The old Presbyterian chapels throughout the country have many of them become Unitarian, and occasionally, even in an agricultural village, a respectable red-brick building may be seen, dating from the time of Queen Anne, in which a few descendants of the eighteenth century heretics still testify against three G.o.ds in one and the deity of Jesus Christ. Generally speaking, the attendance in these chapels is very meagre, but they are often endowed, and so they are kept open.
There was one in the large, straggling half-village, half-town of D-, within about ten miles of me, and the pulpit was then vacant. The income was about 100 pounds a year. The princ.i.p.al man there was a small general dealer, who kept a shop in the middle of the village street, and I had come to know him slightly, because I had undertaken to give his boy a few lessons to prepare him for admission to a boarding-school. The money in my pocket was coming to an end, and as I did not suppose that any dishonesty would be imposed on me, and although the prospect were not cheering, I expressed my willingness to be considered as a candidate.
In the course of a week or two I was therefore invited to preach. I was so reduced that I was obliged to walk the whole distance on the Sunday morning, and as I was asked to no house, I went straight to the chapel, and loitered about in the graveyard till a woman came and opened a door at the back. I explained who I was, and sat down in a Windsor chair against a small kitchen table in the vestry. It was cold, but there was no fire, nor were any preparations made for one.
On the mantel-shelf were a bottle of water and a gla.s.s, but as the water had evidently been there for some time, it was not very tempting.
I waited in silence for about twenty minutes, and my friend the dealer then came in, and having shaken hands, and remarked that it was chilly, asked me for the hymns. These I gave him, and went into the pulpit. I found myself in a plain-looking building designed to hold about two hundred people. There was a gallery opposite me, and the floor was occupied with high, dark, brown pews, one or two immediately on my right and left being surrounded with faded green curtains. I counted my hearers, and discovered that there were exactly seventeen, including two very old labourers, who sat on a form near the door. The gallery was quite empty, except a little organ, or seraphine, I think it was called, which was played by a young woman. The dealer gave out the hymns, and accompanied the seraphine in a ba.s.s voice, singing the air.
A weak whisper might be perceived from the rest of the congregation, but nothing more.
I was somewhat taken aback at finding in the Bible a discourse which had been left by one of my predecessors. It was a funeral-sermon, neatly written, and had evidently done duty on several occasions, although the allusions in it might be considered personal. The piety and good works of the departed were praised with emphasis, but the masculine p.r.o.nouns originally used were altered above the lines all throughout to feminine p.r.o.nouns, and the word "brother" to "sister," so that no difficulty might arise in reading it for either s.e.x. I was faint, benumbed, and with no heart for anything. I talked for about half-an-hour about what I considered to be the real meaning of the death of Christ, thinking that this was a subject which might prove as attractive as any other.
After the service the a.s.sembly of seventeen departed, save one thin elderly gentleman, who came into the vestry, and having made a slight bow, said: "Mr. Rutherford, will you come with me, if you please?" I accordingly followed him, almost in silence, through the village till we reached his house, where his wife, who had gone on before, received us. They had formerly kept the shop which the dealer now had, but had retired. They might both be about sixty-five, and were of about the same temperament, pale, thin, and ineffectual, as if they had been fed on gruel.
We had dinner in a large room with an old-fashioned grate in it, in which was stuck a basket stove. I remember perfectly well what we had for dinner. There was a neck of mutton (cold), potatoes, cabbage, a suet pudding, and some of the strangest-looking ale I ever saw--about the colour of lemon juice, but what it was really like I do not know, as I did not drink beer. I was somewhat surprised at being asked whether I would take potatoes OR cabbage, but thinking it was the custom of the country not to indulge in both at once, and remembering that I was on probation, I said "cabbage."
Very little was spoken during dinner-time by anybody, and scarcely a word by my hostess. After dinner she cleared the things away, and did not again appear. My host drew near the basket stove, and having remarked that it was beginning to rain, fell into a slumber. At twenty minutes to two we sallied out for the afternoon service, and found the seventeen again in their places, excepting the two labourers, who were probably prevented by the wet from attending.
The service was a repet.i.tion of that in the morning, and when I came down my host again came forward and presented me with nineteen shillings. The fee was a guinea, but from that two shillings were abated for my entertainment. He informed me at the same time that a farmer, who had been hearing me and who lived five miles on my road, would give me a lift. He was a very large, stout man, with a rosy countenance, which was somewhat of a relief after the gruel face of my former friend. We went round to a stable-yard, and I got into a four- wheeled chaise. His wife sat with him in front, and a biggish boy sat with me behind.
When we came to a guide-post which pointed down his lane, I got out, and was dismissed in the dark with the observation--uttered good- naturedly and jovially, but not very helpfully--that he was "afraid I should have a wettish walk." The walk certainly was wettish, and as I had had nothing to eat or drink since my midday meal, I was miserable and desponding. But just before I reached home the clouds rolled off with the south-west wind into detached, fleecy ma.s.ses, separated by liquid blue gulfs, in which were sowed the stars, and the effect upon me was what that sight, thank G.o.d, always has been--a sense of the infinite, extinguishing all mean cares.
I expected to hear no more from my Unitarian acquaintances, and was therefore greatly surprised when, a week after my visit, I received an invitation to "settle" amongst them. The usual month"s trial was thought unnecessary, as I was not altogether a stranger to some of them. I hardly knew what to do, I could not feel any enthusiasm at the prospect of the engagement, but, on the other hand, there was nothing else before me. There is no more helpless person in this world than a minister who is thrown out of work. At any rate, I should be doing no harm if I went.
I pondered over the matter a good deal, and then reflected that in a case where every opening is barred save one, it is our duty not to plunge at an impa.s.sable barrier, but to take that one opening, however unpromising it may be. Accordingly I accepted. My income was to be a hundred a year, and it was proposed that I should lodge with my friend the retired dealer, who had the only two rooms in the village which were available.
I went to bid Mardon and Mary good-bye. I had not seen either of them since the night of the song. To my surprise I found them both away.
The blinds were down and the door locked. A neighbour, who heard me knocking, came out and told me the news. Mardon had had a dispute with his employer, and had gone to London to look for work. Mary had gone to see a relative at some distance, and would remain there until her father had determined what was to be done.
I obtained the addresses of both of them, and wrote to Mardon, telling him what my destiny for the present was to be. To Mary I wrote also, and to her I offered my heart. Looking backward, I have sometimes wondered that I felt so little hesitation; not that I have ever doubted since, that what I did then was the one perfectly right thing which I have done in my life, but because it was my habit so to confuse myself with meditative indecision. I had doubted before. I remember once being so near engaging myself to a girl that the desk was open and the paper under my hand. But I held back, could not make up my mind, and happily was stayed. Had I not been restrained, I should for ever have been miserable. The remembrance of this escape, and the certain knowledge that of all beings whom I knew I was most likely to be mistaken in an emergency, always produced in me a torturing tendency to inaction. There was no such tendency now. I thought I chose Mary, but there was no choice. The feeblest steel filing which is drawn to a magnet, would think, if it had consciousness, that it went to the magnet of its own free will. My soul rushed to hers as if dragged by the force of a loadstone.
But she was not to be mine. I had a note from her, a sweet note, thanking me with much tenderness for my affectionate regard for her, but saying that her mind had long since been made up. She was an only child of a mother whom her father had loved above everything in life, and she could never leave him nor suffer any affection to interfere with that which she felt for him and which he felt for her. I might well misinterpret him, and think it strange that he should be so much bound up in her. Few people knew him as she did.
The shock to me at first was overpowering, and I fell under the influence of that horrible monomania from which I had been free for so long. For weeks I was prostrate, with no power of resistance; the evil being intensified by my solitude. Of all the dreadful trials which human nature has the capacity to bear unshattered, the worst--as, indeed, I have already said--is the fang of some monomaniacal idea which cannot be wrenched out. A main part of the misery, as I have also said, lies in the belief that suffering of this kind is peculiar to ourselves. We are afraid to speak of it, and not knowing, therefore, how common it is, we are distracted with the fear that it is our own special disease.
I managed to get through my duties, but how I cannot tell. Fortunately our calamities are not what they appear to be when they lie in perspective behind us or before us, for they actually consist of distinct moments, each of which is overcome by itself. I was helped by remembering my recovery before, and I was able now, as a reward of long-continued abstinence from wine, to lie much stiller, and wait with more patience till the cloud should lift.
Mardon having gone to London, I was more alone than ever, but my love for Mary increased in intensity, and had a good deal to do with my restoration to health. It was a hopeless love, but to be in love hopelessly is more akin to sanity than careless, melancholy indifference to the world. I was relieved from myself by the anchorage of all my thoughts elsewhere. The pain of loss was great, but the main curse of my existence has not been pain or loss, but gloom; blind wandering in a world of black fog, haunted by apparitions. I am not going to expand upon the history of my silent relationship to Mary during that time. How can I? All that I felt has been described better by others; and if it had not been, I have no mind to attempt a description myself, which would answer no purpose.
I continued to correspond with Mardon, but with Mary I interchanged no word. After her denial of me I should have dreaded the charge of selfishness if I had opened my lips again. I could not place myself in her affection before her father.
My work at the chapel was of the most lifeless kind. My people really consisted of five families--those of the retired dealer, the farmer who took me home the first day I preached, and a man who kept a shop in the village for the sale of all descriptions of goods, including ready-made clothing and provisions. He had a wife and one child.
Then there was a super-annuated bra.s.s-founder, who had a large house near, and who nominally was a Unitarian, having professed himself a Unitarian in the town in which he was formerly in business, where Unitarianism was flourishing. He had come down here to cultivate, for amus.e.m.e.nt, a few acres of ground, and play the squire at a cheap rate.
Released from active employment, he had given himself over to eating and drinking, particularly the drinking of port wine. His wife was dead, his sons were in business for themselves, and his daughters all went to church. His connection with the chapel was merely nominal, and I was very glad it was so. I was hardly ever brought into contact with him, except as trustee, and once I was asked to his house to dinner; but the attempt to make me feel my inferiority was so painful, and the rudeness of his children was so marked, that I never went again.
There was also a schoolmaster, who kept a low-priced boarding-school with a Unitarian connection. He lived, however, at such a distance that his visits were very unfrequent. Sometimes on a fine summer"s Sunday morning the boys would walk over--about twenty of them altogether, but this only happened perhaps half-a-dozen times in a year.
Although my congregation had a freethought lineage, I do not think that I ever had anything to do with a more petrified set. With one exception, they were meagre in the extreme. They were perfectly orthodox, except that they denied a few orthodox doctrines. Their method was as strict as that of the most rigid Calvinist. They plumed themselves, however, greatly on their intellectual superiority over the Wesleyans and Baptists round them; and so far as I could make out, the only topics they delighted in were demonstrations of the unity of G.o.d from texts in the Bible, and polemics against tri-theism. Sympathy with the great problems then beginning to agitate men they had none.
Socially they were cold, and the entertainment at their houses was pale and penurious. They never considered themselves bound to contribute a shilling to my support. There was an endowment of a hundred a year, and they were relieved from all further anxiety. They had no enthusiasm for their chapel, and came or stayed away on the Sunday just as it suited them, and without caring to a.s.sign any reason.
The one exception was the wife of the shopkeeper. She was a contrast to her husband and all the rest. I do not think she was a Unitarian born and bred. She talked but little about theology, but she was devoted to her Bible, and had a fine sense for all the pa.s.sages in it which had an experience in them. She was generous, spiritual, and possessed of an unswerving instinct for what was right. Oftentimes her prompt decisions were a scandal to her more sedate friends, who did not believe in any way of arriving at the truth except by rationalising, but she hardly ever failed to hit the mark. It was in questions of relationship between persons, of behaviour, and of morals, that her guidance was the surest. In such cases her force seemed to keep her straight, while the weakness of those around made it impossible for them not to wander, first on one side and then on the other. She was unflinching in her expressions, and at any sacrifice did her duty. It was her severity in obeying her conscience which not only gave authority to her admonitions, but was the source of her inspirations.
She was not much of a reader, but she read strange things. She had some old volumes of a magazine--a "Repository" of some kind; I have forgotten what--and she picked out from them some translations of German verses which she greatly admired. She was not a well educated woman in the school sense of the word, and of several of our greatest names in literature had heard nothing. I do not think she knew anything about Shakespeare, and she never entered into the meaning of dramatic poetry. At all points her path was her own, intersecting at every conceivable angle the paths of her acquaintances, and never straying along them except just so far as they might happen to be hers.
While I was in the village an event happened which caused much commotion. Her son was serving in the shop, and there was in the house at the time a nice-looking, clean servant-girl. Mrs. Lane, for that was my friend"s name, had meditated discharging her, for, with her usual quickness, she thought she saw something in the behaviour of her son to the girl which was peculiar. One morning, however, both her son and the girl were absent, and there was a letter upon the table announcing that they were in a town about twenty miles off and were married.
The shock was great, and a tumult of voices arose, confusing counsel.
Mrs. Lane said but little, but never wavered an instant. Leaving her husband to "consider what was best to be done," she got out the gig, drove herself over to her son"s lodging, and presented herself to her amazed daughter-in-law, who fell upon her knees and prayed for pity.
"My dear," said Mrs. Lane, "get up this instant; you are my daughter.
Not another word. I"ve come to see what you want." And she kissed her tenderly. The girl was at heart a good girl. She was so bound to her late mistress and her new mother by this behaviour, that the very depth in her opened, and she loved Mrs. Lane ever afterwards with almost religious fervour. She was taught a little up to her son"s level, and a happier marriage I never knew. Mrs. Lane told me what she had done, but she had no theory about it. She merely said she knew it to be the right thing to do.
She was very fond of getting up early in the morning and going out, and in such a village this was an eccentricity bordering almost on lunacy.
At five o"clock she was often wandering about her garden. She was a great lover of order in the house, and kept it well under control, but I do not think I ever surprised her when she was so busy that she would not easily, and without any apparent sacrifice, leave what she was doing to come and talk with me.
As I have said, the world of books in which I lived was almost altogether shut to her, but yet she was the only person in the village whose conversation was lifted out of the petty and personal into the region of the universal. I have been thus particular in describing her--I fear without raising any image of her--because she was of incalculable service to me. I languished from lack of life, and her mere presence, so exuberant in its full vivacity, was like mountain air. Furthermore, she was not troubled much with my philosophical difficulties. They had not come in her path. Her world was the world of men and women--more particularly of those she knew--and it was a world in which it did me good to dwell. She was all the more important to me, because outside our own little circle there was no society whatever. The Church and the other Dissenting bodies considered us non-Christian.
I often wondered that Mr. Lane retained his business, and, indeed, he would have lost it if he had not established a reputation for honesty, which drew customers to him, who, notwithstanding the denunciations of the parson, preferred tea with some taste in it from a Unitarian to the insipid wood-flavoured stuff which was sold by the grocer who believed in the Trinity.
CHAPTER VIII--PROGRESS IN EMANc.i.p.aTION
I was with my Unitarian congregation for about a twelvemonth. My life during that time, save so far as my intercourse with Mrs. Lane, and one other friend presently to be mentioned, was concerned, was as sunless and joyless as it had ever been. Imagine me living by myself, roaming about the fields, and absorbed mostly upon insoluble problems with which I never made any progress, and which tended to draw me away from what enjoyment of life there was which I might have had.
One day I was walking along under the south side of a hill, which was a great place for b.u.t.terflies, and I saw a man, apparently about fifty years old, coming along with a b.u.t.terfly-net. He did not see me, for he looked about for a convenient piece of turf, and presently sat down, taking out a sandwich-box, from which he produced his lunch. His occupation did not particularly attract me, but in those days, if I encountered a new person who was not repulsive, I was always as eager to make his acquaintance as if he perchance might solve a secret for me, the answer to which I burned to know. I have been disappointed so many times, and have found that n.o.body has much more to tell me, that my curiosity has somewhat abated, but even now, the news that anybody who has the reputation for intelligence has come near me, makes me restless to see him. I accordingly saluted the b.u.t.terfly-catcher, who returned the salutation kindly, and we began to talk.
He told me that he had come seven miles that morning to that spot because he knew that it was haunted by one particular species of b.u.t.terfly which he wished to get; and as it was a still, bright day, he hoped to find a specimen. He had been unsuccessful for some years.
Presupposing that I knew all about his science, he began to discourse upon it with great freedom, and he ended by saying that he would be happy to show me his collection, which was one of the finest in the country.
"But I forget," said he, "as I always forget in such cases, perhaps you don"t care for b.u.t.terflies."
"I take much interest in them. I admire exceedingly the beauty of their colours."
"Ah, yes, but you don"t care for them scientifically, or for collecting them."
"No, not particularly. I cannot say I ever saw much pleasure in the mere cla.s.sification of insects."
"Perhaps you are devoted to some other science?"
"No, I am not."
"Well, I daresay it looks absurd for a man at my years to be running after a moth. I used to think it was absurd, but I am wiser now.
However, I cannot stop to talk; I shall lose the sunshine. The first time you are anywhere near me, come and have a look. You will alter your opinion."