The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• The Park and the Paddock.
• Chapter I.: Pride of Patrimony.
• Chapter II.: Patrimonial Appendages.
• Chapter III.: Clerical Duty.
• Chapter IV.: Clerical Recreations.
• Chapter V.: Vowed Sisterhood.
• Chapter VI.: Battles At Navarino.
• Chapter VII.: Lounging and Listening.
• Chapter VIII.: Characteristics.
• The Tenth Haycock.
• Chapter I.: Perambulation.
• Chapter II.: Interlocutory Decrees.
• Chapter III.: Intrusion.
• Chapter IV.: Heresy.
• Chapter V.: Extortion.
• Chapter VI.: Commutation.
• Chapter VII.: Dimission.
• Chapter VIII.: Benefit of Clergy.
• The Jerseymen Meeting.
• Chapter I.: A Phenomenon.
• Chapter II.: A Legacy.
• Chapter III.: Life In Lambeth.
• Chapter IV.: The Phenomenon Again.
• Chapter V.: An Economical Project.
• Chapter VI.: Lessons In Loyalty.
• Chapter VII.: Harder Lessons In Loyalty.
• The Jerseymen Parting.
• Chapter I.: A Busy Man At Leisure.
• Chapter II.: Knitting and Unravelling.
• Chapter III.: A Mate For Mother Hubbard.
• Chapter IV.: Friend Or Foe?
• Chapter V.: The Darkening Hour.
• Chapter VI.: The Land of Signals.
• Chapter VII.: Welcome to Supper.
• Chapter VIII.: A Wanderer Still.
• The Scholars of Arneside.: Preface.
• Chapter I.: The Mysteries of Wisdom.
• Chapter II.: Maternal Anticipations.
• Chapter III.: Lessons On the Hills.
• Chapter IV.: Signs In the Sky.
• Chapter V.: Owen and X.Y.Z.
• Chapter VI.: Press and Post-office.
• Chapter VII.: The Policy of Mps.
• Chapter VIII.: Family Secrets.
• Chapter IX.: The Mysteries Laid Open.

Chapter VII.

LOUNGING AND LISTENING.

“I never said anything so decidedly to you before, James, but you must stay,” said Richard to his brother, the clergyman, who was lounging from window to window of the library.

“Such a place to keep one shut up in, in the midst of winter!” muttered James. “It is enough to make one melancholy to look at that black frozen water under the rocks, and all the trees within sight loaded with snow, and not a twig stirring to shake off so much as a flake. ’Tis so desolate when one compares it with London, I declare my spirits won’t stand it.”

“One week cannot make much difference. It was all your doing that any stir was made about these poachers at all, and you must stay a few days longer to carry the matter through. What difference can one week make?”

“All the difference in the world. The journey up to town with the Lees signifies more than any thing I shall meet with when I get there. The happiness of my whole life may depend on those three days of travelling—”

“How little you know of yourself, James,” said his sister, “if you think that anything that can happen in three days can make you happy!”

“You can make me preciously unhappy, I know, if you keep me three days longer in this miserable place. Why, ’tis a place only fit for a hermit to live in, in winter.”

And he glanced at a green stain which was still conspicuous on the ceiling. It was convenient to overlook the thick new carpet, the roaring fire, and the ample provision of books, whose arrangement had been just completed under his own eye. “It is very strange if you cannot transport a man without my help. I am sure I wish Taplin had gone on thumbing his Ready Reckoner for many a night to come before I had meddled with him. It will end in my being full as much punished as he, or any of his gang.”

“Thumbing his what?” asked Fanny of Richard.

“The Ready Reckoner. Taplin has been the head of the poaching gang. It has been organized by him,—made into a kind of club, sworn to co-operate. Taplin administered the oath; and his excuse is, that the men were sworn, not on a Testament, but on the Ready Reckoner. We have evidence enough to transport Taplin. It was James that obtained it; (you had better ask him how;) and now he wants to be off to London, at the critical moment, (you had better ask him why,) and leave me to manage the matter in which I have never stirred, except in as far as I was forced by him.”

“I know the how and the why,” observed Fanny, gravely. “The greatest wonder of all is to hear him talk of the happiness of his future life, with such a how and why lying on his conscience.”

“Now, you just show, at this moment, the folly of meddling in other people’s affairs, and preaching about other people’s consciences,” said James, turning round from the window. “I can tell you that Sarah Swallow is going to be married. I know it for fact; for her intended told me of it himself. Indeed, he asked me to marry them. What do you think of this, Fanny?”

“I think just as I did before. If Sarah proved herself as light-minded and fickle as yourself,—if she so injured and betrayed the interests of her sex,—how does that excuse your treachery to—”

“Now, if you say another word about the sanctity of the church, and the dignity of the clerical character, and all that, I will never set foot in my living again to the end of my days.”

“I was not going to make any appeal to you which I know to be so useless. The clerical character has no dignity in your keeping; and you take care that the church shall have no sanctity in the eyes of your people.”

“That is not my fault.”

“I know it. You can no more be a clergyman than you can be a musician or a sculptor. Your misfortune and that of your people is that you are called a clergyman.”

“Ah! I saw two old women dreadfully scandalized, the last time I came from the hunt. They thought I was over the ears in a pitcher of ale; but I heard them say, ‘There’s our parson, with not a thread of black on him but his neckcloth.’ ”

“The sin of the case lies with the church that makes a point of a black coat while she tempts in—”

“Black hearts?”

“Hearts that must needs come out black from being steeped in the hypocrisy of a professed sanctity.”

“I am sure I never professed any sanctity.”

“Therefore your heart is not of the deepest black of all. But what has been your only alternative? Leading your people to think that no sanctity exists.”

“That is the fault of the system,—not mine. The system made it a matter of course that I should be a clergyman. Here I am. I must either set my face at its full length, and play a damned deep part when I talk of righteousness, and temperance, and—and all that—”

“And judgment to come,” said Richard, gravely.

“Or, if the people see I am thinking of anything but what I am saying, they can hardly believe that such threats signify much. You should lay the blame on those that put me into the church.”

“They would plead that you were put there as a matter of course;—that you were born to it. They would refer the blame farther back; where, indeed, it ought to rest. The day must come when faithless parents must be arraigned by their injured children: and then will your people, among a countless multitude besides, rise up in judgment against mother-church for having made an elaborate provision for, not only desecrating the gospel, but generating infidelity towards both God and man.”

“That may be all very true; but I cannot help my share of it now.”

“You can stop the spread of the mischief which has sprung up through you. Come out of the church. You look more astonished than there is any occasion for. Remember—”

“Remember, sister, how it is with other professions. A bad physician does not give up practice; nor does an ignorant lawyer, because of incapacity.”

“Remember that the physician and lawyer who are as well known to be as unfit for their business as you are for yours, are not employed. In the profession of the church alone are the incapable sure of their occupation and its recompense. But no one is more aware than you that the days are coming when, if the unqualified do not step out of the church, they will be plucked out; or, if time be promised them to die out, it will be a chance whether the impatience of the long-betrayed people will not unroof the sanctuary from over their heads. You well know this, James. Your duty to your church, then, requires that you vacate your place: that at least one—”

“Knave? Hypocrite? Come. Out with it!”

“At least one unqualified person may give place to a true-hearted one who may help to restore what has been laid waste. If you owe no duty to your church, you do to your people; and both the one and the other require you to vacate.”

“And Mary Lee forbids. If you had said all this a month ago —”

“Then Sarah Swallow would have forbidden. Your people must be betrayed in order to enable you to marry, while, at the same time, you cannot make up your mind whom to marry. You will persuade yourself, when you have been married a month, that you have made the wrong choice, after all. If you would give up your living, and work with your conscience in some other employment, instead of sporting with it in this, you might find at last that you had a heart, and that there was some one person who alone could satisfy it. You might be happy, James, after all.”

“There is no use in that sort of thing now,” urged James. “Sarah is disposed of, and Mary Lee—”

“Disposed of!” said Fanny, fixing her eyes upon him so that his were immediately turned away.

“Upon my honour, I had nothing to do with it. It was all their own doing. It was as much news to me as to anybody when Morse came to ask me to marry him.”

“I believe you. I acquit you of providing for the prostitution of one whose innocent heart you had just gained, and found it convenient to throw away.”

“But the winning and casting off led to the rest,” observed Richard.

“I tell you, she threw herself away. The old man sought her because his son loved her,—not because I did. But he is a good old fellow; and after all—”

“Silence!” cried Fanny. “Go on, if you dare, to say that to be the slave of an ignorant old man,—the household drudge of a being she despises for marrying her almost as much as she despises herself for marrying him,—say, if you dare, that this is a good enough lot for one whom you yourself taught to feel that she had a mind and a heart, to be free in action, and devoted in affection—”

Her eyes rained tears, and her voice trembled so that she could not go on to say that with which her heart was overfull. James began to ask himself whether he had not committed a great mistake in deserting one for whom Fanny seemed to feel so passionate an affection. In the midst of her agitation, Fanny saw his misapprehension.

“It is for my sex,—it is for our nature, that I feel it so much,” she struggled to say. “That no more should be understood of what love is by those who are acting in the very name of love! That any one should dare to open only to darken,—to expand only to crush! Anne says, ‘I did say a great deal, but Sarah is so much cleverer now than I am, that I dare not say all that was in my mind. She sees how foolish many things are that we never used to doubt of, and that I do not understand any better now.’ Nothing can be truer. The whole being of the one sister has been awakened, in order to be tortured; and the other can no longer console.”

To carry off some emotion which could not be helped, James began to jest. He thought it was only fair,—for the purpose of restoring the sympathy between the sisters,—that he should flirt a little with Anne.

“Try;” Fanny said; and she spoke no more.

James next made an attempt upon Richard.

“I am sure you ought to thank me, Richard. You wanted to have Morse’s heart kept from breaking, if you should give up preserving your game. The thing is done, you see, thanks to me.”

Richard took no notice.

“I never saw such a brother and sister in my life,” cried James, with a heavy tread up and down the room. “I believe you do not care for anything that happens to me.”

“We do,” said Richard; “but we are bound to care for others too.”

“And for your future self,” added Fanny. “James, do promise that you will not seek Mary Lee. I do not know why you should look amazed. You must know that she would not think of you, if she knew all; and that you cannot make her life happy, if you could persuade her that you love her now. Do not crush another heart.”

James was, of course, quite sure that he loved Miss Lee, and pretty confident that he could attach her, and absolutely certain that they should make one another perfectly happy. He should go now, and learn whether her departure could by no stratagem be deferred till he could accompany her; if not, he should fly after her the very hour that sentence should be pronounced on Taplin.

He returned in two hours, very much out of humour. The Lees were going the next morning. He should hasten to Brighton, or somewhere, till the spring; any where (after Fellbrow) except London. He hated London at this time of year almost as much as in the autumn. He should speak to Riley about getting so much of the new house ready as should fit it for the residence of a curate. It might as well go on so far, now it was begun; but he could not think what had possessed him to begin building in such a place.