St. Winifred's Part 24

Ungracious as the speech may seem, it cannot be wondered at. A single muddy road runs through Fuzby. Except along this road--muddy and rutty in winter, dusty and rutty in summer--no walk is to be had. The fields are all more or less impa.s.sable with ditches and bogs. Kenrick had christened it "The Dreary Swamp." Nothing in the shape of a view is to be found anywhere, and barely a single flower will deign to grow. The air is unhealthy with moisture, and the only element to be had there in perfection is earth.

All this, Kenrick's father--who had been curate of the village--had fancied would be at least endurable to any man upheld by a strong sense of duty. So when he had married, and had received the gift of a house in the village, he took thither his young and beautiful bride, intending there to live and work until something better could be obtained. He was right. Over the mere disadvantages of situation he might easily have triumphed, and he might have secured there, under different circ.u.mstances, a fair share of happiness, which lies in ourselves and not in the localities in which we live. But in making his calculation he had always a.s.sumed that it would be easy to get on with the inhabitants of Fuzby; and here lay his mistake.

The Vicar of Fuzby, a non-resident pluralist, only appeared at rare intervals to receive the adoration which his flock never refused to any one who was wealthy. His curate, having a very slender income, came in for no share at all of this respect. On the contrary, the whole population a.s.sumed a right to patronise him, to interfere with him, to annoy and to thwart him. There was at Fuzby one squire--a rich farmer, coa.r.s.e, ignorant, and brutal. This man, being the richest person in the parish, generally carried everything in his own way, and among other attempts to imitate the absurdities of his superiors, had ordered the s.e.xton never to cease ringing the church-bell, however late, until he and his family had taken their seats. A very few Sundays after Mr Kenrick's arrival the bell was still ringing eight minutes after the time for morning service, and sending to desire the s.e.xton to leave off, he received the message that--

"Mr Hugginson hadn't come yet."

"I will not have the congregation kept waiting for Mr Hugginson or any one else," said the curate.

"O zurr, the zervus haint begun afore Muster Hugginson has come in this ten year."

"Then the sooner Mr Hugginson is made to understand that the hours of service are not to be altered at his convenience the better. Let the bell cease immediately."

But the s.e.xton, a dogged, bovine, bullet-headed labourer, took no notice whatever of this injunction, and although Mr Kenrick went into the reading-desk, continued l.u.s.tily to ring the bell until the whole Hugginson family, furious that their dignity should thus be insulted, sailed into church at the beginning of the psalms.

Next morning Mr Kenrick turned the s.e.xton out of his place, and received a most wrathful visit from Mr Hugginson, who, after pouring on him a torrent of the most disgusting abuse, got scarlet in the forehead, shook his stick in Mr Kenrick's face, flung his poverty in his teeth, and left the cottage, vowing eternal vengeance.

With him went all the Fuzby population. It would be long to tell the various little causes which led to Mr Kenrick's unpopularity among them. Every clergyman similarly circ.u.mstanced may conjecture these for himself; they resolved themselves mainly into the fact that Mr Kenrick was abler, wiser, purer, better, more Christian, than they. His thoughts were not theirs, nor his ways their ways.

"He had a daily beauty in his life That made them ugly."

And so, to pa.s.s briefly and lightly, over an unpleasant subject, Fuzby was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with the concentrated meanness of petty malignant natures, united in the one sole object of snubbing and worrying the unhappy curate. To live among them was like living in a cloud of poisonous flies. If Dante had known Fuzby-le-Mud, he could have found for a really generous and n.o.ble spirit no more detestable or unendurable inferno than this muddy English village.

The chief characteristic of Fuzby was a pestilential spirit of gossip.

There was no lying scandal, there was no malicious whisper, that did not thrive with rank luxuriance in that mean atmosphere, which, at the same time, starved up every great and high-minded wish. There was no circ.u.mstance so minute that calumny could not insert into it a venomous claw. Mr Kenrick was one of the most exemplary, generous, and pure-minded of men; his only fault was quickness of temper. His n.o.ble character, his conciliatory manners, his cultivated mind, his Christian forbearance, were all in vain. He was poor, and he could not be a toady: these were two unpardonable sins; and he, a true man, moved like an angel among a set of inferior beings. For a time he struggled on.

He tried not to mind the lies they told of him. What was it to him, for instance, if they took advantage of his hasty language to declare that he was in the constant habit of swearing, when he knew that even from boyhood no oath had ever crossed his lips? What was it to him that these uneducated boors, in their feeble ignorance, tried constantly to entrap him into something which they called unorthodox, and to twist his words into the semblance of fancied heresy? It was more painful to him that they opposed and vilified every one whom he helped, and whose interests, in pity, he endeavoured to forward. But still he bore on, he struggled on, till the _denouement_ came. It is not worth while entering into the various schemes invented for his annoyance, but at last an unfortunate, although purely accidental, discrepancy was detected in the accounts of one of the parish charities which Mr Kenrick officially managed. Mr Hugginson seized his long-looked-for opportunity: he went round the parish, and got a large number of his creatures among the congregation to affirm by their signatures that Mr Kenrick had behaved dishonestly. This memorial he sent to the bishop, and disseminated among all the clergy with malicious a.s.siduity. At the next clerical meeting Mr Kenrick found himself most coldly received.

Compelled in self-defence to take legal proceedings against the squire, he found himself involved in heavy expenses. He won his cause, and his character was cleared; but the jury, attending only to the technicalities of the case, and conceiving that there was enough _prima facie_ evidence to justify Mr Hugginson's proceedings, left each side to pay their own costs. These costs swallowed up the whole of the poor curate's private resources, and also involved him in debt. The agony, the suspense, the shame, the cruel sense of oppression and injustice, bore with a crushing weight on his weakened health. He could not tolerate that the merest breath of suspicion, however false, should pa.s.s over his fair and honourable name. He pined away over the atrocious calumny; it poisoned for him the very life-springs of happiness, and destroyed his peace of mind for ever. This young man, in the flower of youth--a man who might have been a leader and teacher of men--a man of gracious presence and high power--died of a broken heart. He died of a broken heart, and all Fuzby built his conspicuous tomb, and shed crocodile tears over his pious memory. Truly, as some one has said, very black stains lie here and there athwart the white conventionalities of common life!

This had happened when our little Kenrick was eight years old; he never forgot the spectacle of his poor father's heartbreaking misery during the last year of his life. He never forgot how, during that year, sorrow and anxiety had aged his father's face, and silvered his hair, young as he was, with premature white, and so quenched his spirits, that often he would take his little boy on his knee, and look upon him so long in silence, that the child cried at the intensity of that long, mournful, hopeless gaze, and at the tears which he saw slowly coursing each other down his father's careworn and furrowed cheeks. Ever since then the boy had walked among the Fuzby people with open scorn and defiance, as among those whose slanders had done to death the father whom he so proudly loved. In spite of his mother's wishes, he would not stoop to pay them even the semblance of courtesy. No wonder that he hated Fuzby with a perfect hatred, and that his home there was a miserable home.

Yet, if any one _could_ have made happy a home in such a place, it would have been Mrs Kenrick. Never, I think, did a purer, a fairer, a sweeter soul live on earth, or one more like the angels of heaven. The winning grace of her manners, the simple sweetness of her address, the pathetic beauty and sadness of her face, would have won for her, and _had_ won for her, in any other place but Fuzby, the love and admiration which were her due.

"She had a mind that envy could not but call fair."

But at Fuzby, from the dominant faction of Hugginson, and the small vulgar-minded sets who always tried to brow-beat those who were poor, particularly if their birth and breeding were gentle, she found nothing but insulting coldness, or still more insulting patronage. When first she heard the marriage-bells clang out from the old church tower of her home, and had walked by the side of her young husband, a glad and lovely bride, she had looked forward to many happy years. With _him_, at any rate, it seemed that no place could be very miserable. Poor lady! her life had been one long martyrdom, all the more hard to bear because it was made up for the most part of small annoyances, petty mortifications, little recurring incessant bitternesses. And now, during the seven years of her widowhood, she had gained a calmer and serener atmosphere, in which she was raised above the _possibility_ of humiliation from the dwarfed natures and malicious hearts in the midst of which she lived.

They could hurt her feelings, they could embitter her days no longer.

To the hopes and pleasures of earth she had bidden farewell. Still young, still beautiful, she had reached the full maturity of Christian life, meekly bearing the load of scorn, and disappointment, and poverty, looking only for that rest which remaineth to the people of G.o.d. In her lonely home, with no friend at Fuzby to whom she could turn for counsel or for consolation, shut up with the sorrows of her own lonely heart, she often mused at the slight sources, the _little sins_ of others, from which her misery had sprung; she marvelled at the mystery that man should be to man "the sorest, surest ill." Truly, it _is_ a strange thought! O! it is pitiable that, as though death, and want, and sin were not enough, we too must add to the sum of human miseries by despising, by neglecting, by injuring others. We wound by our harsh words, we dishonour by our coa.r.s.e judgments, we grieve by our untender pride, the souls for whom Christ died; and we wound most deeply, and grieve most irreparably, the n.o.blest and the best.

The one tie that bound her to earth was her orphan son--her hope, her pride; all her affections were centred in that beautiful boy. Now, if I were writing a romance, I should of course represent that yearning mother's affection as reciprocated with all the warmth and pa.s.sion of the boy's heart. But it was not so. Harry Kenrick did indeed love his mother; he would have borne anything rather than see her suffer any great pain; but his manners were too often cold, his conduct wilful or thoughtless. He did not love her--perhaps no child can love his parents--with all the _abandon_ and intensity wherewith she loved him.

The fact is, a blight lay upon Kenrick whenever he was at home--the Fuzby blight he called it. He hated the place so much, he hated the people in it so much, he felt the annoyances of their situation with so keen and fretful a sensibility, that at Fuzby, even though with his mother, he was never happy. Even her society could not make up to him for the detestation with which he not unnaturally regarded the village and its inhabitants. At school he was bright, warm-hearted, and full of life; at home he seemed to draw himself into a sh.e.l.l of reserve and coldness; and it was a deep unspoken trial to that gentle mother's heart that she could not make home happy to the boy whom she so fondly loved, and that even to her he seemed indifferent; for his manners--since he had been to school and learned how very differently other boys were circ.u.mstanced, and what untold pleasures centred for them in that word "home"--were to her always shy and silent, appeared sometimes almost harsh.

I wish I could represent it otherwise; but things are not often truly represented in books; and is not this a very common as well as a very tragic case? Not even in her son could Mrs Kenrick look for happiness; even his society brought with it trials almost as hard to bear as those which his absence caused. Yet no mother could have brought up her child more wisely, more tenderly, with more undivided and devoted care.

Harry's _heart_ was true could she have looked into it; but at Fuzby a cold, repellent manner fell on him like a mildew. And Mrs Kenrick wept in silence, as she thought--though it was not true--that even her own son did not love her, or at least did not love her as she had hoped he would. It was the last bitter drop in that overflowing cup which it had pleased G.o.d that she should be called upon to drink.

The boys drove up to the door of the little cottage. It stood in a garden, but as the garden was overlooked by Fuzbeians on all sides, it offered few attractions, and was otherwise very small and plain. They were greeted by Mrs Kenrick's soft and pleasant voice.

"Well, dear Harry, I am delighted that you have brought back your friend."

Harry's mind was pre-occupied with the poverty-stricken aspect which he thought the house must present to his friend, and he did not answer her, but said to Walter--

"Well, Walter, here is the hut we inhabit. We have only one girl, as servant. I'll carry up the box. I do pretty nearly everything but clean the shoes."

Mrs Kenrick's eyes filled with sad tears at the bitter words; but she checked them to greet Walter, who advanced and shook her by the hand so cordially, and with a manner so respectfully affectionate, that he won her heart at once.

"Harry has not yet learned," she said playfully, "that poverty is not a thing to be ashamed of; but I am sure, Walter--forgive my using the name which my boy has made so familiar to me--that you will not mind any little inconveniences during your short stay with us."

"Oh, no, Mrs Kenrick," said Walter; "to be with you and him will be the greatest possible enjoyment."

"I wish you wouldn't flap our poverty in every one's face, mother," said Kenrick, almost angrily, when Walter had barely left the room.

"O Harry, Harry," said Mrs Kenrick, speaking sadly, "you surely forget, dear boy, that it is your mother to whom you are speaking. And was it I who mentioned our poverty first? O Harry, when will you learn to be contented with the dispensations of G.o.d? Believe me, dearest, we might make our poverty as happy as any wealth, if we would but have eyes to see the blessings it involves." The boy turned away impatiently, and as he ran upstairs to rejoin his friend, the lady sat down with a deep sigh to her work. It was long ere Kenrick learnt how much his conduct was to blame; but long after, when his mother was dead, he was reminded painfully of this scene, when he accidentally found in her handwriting this extract from one of her favourite authors--

"It has been reserved for this age to perceive the blessedness of another kind of poverty; not voluntary nor proud, but accepted and submissive; not clear-sighted nor triumphant, but subdued and patient; partly patient in tenderness--of G.o.d's will; partly patient in blindness--of man's oppression; too laborious to be thoughtful, too innocent to be conscious; too much experienced in sorrow to be hopeful-- waiting in its peaceful darkness for the unconceived dawn; yet not without its sweet, complete, untainted happiness, like intermittent notes of birds before the daybreak, or the first gleams of heaven's amber on the eastern grey. Such poverty as this it has been reserved for this age of ours to honour while it afflicted; it is reserved for the age to come to honour it and to spare."

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER.

What, man! I know them, yea, And what they weigh even to the utmost scruple; Scrambling, out-facing, fashion-monging boys, That lie, and cog, and flout, deprave, and slander.

Much Ado about Nothing, act 5, scene 1.

Walter could not help hearing a part of this conversation, and he was pained and surprised that Kenrick, whom he had regarded as so fine a character, should show his worst side at home, and should speak and act thus unkindly to one whom he was so deeply bound to love and reverence.

And he was even more surprised when he went downstairs again and looked on the calm face of his friend's mother, so lovely, so gentle, so resigned, and felt the charm of manners which, in their natural grace and sweetness, might have shed l.u.s.tre on a court. All that he could himself do was to show by his own manner to Mrs Kenrick the affection and respect with which he regarded her. When he hinted to Kenrick, as delicately and distantly as he could, that he thought his manner to his mother rather brusque, Kenrick reddened rather angrily, but only replied, "Ah, it's all very well for you to talk; but you don't live at Fuzby."

"Yet I've enjoyed my visit very much, Ken; you can't think how much I love your mother."

"Thank you, Walter, for saying so. But how would you like to _live always_ at such a place?"

"If I did I should do my best to make it happy."

"Make it _happy_!" said Kenrick; and as he turned away he muttered something about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Soon after he told Walter some of those circ.u.mstances about his father's life which we have recently related. When the three days were over the boys started for Saint Winifred's. They drove to the station in the pony-chaise before described, accompanied, against Kenrick's will, by his mother.

She bore up bravely as she bade them good-bye, knowing the undemonstrative character of boys, and seeing that they were both in the merriest mood. She knew, too, that their gaiety was natural: the world lay before _them_, bright and seductive as yet, with no shadow across its light; nor was she all in all to Harry as he was to her. He had other hopes, and another home, and other ties; and remembering this she tried not to grieve that he should leave her with so light a heart. But as she turned away from the platform when the train had started, taking with it all that she held dearest in the world, and as she walked back to the lonely home which had nothing but faith--for there was not even hope--to brighten it, the quiet tears flowed fast over the fair face beneath her veil. Yet as she crossed over her lonely threshold her thoughts were not even then for herself, but they carried her on the wings of prayer to the throne of mercy for the beloved boy from whom she was again to be separated for nearly five long months.

The widowed mother wept; but the boy's spirits rose as he drew closer to the hills and to the sea, which told him that Saint Winifred's was near.

He talked happily with Walter about the coming half--eager with ambition, with hope, with high spirits, and fine resolutions. He clapped his hands with pleasure when they reached the top of Bardlyn Hill and caught sight of the school buildings.

Having had a long distance to travel they were among the late arrivals, and at the great gate stood Henderson and Power ready to greet them and the other boys who came with them in the same coach. Among these were Eden and Bliss.

"Ah, Eden," said Henderson, "I've been writing a poem about you--

"I'm a shrimp, I'm a shrimp of diminutive size, Inspect my antennae and look at my eyes; Quick, quick, feel me quick, for cannot you see I'm a shrimp, I'm a shrimp, to be eaten with tea?"

"And who's this?--why," he said clasping his hands and throwing up his eyes in mock rapture, "this indeed is Bliss!"

"I'll lick you, Flip," said Bliss, only in a more good-humoured tone than usual, as he hit at him.