by George Eliot
rarely allowed him to occupy his place at church.
"There's Dempster," said Mrs Linnet to her daughter Mary, "looking more
respectable than usual, I declare. He's got a fine speech by heart to make to
the Bishop, I'll answer for it. But he'll be pretty well sprinkled with snuff
before service is over, and the Bishop won't be able to listen to him for
sneezing, that's one comfort."
At length, the last stage in the long ceremony was over, the large assembly
streamed warm and weary into the open afternoon sunshine, and the Bishop retired
to the Parsonage, where, after honouring Mrs Crewe's collation, he was to give
audience to the delegates and Mr Tryan on the great question of the evening
lecture.
Between five and six o'clock the Parsonage was once more as quiet as usual under
the shadow of its tall elms, and the only traces of the Bishop's recent presence
there were the wheel-marks on the gravel, and the long table with its garnished
dishes awry, its damask sprinkled with crumbs, and its decanters without their
stoppers. Mr Crewe was already calmly smoking his pipe in the opposite
sitting-room, and Janet was agreeing with Mrs Crewe that some of the blanc-mange
would be a nice thing to take to Sally Martin, while the little old lady herself
had a spoon in her hand ready to gather the crumbs into a plate, that she might
scatter them on the gravel for the little birds.
Before that time, the Bishop's carriage had been seen driving through the High
Street on its way to Lord Trufford's, where he was to dine. The question of the
lecture was decided, then?
The nature of the decision may be gathered from the following conversation which
took place in the bar of the Red Lion that evening.
"So you're done, eh, Dempster?" was Mr Pilgrim's observation, uttered with some
gusto. He was not glad Mr Tryan had gained his point, but he was not sorry
Dempster was disappointed.
"Done, sir? Not at all. It is what I anticipated. I knew we had nothing else to
expect in these days, when the Church is infested by a set of men who are only
fit to give out hymns from an empty cask, to tunes set by a journeyman cobbler.
But I was not the less to exert myself in the cause of sound Churchmanship for
the good of the town. Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning;
but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my
way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat, as Mr Tryan shall
learn to his cost."
"He must be a poor shuperannyated sort of a bishop, that's my opinion," said Mr
Tomlinson, "to go along with a sneaking Methodist like Tryan. And, for my part,
I think we should be as well wi'out bishops, if they're no wiser than that.
Where's the use o' havin' thousands a-year an' livin' in a pallis, if they don't
stick to the Church?"
"No. There you're going out of your depth, Tomlinson," said Mr Dempster. "No one
shall hear me say a word against Episcopacy�it is a safeguard of the Church; we
must have ranks and dignities there as well as everywhere else. No, sir!
Episcopacy is a good thing; but it may happen that a bishop is not a good thing.
Just as brandy is a good thing, though this particular bottle is British, and
tastes like sugared rain-water caught down the chimney. Here, Ratcliffe, let me
have something to drink, a little less like a decoction of sugar and soot."
"I said nothing again' Episcopacy," returned Mr Tomlinson. "I only said I
thought we should do as well wi'out bishops; an' I'll say it again for the
matter o' that. Bishops never brought ony grist to my mill."
"Do you know when the lectures are to begin?" said Mr Pilgrim.
"They are to begin on Sunday next," said Mr Dempster in a significant tone; "but
I think it will not take a long sighted prophet to foresee the end of them. It
strikes me Mr Tryan will be looking out for another curacy shortly."
"He'll not get many Milby people to go and hear his lectures after a while, I'll
bet a guinea," observed Mr Budd. "I know I'll not keep a single workman on my
ground who either goes to the lecture himself or lets anybody belonging to him
go."
"Nor me nayther," said Mr Tomlinson. "No Tryanite shall touch a sack or drive a
waggon o' mine, that you may depend on. An' I know more besides me as are o' the
same mind."
"Tryan has a good many friends in the town, though, and friends that are likely
to stand by him too," said Mr Pilgrim. "I should say it would be as well to let
him and his lectures alone. If he goes on preaching as he does, with such a
constitution as his, he'll get a relaxed throat by-and-by, and you'll be rid of
him without any trouble."
"We'll not allow him to do himself that injury," said Mr Dempster. "Since his
health is not good, we'll persuade him to try change of air. Depend upon it,
he'll find the climate of Milby too hot for him."
CHAPTER VII.
Mr Dempster did not stay long at the Red Lion that evening. He was summoned home
to meet Mr Armstrong, a wealthy client, and as he was kept in consultation till
a late hour, it happened that this was one of the nights on which Mr Dempster
went to bed tolerably sober. Thus the day, which had been one of Janet's
happiest, because it had been spent by her in helping her dear old friend Mrs
Crewe, ended for her with unusual quietude; and as a bright sunset promises a
fair morning, so a calm lying down is a good augury for a calm waking. Mr
Dempster, on the Thursday morning, was in one of his best humours, and though
perhaps some of the good humour might result from the prospect of a lucrative
and exciting bit of business in Mr Armstrong's probable lawsuit, the greater
part of it was doubtless due to those stirrings of the more kindly, healthy sap
of human feeling, by which goodness tries to get the upper hand in us whenever
it seems to have the slightest chance�on Sunday mornings, perhaps, when we are
set free from the grinding hurry of the week, and take the little three-year-old
on our knee at breakfast to share our egg and muffin; in moments of trouble,
when death visits our roof or illness makes us dependent on the tending hand of
a slighted wife; in quiet talks with an aged mother, of the days when we stood
at her knee with our first picture-book, or wrote her loving letters from
school. In the man whose childhood has known caresses there is always a fibre of
memory that can be touched to gentle issues, and Mr Dempster, whom you have
hitherto seen only as the orator of the Red Lion, and the drunken tyrant of a
dreary midnight home, was the first-born darling son of a fair little mother.
That mother was living still, and her own large black easy-chair, where she sat
knitting through the live-long day, was now set ready for her at the
breakfast-table, by her son's side, a sleek tortoise-shell cat acting as
provisional incumbent.
"Good morning, Mamsey! why, you're looking as fresh as a daisy this morning.
You're getting young again," said Mr Dempster, looking up from his newspaper
when the little old lady entered. A very little old lady she was, with a pale,
&n
bsp; scarcely wrinkled face, hair of that peculiar white which tells that the locks
have once been blond, a natty pure white cap on her head, and a white shawl
pinned over her shoulders. You saw at a glance that she had been a mignonne
blonde, strangely unlike her tall, ugly, dingy-complexioned son; unlike her
daughter-in-law, too, whose large-featured brunette beauty seemed always thrown
into higher relief by the white presence of little Mamsey. The unlikeness
between Janet and her mother-in-law went deeper than outline and complexion, and
indeed there was little sympathy between them, for old Mrs Dempster had not yet
learned to believe that her son, Robert, would have gone wrong if he had married
the right woman�a meek woman like herself, who would have borne him children,
and been a deft, orderly housekeeper. In spite of Janet's tenderness and
attention to her, she had had little love for her daughter-in-law from the
first, and had witnessed the sad growth of home-misery through long years,
always with a disposition to lay the blame on the wife rather than on the
husband, and to reproach Mrs Raynor for encouraging her daughter's faults by a
too exclusive sympathy. But old Mrs Dempster had that rare gift of silence and
passivity which often supplies the absence of mental strength; and, whatever
were her thoughts, she said no word to aggravate the domestic discord. Patient
and mute she sat at her knitting through many a scene of quarrel and anguish;
resolutely she appeared unconscious of the sounds that reached her ears, and the
facts she divined after she had retired to her bed; mutely she witnessed poor
Janet's faults, only registering them as a balance of excuse on the side of her
son. The hard, astute, domineering attorney was still that little old woman's
pet, as he had been when she watched with triumphant pride his first tumbling
effort to march alone across the nursery floor. "See what a good son he is to
me!" she often thought. "Never gave me a harsh word. And so he might have been a
good husband."
O it is piteous�that sorrow of aged women! In early youth, perhaps, they said to
themselves, "I shall be happy when I have a husband to love me best of all;"
then, when the husband was too careless, "My child will comfort me;" then,
through the mother's watching and toil, "My child will repay me all when it
grows up." And at last, after the long journey of years has been wearily
travelled through, the mother's heart is weighed down by a heavier burthen, and
no hope remains but the grave.
But this morning old Mrs Dempster sat down in her easy-chair without any
painful, suppressed remembrance of the preceding night.
"I declare mammy looks younger than Mrs Crewe, who is only sixty-five," said
Janet. "Mrs Crewe will come to see you to-day, mammy, and tell you all about her
troubles with the Bishop and the collation. She'll bring her knitting, and
you'll have a regular gossip together."
"The gossip will be all on one side, then, for Mrs Crewe gets so very deaf, I
can't make her hear a word. And if I motion to her, she always understands me
wrong."
"O, she will have so much to tell you to-day, you will not want to speak
yourself. You, who have patience to knit those wonderful counter-panes, mammy,
must not be impatient with dear Mrs Crewe. Good old lady! I can't bear her to
think she's ever tiresome to people, and you know she's very ready to fancy
herself in the way. I think she would like to shrink up to the size of a mouse,
that she might run about and do people good without their noticing her."
"It isn't patience I want, God knows; it's lungs to speak loud enough. But
you'll be at home yourself, I suppose, this morning; and you can talk to her for
me."
"No, mammy; I promised poor Mrs Lowme to go and sit with her. She's confined to
her room, and both the Miss Lowmes are out; so I'm going to read the newspaper
to her and amuse her."
"Couldn't you go another morning? As Mr Armstrong and that other gentleman are
coming to dinner, I should think it would be better to stay at home. Can you
trust Betty to see to everything? She's new to the place."
"O I couldn't disappoint Mrs Lowme; I promised her. Betty will do very well, no
fear."
Old Mrs Dempster was silent after this, and began to sip her tea. The breakfast
went on without further conversation for some time, Mr Dempster being absorbed
in the papers. At length, when he was running over the advertisements, his eye
seemed to be caught by something that suggested a new thought to him. He
presently thumped the table with an air of exultation, and said, turning to
Janet,�
"I've a capital idea, Gipsy!" (that was his name for his dark-eyed wife when he
was in an extraordinarily good humour), "and you shall help me. It's just what
you're up to."
"What is it?" said Janet, her face beaming at the sound of the pet name, now
heard so seldom. "Anything to do with conveyancing?"
"It's a bit of fun worth a dozen fees�a plan for raising a laugh against Tryan
and his gang of hypocrites."
"What is it? Nothing that wants a needle and thread, I hope, else I must go and
teaze mother."
"No, nothing sharper than your wit�except mine. I'll tell you what it is. We'll
get up a programme of the Sunday evening lecture, like a play-bill, you
know�'Grand Performance of the celebrated Mountebank,' and so on. We'll bring in
the Tryanites�old Landor and the rest�in appropriate characters. Proctor shall
print it, and we'll circulate it in the town. It will be a capital hit."
"Bravo!" said Janet, clapping her hands. She would just then have pretended to
like almost anything, in her pleasure at being appealed to by her husband, and
she really did like to laugh at the Tryanites. "We'll set about it directly, and
sketch it out before you go to the office. I've got Tryan's sermons up-stairs,
but I don't think there's anything in them we can use. I've only just looked
into them; they're not at all what I expected�dull, stupid things�nothing of the
roaring fire-and-brimstone sort that I expected."
"Roaring? No; Tryan's as soft as a sucking dove�one of your honey-mouthed
hypocrites. Plenty of devil and malice in him, though, I could see that, while
he was talking to the Bishop; but as smooth as a snake outside. He's beginning a
single-handed fight with me, I can see�persuading my clients away from me. We
shall see who will be the first to cry peccavi. Milby will do better without Mr
Tryan than without Robert Dempster, I fancy! and Milby shall never be flooded
with cant as long as I can raise a breakwater against it. But now, get the
breakfast things cleared away, and let us set about the play-bill. Come, mamsey,
come and have a walk with me round the garden, and let us see how the cucumbers
are getting on. I've never taken you round the garden for an age. Come, you
don't want a bonnet. It's like walking in a greenhouse this morning."
"But she will want a parasol," said Janet. "There's one on the stand against the
garden-door, Robert."
The little old lady took her son's arm with
placid pleasure. She could barely
reach it so as to rest upon it, but he inclined a little towards her, and
accommodated his heavy long-limbed steps to her feeble pace. The cat chose to
sun herself too, and walked close beside them, with tail erect, rubbing her
sleek sides against their legs, and too well fed to be excited by the twittering
birds. The garden was of the grassy, shady kind, often seen attached to old
houses in provincial towns; the apple-trees had had time to spread their
branches very wide, the shrubs and hardy perennial plants had grown into a
luxuriance that required constant trimming to prevent them from intruding on the
space for walking. But the farther end, which united with green fields, was open
and sunny.
It was rather sad, and yet pretty, to see that little group passing out of the
shadow into the sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shadow again: sad,
because this tenderness of the son for the mother was hardly more than a nucleus
of healthy life in an organ hardening by disease, because the man who was linked
in this way with an innocent past, had become callous in worldliness, fevered by
sensuality, enslaved by chance impulses; pretty, because it showed how hard it
is to kill the deep-down fibrous roots of human love and goodness�how the man
from whom we make it our pride to shrink, has yet a close brotherhood with us
through some of our most sacred feelings.
As they were returning to the house, Janet met them, and said, "Now, Robert, the
writing things are ready. I shall be clerk, and Mat Paine can copy it out
after."
Mammy once more deposited in her arm-chair, with her knitting in her hand, and
the cat purring at her elbow, Janet seated herself at the table, while Mr
Dempster placed himself near her, took out his snuff-box, and plentifully
suffusing himself with the inspiring powder, began to dictate.
What he dictated, we shall see by-and-by.
CHAPTER VIII.
The next day, Friday, at five o'clock by the sundial, the large bow-window of
Mrs Jerome's parlour was open; and that lady herself was seated within its ample
semicircle, having a table before her on which her best tea-tray, her best
china, and her best urn-rug had already been standing in readiness for half an
hour. Mrs Jerome's best tea-service was of delicate white fluted china, with
gold springs upon it�as pretty a tea-service as you need wish to see, and quite
good enough for chimney ornaments; indeed, as the cups were without handles,
most visitors who had the distinction of taking tea out of them, wished that
such charming china had already been promoted to that honorary position. Mrs
Jerome was like her china, handsome and old-fashioned. She was a buxom lady of
sixty, in an elaborate lace cap fastened by a frill under her chin, a dark,
well-curled front concealing her forehead, a snowy neckerchief exhibiting its
ample folds as far as her waist, and a stiff grey silk gown. She had a clean
damask napkin pinned before her to guard her dress during the process of
tea-making; her favourite geraniums in the bow-window were looking as healthy as
she could desire; her own handsome portrait, painted when she was twenty years
younger, was smiling down on her with agreeable flattery; and altogether she
seemed to be in as peaceful and pleasant a position as a buxom, well-drest
elderly lady need desire. But, as in so many other cases, appearances were
deceptive. Her mind was greatly perturbed and her temper ruffled by the fact
that it was more than a quarter past five even by the losing timepiece, that it
was half-past by her large gold watch, which she held in her hand as if she were
counting the pulse of the afternoon, and that, by the kitchen clock, which she
felt sure was not an hour too fast, it had already struck six. The lapse of time
was rendered the more unendurable to Mrs Jerome by her wonder that Mr Jerome
could stay out in the garden with Lizzie in that thoughtless way, taking it so
