she was all right," he reflected. But he took care, in sending the message, to add a reassuring word or two ; and he proceeded to despatch another telegram to the same postal destina tion — " Madame St. Just, The Vicarage, Langthwaite, by Milnerbridge." Then he went from the crowded telegraph office to the equally crowded little refreshment-room, where a young lady with a touzled head of hair showed a strong disinclination to supply tea, preferring to administer beer. When the precious beverage was won at last, by dint of a sternly proffered demand, it was found to bear but a remote and distant relation ship to the tea usually drunk by Bernard Carfax and Gertrude Vaughan.

Still, smoky, bitter, and expensive as it might be, it was tea ! and Mr. Carfax bore it off in triumph to the waiting-room. His clerical garb daunted the remonstrance rising to the pert young lady's lips, anent the safety of her cups and spoons. It was a curious experience to be drinking tea with an utter stranger at the corner of the great wooden table in the now partially deserted room. Why are the tables in waiting-rooms always so preternaturally vast and solid ? What burden do they sustain, save a book of texts and a water-bottle, with, perhaps, a stray bag and bundle of wraps ? Yet they look as though they were constructed to support the weight of Homeric banquets thrice a day. No one, save under the rarest circumstances, ever eats or drinks upon them. Miss Vaughan enjoyed her tea and the additional luxury of a bun, so stale it was difficult to conjecture when it could have been baked; then she fell to thanking her companion, and did so in a very winsome manner.

" I am most grateful to you for preventing me from getting out of the train," she said. "If it had not been for you I might have been in fragments at the present moment." " Pray do not speak lightly of it," said the clergyman, gravely. " I do not feel lightly, I assure you," protested Miss Vaughan. " It seemed to me that at all risks I must escape from that horrible carriage." But she was thinking, " Why should he object to my making light of it, when he seemed to consider there was so little to fear at the time?" The conventionalities of ordinary English life have a way of disappearing in presence of any emergency, and it was natural enough that Gertrude Vaughan should not object to Mr. Carfax's companionship through the long desolate hours of waiting. They were walking up and down the platform together, when he said, rather abruptly — " I must tell you that the address you gave me for your telegram is that of my own home.

Perhaps you will allow me to introduce myself. My name is Carfax, and I am Vicar of Langthwaite." Gertrude started, flushed scarlet, and then turned very pale. Under ordinary circumstances she would have been delighted to find that her kind and chivalrous fellow-traveller, with the ascetic face and soldierly bearing, was to be a neighbour through the coming year. But now — how should she explain ? what should she say ? Tears of vexation actually rose to her eyes, but she forced them back again. " I am on my way to live with my grandfather, Dr. Yorke, to whom you telegraphed," she confessed with obvious reluctance. "Really! I know the name well," replied Mr. Carfax, courteously. " In fact, I have met Dr. Yorke, though I can hardly say I have the pleasure of his acquaintance. I hope you will like Langthwaite."

" I am sure I shall not." " Oh, but why not ? The country is beautiful ; on the edge of some of the finest moors in the county of Northminster ; and there are some very pleasant people in the neighbourhood." A pause ensued, during wliich Gertrude was evidently deliberating whether she should confide in her new acquaintance. At length she abruptly exclaimed — " There may be pleasant people, but I am almost sure not to know them. I need not tell you, if you are Vicar of Langthwaite, that grandfather is— is— a Dissenter." She pronounced the fatal word with bated breath, glancing up at her companion's face to see the effect produced. But she was disappointed, for he looked inscrutable. " I am not a Dissenter !" she hastened to declare. " Indeed, I have never known any — and I expect it will be quite too dreadful."

" On religious or on social grounds ? " inquired her companion, with a touch of latent irony lost upon Gertrude. " Oh, on both ! I have never been to a Dissenting chapel in my life — I should think it quite out of the question ; and, of course, I shall be perfectly isolated from all society. I cannot think why such a dreadful arrangement was ever made for me ! " cried the young lady. Mr. Carfax felt sure that if he said nothing she would soon confide the whole history of the " arrangement " to him. He was not mistaken, for in a little while Gertrude had disclosed the chief events of her short life. She was the child of Dr. Yorke's eldest daughter, who had married a colonel in the army against her father's wish. " Some one who did not suit the rigid Puritan, no doubt," rightly concluded Mr. Carfax.

Her father and mother had died in India, and, by the latter's wish, Dr. Yorke was left Gertrude's guardian. For several years the girl had remained at the Brighton school where she was originally placed by her parents, spending the holidays with her father's relatives in town. The last year had been entirely passed in visiting them ; but now Dr. Yorke had inter posed, and insisted that the claims of his guardianship should not be a dead letter ; one year remained before she came of age ; that year should not be spent with her " worldly " kindred, but with him. There were minor grievances attending the change from the London to the Northminster home. The " season " was approaching its height. Then, had Gertrude waited but one week after the appointed time, an escort, in the person of a lady friend, would have been forthcoming ; but Dr. Yorke, when the postpone ment was notified to him, had sternly refused his consent.

Plans once made should not be broken ; his grand-daughter could come to no harm in so simple a journey, direct from London to Northminster. She had no maid of her own, having shared the services of one with her girl-cousins. Dr. Yorke would have been horrified at such an extravagance. So she had been forced to travel alone. " And, you see, something has happened," said Gertrude. "And, if you had not been at hand, it might have been very serious." In conclusion of the whole matter, it was evidently a terrible martyrdom to which Miss Vaughan was look ing forward. Mr. Carfax did not very well know what to say to console her when she lamented that she knew she would not be allowed to attend church. He disliked Dissenters cordially, and considered that schism was a sin. It had been a shock to him to find that his pretty fellow-traveller was bound for the house of one of them whom the High Churchman knew, both by repute and by occasional encounters, as a dauntless enemy of the " Establishment."

The Dissenters he had seen offended his taste in every way. That there might be good ones among them, he was quite willing to allow theoretically, as your staunch Protestant will aUow there may possibly here and there be a good Roman Cathohc ; but he did not want to have anything to do with even the most excellent specimen. " What would Monica say ? " he reflected. He was honestly sorry for the girl, but his consolations could not be very hearty, and his sense of honour revolted from advising her to defy her grandfather. He was glad, when they were once more in the train, that the presence of two or three additional passengers forbade any but general conver sation, and in a little while Gertrude, on her part, was thankful enough to rest and dream with closed eyes over the exciting events of her day.

Chapter II

" Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage." Samuel Johnson. And what manner of man was the redoubtable grand father to whose country home Gertrude Vaughan was bound on the day of her railway accident ? Tlie question may be most effectually answered by looking in upon him just six years before the date of thc last chapter. Retrospects are tiresome, but this one shall be so brief as to be ended before Gertrude has finished her dreams in the corner of the carriage. The Rev. Septimus Yorke, D.D., President of the Northminster Theological College, was standing with his back to the fire in his study ; a fire of the dusty, discouraged type peculiar to a sunny April morning. The room round which his gaze strayed was plain and ordinary enough. Foursquare in shape, the walls lined with shelves, the furniture scanty, there was not a hint of the æsthetic tastes of the litterateur, the comfort of the university man who takes his ease among his books, nor yet of the asceticism of the rebgious devotee whose study is a cloistral retreat.

On the shelves were no priceless first editions, no gems of binding nor of printing ; few volumes of English poetry excepting Shakespeare and Milton, none of fiction. Homer, Plato, Virgil, were there in ancient calf bindings, but the staple was theology — English, and German also of the more orthodox type. There were controversial works in abundance, and many books on Palestine and on Jewish antiquities, while sermons of Puritan divines stood in ponderous rows. It was, indeed, the library of a Puritan. Its owner was a man of remarkable appearance. Huge, sinewy, and loosely knit, his frame denoted great physical strength. In his younger days he must have been a veritable son of Anak, and it was darkly rumoured that his muscular power still exceeded that of the majority of his students. He looked as if he had been fighting all his hfe ; and so, indeed, he had, in a moral if not a physical sense.

The pugilistic virtues are as a rule not poetical or lovely to behold, especially when they are called out by antagonism to the estabhshed order of things. They are never, in fact, very attractive, unless in a hero or patriot, and even then it may be remarked that your hero of the one side is apt to be styled a rebel by the other. The tightness of Dr. Yorke's lips and the squareness of his jaw were concealed neither by beard nor moustache, his short hair was only streaked with iron-grey, and many a recalcitrant youth had quailed before the keenness of his black eyes. Young men who were troubled by " rebgious doubts " did not feel drawn to confide in Dr. Yorke. From the street below came the incessant click-clack of clogs and the shrill chatter of many voices as the " mill hands " streamed home at their dinner-hour.

The study was an unlovely room, its surroundings were unromantic, and its owner was not used to the melting mood. Still, as he looked round at the books, at the uncurtained window with its view of mill chimneys, at his large clumsy desk and chair in the corner, his eyes suddenly filled with tears. Very httle material beauty is needed to make a para dise for a human soul, for which it will cry out as bitterly as Adam for his lost Eden when the in exorable angel with the fiery sword shall close the gates. A tap at the door roused Dr. Yorke from his reverie. Never had he been seen since childhood with a tear in his eye. And he paused for a moment or two before with recovered composure he bade the visitor " Come in." A man of gentle, scholarly mien and quiet demeanour, -with prematurely bowed shoulders, obeyed the sum mons. The Rev. Philip Hawthorne, classical professor at the College, was so great a contrast to his chief that irreverent students had been known to style the pair of tutors, " the Law and the Gospel."

He seemed to be in a httle mild bewilderment as to the purpose for which he was summoned ; but he was not left long in doubt. " I wish for a serious talk with you, my good brother," said Dr. Yorke, forcibly repressing every sign of emotion, and resolutely closing his eyes to that paradise from which his own words were about to exile him for ever. " Sit down — sit down. '' I cannot hide from myself," he resumed after a moment's pause, " that my active work in life is well nigh done. The detail connected with the new College has been overwhelming. But now the money is gathered in, the building is nearly complete, and I must e'en say, with Simeon of old — "'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace : for mine eyes have seen ' " The voice quavered and stopped. " My dear Doctor Yorke," exclaimed his colleague with answering emotion, " you must not speak so.

Why, you have many years of life and energy before you as yet." " I am fully aware, my dear brother, that my hfe is in the Lord's keeping, and that neither you nor I can decide when He will give the signal of release," returned Dr. Yorke, with sudden dignity, and a tone in his voice which seemed to imply, " Don't tell me what I know as well as or better than yourself." " But that is not the point. I was about to say — when you inter rupted me — that I have fully determined to resign the presidency in June. No, do not try to persuade me against it or express regret," he continued, putting forth his hand ; "it is very kind of you, but inopportune. I have sent for you now, my dear Hawthorne, to tell you that I hope and bebeve the committee will appoint you as my successor." The tutor trembled, and a flush came into his face.

Mingled with a thrill of delight came a shock of pain that he could rejoice at his old friend's retirement. Was not this the basest ingratitude, the worst of sel fishness ? Mr. Hawthorne took himself to task, and sent up an inward prayer that he might not be guilty of those sins. And yet — he could not help being glad. " You are a man of attainments far superior to my own — no, do not interrupt me again, Hawthorne. You would have made your mark at Oxford or Cambridge, if you had found a welcome there; the Rector of Hardingley once told me that had you been in the Church you would long ago have had preferment. No matter ; a better lot and wider influence may be yours. Only, my son, be strong." The eagle gaze of the old man seemed as though it would pierce into the other's soul. " We strive for an unpopular cause ; we teach those whom I have heard called ignorant boors by those who are themselves more ignorant still.