Rachel Ray Part 34

Sooner than be invaded and mutilated he would have submitted to an order calling upon him to find a third curate,--could any power have given such order. His parish had been invaded and his clerical authority mutilated. He was no longer _totus teres atque rotundus_.

The beauty of his life was over, and the contentment of his mind was gone. He knew that it was only left for him to die, spending such days as remained to him in vague prophecies of evil against his devoted country,--a country which had allowed its ancient parochial landmarks to be moved, and its ecclesiastical fastnesses to be invaded!

But perhaps hatred of Mr. p.r.o.ng was the strongest pa.s.sion of Dr.

Harford's heart at the present moment. He had ever hated the dissenting ministers by whom he was surrounded. In Devons.h.i.+re dissent has waxed strong for many years, and the pastors of the dissenting flocks have been thorns in the side of the Church of England clergymen. Dr. Harford had undergone his full share of suffering from such thorns. But they had caused him no more than a pleasant irritation in comparison with what he endured from the presence of Mr. p.r.o.ng in Baslehurst. He would sooner have entertained all the dissenting ministers of the South Hams together than have put his legs under the same mahogany with Mr. p.r.o.ng. Mr. p.r.o.ng was to him the evil thing! Anathema! He believed all bad things of Mr. p.r.o.ng with an absolute faith, but without any ground on which such faith should have been formed. He thought that Mr. p.r.o.ng drank spirits; that he robbed his paris.h.i.+oners;--Dr. Harford would sooner have lost his tongue than have used such a word with reference to those who attended Mr. p.r.o.ng's chapel;--that he had left a deserted wife on some parish; that he was probably not in truth ordained. There was nothing which Dr. Harford could not believe of Mr. p.r.o.ng. Now all this was, to say the least of it, a pity, for it disfigured the close of a useful and conscientious life.

Dr. Harford of course intended to vote for Mr. Cornbury, but he would not join loudly in condemnation of Mr. Tappitt. Tappitt had stood stanchly by him in all parochial contests regarding the new district. Tappitt opposed the p.r.o.ng faction at all points. Tappitt as churchwarden had been submissive to the doctor. Church of England principles had always been held at the brewery, and Bungall had been ever in favour with Dr. Harford's predecessor.

"He calls himself a Liberal, and always has done," said the doctor.

"You can't expect that he should desert his own party."

"But a Jew!" said old Mr. Comfort.

"Well; why not a Jew?" said the doctor. Whereupon Mr. Comfort, and Butler Cornbury, and Dr. Harford's own curate, young Mr. Calclough, and Captain Byng, an old bachelor, who lived in Baslehurst, all stared at him; as Dr. Harford had intended that they should. "Upon my word," said he, "I don't see the use for caring for that kind of thing any longer; I don't indeed. In the way we are going on now, and for the sort of thing we do, I don't see why Jews shouldn't serve us as well in Parliament as Christians. If I am to have my brains knocked out, I'd sooner have it done by a declared enemy than by one who calls himself my friend."

"But our brains are not knocked out yet," said Butler Cornbury.

"I don't know anything about yours, but mine are."

"I don't think the world's coming to an end yet," said the captain.

"Nor do I. I said nothing about the world coming to an end. But if you saw a part of your s.h.i.+p put under the command of a landlubber, who didn't know one side of the vessel from the other, you'd think the world had better come to an end than be carried on in that way."

"It's not the same thing, you know," said the captain. "You couldn't divide a s.h.i.+p."

"Oh, well; you'll see."

"I don't think any Christian should vote for a Jew," said the curate.

"A verdict has gone out against them, and what is man that he should reverse it?"

"Are you quite sure that you are reversing it by putting them into Parliament?" said Dr. Harford. "May not that be a carrying on of the curse?"

"There's consolation in that idea for Butler if he loses his election," said Mr. Comfort.

"Parliament isn't what it was," said the doctor. "There's no doubt about that."

"And who is to blame?" said Mr. Comfort, who had never supported the Reform Bill as his neighbour had done.

"I say nothing about blame. It's natural that things should get worse as they grow older."

"Dr. Harford thinks Parliament is worn out," said Butler Cornbury.

"And what if I do think so? Have not other things as great fallen and gone into decay? Did not the Roman senate wear out, as you call it? And as for these Jews, of whom you are speaking, what was the curse upon them but the wearing out of their grace and wisdom? I am inclined to think that we are wearing out; only I wish the garment could have lasted my time without showing so many thin places."

"Now I believe just the contrary," said the captain. "I don't think we have come to our full growth yet."

"Could we lick the French as we did at Trafalgar and Waterloo?" said the doctor.

The captain thought a while before he answered, and then spoke with much solemnity. "Yes," said he, "I think we could. And I hope the time will soon come when we may."

"We shan't do it if we send Jews to Parliament," said Mr. Comfort.

"I must say I think Tappitt wrong," said young Cornbury. "Of course, near as the thing is going, I'm sorry to lose his vote; but I'm not speaking because of that. He has always pretended to hold on to the Church party here, and the Church party has held on to him. His beer is none of the best, and I think he'd have been wise to stick to his old friends."

"I don't see the argument about the beer," said the doctor.

"He shouldn't provoke his neighbours to look at his faults."

"But the Jew's friends would find out that the beer is bad as well as yours."

"The truth is," said Cornbury, "that Tappitt thinks he has a personal grievance against me. He's as cross as a bear with a sore head at the present moment, because this young fellow who was to have been his partner has turned against him. There's some love affair, and my wife has been there and made a mess of it. It's hard upon me, for I don't know that I ever saw the young man in my life."

"I believe that fellow is a scamp," said the doctor.

"I hope not," said Mr. Comfort, thinking of Rachel and her hopes.

"We all hope he isn't, of course," said the doctor. "But we can't prevent men being scamps by hoping. There are other scamps in this town in whom, if my hoping would do any good, a very great change would be made."--Everybody present knew that the doctor alluded especially to Mr. p.r.o.ng, whose condition, however, if the doctor's hopes could have been carried out, would not have been enviable.--"But I fear this fellow Rowan is a scamp, and I think he has treated Tappitt badly. Tappitt told me all about it only this morning."

"Audi alteram partem," said Mr. Comfort.

"The scamp's party you mean," said the doctor. "I haven't the means of doing that. If in this world we suspend our judgment till we've heard all that can be said on both sides of every question, we should never come to any judgment at all. I hear that he's in debt; I believe he behaved very badly to Tappitt himself, so that Tappitt was forced to use personal violence to defend himself; and he has certainly threatened to open a new brewery here. Now that's bad, as coming from a young man related to the old firm."

"I think he should leave the brewery alone," said Mr. Comfort.

"Of course he should," said the doctor. "And I hear, moreover, that he is playing a wicked game with a girl in your parish."

"I don't know about a wicked game," said the other. "It won't be a wicked game if he marries her."

Then Rachel's chances of matrimonial success were discussed with a degree of vigour which must have been felt by her to be highly complimentary, had she been aware of it. But I grieve to say that public opinion, as expressed in Dr. Harford's dining-room, went against Luke Rowan. Mr. Tappitt was not a great man, either as a citizen or as a brewer: he was not one to whom Baslehurst would even rejoice to raise a monument; but such as he was he had been known for many years. No one in that room loved or felt for him anything like real friends.h.i.+p; but the old familiarity of the place was in his favour, and his form was known of old upon the High Street. He was not a drunkard, he lived becomingly with his wife, he had paid his way, and was a fellow-townsman. What was it to Dr. Harford, or even to Mr. Comfort, that he brewed bad beer? No man was compelled to drink it. Why should not a man employ himself, openly and legitimately, in the brewing of bad beer, if the demand for bad beer were so great as to enable him to live by the occupation? On the other hand, Luke Rowan was personally known to none of them; and they were jealous that a change should come among them with any view of teaching them a lesson or improving their condition. They believed, or thought they believed, that Mr. Tappitt had been ill-treated in his counting-house. It was grievous to them that a man with a wife and three daughters should have been threatened by a young unmarried man,--by a man whose shoulders were laden with no family burden.

Whether Rowan's propositions had been in truth good or evil, just or unjust, they had not inquired, and would not probably have ascertained had they done so. But they judged the man and condemned him. Mr. Comfort was brought round to condemn him as thoroughly as did Dr. Harford,--not reflecting, as he did so, how fatal his condemnation might be to the happiness of poor Rachel Ray.

"The fact is, Butler," said the doctor, when Mr. Comfort had left them, and gone to the drawing-room;--"the fact is, your wife has not played her cards at the brewery as well as she usually does play them. She has been taking this young fellow's part; and after that I don't know how she was to expect that Tappitt would stand by you."

"No general can succeed always," said Cornbury, laughing.

"Well; some generals do. But I must confess your wife is generally very successful. Come; we'll go up-stairs; and don't you tell her that I've been finding fault. She's as good as gold, and I can't afford to quarrel with her; but I think she has tripped here."

When the old doctor and Butler Cornbury reached the drawing-room the names of Rowan and Tappitt had not been as yet banished from the conversation; but to them had been added some others. Rachel's name had been again mentioned, as had also that of Rachel's sister.

"Papa, who do you think is going to be married?" said Miss Harford.

"Not you, my dear, is it?" said the doctor.

"Mr. p.r.o.ng is going to be married to Mrs. Prime," said Miss Harford, showing by the solemnity of her voice that she regarded the subject as one which should by its nature repress any further joke.

Nor was Dr. Harford inclined to joke when he heard such tidings as these. "Mr. p.r.o.ng!" said he. "Nonsense; who told you?"

"Well, it was Baker told me." Mrs. Baker was the housekeeper at the Baslehurst rectory, and had been so for the last thirty years. "She learned it at Drabbit's in the High Street, where Mrs. Prime had been living since she left her mother's cottage."

"If that's true, Comfort," said the doctor, "I congratulate you on your paris.h.i.+oner."