Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot

rarely allowed him to occupy his place at church.

  "There's Dempster," said Mrs Linnet to her daughter Mary, "looking more

  respectable than usual, I declare. He's got a fine speech by heart to make to

  the Bishop, I'll answer for it. But he'll be pretty well sprinkled with snuff

  before service is over, and the Bishop won't be able to listen to him for

  sneezing, that's one comfort."

  At length, the last stage in the long ceremony was over, the large assembly

  streamed warm and weary into the open afternoon sunshine, and the Bishop retired

  to the Parsonage, where, after honouring Mrs Crewe's collation, he was to give

  audience to the delegates and Mr Tryan on the great question of the evening

  lecture.

  Between five and six o'clock the Parsonage was once more as quiet as usual under

  the shadow of its tall elms, and the only traces of the Bishop's recent presence

  there were the wheel-marks on the gravel, and the long table with its garnished

  dishes awry, its damask sprinkled with crumbs, and its decanters without their

  stoppers. Mr Crewe was already calmly smoking his pipe in the opposite

  sitting-room, and Janet was agreeing with Mrs Crewe that some of the blanc-mange

  would be a nice thing to take to Sally Martin, while the little old lady herself

  had a spoon in her hand ready to gather the crumbs into a plate, that she might

  scatter them on the gravel for the little birds.

  Before that time, the Bishop's carriage had been seen driving through the High

  Street on its way to Lord Trufford's, where he was to dine. The question of the

  lecture was decided, then?

  The nature of the decision may be gathered from the following conversation which

  took place in the bar of the Red Lion that evening.

  "So you're done, eh, Dempster?" was Mr Pilgrim's observation, uttered with some

  gusto. He was not glad Mr Tryan had gained his point, but he was not sorry

  Dempster was disappointed.

  "Done, sir? Not at all. It is what I anticipated. I knew we had nothing else to

  expect in these days, when the Church is infested by a set of men who are only

  fit to give out hymns from an empty cask, to tunes set by a journeyman cobbler.

  But I was not the less to exert myself in the cause of sound Churchmanship for

  the good of the town. Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning;

  but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my

  way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat, as Mr Tryan shall

  learn to his cost."

  "He must be a poor shuperannyated sort of a bishop, that's my opinion," said Mr

  Tomlinson, "to go along with a sneaking Methodist like Tryan. And, for my part,

  I think we should be as well wi'out bishops, if they're no wiser than that.

  Where's the use o' havin' thousands a-year an' livin' in a pallis, if they don't

  stick to the Church?"

  "No. There you're going out of your depth, Tomlinson," said Mr Dempster. "No one

  shall hear me say a word against Episcopacy?it is a safeguard of the Church; we

  must have ranks and dignities there as well as everywhere else. No, sir!

  Episcopacy is a good thing; but it may happen that a bishop is not a good thing.

  Just as brandy is a good thing, though this particular bottle is British, and

  tastes like sugared rain-water caught down the chimney. Here, Ratcliffe, let me

  have something to drink, a little less like a decoction of sugar and soot."

  "I said nothing again' Episcopacy," returned Mr Tomlinson. "I only said I

  thought we should do as well wi'out bishops; an' I'll say it again for the

  matter o' that. Bishops never brought ony grist to my mill."

  "Do you know when the lectures are to begin?" said Mr Pilgrim.

  "They are to begin on Sunday next," said Mr Dempster in a significant tone; "but

  I think it will not take a long sighted prophet to foresee the end of them. It

  strikes me Mr Tryan will be looking out for another curacy shortly."

  "He'll not get many Milby people to go and hear his lectures after a while, I'll

  bet a guinea," observed Mr Budd. "I know I'll not keep a single workman on my

  ground who either goes to the lecture himself or lets anybody belonging to him

  go."

  "Nor me nayther," said Mr Tomlinson. "No Tryanite shall touch a sack or drive a

  waggon o' mine, that you may depend on. An' I know more besides me as are o' the

  same mind."

  "Tryan has a good many friends in the town, though, and friends that are likely

  to stand by him too," said Mr Pilgrim. "I should say it would be as well to let

  him and his lectures alone. If he goes on preaching as he does, with such a

  constitution as his, he'll get a relaxed throat by-and-by, and you'll be rid of

  him without any trouble."

  "We'll not allow him to do himself that injury," said Mr Dempster. "Since his

  health is not good, we'll persuade him to try change of air. Depend upon it,

  he'll find the climate of Milby too hot for him."

  CHAPTER VII.

  Mr Dempster did not stay long at the Red Lion that evening. He was summoned home

  to meet Mr Armstrong, a wealthy client, and as he was kept in consultation till

  a late hour, it happened that this was one of the nights on which Mr Dempster

  went to bed tolerably sober. Thus the day, which had been one of Janet's

  happiest, because it had been spent by her in helping her dear old friend Mrs

  Crewe, ended for her with unusual quietude; and as a bright sunset promises a

  fair morning, so a calm lying down is a good augury for a calm waking. Mr

  Dempster, on the Thursday morning, was in one of his best humours, and though

  perhaps some of the good humour might result from the prospect of a lucrative

  and exciting bit of business in Mr Armstrong's probable lawsuit, the greater

  part of it was doubtless due to those stirrings of the more kindly, healthy sap

  of human feeling, by which goodness tries to get the upper hand in us whenever

  it seems to have the slightest chance?on Sunday mornings, perhaps, when we are

  set free from the grinding hurry of the week, and take the little three-year-old

  on our knee at breakfast to share our egg and muffin; in moments of trouble,

  when death visits our roof or illness makes us dependent on the tending hand of

  a slighted wife; in quiet talks with an aged mother, of the days when we stood

  at her knee with our first picture-book, or wrote her loving letters from

  school. In the man whose childhood has known caresses there is always a fibre of

  memory that can be touched to gentle issues, and Mr Dempster, whom you have

  hitherto seen only as the orator of the Red Lion, and the drunken tyrant of a

  dreary midnight home, was the first-born darling son of a fair little mother.

  That mother was living still, and her own large black easy-chair, where she sat

  knitting through the live-long day, was now set ready for her at the

  breakfast-table, by her son's side, a sleek tortoise-shell cat acting as

  provisional incumbent.

  "Good morning, Mamsey! why, you're looking as fresh as a daisy this morning.

  You're getting young again," said Mr Dempster, looking up from his newspaper

  when the little old lady entered. A very little old lady she was, with a pale,

&n
bsp; scarcely wrinkled face, hair of that peculiar white which tells that the locks

  have once been blond, a natty pure white cap on her head, and a white shawl

  pinned over her shoulders. You saw at a glance that she had been a mignonne

  blonde, strangely unlike her tall, ugly, dingy-complexioned son; unlike her

  daughter-in-law, too, whose large-featured brunette beauty seemed always thrown

  into higher relief by the white presence of little Mamsey. The unlikeness

  between Janet and her mother-in-law went deeper than outline and complexion, and

  indeed there was little sympathy between them, for old Mrs Dempster had not yet

  learned to believe that her son, Robert, would have gone wrong if he had married

  the right woman?a meek woman like herself, who would have borne him children,

  and been a deft, orderly housekeeper. In spite of Janet's tenderness and

  attention to her, she had had little love for her daughter-in-law from the

  first, and had witnessed the sad growth of home-misery through long years,

  always with a disposition to lay the blame on the wife rather than on the

  husband, and to reproach Mrs Raynor for encouraging her daughter's faults by a

  too exclusive sympathy. But old Mrs Dempster had that rare gift of silence and

  passivity which often supplies the absence of mental strength; and, whatever

  were her thoughts, she said no word to aggravate the domestic discord. Patient

  and mute she sat at her knitting through many a scene of quarrel and anguish;

  resolutely she appeared unconscious of the sounds that reached her ears, and the

  facts she divined after she had retired to her bed; mutely she witnessed poor

  Janet's faults, only registering them as a balance of excuse on the side of her

  son. The hard, astute, domineering attorney was still that little old woman's

  pet, as he had been when she watched with triumphant pride his first tumbling

  effort to march alone across the nursery floor. "See what a good son he is to

  me!" she often thought. "Never gave me a harsh word. And so he might have been a

  good husband."

  O it is piteous?that sorrow of aged women! In early youth, perhaps, they said to

  themselves, "I shall be happy when I have a husband to love me best of all;"

  then, when the husband was too careless, "My child will comfort me;" then,

  through the mother's watching and toil, "My child will repay me all when it

  grows up." And at last, after the long journey of years has been wearily

  travelled through, the mother's heart is weighed down by a heavier burthen, and

  no hope remains but the grave.

  But this morning old Mrs Dempster sat down in her easy-chair without any

  painful, suppressed remembrance of the preceding night.

  "I declare mammy looks younger than Mrs Crewe, who is only sixty-five," said

  Janet. "Mrs Crewe will come to see you to-day, mammy, and tell you all about her

  troubles with the Bishop and the collation. She'll bring her knitting, and

  you'll have a regular gossip together."

  "The gossip will be all on one side, then, for Mrs Crewe gets so very deaf, I

  can't make her hear a word. And if I motion to her, she always understands me

  wrong."

  "O, she will have so much to tell you to-day, you will not want to speak

  yourself. You, who have patience to knit those wonderful counter-panes, mammy,

  must not be impatient with dear Mrs Crewe. Good old lady! I can't bear her to

  think she's ever tiresome to people, and you know she's very ready to fancy

  herself in the way. I think she would like to shrink up to the size of a mouse,

  that she might run about and do people good without their noticing her."

  "It isn't patience I want, God knows; it's lungs to speak loud enough. But

  you'll be at home yourself, I suppose, this morning; and you can talk to her for

  me."

  "No, mammy; I promised poor Mrs Lowme to go and sit with her. She's confined to

  her room, and both the Miss Lowmes are out; so I'm going to read the newspaper

  to her and amuse her."

  "Couldn't you go another morning? As Mr Armstrong and that other gentleman are

  coming to dinner, I should think it would be better to stay at home. Can you

  trust Betty to see to everything? She's new to the place."

  "O I couldn't disappoint Mrs Lowme; I promised her. Betty will do very well, no

  fear."

  Old Mrs Dempster was silent after this, and began to sip her tea. The breakfast

  went on without further conversation for some time, Mr Dempster being absorbed

  in the papers. At length, when he was running over the advertisements, his eye

  seemed to be caught by something that suggested a new thought to him. He

  presently thumped the table with an air of exultation, and said, turning to

  Janet,?

  "I've a capital idea, Gipsy!" (that was his name for his dark-eyed wife when he

  was in an extraordinarily good humour), "and you shall help me. It's just what

  you're up to."

  "What is it?" said Janet, her face beaming at the sound of the pet name, now

  heard so seldom. "Anything to do with conveyancing?"

  "It's a bit of fun worth a dozen fees?a plan for raising a laugh against Tryan

  and his gang of hypocrites."

  "What is it? Nothing that wants a needle and thread, I hope, else I must go and

  teaze mother."

  "No, nothing sharper than your wit?except mine. I'll tell you what it is. We'll

  get up a programme of the Sunday evening lecture, like a play-bill, you

  know?'Grand Performance of the celebrated Mountebank,' and so on. We'll bring in

  the Tryanites?old Landor and the rest?in appropriate characters. Proctor shall

  print it, and we'll circulate it in the town. It will be a capital hit."

  "Bravo!" said Janet, clapping her hands. She would just then have pretended to

  like almost anything, in her pleasure at being appealed to by her husband, and

  she really did like to laugh at the Tryanites. "We'll set about it directly, and

  sketch it out before you go to the office. I've got Tryan's sermons up-stairs,

  but I don't think there's anything in them we can use. I've only just looked

  into them; they're not at all what I expected?dull, stupid things?nothing of the

  roaring fire-and-brimstone sort that I expected."

  "Roaring? No; Tryan's as soft as a sucking dove?one of your honey-mouthed

  hypocrites. Plenty of devil and malice in him, though, I could see that, while

  he was talking to the Bishop; but as smooth as a snake outside. He's beginning a

  single-handed fight with me, I can see?persuading my clients away from me. We

  shall see who will be the first to cry peccavi. Milby will do better without Mr

  Tryan than without Robert Dempster, I fancy! and Milby shall never be flooded

  with cant as long as I can raise a breakwater against it. But now, get the

  breakfast things cleared away, and let us set about the play-bill. Come, mamsey,

  come and have a walk with me round the garden, and let us see how the cucumbers

  are getting on. I've never taken you round the garden for an age. Come, you

  don't want a bonnet. It's like walking in a greenhouse this morning."

  "But she will want a parasol," said Janet. "There's one on the stand against the

  garden-door, Robert."

  The little old lady took her son's arm with
placid pleasure. She could barely

  reach it so as to rest upon it, but he inclined a little towards her, and

  accommodated his heavy long-limbed steps to her feeble pace. The cat chose to

  sun herself too, and walked close beside them, with tail erect, rubbing her

  sleek sides against their legs, and too well fed to be excited by the twittering

  birds. The garden was of the grassy, shady kind, often seen attached to old

  houses in provincial towns; the apple-trees had had time to spread their

  branches very wide, the shrubs and hardy perennial plants had grown into a

  luxuriance that required constant trimming to prevent them from intruding on the

  space for walking. But the farther end, which united with green fields, was open

  and sunny.

  It was rather sad, and yet pretty, to see that little group passing out of the

  shadow into the sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shadow again: sad,

  because this tenderness of the son for the mother was hardly more than a nucleus

  of healthy life in an organ hardening by disease, because the man who was linked

  in this way with an innocent past, had become callous in worldliness, fevered by

  sensuality, enslaved by chance impulses; pretty, because it showed how hard it

  is to kill the deep-down fibrous roots of human love and goodness?how the man

  from whom we make it our pride to shrink, has yet a close brotherhood with us

  through some of our most sacred feelings.

  As they were returning to the house, Janet met them, and said, "Now, Robert, the

  writing things are ready. I shall be clerk, and Mat Paine can copy it out

  after."

  Mammy once more deposited in her arm-chair, with her knitting in her hand, and

  the cat purring at her elbow, Janet seated herself at the table, while Mr

  Dempster placed himself near her, took out his snuff-box, and plentifully

  suffusing himself with the inspiring powder, began to dictate.

  What he dictated, we shall see by-and-by.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  The next day, Friday, at five o'clock by the sundial, the large bow-window of

  Mrs Jerome's parlour was open; and that lady herself was seated within its ample

  semicircle, having a table before her on which her best tea-tray, her best

  china, and her best urn-rug had already been standing in readiness for half an

  hour. Mrs Jerome's best tea-service was of delicate white fluted china, with

  gold springs upon it?as pretty a tea-service as you need wish to see, and quite

  good enough for chimney ornaments; indeed, as the cups were without handles,

  most visitors who had the distinction of taking tea out of them, wished that

  such charming china had already been promoted to that honorary position. Mrs

  Jerome was like her china, handsome and old-fashioned. She was a buxom lady of

  sixty, in an elaborate lace cap fastened by a frill under her chin, a dark,

  well-curled front concealing her forehead, a snowy neckerchief exhibiting its

  ample folds as far as her waist, and a stiff grey silk gown. She had a clean

  damask napkin pinned before her to guard her dress during the process of

  tea-making; her favourite geraniums in the bow-window were looking as healthy as

  she could desire; her own handsome portrait, painted when she was twenty years

  younger, was smiling down on her with agreeable flattery; and altogether she

  seemed to be in as peaceful and pleasant a position as a buxom, well-drest

  elderly lady need desire. But, as in so many other cases, appearances were

  deceptive. Her mind was greatly perturbed and her temper ruffled by the fact

  that it was more than a quarter past five even by the losing timepiece, that it

  was half-past by her large gold watch, which she held in her hand as if she were

  counting the pulse of the afternoon, and that, by the kitchen clock, which she

  felt sure was not an hour too fast, it had already struck six. The lapse of time

  was rendered the more unendurable to Mrs Jerome by her wonder that Mr Jerome

  could stay out in the garden with Lizzie in that thoughtless way, taking it so