Scenes of Clerical Life: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

It was happy for the Rev. Amos Barton that he did not, like us, overhear
the conversation recorded in the last chapter. Indeed, what mortal is
there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity
of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his own doings, with
the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor
plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if
we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence! The
very capacity for good would go out of us. For, tell the most impassioned
orator, suddenly, that his wig is awry, or his shirt-lap hanging out, and
that he is tickling people by the oddity of his person, instead of
thrilling them by the energy of his periods, and you would infallibly dry
up the spring of his eloquence. That is a deep and wide saying, that no
miracle can be wrought without faith--without the worker's faith in
himself, as well as the recipient's faith in him. And the greater part of
the worker's faith in himself is made up of the faith that others believe
in him.

Let me be persuaded that my neighbour Jenkins considers me a blockhead,
and I shall never shine in conversation with him any more. Let me
discover that the lovely Phoebe thinks my squint intolerable, and I shall
never be able to fix her blandly with my disengaged eye again. Thank
heaven, then, that a little illusion is left to us, to enable us to be
useful and agreeable--that we don't know exactly what our friends think
of us--that the world is not made of looking-glass, to show us just the
figure we are making, and just what is going on behind our backs! By the
help of dear friendly illusion, we are able to dream that we are charming
and our faces wear a becoming air of self-possession; we are able to
dream that other men admire our talents--and our benignity is
undisturbed; we are able to dream that we are doing much good--and we do
a little. Thus it was with Amos Barton on that very Thursday evening,
when he was the subject of the conversation at Cross Farm. He had been
dining at Mr. Farquhar's, the secondary squire of the parish, and,
stimulated by unwonted gravies and port-wine, had been delivering his
opinion on affairs parochial and otherwise with considerable animation.
And he was now returning home in the moonlight--a little chill, it is
true, for he had just now no greatcoat compatible with clerical dignity,
and a fur boa round one's neck, with a waterproof cape over one's
shoulders, doesn't frighten away the cold from one's legs; but entirely
unsuspicious, not only of Mr. Hackit's estimate of his oratorical powers,
but also of the critical remarks passed on him by the Misses Farquhar as
soon as the drawing-room door had closed behind him. Miss Julia had
observed that she _never_ heard any one sniff so frightfully as Mr.
Barton did--she had a great mind to offer him her pocket-handkerchief;
and Miss Arabella wondered why he always said he was going _for_ to do a
thing. He, excellent man! was meditating fresh pastoral exertions on the
morrow; he would set on foot his lending library; in which he had
introduced some books that would be a pretty sharp blow to the
Dissenters--one especially, purporting to be written by a working man
who, out of pure zeal for the welfare of his class, took the trouble to
warn them in this way against those hypocritical thieves, the Dissenting
preachers. The Rev. Amos Barton profoundly believed in the existence of
that working man, and had thoughts of writing to him. Dissent, he
considered, would have its head bruised in Shepperton, for did he not
attack it in two ways? He preached Low-Church doctrine--as evangelical as
anything to be heard in the Independent Chapel; and he made a High-Church
assertion of ecclesiastical powers and functions. Clearly, the Dissenters
would feel that 'the parson' was too many for them. Nothing like a man
who combines shrewdness with energy. The wisdom of the serpent, Mr.
Barton considered, was one of his strong points.

Look at him as he winds through the little churchyard! The silver light
that falls aslant on church and tomb, enables you to see his slim black
figure, made all the slimmer by tight pantaloons, as it flits past the
pale gravestones. He walks with a quick step, and is now rapping with
sharp decision at the vicarage door. It is opened without delay by the
nurse, cook, and housemaid, all at once--that is to say, by the robust
maid-of-all-work, Nanny; and as Mr. Barton hangs up his hat in the
passage, you see that a narrow face of no particular complexion--even the
small-pox that has attacked it seems to have been of a mongrel,
indefinite kind--with features of no particular shape, and an eye of no
particular expression is surmounted by a slope of baldness gently rising
from brow to crown. You judge him, rightly, to be about forty. The house
is quiet, for it is half-past ten, and the children have long been gone
to bed. He opens the sitting-room door, but instead of seeing his wife,
as he expected, stitching with the nimblest of fingers by the light of
one candle, he finds her dispensing with the light of a candle
altogether. She is softly pacing up and down by the red firelight,
holding in her arms little Walter, the year-old baby, who looks over her
shoulder with large wide-open eyes, while the patient mother pats his
back with her soft hand, and glances with a sigh at the heap of large and
small stockings lying unmended on the table.

She was a lovely woman--Mrs. Amos Barton, a large, fair, gentle Madonna,
with thick, close, chestnut curls beside her well-rounded cheeks, and
with large, tender, short-sighted eyes. The flowing lines of her tall
figure made the limpest dress look graceful, and her old frayed black
silk seemed to repose on her bust and limbs with a placid elegance and
sense of distinction, in strong contrast with the uneasy sense of being
no fit, that seemed to express itself in the rustling of Mrs. Farquhar's
_gros de Naples_. The caps she wore would have been pronounced, when off
her head, utterly heavy and hideous--for in those days even fashionable
caps were large and floppy; but surmounting her long arched neck, and
mingling their borders of cheap lace and ribbon with her chestnut curls,
they seemed miracles of successful millinery. Among strangers she was shy
and tremulous as a girl of fifteen; she blushed crimson if any one
appealed to her opinion; yet that tall, graceful, substantial presence
was so imposing in its mildness, that men spoke to her with an agreeable
sensation of timidity.

Soothing, unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood! which supersedes all
acquisitions, all accomplishments. You would never have asked, at any
period of Mrs. Amos Barton's life, if she sketched or played the piano.
You would even perhaps have been rather scandalized if she had descended
from the serene dignity of _being_ to the assiduous unrest of _doing_.
Happy the man, you would have thought, whose eye will rest on her in the
pauses of his fireside reading--whose hot aching forehead will be soothed
by the contact of her cool soft hand who will recover himself from
dejection at his mistakes and failures in the loving light of her
unreproaching eyes! You would not, perhaps, have anticipated that this
bliss would fall to the share of precisely such a man as Amos Barton,
whom you have already surmised not to have the refined sensibilities for
which you might have imagined Mrs. Barton's qualities to be destined by
pre-established harmony. But I, for one, do not grudge Amos Barton this
sweet wife. I have all my life had a sympathy for mongrel ungainly dogs,
who are nobody's pets; and I would rather surprise one of them by a pat
and a pleasant morsel, than meet the condescending advances of the
loveliest Skye-terrier who has his cushion by my lady's chair. That, to
be sure, is not the way of the world: if it happens to see a fellow of
fine proportions and aristocratic mien, who makes no _faux pas_, and wins
golden opinions from all sorts of men, it straightway picks out for him
the loveliest of unmarried women, and says, _There_ would be a proper
match! Not at all, say I: let that successful, well-shapen, discreet and
able gentleman put up with something less than the best in the
matrimonial department; and let the sweet woman go to make sunshine and a
soft pillow for the poor devil whose legs are not models, whose efforts
are often blunders, and who in general gets more kicks than halfpence.
She--the sweet woman--will like it as well; for her sublime capacity of
loving will have all the more scope; and I venture to say, Mrs. Barton's
nature would never have grown half so angelic if she had married the man
you would perhaps have had in your eye for her--a man with sufficient
income and abundant personal eclat. Besides, Amos was an affectionate
husband, and, in his way, valued his wife as his best treasure.

But now he has shut the door behind him, and said, 'Well, Milly!'

'Well, dear!' was the corresponding greeting, made eloquent by a smile.

'So that young rascal won't go to sleep! Can't you give him to Nanny?'

'Why, Nanny has been busy ironing this evening; but I think I'll take him
to her now.' And Mrs. Barton glided towards the kitchen, while her
husband ran up-stairs to put on his maize-coloured dressing-gown, in
which costume he was quietly filling his long pipe when his wife returned
to the sitting-room. Maize is a colour that decidedly did _not_ suit his
complexion, and it is one that soon soils; why, then, did Mr. Barton
select it for domestic wear? Perhaps because he had a knack of hitting on
the wrong thing in garb as well as in grammar.

Mrs. Barton now lighted her candle, and seated herself before her heap of
stockings. She had something disagreeable to tell her husband, but she
would not enter on it at once. 'Have you had a nice evening, dear?'

'Yes, pretty well. Ely was there to dinner, but went away rather early.
Miss Arabella is setting her cap at him with a vengeance. But I don't
think he's much smitten. I've a notion Ely's engaged to some one at a
distance, and will astonish all the ladies who are languishing for him
here, by bringing home his bride one of these days. Ely's a sly dog;
he'll like that.'

'Did the Farquhars say anything about the singing last Sunday?'

'Yes; Farquhar said he thought it was time there was some improvement in
the choir. But he was rather scandalized at my setting the tune of
"Lydia." He says he's always hearing it as he passes the Independent
meeting.' Here Mr. Barton laughed--he had a way of laughing at criticisms
that other people thought damaging--and thereby showed the remainder of a
set of teeth which, like the remnants of the Old Guard, were few in
number, and very much the worse for wear. 'But,' he continued, 'Mrs.
Farquhar talked the most about Mr. Bridmain and the Countess. She has
taken up all the gossip about them, and wanted to convert me to her
opinion, but I told her pretty strongly what I thought.'

'Dear me! why will people take so much pains to find out evil about
others? I have had a note from the Countess since you went, asking us to
dine with them on Friday.'

Here Mrs. Barton reached the note from the mantelpiece, and gave it to
her husband. We will look over his shoulder while he reads it:--

"Sweetest Milly, Bring your lovely face with your husband to dine with us
on Friday at seven--do. If not, I will be sulky with you till Sunday,
when I shall be obliged to see you, and shall long to kiss you that very
moment. Yours, according to your answer,

Caroline Czerlaski."

'Just like her, isn't it?' said Mrs. Barton. 'I suppose we can go?'

'Yes; I have no engagement. The Clerical Meeting is tomorrow, you know.'

'And, dear, Woods the butcher called, to say he must have some money next
week. He has a payment to make up.'

This announcement made Mr. Barton thoughtful. He puffed more rapidly, and
looked at the fire.

'I think I must ask Hackit to lend me twenty pounds, for it is nearly two
months till Lady-day, and we can't give Woods our last shilling.'

'I hardly like you to ask Mr. Hackit, dear--he and Mrs. Hackit have been
so very kind to us; they have sent us so many things lately.'

'Then I must ask Oldinport. I'm going to write to him tomorrow morning,
for to tell him the arrangement I've been thinking of about having
service in the workhouse while the church is being enlarged. If he agrees
to attend service there once or twice, the other people will come. Net
the large fish, and you're sure to have the small fry.'

'I wish we could do without borrowing money, and yet I don't see how we
can. Poor Fred must have some new shoes; I couldn't let him go to Mrs.
Bond's yesterday because his toes were peeping out, dear child! and I
can't let him walk anywhere except in the garden. He must have a pair
before Sunday. Really, boots and shoes are the greatest trouble of my
life. Everything else one can turn and turn about, and make old look like
new; but there's no coaxing boots and shoes to look better than they
are.'

Mrs. Barton was playfully undervaluing her skill in metamorphosing boots
and shoes. She had at that moment on her feet a pair of slippers which
had long ago lived through the prunella phase of their existence, and
were now running a respectable career as black silk slippers, having been
neatly covered with that material by Mrs. Barton's own neat fingers.
Wonderful fingers those! they were never empty; for if she went to spend
a few hours with a friendly parishioner, out came her thimble and a piece
of calico or muslin, which, before she left, had become a mysterious
little garment with all sorts of hemmed ins and outs. She was even trying
to persuade her husband to leave off tight pantaloons, because if he
would wear the ordinary gun-cases, she knew she could make them so well
that no one would suspect the sex of the tailor.

But by this time Mr. Barton has finished his pipe, the candle begins to
burn low, and Mrs. Barton goes to see if Nanny has succeeded in lulling
Walter to sleep. Nanny is that moment putting him in the little cot by
his mother's bedside; the head, with its thin wavelets of brown hair,
indents the little pillow; and a tiny, waxen, dimpled fist hides the rosy
lips, for baby is given to the infantile peccadillo of thumb-sucking. So
Nanny could now join in the short evening prayer, and all could go to
bed. Mrs. Barton carried up-stairs the remainder of her heap of
stockings, and laid them on a table close to her bedside, where also she
placed a warm shawl, removing her candle, before she put it out, to a tin
socket fixed at the head of her bed. Her body was very weary, but her
heart was not heavy, in spite of Mr. Woods the butcher, and the
transitory nature of shoe-leather; for her heart so overflowed with love,
she felt sure she was near a fountain of love that would care for husband
and babes better than she could foresee; so she was soon asleep. But
about half-past five o'clock in the morning, if there were any angels
watching round her bed--and angels might be glad of such an office they
saw Mrs. Barton rise up quietly, careful not to disturb the slumbering
Amos, who was snoring the snore of the just, light her candle, prop
herself upright with the pillows, throw the warm shawl round her
shoulders, and renew her attack on the heap of undarned stockings. She
darned away until she heard Nanny stirring, and then drowsiness came with
the dawn; the candle was put out, and she sank into a doze. But at nine
o'clock she was at the breakfast-table, busy cutting bread-and-butter for
five hungry mouths, while Nanny, baby on one arm, in rosy cheeks, fat
neck, and night-gown, brought in a jug of hot milk-and-water. Nearest her
mother sits the nine-year-old Patty, the eldest child, whose sweet fair
face is already rather grave sometimes, and who always wants to run
up-stairs to save mamma's legs, which get so tired of an evening. Then
there are four other blond heads--two boys and two girls, gradually
decreasing in size down to Chubby, who is making a round O of her mouth
to receive a bit of papa's 'baton'. Papa's attention was divided between
petting Chubby, rebuking the noisy Fred, which he did with a somewhat
excessive sharpness, and eating his own breakfast. He had not yet looked
at Mamma, and did not know that her cheek was paler than usual. But Patty
whispered, 'Mamma, have you the headache?'

Happily coal was cheap in the neighbourhood of Shepperton, and Mr. Hackit
would any time let his horses draw a load for 'the parson' without
charge; so there was a blazing fire in the sitting-room, and not without
need, for the vicarage garden, as they looked out on it from the
bow-window, was hard with black frost, and the sky had the white woolly
look that portends snow.

Breakfast over, Mr. Barton mounted to his study, and occupied himself in
the first place with his letter to Mr. Oldinport. It was very much the
same sort of letter as most clergymen would have written under the same
circumstances, except that instead of perambulate, the Rev. Amos wrote
preambulate, and instead of 'if haply', 'if happily', the contingency
indicated being the reverse of happy. Mr. Barton had not the gift of
perfect accuracy in English orthography and syntax, which was
unfortunate, as he was known not to be a Hebrew scholar, and not in the
least suspected of being an accomplished Grecian. These lapses, in a man
who had gone through the Eleusinian mysteries of a university education,
surprised the young ladies of his parish extremely; especially the Misses
Farquhar, whom he had once addressed in a letter as Dear Mads.,
apparently an abbreviation for Madams. The persons least surprised at the
Rev. Amos's deficiencies were his clerical brethren, who had gone through
the mysteries themselves.

At eleven o'clock, Mr. Barton walked forth in cape and boa, with the
sleet driving in his face, to read prayers at the workhouse,
euphemistically called the 'College'. The College was a huge square stone
building, standing on the best apology for an elevation of ground that
could be seen for about ten miles around Shepperton. A flat ugly district
this; depressing enough to look at even on the brightest days. The roads
are black with coal-dust, the brick houses dingy with smoke; and at that
time--the time of handloom weavers--every other cottage had a loom at its
window, where you might see a pale, sickly-looking man or woman pressing
a narrow chest against a board, and doing a sort of treadmill work with
legs and arms. A troublesome district for a clergyman; at least to one
who, like Amos Barton, understood the 'cure of souls' in something more
than an official sense; for over and above the rustic stupidity furnished
by the farm-labourers, the miners brought obstreperous animalism, and the
weavers in an acrid Radicalism and Dissent. Indeed, Mrs. Hackit often
observed that the colliers, who many of them earned better wages than Mr.
Barton, 'passed their time in doing nothing but swilling ale and smoking,
like the beasts that perish' (speaking, we may presume, in a remotely
analogical sense); and in some of the alehouse corners the drink was
flavoured by a dingy kind of infidelity, something like rinsings of Tom
Paine in ditch-water. A certain amount of religious excitement created by
the popular preaching of Mr. Parry, Amos's predecessor, had nearly died
out, and the religious life of Shepperton was falling back towards
low-water mark. Here, you perceive, was a terrible stronghold of Satan;
and you may well pity the Rev. Amos Barton, who had to stand
single-handed and summon it to surrender. We read, indeed, that the walls
of Jericho fell down before the sound of trumpets; but we nowhere hear
that those trumpets were hoarse and feeble. Doubtless they were trumpets
that gave forth clear ringing tones, and sent a mighty vibration through
brick and mortar. But the oratory of the Rev. Amos resembled rather a
Belgian railway-horn, which shows praiseworthy intentions inadequately
fulfilled. He often missed the right note both in public and private
exhortation, and got a little angry in consequence. For though Amos
thought himself strong, he did not _feel_ himself strong. Nature had
given him the opinion, but not the sensation. Without that opinion he
would probably never have worn cambric bands, but would have been an
excellent cabinetmaker and deacon of an Independent church, as his father
was before him (he was not a shoemaker, as Mr. Pilgrim had reported). He
might then have sniffed long and loud in the corner of his pew in Gun
Street Chapel; he might have indulged in halting rhetoric at
prayer-meetings, and have spoken faulty English in private life; and
these little infirmities would not have prevented him, honest faithful
man that he was, from being a shining light in the dissenting circle of
Bridgeport. A tallow dip, of the long-eight description, is an excellent
thing in the kitchen candlestick, and Betty's nose and eye are not
sensitive to the difference between it and the finest wax; it is only
when you stick it in the silver candlestick, and introduce it into the
drawing-room, that it seems plebeian, dim, and ineffectual. Alas for the
worthy man who, like that candle, gets himself into the wrong place! It
is only the very largest souls who will be able to appreciate and pity
him--who will discern and love sincerity of purpose amid all the bungling
feebleness of achievement.

But now Amos Barton has made his way through the sleet as far as the
College, has thrown off his hat, cape, and boa, and is reading, in the
dreary stone-floored dining-room, a portion of the morning service to the
inmates seated on the benches before him. Remember, the New Poor-law had
not yet come into operation, and Mr. Barton was not acting as paid
chaplain of the Union, but as the pastor who had the cure of all souls in
his parish, pauper as well as other. After the prayers he always
addressed to them a short discourse on some subject suggested by the
lesson for the day, striving if by this means some edifying matter might
find its way into the pauper mind and conscience--perhaps a task as
trying as you could well imagine to the faith and patience of any honest
clergyman. For, on the very first bench, these were the faces on which
his eye had to rest, watching whether there was any stirring under the
stagnant surface.

Right in front of him--probably because he was stone-deaf, and it was
deemed more edifying to hear nothing at a short distance than at a long
one--sat 'Old Maxum', as he was familiarly called, his real patronymic
remaining a mystery to most persons. A fine philological sense discerns
in this cognomen an indication that the pauper patriarch had once been
considered pithy and sententious in his speech; but now the weight of
ninety-five years lay heavy on his tongue as well as in his ears, and he
sat before the clergyman with protruded chin, and munching mouth, and
eyes that seemed to look at emptiness.

Next to him sat Poll Fodge--known to the magistracy of her county as Mary
Higgins--a one-eyed woman, with a scarred and seamy face, the most
notorious rebel in the workhouse, said to have once thrown her broth over
the master's coat-tails, and who, in spite of nature's apparent
safeguards against that contingency, had contributed to the perpetuation
of the Fodge characteristics in the person of a small boy, who was
behaving naughtily on one of the back benches. Miss Fodge fixed her one
sore eye on Mr. Barton with a sort of hardy defiance.

Beyond this member of the softer sex, at the end of the bench, sat 'Silly
Jim', a young man afflicted with hydrocephalus, who rolled his head from
side to side, and gazed at the point of his nose. These were the
supporters of Old Maxum on his right.

On his left sat Mr. Fitchett, a tall fellow, who had once been a footman
in the Oldinport family, and in that giddy elevation had enunciated a
contemptuous opinion of boiled beef, which had been traditionally handed
down in Shepperton as the direct cause of his ultimate reduction to
pauper commons. His calves were now shrunken, and his hair was grey
without the aid of powder; but he still carried his chin as if he were
conscious of a stiff cravat; he set his dilapidated hat on with a knowing
inclination towards the left ear; and when he was on field-work, he
carted and uncarted the manure with a sort of flunkey grace, the ghost of
that jaunty demeanour with which he used to usher in my lady's morning
visitors. The flunkey nature was nowhere completely subdued but in his
stomach, and he still divided society into gentry, gentry's flunkeys, and
the people who provided for them. A clergyman without a flunkey was an
anomaly, belonging to neither of these classes. Mr. Fitchett had an
irrepressible tendency to drowsiness under spiritual instruction, and in
the recurrent regularity with which he dozed off until he nodded and
awaked himself, he looked not unlike a piece of mechanism, ingeniously
contrived for measuring the length of Mr. Barton's discourse.

Perfectly wide-awake, on the contrary, was his left-hand neighbour, Mrs.
Brick, one of those hard undying old women, to whom age seems to have
given a network of wrinkles, as a coat of magic armour against the
attacks of winters, warm or cold. The point on which Mrs. Brick was still
sensitive--the theme on which you might possibly excite her hope and
fear--was snuff. It seemed to be an embalming powder, helping her soul to
do the office of salt.

And now, eke out an audience of which this front benchful was a sample,
with a certain number of refractory children, over whom Mr. Spratt, the
master of the workhouse, exercised an irate surveillance, and I think you
will admit that the university-taught clergyman, whose office it is to
bring home the gospel to a handful of such souls, has a sufficiently hard
task. For, to have any chance of success, short of miraculous
intervention, he must bring his geographical, chronological, exegetical
mind pretty nearly to the pauper point of view, or of no view; he must
have some approximate conception of the mode in which the doctrines that
have so much vitality in the plenum of his own brain will comport
themselves _in vacuo_--that is to say, in a brain that is neither
geographical, chronological, nor exegetical. It is a flexible imagination
that can take such a leap as that, and an adroit tongue that can adapt
its speech to so unfamiliar a position. The Rev. Amos Barton had neither
that flexible imagination, nor that adroit tongue. He talked of Israel
and its sins, of chosen vessels, of the Paschal lamb, of blood as a
medium of reconciliation; and he strove in this way to convey religious
truth within reach of the Fodge and Fitchett mind. This very morning, the
first lesson was the twelfth chapter of Exodus, and Mr. Barton's
exposition turned on unleavened bread. Nothing in the world more suited
to the simple understanding than instruction through familiar types and
symbols! But there is always this danger attending it, that the interest
or comprehension of your hearers may stop short precisely at the point
where your spiritual interpretation begins. And Mr. Barton this morning
succeeded in carrying the pauper imagination to the dough-tub, but
unfortunately was not able to carry it upwards from that well-known
object to the unknown truths which it was intended to shadow forth.

Alas! a natural incapacity for teaching, finished by keeping 'terms' at
Cambridge, where there are able mathematicians, and butter is sold by the
yard, is not apparently the medium through which Christian doctrine will
distil as welcome dew on withered souls.

And so, while the sleet outside was turning to unquestionable snow, and
the stony dining-room looked darker and drearier, and Mr. Fitchett was
nodding his lowest, and Mr. Spratt was boxing the boys' ears with a
constant _rinforzando_, as he felt more keenly the approach of
dinner-time, Mr. Barton wound up his exhortation with something of the
February chill at his heart as well as his feet. Mr. Fitchett, thoroughly
roused now the instruction was at an end, obsequiously and gracefully
advanced to help Mr. Barton in putting on his cape, while Mrs. Brick
rubbed her withered forefinger round and round her little shoe-shaped
snuff-box, vainly seeking for the fraction of a pinch. I can't help
thinking that if Mr. Barton had shaken into that little box a small
portion of Scotch high-dried, he might have produced something more like
an amiable emotion in Mrs. Brick's mind than anything she had felt under
his morning's exposition of the unleavened bread. But our good Amos
laboured under a deficiency of small tact as well as of small cash; and
when he observed the action of the old woman's forefinger, he said, in
his brusque way, 'So your snuff is all gone, eh?'

Mrs. Brick's eyes twinkled with the visionary hope that the parson might
be intending to replenish her box, at least mediately, through the
present of a small copper.

'Ah, well! you'll soon be going where there is no more snuff. You'll be
in need of mercy then. You must remember that you may have to seek for
mercy and not find it, just as you're seeking for snuff.'

At the first sentence of this admonition, the twinkle subsided from Mrs.
Brick's eyes. The lid of her box went 'click!' and her heart was shut up
at the same moment.

But now Mr. Barton's attention was called for by Mr. Spratt, who was
dragging a small and unwilling boy from the rear. Mr. Spratt was a
small-featured, small-statured man, with a remarkable power of language,
mitigated by hesitation, who piqued himself on expressing unexceptionable
sentiments in unexceptional language on all occasions.

'Mr. Barton, sir--aw--aw--excuse my trespassing on your time--aw--to beg
that you will administer a rebuke to this boy; he is--aw--aw--most
inveterate in ill-behaviour during service-time.'

The inveterate culprit was a boy of seven, vainly contending against
'candles' at his nose by feeble sniffing. But no sooner had Mr. Spratt
uttered his impeachment, than Miss Fodge rushed forward and placed
herself between Mr. Barton and the accused.

'That's _my_ child, Muster Barton,' she exclaimed, further manifesting
her maternal instincts by applying her apron to her offspring's nose.
'He's al'ys a-findin' faut wi' him, and a-poundin' him for nothin'. Let
him goo an' eat his roost goose as is a-smellin' up in our noses while
we're a-swallering them greasy broth, an' let my boy alooan.'

Mr. Spratt's small eyes flashed, and he was in danger of uttering
sentiments not unexceptionable before the clergyman; but Mr. Barton,
foreseeing that a prolongation of this episode would not be to
edification, said 'Silence!' in his severest tones.

'Let me hear no abuse. Your boy is not likely to behave well, if you set
him the example of being saucy.' Then stooping down to Master Fodge, and
taking him by the shoulder, 'Do you like being beaten?'

'No-a.'

'Then what a silly boy you are to be naughty. If you were not naughty,
you wouldn't be beaten. But if you are naughty, God will be angry, as
well as Mr. Spratt; and God can burn you for ever. That will be worse
than being beaten.'

Master Fodge's countenance was neither affirmative nor negative of this
proposition.

'But,' continued Mr. Barton, 'if you will be a good boy, God will love
you, and you will grow up to be a good man. Now, let me hear next
Thursday that you have been a good boy.'

Master Fodge had no distinct vision of the benefit that would accrue to
him from this change of courses. But Mr. Barton, being aware that Miss
Fodge had touched on a delicate subject in alluding to the roast goose,
was determined to witness no more polemics between her and Mr. Spratt,
so, saying good morning to the latter, he hastily left the College.

The snow was falling in thicker and thicker flakes, and already the
vicarage-garden was cloaked in white as he passed through the gate. Mrs.
Barton heard him open the door, and ran out of the sitting-room to meet
him.

'I'm afraid your feet are very wet, dear. What a terrible morning! Let me
take your hat. Your slippers are at the fire.'

Mr. Barton was feeling a little cold and cross. It is difficult, when you
have been doing disagreeable duties, without praise, on a snowy day, to
attend to the very minor morals. So he showed no recognition of Milly's
attentions, but simply said, 'Fetch me my dressing-gown, will you?'

'It is down, dear. I thought you wouldn't go into the study, because you
said you would letter and number the books for the Lending Library. Patty
and I have been covering them, and they are all ready in the
sitting-room.'

'Oh, I can't do those this morning,' said Mr. Barton, as he took off his
boots and put his feet into the slippers Milly had brought him; 'you must
put them away into the parlour.'

The sitting-room was also the day nursery and schoolroom; and while
Mamma's back was turned, Dickey, the second boy, had insisted on
superseding Chubby in the guidance of a headless horse, of the
red-wafered species, which she was drawing round the room, so that when
Papa opened the door Chubby was giving tongue energetically.

'Milly, some of these children must go away. I want to be quiet.'

'Yes, dear. Hush, Chubby; go with Patty, and see what Nanny is getting
for our dinner. Now, Fred and Sophy and Dickey, help me to carry these
books into the parlour. There are three for Dickey. Carry them steadily.'

Papa meanwhile settled himself in his easy-chair, and took up a work on
Episcopacy, which he had from the Clerical Book Society; thinking he
would finish it and return it this afternoon, as he was going to the
Clerical Meeting at Milby Vicarage, where the Book Society had its
headquarters.

The Clerical Meetings and Book Society, which had been founded some eight
or ten months, had had a noticeable effect on the Rev. Amos Barton. When
he first came to Shepperton he was simply an evangelical clergyman, whose
Christian experiences had commenced under the teaching of the Rev. Mr.
Johns, of Gun Street Chapel, and had been consolidated at Cambridge under
the influence of Mr. Simeon. John Newton and Thomas Scott were his
doctrinal ideals; he would have taken in the "Christian Observer" and the
"Record," if he could have afforded it; his anecdotes were chiefly of the
pious-jocose kind, current in dissenting circles; and he thought an
Episcopalian Establishment unobjectionable.

But by this time the effect of the Tractarian agitation was beginning to
be felt in backward provincial regions, and the Tractarian satire on the
Low-Church party was beginning to tell even on those who disavowed or
resisted Tractarian doctrines. The vibration of an intellectual movement
was felt from the golden head to the miry toes of the Establishment; and
so it came to pass that, in the district round Milby, the market-town
close to Shepperton, the clergy had agreed to have a clerical meeting
every month, wherein they would exercise their intellects by discussing
theological and ecclesiastical questions, and cement their brotherly love
by discussing a good dinner. A Book Society naturally suggested itself as
an adjunct of this agreeable plan; and thus, you perceive, there was
provision made for ample friction of the clerical mind.

Now, the Rev. Amos Barton was one of those men who have a decided will
and opinion of their own; he held himself bolt upright, and had no
self-distrust. He would march very determinedly along the road he thought
best; but then it was wonderfully easy to convince him which was the best
road. And so a very little unwonted reading and unwonted discussion made
him see that an Episcopalian Establishment was much more than
unobjectionable, and on many other points he began to feel that he held
opinions a little too far-sighted and profound to be crudely and suddenly
communicated to ordinary minds. He was like an onion that has been rubbed
with spices; the strong original odour was blended with something new and
foreign. The Low-Church onion still offended refined High Church
nostrils, and the new spice was unwelcome to the palate of the genuine
onion-eater.

We will not accompany him to the Clerical Meeting today, because we shall
probably want to go thither some day when he will be absent. And just now
I am bent on introducing you to Mr. Bridmain and the Countess Czerlaski,
with whom Mr. and Mrs. Barton are invited to dine tomorrow.

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