Holy orders : the tragedy of a quiet life

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The Tragedy of a Quiet Life

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Chapter I

A STORM of rain was sweeping over the Cotswolds.

The clouds drifted along the sky in low uneven masses, — breaking asunder now and then to show fitful glimpses of blue between their dividing gloom, — the hills looked bare and wan, and their ridges were blurred like the outline of a picture which the painter has smudged in haste and carelessness. Every now and again a restless wind arose and blew the tree-tops drearily to and fro, — the landscape wore a dismal expressionless aspect, and as the clammy wet mists crept over the field and common, they brought with them a shuddering chill which penetrated coldly to the warmest blood, and created an uncomfortable sense of physi¬ cal and mental depression. In a certain small village, — which, to save all contest for supremacy, shall not here be given its true name, but shall be called Shadbrook, — the rain seemed to gather special force, pouring in torrents over the irregularly clustered houses and trickling down from their roofs into wide puddles of mud through the ‘ main street/ as it was called, merely because the Post-office, a combined business of small groceries and the country’s mails, happened to be located therein. Shadbrook was in some respects con¬ structed so as to give the greatest possible inconvenience to those who by chance or fortune found themselves constrained to dwell in it. There were two portions of it, — one ancient — the other modern. The ancient part was composed of small, strongly-built stone houses, many of them rich in the possession of old oak rafters and stray bits of fine paneling left here and there where the dealer in antiquities had found it impossible to remove them without destroying the whole structure, — the modern was one of those ‘ model villages * which well-meaning landowners go to the pains of erecting at great cost and little profit for their often ungrateful tenants, who not only find fault with the houses, but, as occu¬ pants, demur at paying their rents.

Between the two there ran a brook of not very clear water, over which there was a picturesque bridge of a single span, which was traditionally reputed to have been built by the Romans. Looking down from this bridge into the stream, one saw various mute ex¬ pressions of the interior life of the village — broken china, empty preserved-meat tins, old kettles, pots and pans of every description, commingled with unsightly portions of decaying vegetable matter which were not altogether odor¬ less. And here indeed, though the passing stranger knew it not, was the center of a great faction, — the core of an in¬ ternal party strife. Year in and year out it was a matter of dispute as to which inhabitants of the village on either side of the bridge thus turned the river into a dusthole. Was it the ‘ original ’ or the ‘ model ’ village? No one could tell — no one dared. Many had been the protests from the kindly landowner, something of a benefactor in his way, whose man¬ sion and deer-park were some two miles distant, — urgent and persuasive had been the requests both from him and his wife, a great lady of fashion, that their tenants should try to keep the rivulet clean, — and most effusive had been the promises received in return. But no real change was ever effected. Each side blamed the other. The people in the old stone houses declared they never did see such ‘ mucky ’ folk as those who occupied their landlord’s ‘ model ’ cottages • — while the dwellers in the model cottages declared that their neighbors of the ‘ stone hut period ’ were semi-barbarians, ‘ as didn’t know a clean thing when they see’d it.’

Only on Sundays was a kind of silent truce effected — for there was but one church — a small and very ancient edifice, once the chapel, so legended, of a holy hermit in the early Christian era and carefully preserved by the monks until the stormy days of the Reformation, when it was — like all the churches in the neigh¬ borhood — deprived of its images and relics, and consider¬ ably disfigured, though not destroyed. Of late years it had been carefully restored to something of its pristine appear¬ ance, and the simple services of the Church of England were faithfully performed in it Sunday after Sunday by the resi¬ dent Vicar, the Reverend Richard Everton. He was a good and kindly man, and when the living was first bestowed upon him, he was moved to a sense of overpowering and grateful wonder at his amazing fortune. He had been working as a poor curate in the East End of London, and happened by chance to be chosen to preach a sermon on a particular occasion for some great cause of charity. Among his hearers was the wealthy patron of the living of Shadbrook, and so pleased was this good country squire with the young preacher’s eloquence, that he sought him out and made his personal acquaintance — an acquaintance which soon deepened into friendship — the result of which friendship was his present position. And the Reverend Richard thought him¬ self a more than lucky man. For not only was the church of Shadbrook an interesting one from the point of antiquity, — but there was a vicarage attached to it, which was quite a beautiful sixteenth-century house — full of untouched oaltpaneling, and connected by poetic tradition with the lovestory of a lady of that romantic period when young women were supposed to die straight off as soon as lovers betrayed their trust, even as lilies die when deprived of water. There were leaning gables and big latticed windows and quaint chimney-stacks to this house, — and a garden of the loveliest ‘ old-fashioned ’ type, shut in from the outer world by trees beneath some of which Sir Philip Sidney might have com¬ posed a sonnet. And so when Richard Everton first took up his abode in this charming rural retreat, he was as happy as a poet is when inspired with a fine idea. Life seemed to radiate joy upon him, inwardly and outwardly — for he was young. And on the faith of his dreams and his delight and his respite from all financial care, he did what most men would have done under similar circumstances — he fell in love and got married.

Mrs. Everton was very pretty. She was, it may be at once stated, much too pretty for a clergyman’s wife. She was dainty, mignonne , golden-haired, blue-eyed, light-footed, merry, — with a voice like a lark’s and a smile like the very sunshine — everything, in fact, that a clergyman’s wife ought not to be, if she would stand in a * respectable ’ position with county society. Her quite un-Christian name, too, Azalea — - was absurd and almost ‘ stagey.’ Her dress was always ex¬ quisitely tasteful — though not extravagant — and people said — such people as there were in Shadbrook to say anything — • that they ‘ wondered how she could do it.’ She was a daily joy and bewilderment to her husband during the first year of their marriage. Then there arrived a baby-boy — like, yet unlike her, with a wise angel face, and a noble head like that of the infant Hercules. Where he came from neither of his parents could imagine. The Reverend Richard stared for hours at his offspring, wondering why it looked so grandly at him. For he himself was quite a plain, ordinary sort of man — his two best features being his eyes and mouth — eyes which were deeply set and darkly blue, — and lips that were finely sensitive and accustomed to gentle lines of speech and smile. The beauty of his baby son confused and oppressed him. He was troubled by it, though he knew not why. His wife was not so much perplexed as delighted with her child — she looked like a little girl suddenly pre¬ sented by a kind friend with a model doll.

After the birth of this wondrous boy, the family in Shadbrook Vicarage considered itself complete. Everything smiled upon the happy trio. The house was lovely — the gar¬ den delicious — the air good, and the surrounding landscape perfect. At the time this ‘ ower true tale ’ opens, the Vicar and his wife had enjoyed their enviable condition of con¬ nubial bliss for three years, — and their beautiful son was two summers old — just at what is called the ‘ interesting ’ age. And it was at this very juncture that a kind of mys¬ terious change came over the spirit of the dream — so far at least as the Vicar himself was concerned. In the joy of securing Shadbrook living, and the greater bliss of winning the love of Azalea, — felicity crowned and completed by the arrival of the boy with the fine head and angelic countenance, — the Reverend Richard had forgotten altogether one trifling circumstance, — namely that he was a clever man. That is to say, a man gifted above the ordinary, with a wide knowl¬ edge of books, a keen grasp of things social and political, and a natural bias towards the graces of art and learning. Amid the smiles of his wife and the prattle of his infant, he had so obliterated himself that he had completely lost sight of the fact that perhaps there might be wider and more useful fields of labor than Shadbrook. When this thought first came to him he put it away as though it were a suggestion from the evil one, involving some deadly sin — yet every now and then it persistently recurred to him and forced itself upon his pained attention. He was ashamed of it, and angry with himself for giving way to what he called a ‘ weakness ’ — but nevertheless the question rang in his ears with haunting per¬ sistence — “ Are you going to spend all your life in Shadbrook? ”

All his life! He was only thirty-five — and probably — taking all the chances for and against, there were several years before him. Long years too — for in Shadbrook the time lagged on with a most extraordinary slowness. Yet who could wish for a more peaceful way of passing the days than the work of 4 curing ’ Shadbrook souls? There was no prettier old village church in England than the one in which it was his duty to officiate, and as for his personal en¬ vironment, there was no better house anywhere than his — no lovelier wife — no more beautiful child. What more then could he desire? How was it that a sudden cloud — small yet perfectly perceptible — had crept into his sky?

He asked himself the question many times — angrily and with a keen self-reproach. But he kept his own counsel as to his inward condition of mind — and not even to that dazzling creature of sunshine and gossamer, his adored Azalea, whose bewildering fairy beauty and gayety of heart were a perpetual amazement to his mind, did he confide what he gravely decided was ‘ a matter between himself and God.5

On this day of dull rain and sweeping mist, when even the Vicarage garden looked dreary, the spring not having yet made up its mind as to whether or no it meant finally to dethrone a long and obstinately reigning winter, and when Shadbrook in both its ancient and modern parts presented its worst and most forlorn aspect, there was something more than usually depressing in the atmosphere, and the Reverend Rich¬ ard felt it poignantly. He sat in his study, at a round oak table profusely strewn with letters and papers, holding a pen listlessly in his hand, and trying to fix his mind on his next Sunday’s sermon. Opposite to him the spacious latticed window gave him an open view of his garden — a dream of beauty in June and July, — but just now fitting itself into his particular frame of mind as somewhat like a well-kept ceme¬ tery from which the gravestones and memorial monuments had been recently removed. Tall dark firs and evergreens waved their hearse-like plumes solemnly to and fro in the driving rain — the lawns were sodden and marked by the muddy trail of the delving worm — the flower-borders showed some meekly aspiring little spikes of green indicative of bulbs waiting to grow tall if the sun would only shine upon them — and a few withered snowdrops drooped towards the gravel path and shivered in the swish of the wind. Everton’s deep-set, thoughtful eyes observed all these trifles with a kind of morbid acuteness.

“ Even for March,” — he said to himself gently, as though apologizing for the remark — “ the weather is trying! ”

He turned his pen about betwixt Anger and thumb — but wrote not a word with it. A terrible conviction was forcing itself upon his mind that there was nothing to write about. It was a dreadful fact. Nothing to write about! He, a minister of the Gospel, — with the Book of all books beside him — the exhaustless fount of spiritual prophecy, poesy and power, could And nothing to say on any subject in it. Every week he was newly confronted by this amazing difficulty. Yet it was not that he was destitute of ideas — only — and here was the stumbling-block — his ideas would not appeal to the intelligence of Shadbrook. Were he to express him¬ self in such language as he desired to use — were he to give his heart and soul full vent, and speak with the passion and enthusiasm that inwardly consumed his being as with a consuming flame, why then, his parishioners — Well? What of his parishioners? Would they be angry, surprised, or in any way moved to unusual emotion? No — oh no! They simply would not understand. There was the core and kernel of his trouble. They-would-not-understand ! They did not understand him as it was, even when he preached the oldest and most worn-out platitudes. In fact, he was often greatly concerned as to whether they in very truth comprehended the Christian doctrine at all. He sometimes had a glimmering painful sense that they merely accepted it, because it was the particular form of approach to the Almighty which was or¬ dained to be taught according to the laws of the country — and that if by some singular chance Buddhism were intro¬ duced in its stead as the religion of the realm, they would accept that with equal alacrity and equanimity. He had often sounded the members of his flock on the question of their belief — because he felt it his duty to do so — but the answers he had received were for the most part vague and unsatisfac¬ tory. There was Farmer Hobday, for example, — the best farmer anywhere about for forty miles — a regular church¬ goer, and an excellent man in every way — yet no one could honestly say he was ‘ orthodox.’ Once when the Reverend Richard had delicately touched on a certain religious matter, this very Hobday, huge-boned, red-faced and mighty of stature, had turned a pair of round expressionless eyes upon him, and with a slow smile had observed:

“Now doan’t ’ee do it, passon! — do-an’t ’ee do it! You minds your church an’ I minds my plow! Neither on us knaws ’ow the A’mighty manages to work us along through a powerful lot o’ trouble — yet worked we are ! — an’ if we axes no questions, we woan’t be told no lies! ”

Then there was Mrs. Moddley — a widow with eight young children, whose husband had been killed while work¬ ing on the railway line which purposely missed Shadbrook altogether on its way to Cheltenham. She too was a regu¬ lar church-goer — and when Everton was preparing some of the village lads for confirmation, one of her boys had created confusion in the class by suddenly observing: “ Please, sir, mother says she don’t see ’ow God can bear to live, watchin’ all the poor folks die what He’s made Hisself ! ”

The Vicar had for the time managed to elude this star¬ tling proposition by skillful handling of the truism that we are all poor sinful souls who are not expected to comprehend the ways of the Almighty — but he took an early opportunity of interviewing Mrs. Moddley on the subject of her son’s remark. Mrs. Moddley, who was washing her children’s clothes, and whose arms, half in and half out of a tub of soap-suds, presented a boiled lobster-like appearance, listened with respectful patience, while the clergyman quietly and with the greatest kindness, pointed out that the thought ex¬ pressed by Master Moddley — ‘ Jimmy ’ as he was familiarly called — was a little — yes, just a little improper, and ought not to have been allowed to find refuge in a child’s brain.

“Well!” said Mrs. Moddley, straightening herself up from the wash-tub and heaving a short sharp sigh — “ You may be right, Mr. Everton, and I daresay you are, for it’s not my place to argefy with my betters, an’ Eve never done it nohow — but as for puttin’ thoughts in a child’s brain, if you’ll believe me, sir, they don’t want no puttin’, for they comes there with no trouble at all — and whatever I’ve said to Jimmy ’tain’t ’arf as bad as what Jimmy says to me — • which I don’t put into his ’ed nohow — an’ if God doos every¬ thing, then it’s God as is to blame, beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Everton, but it’s the truth I do assure you! ”

Here she paused, out of breath, and wrung her hands free from the soap-suds. Everton looked slightly troubled.

“ But Mrs. Moddley,” he argued — “ you are always in church on Sundays — and you understand - ”

“ No, that I don’t! — and that I should never wish you, sir, to think as I did,” — she declared, with energy — “ Nor ever ’ave I done so since I was born an’ eddicated. But I takes it as it comes, feelin’ it’s all for the best, so long as we doos our dooty in that state of life in which it has pleased God to call us.”

These last words she uttered in the tone of a stage recita¬ tion. Then, glancing at the clergyman’s kindly, clever face, she dusted a chair and offered it to him.

“ Sit down, sir,” — she said, with quite a motherly air — • “ you looks a bit worrited — but I do make so bold as to say there’s no ’arm in either me or Jimmy or any o’ my lambs — they’se only just curious sort o’ little creatures, wantin’ to know the why an’ the wherefore of everything — and they gives trouble to us older folk without meanin’ of it. But they all says their prayers as good as gold — and my youngest girl, Betty, she prays so hard that she’s fair wore out when she’s done, an’ rolls over like a dumplin’ into bed after the Amen — bless her ’art ! — she’s but four years old — an’ all her trouble in this life is that old Mrs. Kibble will never get good enough to be an angel! Think o’ that! Old Mrs. Kibble that ’as been a drunkard for these many years an’ is gettin’ wusser as she goes on, — an’ my Betty wants her to be an angel! Lord, lord! I’ve laughed till I cried over that ! ”

An irrepressible smile crossed Everton’s face. A picture of Betty, round, pink as an apple-blossom, and soft as a peach, praying till she was ‘ wore out ’ for ‘ crazy Kibble ’ as the irreverent lads of the village called the ancient female reprobate in question, was humorous as well as pathetic.

And surely there was something very purely Christian in the child’s feeling, if she could in her innocent heart implore the Almighty to transform an old, ugly, dirty confirmed drunkard, who was a disgrace to herself and her neighbors, into an angel!

“ Good little Betty! ” he said gently — “ Still, Mrs. Moddley, I think it is necessary for us elders to impose a certain restraint on our speech in the presence of very young chil¬ dren — and Jimmy’s remark was almost — I will not say quite — but almost on the verge of blasphemy. And it appears he only repeated what you, his mother, said. Now those words - ”

“ Those words was which? ” demanded Mrs. Moddley.

“ Well just to this effect,” hesitated Everton — “ That you wondered how God could live watching all the poor folks die that He made Himself.”

Mrs. Moddley ’s eyes twinkled curiously.

“ Well, I ain’t goin’ back on it,” — she said — “ It’s ezackly what I thinks — though I’ll freely own my tongue often gets the better of me. But there, Mr. Everton, take me myself, if I sees a fly a-drownin’ in the milk I picks it out an’ gives the poor know-nothin’ inseck a chance for its life, though flies is a nuisance in the summer-time as everybody knows, but seein’ God made ’em I daresay if they thinks at all they wants their lives as much as we do ours. And though I’m told in church as God ’ad only one Son, an’ killed Him in order to wash out our sins in the blood, I can’t never believe ’twas meant that way - ”

“Mrs. Moddley!” gasped Richard — “You — you — ex¬ cuse me — you don’t know what a terrible thing you are saying - ”

“ Look ’ere, Mr. Everton,” and Mrs. Moddley leaned her wet arms argumentatively across the wash-tub — “ I ain’t goin’ to b’lieve for a moment that the Almighty is a worser person than ourselves. Not a bit of it! Now I wouldn’t kill a son of mine to save anybody — there! An’ I’m only Martha Moddley. An’ our wretched little sins, sich as they is, all comes through our not knowin’ better — 'wherefore I says, the blessed Lord Jesus came down from heaven to show: us how to live patient and die quiet without complainin’, an’ trust to the Father of us all to do right by us in this io world, seem’ we’ve been brought ’ere without our own wish, an’ got to suffer a deal o’ woe. That’s my view of religion — an’ a bad one no doubt it is — but Lord love ye, Mr. Everton ! ” — and here her round face beamed smilingly at him — “ Don’t ye worrit over me one bit ! — you’ll never see me miss a Sunday out of church, for the singin’ an’ the prayers doos us all good, even if we can’t make it all out — and you’re a real gentleman born, which is what we alius wanted for this parish, ’avin’ ’ad a man previous what lived with his cook, — quite a fine gel — on the sly, an’ all of us knowed it an’ couldn’t say nothin’. For says my pore dear ’usband as is gone, — ‘ We must ketch ’im in the hact ’ — an’ that you will realize, Mr. Everton, was impossible — so that when he died of a ’plexy fit, ’twas a good riddance for all round. An’ I’m sure we couldn’t wish for a better parson an’ wife than you an’ your lady — so now, sir,” — and she nodded con¬ solingly at him — “ you’ve no need to worrit, as I says, for you doos your dooty, an’ to the best o’ my powers I’ll do mine, an’ I’ll bite my tongue ’ard before I let it talk over Jimmy’s ’ed ’bout what he’s a bit too young to see for hisself proper.”

With this most uncertain and entirely unprofitable ex¬ planation, Everton had to be content — and never afterwards saw Mrs. Moddley in church without a nervous qualm. He began to be afraid of getting on religious subjects with his parishioners at all, and found that it was safer to utter vague prognostications about the weather and the crops than to mention the doctrines of original sin and divine redemp¬ tion. Pigs furnished a more appreciated subject of dis¬ course, — the birth, growth and fattening of these interesting animals being more important to the inhabitants of Shadbrook than any other event which an industrious press might chronicle in any part of the world. There was no one, in fact, to whom he could impart the growing sense he had of his own incompetency to deal with this rough human mate¬ rial, which though undoubtedly endowed with the ‘ spirit which maketh for righteousness,’ yet had no means of mani¬ festing its real trend of thought. He was a scholarly man — and he had no other of his class with whom to exchange ideas. True, there were two ‘ great ’ houses, so-called, — the one of his patron, Squire Hazlitt, who had selected him for

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the living of Shadbrook, and who was hardly ever in the place, his wife and daughters preferring to drag him about in the wake of mischievous modern society, which elects to spend its money on foreign resorts rather than to help forward the equally beautiful and much more healthy pleas¬ ure places at home — the other the ‘ commodious villa,’ to use auctioneer parlance, of the brewer of the district, whose hideous brewery-buildings disfigured the landscape some eight or ten miles away. With the Squire, Everton and his pretty wife were on terms of pleasure and intimacy whenever that gentleman was at home; with the brewer, he was at open feud. For Shadbrook had two public-houses — a criminal superfluity for so small a place, — and both were ‘ tied ’ to Messrs. Minchin and Co., who kept them well supplied with the direst poison in the shape of beer that ever went down the throats of poor laboring men. Minchin himself was a pompous, self-satisfied commoner who had allied him¬ self for his own advantage to the daughter of a pauper baronet, in order that he might claim to be ‘ connected with the aristocracy.’ He was a persistent church-goer, and a publicly proclaimed teetotaler. That is to say, he drank nothing but water, and gave his friends nothing but water, while he made his money out of the working-man’s drunken¬ ness, or rather let us say the working-man’s delirium, brought on by the consumption of his manufactured poison. With such characteristics as these, every one will admit that he was a good and righteous man.

But he hated the Reverend Rich¬ ard Everton, — and the Reverend Richard Everton, so far as it was possible for a Christian minister with human blood in his veins to hate, hated him in return. Mrs. Minchin, a somewhat 4 horsey ’ lady, with a strident voice and an ag¬ gressive manner, ‘ detested,’ to use her own expression, ‘ that odious little woman, Azalea Everton.’ It was a case of simple cause and effect — Mrs. Everton being pretty and Mrs. Minchin plain, — Mrs. Everton being the mother of a boy whose beauty was the wonder of all who beheld him, and Mrs. Minchin having produced alarmingly ugly twins, boy and girl, who might for all the good temper and intelligence they showed, just as well have never been born. These, and other equally cogent reasons, kept the two families well apart. Mrs. Everton, indeed, though as a rule the sweetest of sweet creatures, could not altogether refrain from giving her pretty head a slight, very slight, toss of indifference, when she happened to pass Mrs. Minchin on the country road — and Mrs. Minchin made no attempt to restrain the very unmusical snort which affected her nose and throat at the merest side glimpse of Mrs. Everton. Such being the position of things, it followed that there were no real ‘ neigh¬ bors ’ in the true sense of the word, for a man of learning and refinement such as the Vicar was, for even Squire Hazlitt, his patron, was scarcely to be called cultured, though he had plenty of good-humor and shrewd common-sense. Yet the years of his life at Shadbrook had so far been spentin such happiness that he had never thought it possible or likely that he might, with a growing, broadening mind, some day need a growing and broadening environment. That afflictive cramp which nips the intellectual spirit when it finds itself hemmed in on all sides by provincial nonentities, had not as yet seriously troubled him — and its first twinges were only now beginning to pinch him in a warning, and not to say undesirable and undesired manner.

“ Are you going to pass all your life in Shadbrook? ”

The question, put as it were by the mocking voice of some interior demon, was asked of him again on this cold March morning when he sat trying to write what he felt could never be written. And yet — what burning thoughts were in his brain, longing to communicate themselves to his motion¬ less pen! — thoughts of the goodness and majesty of the Creator — thoughts of the daily discoveries of science — thoughts of the inexhaustible millions upon millions of solar Sj^stems in limitless space — thoughts that w-ere like lightningpoems, singing themselves to his inner consciousness and de¬ claring him to be a living Soul — a part of God — a spark of the Divine, sent to evolve itself through experience and diffi¬ culty from the imperfect to the perfect state of being. The daily papers brought him news of the world’s unrest — and realizing the paltry ‘ sensationalism of religion ’ worked up by certain followers of antichrist, who saw no shame in associating themselves with the notoriety-hunting proprietors of a cheap and degraded press, he recognized the wrong that was being done to the pure teaching of Christ, and the havoc that was wickedly wrought among men by the spread of infidel doctrine. He longed to be up and doing — to don the spiritual sword and buckler, and go forth with the armies of the Lord — to preach with no uncertain voice, but with a true note, clear as a clarion call, and to help draw back the social world from the abyss whither he, and all deep-thinking men could see it visibly hurrying — and yet — his ‘ cure ’ was merely Shadbrook. Shadbrook was his busi¬ ness; with the rest of the world he had no need to concern himself.