Scenes of Clerical Life: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

'No!' said lawyer Dempster, in a loud, rasping, oratorical tone,
struggling against chronic huskiness, 'as long as my Maker grants me
power of voice and power of intellect, I will take every legal means to
resist the introduction of demoralizing, methodistical doctrine into this
parish; I will not supinely suffer an insult to be inflicted on our
venerable pastor, who has given us sound instruction for half a century.'

It was very warm everywhere that evening, but especially in the bar of
the Red Lion at Milby, where Mr. Dempster was seated mixing his third
glass of brandy-and-water. He was a tall and rather massive man, and the
front half of his large surface was so well dredged' with snuff, that the
cat, having inadvertently come near him, had been seized with a severe
fit of sneezing--an accident which, being cruelly misunderstood, had
caused her to be driven contumeliously from the bar. Mr. Dempster
habitually held his chin tucked in, and his head hanging forward, weighed
down, perhaps, by a preponderant occiput and a bulging forehead, between
which his closely-clipped coronal surface lay like a flat and new-mown
table-land. The only other observable features were puffy cheeks and a
protruding yet lipless mouth. Of his nose I can only say that it was
snuffy; and as Mr. Dempster was never caught in the act of looking at
anything in particular, it would have been difficult to swear to the
colour of his eyes.

'Well! I'll not stick at giving myself trouble to put down such
hypocritical cant,' said Mr. Tomlinson, the rich miller. 'I know well
enough what your Sunday evening lectures are good for--for wenches to
meet their sweethearts, and brew mischief. There's work enough with the
servant-maids as it is--such as I never heard the like of in my mother's
time, and it's all along o' your schooling and newfangled plans. Give me
a servant as can nayther read nor write, I say, and doesn't know the year
o' the Lord as she was born in. I should like to know what good those
Sunday schools have done, now. Why, the boys used to go a birds-nesting
of a Sunday morning; and a capital thing too--ask any farmer; and very
pretty it was to see the strings o' heggs hanging up in poor people's
houses. You'll not see 'em nowhere now.'

'Pooh!' said Mr. Luke Byles, who piqued himself on his reading, and was
in the habit of asking casual acquaintances if they knew anything of
Hobbes; 'it is right enough that the lower orders should be instructed.
But this sectarianism within the Church ought to be put down. In point of
fact, these Evangelicals are not Churchmen at all; they're no better than
Presbyterians.'

'Presbyterians? what are they?' inquired Mr. Tomlinson, who often said
his father had given him 'no eddication, and he didn't care who knowed
it; he could buy up most o' th' eddicated men he'd ever come across.'

'The Presbyterians,' said Mr. Dempster, in rather a louder tone than
before, holding that every appeal for information must naturally be
addressed to him, 'are a sect founded in the reign of Charles I., by a
man named John Presbyter, who hatched all the brood of Dissenting vermin
that crawl about in dirty alleys, and circumvent the lord of the manor in
order to get a few yards of ground for their pigeon-house conventicles.'

'No, no, Dempster,' said Mr. Luke Byles, 'you're out there.
Presbyterianism is derived from the word presbyter, meaning an elder.'

'Don't contradict _me_, sir!' stormed Dempster. 'I say the word
presbyterian is derived from John Presbyter, a miserable fanatic who wore
a suit of leather, and went about from town to village, and from village
to hamlet, inoculating the vulgar with the asinine virus of dissent.'

'Come, Byles, that seems a deal more likely,' said Mr. Tomlinson, in a
conciliatory tone, apparently of opinion that history was a process of
ingenious guessing.

'It's not a question of likelihood; it's a known fact. I could fetch you
my Encyclopaedia, and show it you this moment.'

'I don't care a straw, sir, either for you or your Encyclopaedia,' said
Mr. Dempster; 'a farrago of false information, of which you picked up an
imperfect copy in a cargo of waste paper. Will you tell _me_, sir, that I
don't know the origin of Presbyterianism? I, sir, a man known through the
county, intrusted with the affairs of half a score parishes; while you,
sir, are ignored by the very fleas that infest the miserable alley in
which you were bred.'

A loud and general laugh, with 'You'd better let him alone Byles';
'You'll not get the better of Dempster in a hurry', drowned the retort of
the too well-informed Mr. Byles, who, white with rage, rose and walked
out of the bar.

'A meddlesome, upstart, Jacobinical fellow, gentlemen', continued Mr.
Dempster. 'I was determined to be rid of him. What does he mean by
thrusting himself into our company? A man with about as much principle as
he has property, which, to my knowledge, is considerably less than none.
An insolvent atheist, gentlemen. A deistical prater, fit to sit in the
chimney-corner of a pot-house, and make blasphemous comments on the one
greasy newspaper fingered by beer-swilling tinkers. I will not suffer in
my company a man who speaks lightly of religion. The signature of a
fellow like Byles would be a blot on our protest.'

'And how do you get on with your signatures?' said Mr. Pilgrim, the
doctor, who had presented his large top-booted person within the bar
while Mr. Dempster was speaking. Mr. Pilgrim had just returned from one
of his long day's rounds among the farm-houses, in the course of which he
had sat down to two hearty meals that might have been mistaken for
dinners if he had not declared them to be 'snaps'; and as each snap had
been followed by a few glasses of 'mixture'; containing a less liberal
proportion of water than the articles he himself labelled with that
broadly generic name, he was in that condition which his groom indicated
with poetic ambiguity by saying that 'master had been in the sunshine'.
Under these circumstances, after a hard day, in which he had really had
no regular meal, it seemed a natural relaxation to step into the bar of
the Red Lion, where, as it was Saturday evening, he should be sure to
find Dempster, and hear the latest news about the protest against the
evening lecture.

'Have you hooked Ben Landor yet?' he continued, as he took two chairs,
one for his body, and the other for his right leg.

'No,' said Mr. Budd, the churchwarden, shaking his head; 'Ben Landor has
a way of keeping himself neutral in everything, and he doesn't like to
oppose his father. Old Landor is a regular Tryanite. But we haven't got
your name yet, Pilgrim.'

'Tut tut, Budd,' said Mr. Dempster, sarcastically, 'you don't expect
Pilgrim to sign? He's got a dozen Tryanite livers under his treatment.
Nothing like cant and methodism for producing a superfluity of bile.'

'O, I thought, as Pratt had declared himself a Tryanite, we should be
sure to get Pilgrim on our side.'

Mr. Pilgrim was not a man to sit quiet under a sarcasm, nature having
endowed him with a considerable share of self-defensive wit. In his most
sober moments he had an impediment in his speech, and as copious
gin-and-water stimulated not the speech but the impediment, he had time
to make his retort sufficiently bitter.

'Why, to tell you the truth, Budd,' he spluttered, 'there's a report all
over the town that Deb Traunter swears you shall take her with you as one
of the delegates, and they say there's to be a fine crowd at your door
the morning you start, to see the row. Knowing your tenderness for that
member of the fair sex, I thought you might find it impossible to deny
her. I hang back a little from signing on that account, as Prendergast
might not take the protest well if Deb Traunter went with you.'

Mr. Budd was a small, sleek-headed bachelor of five-and-forty, whose
scandalous life had long furnished his more moral neighbours with an
after-dinner joke. He had no other striking characteristic, except that
he was a currier of choleric temperament, so that you might wonder why he
had been chosen as clergyman's churchwarden, if I did not tell you that
he had recently been elected through Mr. Dempster's exertions, in order
that his zeal against the threatened evening lecture might be backed by
the dignity of office.

'Come, come, Pilgrim,' said Mr. Tomlinson, covering Mr. Budd's retreat,
'you know you like to wear the crier's coat,' green o' one side and red
o' the other. You've been to hear Tryan preach at Paddiford Common--you
know you have.'

'To be sure I have; and a capital sermon too. It's a pity you were not
there. It was addressed to those "void of understanding."'

'No, no, you'll never catch me there,' returned Mr. Tomlinson, not in the
least stung: 'he preaches without book, they say, just like a Dissenter.
It must be a rambling sort of a concern.'

'That's not the worst,' said Mr. Dempster; 'he preaches against good
works; says good works are not necessary to salvation--a sectarian,
antinomian, anabaptist doctrine. Tell a man he is not to be saved by his
works, and you open the flood-gates of all immorality. You see it in all
these canting innovators; they're all bad ones by the sly; smooth-faced,
drawling, hypocritical fellows, who pretend ginger isn't hot in their
mouths, and cry down all innocent pleasures; their hearts are all the
blacker for their sanctimonious outsides. Haven't we been warned against
those who make clean the outside of the cup and the platter? There's this
Tryan, now, he goes about praying with old women, and singing with
charity children; but what has he really got his eye on all the while? A
domineering ambitious Jesuit, gentlemen; all he wants is to get his foot
far enough into the parish to step into Crewe's shoes when the old
gentleman dies. Depend upon it, whenever you see a man pretending to be
better than his neighbours, that man has either some cunning end to
serve, or his heart is rotten with spiritual pride.'

As if to guarantee himself against this awful sin, Mr. Dempster seized
his glass of brandy-and-water, and tossed off the contents with even
greater rapidity than usual.

'Have you fixed on your third delegate yet?' said Mr. Pilgrim, whose
taste was for detail rather than for dissertation.

'That's the man,' answered Dempster, pointing to Mr. Tomlinson. 'We start
for Elmstoke Rectory on Tuesday morning; so, if you mean to give us your
signature, you must make up your mind pretty quickly, Pilgrim.'

Mr. Pilgrim did not in the least mean it, so he only said, 'I shouldn't
wonder if Tryan turns out too many for you, after all. He's got a
well-oiled tongue of his own, and has perhaps talked over Prendergast
into a determination to stand by him.'

'Ve-ry little fear of that,' said Dempster, in a confident tone.
'I'll soon bring him round. Tryan has got his match. I've plenty of rods
in pickle for Tryan.'

At this moment Boots entered the bar, and put a letter into the lawyer's
hands, saying, 'There's Trower's man just come into the yard wi' a gig,
sir, an' he's brought this here letter.'

Mr. Dempster read the letter and said, 'Tell him to turn the gig--I'll be
with him in a minute. Here, run to Gruby's and get this snuff-box filled
--quick!'

'Trower's worse, I suppose; eh, Dempster? Wants you to alter his will,
eh?' said Mr. Pilgrim.

'Business--business--business--I don't know exactly what,' answered the
cautious Dempster, rising deliberately from his chair, thrusting on his
low-crowned hat, and walking with a slow but not unsteady step out of the
bar.

'I never see Dempster's equal; if I did I'll be shot,' said Mr.
Tomlinson, looking after the lawyer admiringly. 'Why, he's drunk the best
part of a bottle o' brandy since here we've been sitting, and I'll bet a
guinea, when he's got to Trower's his head'll be as clear as mine. He
knows more about law when he's drunk than all the rest on 'em when
they're sober.'

'Ay, and other things too, besides law,' said Mr. Budd. 'Did you notice
how he took up Byles about the Presbyterians? Bless your heart, he knows
everything, Dempster does. He studied very hard when he was a young man.'

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