Two Years Ago, Volume I. Charles Kingsley
shall be very sorry; but if she will persist in going to the chapel, I cannot overlook the sin of schism."
"She takes the children to church twice a Sunday, don't she? And teaches them all that you tell her—"
"Why—yes—I have taken the religious instruction almost into my own hands now."
Willis smiled quietly.
"You'll excuse an old sailor, sir; but I think that's more than mortal man can do. There's no hour of the day but what she's teaching them something. She's telling them Bible stories now, I'll warrant, if you could hear her."
Frank made no answer.
"You wouldn't stop her doing that? Oh, sir," and the old man spoke with a quiet earnestness which was not without its effect, "just look at her now, like the Good Shepherd with His lambs about His feet, and think whether that's not much too pretty a sight to put an end to, in a poor sinful world like this."
"It is my duty," said Frank, hardening himself. "It pains me exceedingly, Willis;—I hope I need not tell you that."
"If I know aught of Mr. Headley's heart by his ways, you needn't indeed, sir."
"But I cannot allow it.—Her mother a class leader among these Dissenters, and one of the most active of them, too.—The school next door to her house. The preacher, of course, has influence there, and must have. How am I to instil Church principles into them, if he is counteracting me the moment my back is turned? I have made up my mind, Willis, to do nothing in a hurry. Lady-day is past, and she must go on till Midsummer; then I shall take the school into my own hands, and teach them myself, for I can pay no mistress or master; and Mr. St. Just—"
Frank checked himself as he was going to speak the truth; namely, that his sleepy old absentee rector, Lord Scoutbush's uncle, would yawn and grumble at the move, and wondering why Frank "had not the sense to leave ill alone," would give him no manner of assistance beyond his pittance of eighty pounds a-year, and five pounds at Christmas to spend on the poor.
"Excuse me, sir, I don't doubt that you'll do your best in teaching, as you always do: but I tell you honestly, you'll get no children to teach."
"No children?"
"Their mothers know the worth of Grace too well, and the children too, sir; and they'll go to her all the same, do what you will; and never a one will enter the church door from that day forth."
"On their own heads be it!" said Frank, a little testily; "but I should not have fancied Miss Harvey the sort of person to set up herself in defiance of me."
"The more reason, sir, if you'll forgive me, for your not putting upon her."
"I do not want to put upon her or any one. I will do everything. I will—I do—work day and night for these people, Mr. Willis. I tell you, as I would my own father. I don't think I have another object on earth—if I have, I hope I shall forget it—than the parish: but Church principles I must carry out."
"Well, sir, certainly no man ever worked here as you do. If all had been like you, sir, there would not be a Dissenter here now; but excuse me, sir, the Church is a very good thing, and I keep to mine, having served under her Majesty, and her Majesty's forefathers, and learnt to obey orders, I hope; but don't you think, sir, you're taking it as the Pharisees took the Sabbath-day?"
"How then!"
"Why, as if man was made for the Church, and not the Church for man."
"That is a shrewd thought, at least. Where did you pick it up?"
"'Tis none of my own, sir; a bit of wisdom that my maid let fall; and it has stuck to me strangely ever since."
"Your maid?"
"Yes, Grace there. I always call her my maid; having no father, poor thing, she looks up to me as one, pretty much,—the dear soul. Oh, sir! I hope you'll think over this again, before you do anything. It's done in a day: but years won't undo it again."
So Grace's sayings were quoted against him. Her power was formidable enough, if she dare use it. He was silent awhile, and then—
"Do you think she has heard of this—of my—"
"Honesty's the best policy, sir: she has; and that's the truth. You know how things get round."
"Well; and what did she say?"
"I'll tell you her very words, sir; and they were these, if you'll excuse me. 'Poor dear gentleman,' says she, 'if he thinks chapel-going so wrong, why does he dare drive folks to chapel? I wonder, every time he looks at that deep sea, he don't remember what the Lord said about it, and those who cause his little ones to offend.'"
Frank was somewhat awed. The thought was new; the application of the text, as his own scholarship taught him, even more exact than Grace had fancied.
"Then she was not angry?"
"She, sir! You couldn't anger her if you tore her in pieces with hot pincers, as they did those old martyrs she's always telling about."
"Good-bye, Willis," said Frank, in a hopeless tone of voice, and sauntered to the pier-end, down the steps, and along the lower pier-way, burdened with many thoughts. He came up to the knot of chatting sailors. Not one of them touched his cap, or moved out of the way for him. The boat lay almost across the whole pier-way; and he stopped, awkwardly enough, for there was not room to get by.
"Will you be so kind as to let me pass?" asked he, meekly enough. But no one stirred.
"Why don't you get up, Tom?" asked one.
"I be lame."
"So be I."
"The gentleman can step over me, if he likes," said big Jan; a proposition the impossibility whereof raised a horse-laugh.
"Ain't you ashamed of yourselves, lads?" said the severe voice of Willis, from above. The men rose sulkily; and Frank hastened on, as ready to cry as ever he had been in his life. Poor fellow! he had been labouring among these people for now twelve months, as no man had ever laboured before, and he felt that he had not won the confidence of a single human being,—not even of the old women, who took his teaching for the sake of his charity, and who scented popery, all the while, in words in which there was no popery, and in doctrines which were just the same, on the whole, as those of the dissenting preacher, simply because he would sprinkle among them certain words and phrases which had become "suspect," as party badges. His church was all but empty; the general excuse was, that it was a mile from the town: but Frank knew that that was not the true reason; that all the parish had got it into their heads that he had a leaning to popery; that he was going over to Rome; that he was probably a Jesuit in disguise.
Now, be it always remembered, Frank Headley was a good man, in every sense of the word. He had nothing, save the outside, in common with those undesirable coxcombs, who have not been bred by the High Church movement, but have taken refuge in its cracks, as they would have done forty years ago in those of the Evangelical,—youths who hide their crass ignorance and dulness under the cloak of Church infallibility, and having neither wit, manners, learning, humanity, or any other dignity whereon to stand, talk loud, pour pis aller, about the dignity of the priesthood. Such men Frank had met at neighbouring clerical meetings, overbearing and out-talking the elder and the wiser members; and finding that he got no good from them, had withdrawn into his parish-work, to eat his own heart, like Bellerophon of old. For Frank was a gentleman and a Christian, if ever one there was. Delicate in person, all but consumptive; graceful and refined in all his works and ways; a scholar, elegant rather than deep, yet a scholar still; full of all love for painting, architecture, and poetry, he had come down to bury himself in this remote curacy, in the honest desire of doing good. He had been a curate in a fashionable London Church; but finding the atmosphere thereof not over wholesome to his soul, he had had the courage to throw off St. Nepomuc's, its brotherhoods, sisterhoods, and all its gorgeous and highly-organised appliances for enabling five thousand rich to take tolerable care of five hundred poor: and had fled from "the holy virgins" (as certain old ladies, who do twice their work with half their noise, call them) into the wilderness of Bethnal Green. But six months' gallant work there, with gallant men (for there are High Churchmen there who are an honour to England),