Scenes of Clerical Life: Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Mr. Tryan's most unfriendly observers were obliged to admit that he gave
himself no rest. Three sermons on Sunday, a night-school for young men on
Tuesday, a cottage-lecture on Thursday, addresses to school-teachers, and
catechizing of school-children, with pastoral visits, multiplying as his
influence extended beyond his own district of Paddiford Common, would
have been enough to tax severely the powers of a much stronger man. Mr.
Pratt remonstrated with him on his imprudence, but could not prevail on
him so far to economize time and strength as to keep a horse. On some
ground or other, which his friends found difficult to explain to
themselves, Mr. Tryan seemed bent on wearing himself out. His enemies
were at no loss to account for such a course. The Evangelical curate's
selfishness was clearly of too bad a kind to exhibit itself after the
ordinary manner of a sound, respectable selfishness. 'He wants to get the
reputation of a saint,' said one; 'He's eaten up with spiritual pride,'
said another; 'He's got his eye on some fine living, and wants to creep
up the Bishop's sleeve,' said a third.

Mr. Stickney, of Salem, who considered all voluntary discomfort as a
remnant of the legal spirit, pronounced a severe condemnation on this
self-neglect, and expressed his fear that Mr. Tryan was still far from
having attained true Christian liberty. Good Mr. Jerome eagerly seized
this doctrinal view of the subject as a means of enforcing the
suggestions of his own benevolence; and one cloudy afternoon, in the end
of November, he mounted his roan mare with the determination of riding to
Paddiford and 'arguying' the point with Mr. Tryan.

The old gentleman's face looked very mournful as he rode along the dismal
Paddiford lanes, between rows of grimy houses, darkened with hand-looms,
while the black dust was whirled about him by the cold November wind. He
was thinking of the object which had brought him on this afternoon ride,
and his thoughts, according to his habit when alone, found vent every now
and then in audible speech. It seemed to him, as his eyes rested on this
scene of Mr. Tryan's labours, that he could understand the clergyman's
self-privation without resorting to Mr. Stickney's theory of defective
spiritual enlightenment. Do not philosophic doctors tell us that we are
unable to discern so much as a tree, except by an unconscious cunning
which combines many past and separate sensations; that no one sense is
independent of another, so that in the dark we can hardly taste a
fricassee, or tell whether our pipe is alight or not, and the most
intelligent boy, if accommodated with claws or hoofs instead of fingers,
would be likely to remain on the lowest form? If so, it is easy to
understand that our discernment of men's motives must depend on the
completeness of the elements we can bring from our own susceptibility and
our own experience. See to it, friend, before you pronounce a too hasty
judgement, that your own moral sensibilities are not of a hoofed or
clawed character. The keenest eye will not serve, unless you have the
delicate fingers, with their subtle nerve filaments, which elude
scientific lenses, and lose themselves in the invisible world of human
sensations.

As for Mr. Jerome, he drew the elements of his moral vision from the
depths of his veneration and pity. If he himself felt so much for these
poor things to whom life was so dim and meagre, what must the clergyman
feel who had undertaken before God to be their shepherd?

'Ah!' he whispered, interruptedly, 'it's too big a load for his
conscience, poor man! He wants to mek himself their brother, like; can't
abide to preach to the fastin' on a full stomach. Ah! he's better nor we
are, that's it--he's a deal better nor we are.'

Here Mr. Jerome shook his bridle violently, and looked up with an air of
moral courage, as if Mr. Stickney had been present, and liable to take
offence at this conclusion. A few minutes more brought him in front of
Mrs. Wagstaff's, where Mr. Tryan lodged. He had often been here before,
so that the contrast between this ugly square brick house, with its
shabby bit of grass-plot, stared at all round by cottage windows, and his
own pretty white home, set in a paradise of orchard and garden and
pasture was not new to him; but he felt it with fresh force today, as he
slowly fastened his roan by the bridle to the wooden paling, and knocked
at the door. Mr. Tryan was at home, and sent to request that Mr. Jerome
would walk up into his study, as the fire was out in the parlour below.

At the mention of a clergyman's study, perhaps, your too active
imagination conjures up a perfect snuggery, where the general air of
comfort is rescued from a secular character by strong ecclesiastical
suggestions in the shape of the furniture, the pattern of the carpet, and
the prints on the wall; where, if a nap is taken, it is an easy-chair
with a Gothic back, and the very feet rest on a warm and velvety
simulation of church windows; where the pure art of rigorous English
Protestantism smiles above the mantelpiece in the portrait of an eminent
bishop, or a refined Anglican taste is indicated by a German print from
Overbeck; where the walls are lined with choice divinity in sombre
binding, and the light is softened by a screen of boughs with a grey
church in the background.

But I must beg you to dismiss all such scenic prettiness, suitable as
they may be to a clergyman's character and complexion; for I have to
confess that Mr. Tryan's study was a very ugly little room indeed, with
an ugly slapdash pattern on the walls, an ugly carpet on the floor, and
an ugly view of cottage roofs and cabbage-gardens from the window. His
own person his writing-table, and his book-case, were the only objects in
the room that had the slightest air of refinement; and the sole provision
for comfort was a clumsy straight-backed arm-chair covered with faded
chintz. The man who could live in such a room, unconstrained by poverty,
must either have his vision fed from within by an intense passion, or he
must have chosen that least attractive form of self-mortification which
wears no haircloth and has no meagre days, but accepts the vulgar, the
commonplace, and the ugly, whenever the highest duty seems to lie among
them.

'Mr. Tryan, I hope you'll excuse me disturbin' on you,' said Mr. Jerome.
'But I'd summat partickler to say.'

'You don't disturb me at all, Mr. Jerome; I'm very glad to have a visit
from you,' said Mr. Tryan, shaking him heartily by the hand, and offering
him the chintz-covered 'easy' chair; 'it is some time since I've had an
opportunity of seeing you, except on a Sunday.'

'Ah, sir! your time's so taken up, I'm well aware o' that; it's not only
what you hev to do, but it's goin' about from place to place; an' you
don't keep a hoss, Mr. Tryan. You don't take care enough o' yourself--you
don't indeed, an' that's what I come to talk to y' about.'

'That's very good of you, Mr. Jerome; but I assure you I think walking
does me no harm. It is rather a relief to me after speaking or writing.
You know I have no great circuit to make. The farthest distance I have to
walk is to Milby Church, and if ever I want a horse on a Sunday, I hire
Radley's, who lives not many hundred yards from me.'

'Well, but now! the winter's comin' on, an' you'll get wet i' your feet,
an' Pratt tells me as your constitution's dillicate, as anybody may see,
for the matter o' that, wi'out bein' a doctor. An' this is the light I
look at it in, Mr. Tryan: who's to fill up your place, if you was to be
disabled, as I may say? Consider what a valyable life yours is. You've
begun a great work i' Milby, and so you might carry it on, if you'd your
health and strength. The more care you take o' yourself, the longer
you'll live, belike, God willing, to do good to your fellow-creaturs.'

'Why, my dear Mr. Jerome, I think I should not be a long-lived man in any
case; and if I were to take care of myself under the pretext of doing
more good, I should very likely die and leave nothing done after all.'

'Well! but keepin' a hoss wouldn't hinder you from workin'. It 'ud help
you to do more, though Pratt says as it's usin' your voice so constant as
does you the most harm. Now, isn't it--I'm no scholard, Mr. Tryan, an'
I'm not a-goin' to dictate to you--but isn't it a'most a-killin' o'
yourself, to go on a' that way beyond your strength? We mustn't fling
ower lives away.'

'No, not fling them away lightly, but we are permitted to lay down our
lives in a right cause. There are many duties, as you know, Mr. Jerome,
which stand before taking care of our own lives.'

'Ah! I can't arguy wi' you, Mr. Tryan; but what I wanted to say's
this--There's my little chacenut hoss; I should take it quite a kindness
if you'd hev him through the winter an' ride him. I've thought o' sellin'
him a many times, for Mrs. Jerome can't abide him; and what do I want wi'
two nags? But I'm fond o' the little chacenut, an' I shouldn't like to
sell him. So if you'll only ride him for me, you'll do me a kindness--you
will, indeed, Mr. Tryan.'

'Thank you, Mr. Jerome. I promise you to ask for him, when I feel that I
want a nag. There is no man I would more gladly be indebted to than you;
but at present I would rather not have a horse. I should ride him very
little, and it would be an inconvenience to me to keep him rather than
otherwise.'

Mr. Jerome looked troubled and hesitating, as if he had something on his
mind that would not readily shape itself into words. At last he said,
'You'll excuse me, Mr. Tryan, I wouldn't be takin' a liberty, but I know
what great claims you hev on you as a clergyman. Is it th' expense, Mr.
Tryan? is it the money?'

'No, my dear sir. I have much more than a single man needs. My way of
living is quite of my own choosing, and I am doing nothing but what I
feel bound to do, quite apart from money considerations. We cannot judge
for one another, you know; we have each our peculiar weaknesses and
temptations. I quite admit that it might be right for another man to
allow himself more luxuries, and I assure you I think it no superiority
in myself to do without them. On the contrary, if my heart were less
rebellious, and if I were less liable to temptation, I should not need
that sort of self-denial. But,' added Mr. Tryan, holding out his hand to
Mr. Jerome, 'I understand your kindness, and bless you for it. If I want
a horse, I shall ask for the chesnut.'

Mr. Jerome was obliged to rest contented with this promise, and rode home
sorrowfully, reproaching himself with not having said one thing he meant
to say when setting out, and with having 'clean forgot' the arguments he
had intended to quote from Mr. Stickney.

Mr. Jerome's was not the only mind that was seriously disturbed by the
idea that the curate was over-working himself. There were tender women's
hearts in which anxiety about the state of his affections was beginning
to be merged in anxiety about the state of his health. Miss Eliza Pratt
had at one time passed through much sleepless cogitation on the
possibility of Mr. Tryan's being attached to some lady at a distance--at
Laxeter, perhaps, where he had formerly held a curacy; and her fine eyes
kept close watch lest any symptom of engaged affections on his part
should escape her. It seemed an alarming fact that his handkerchiefs were
beautifully marked with hair, until she reflected that he had an
unmarried sister of whom he spoke with much affection as his father's
companion and comforter. Besides, Mr. Tryan had never paid any distant
visit, except one for a few days to his father, and no hint escaped him
of his intending to take a house, or change his mode of living. No! he
could not be engaged, though he might have been disappointed. But this
latter misfortune is one from which a devoted clergyman has been known to
recover, by the aid of a fine pair of grey eyes that beam on him with
affectionate reverence. Before Christmas, however, her cogitations began
to take another turn. She heard her father say very confidently that
'Tryan was consumptive, and if he didn't take more care of himself, his
life would not be worth a year's purchase;' and shame at having
speculated on suppositions that were likely to prove so false, sent poor
Miss Eliza's feelings with all the stronger impetus into the one channel
of sorrowful alarm at the prospect of losing the pastor who had opened to
her a new life of piety and self-subjection. It is a sad weakness in us,
after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; as
if life were not sacred too--as if it were comparatively a light thing to
fail in love and reverence to the brother who has to climb the whole
toilsome steep with us, and all our tears and tenderness were due to the
one who is spared that hard journey.

The Miss Linnets, too, were beginning to take a new view of the future,
entirely uncoloured by jealousy of Miss Eliza Pratt.

'Did you notice,' said Mary, one afternoon when Mrs. Pettifer was taking
tea with them--'did you notice that short dry cough of Mr. Tryan's
yesterday? I think he looks worse and worse every week, and I only wish I
knew his sister; I would write to her about him. I'm sure something
should be done to make him give up part of his work, and he will listen
to no one here.'

'Ah,' said Mrs. Pettifer, 'it's a thousand pities his father and sister
can't come and live with him, if he isn't to marry. But I wish with all
my heart he could have taken to some nice woman as would have made a
comfortable home for him. I used to think he might take to Eliza Pratt;
she's a good girl, and very pretty; but I see no likelihood of it now.'

'No, indeed.' said Rebecca, with some emphasis: 'Mr. Tryan's heart is not
for any woman to win; it is all given to his work; and I could never wish
to see him with a young inexperienced wife who would be a drag on him
instead of a help-mate.'

'He'd need have somebody, young or old,' observed Mrs. Linnet, 'to see as
he wears a flannel wescoat, an' changes his stockins when he comes in.
It's my opinion he's got that cough wi' sittin i' wet shoes and stockins;
an' that Mrs. Wagstaff's a poor addle-headed thing; she doesn't half tek
care on him.'

'O mother!' said Rebecca, 'she's a very pious woman. And I'm sure she
thinks it too great a privilege to have Mr. Tryan with her, not to do the
best she can to make him comfortable. She can't help her rooms being
shabby.'

'I've nothing to say again' her piety, my dear; but I know very well I
shouldn't like her to cook my victual. When a man comes in hungry an'
tired, piety won't feed him, I reckon. Hard carrots 'ull lie heavy on his
stomach, piety or no piety. I called in one day when she was dishin' up
Mr. Tryan's dinner, an' I could see the potatoes was as watery as watery.
It's right enough to be speritial--I'm no enemy to that; but I like my
potatoes mealy. I don't see as anybody 'ull go to heaven the sooner for
not digestin' their dinner--providin' they don't die sooner, as mayhap
Mr. Tryan will, poor dear man!'

'It will be a heavy day for us all when that comes to pass,' said Mrs.
Pettifer. 'We shall never get anybody to fill up _that_ gap. There's the
new clergyman that's just come to Shepperton--Mr. Parry; I saw him the
other day at Mrs. Bond's. He may be a very good man, and a fine preacher;
they say he is; but I thought to myself, What a difference between him
and Mr. Tryan! He's a sharp-sort-of-looking man, and hasn't that feeling
way with him that Mr. Tryan has. What is so wonderful to me in Mr. Tryan
is the way he puts himself on a level with one, and talks to one like a
brother. I'm never afraid of telling him anything. He never seems to look
down on anybody. He knows how to lift up those that are cast down, if
ever man did.'

'Yes,' said Mary. 'And when I see all the faces turned up to him in
Paddiford Church. I often think how hard it would be for any clergyman
who had to come after him; he has made the people love him so.'

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