Humphrey Bone, the schoolmaster, also made a point of taking a bottle to church, but his was small, and he made occasions for bending his head beneath the front of the pew and imbibing portions of its contents through a very long turkey quill.
The church had remained in statu quo during the Rector’s stay abroad, but now that he had returned, it was with ideas similar to the new broom – he meant to sweep clean. Perhaps the Rev. Eli Mallow was a little conscience-stricken for past neglect. At all events the Rector had now set himself to work on a general reform, but his absence had embittered a by no means friendly people.
“Taking that great wage out of the place year after year,” said Tomlinson, one of the townspeople, “and leaving that curate to do all the work on eighty pounds a year; I haven’t patience with him.”
Several other fellow-townsmen expressed their opinions that it was a shame, and declared that they had not patience with the parson, and the consequence was that he was so talked over, that when he came back and set about his work of reformation he was met at his very first movement by a hedge of thorns that regularly surrounded the church. Every one of these thorns was a prejudice which he had to fight.
“Church did very well for t’ owd rector, and always has done,” was the cry; “why won’t it do for he?”
“Festina lente,” said the Reverend Eli to himself; and he set to work slowly, cautiously, and well, making such advance in his undertaking that plenty of money was promised, and he saw in the future a handsome, well-warmed church, with all the surroundings for reverent worship.
“Poor old fellow!” he had said to himself as he listened to the clerk, for the old man would utter the three first words of a response in a shrill tenor, and then drop his voice, nothing, else being heard until it came to the end, when to a new-comer his peculiar “Hup-men” was almost startling in its strangeness.
“Week, week, week; wubble, wubble, wubble,” the school-children always declared he said, no matter what was the response; and then, after giving out the psalm or hymn so that no one could hear, the poor old fellow would sing in a shrill unmusical voice from behind a huge pair of tortoiseshell framed spectacles, holding his great hymn-book with both hands, and emphasising the words he sang by raising and lowering the book; turning to right and left, singing to the people below his desk, and then at the huge whitewashed beams of the ceiling, before turning three parts round to send his voice into the chancel, for the benefit of the old women from the Bede houses who sat there upon a very uncomfortable bench.
“I dare say it is very wrong,” said Lord Artingale, who had ridden over from Gatton one Sunday to welcome the Mallows back to Lincolnshire, “but much as I want to be reverent, I really don’t think I could go to your church again, Mr Mallow, without laughing in the middle of the service.”
The Rector looked grave, for poor old Warmoth was a great trouble to him, and, as may be gathered, he had consulted the churchwardens on the question of the alterations, and among other things suggested that the old clerk should be asked to resign.
The effect we have seen, and that same day Portlock, the farmer, went up and told the result of his chat with the old clerk.
“It is very provoking, Mr Portlock, very. I want the old man to go quietly – in fact, to resign,” said the Rector. “If I send him away the people will say that he is ill-used.”
“That they will, depend on’t,” replied the Churchwarden. “Our folk take a deal o’ driving.”
“Well, well; what is to be done?”
“Best let things bide as they are, sir; you wean’t do any good by trying to alter ’em.”
“Oh, but that is absurd, Mr Portlock, highly absurd. No, I regret it very much, but he must go. There, I will see him myself.”
The Rector saw the old clerk sooner than he expected, for in crossing the churchyard next day he met him going up to the church.
“Poor old fellow! ninety-three,” said the Rector to himself, as he looked curiously at the strange old figure tottering up the rough cobble-stone path.
“Good-morning, Warmoth,” he said. “Here, give me your hand.”
The old man stopped short, thumped his stick down, and peered up fiercely.
“Nay, nay, nay,” he groaned, “not so owd as all that, mester. I can do it yet. Let me bide, I’m reight yet. Yow want to get shut o’ me – to drift me off. Yow thowt wi’ your new ways that I wasn’t good enew for t’ church, but revvylootion or no revvylootion, I stick to church as my fathers did afore me. When I’m down theer, and can howd out no more, thou mun do thy worst.”
“That’s all put aside, Mr Warmoth,” said the Rector, smiling. “I do want to make improvements here, but not to that extent. I did not want to hurt your feelings. Come, shake hands.”
“Nay; I’ll not,” cried the old man, fiercely, his bearing seeming to have wonderfully altered now. “Thou want’st to get round me wi’ soft words, but I’ll howd thee off – I’ll howd thee off. There ain’t every servant of t’ owd church like me, and I’ll howd my own unto the last.”
“My good old fellow, Heaven forbid that I should be guilty of so unkind an act. You shall stop on, Warmoth, till the last, for no act of mine shall remove you from your post.”
The old man’s jaw fell, and he stepped back, slipped, and would have fallen, but for the Rector’s hands, to which the old fellow clung spasmodically, his face working, his lips twitching in his efforts to speak. But for a long time no words would come, and then but two, twice repeated, though with earnest emphasis —
“Bless thee! Bless thee!”
Then, quickly snatching his hands away, the old man turned aside, leaned his trembling arm against a tombstone which had gradually encroached upon the path, and stood with his head bent down, trying to recover his strength.
It was a strange contrast: the thin, sharply featured old man, and the handsome portly figure of the Rector, as he stood there vexed with himself at having, as he called it, been so weak as to give way at the first difficulty that he had to encounter; and he afterwards came to the conclusion that he might just as well have held out, for the people gave him the credit of killing old Warmoth so as to have his way.
“Let me help you into the church to sit down for a bit,” he said to the trembling old man.
Old Warmoth turned and laid one hand upon the Rector’s, gazing up in his face, and there was a piteous smile upon his withered lips.
“I was afraid thou’d want me to go as soon as I heard thou was coming back; and they said thou’dst get shut o’ me. But sixty year, sir! It would have killed me. I couldn’t have beared to go.”
Two Sundays later the congregation had just left the church, and Portlock was going up to the vestry, when he saw there was something wrong in the clerk’s seat.
“Why, Sammy, owd man,” he cried, “what ails – ”
He did not finish his broken sentence, but tore open the door of the clerk’s desk, the Rector coming forward to where the old man knelt in his accustomed narrow place, his hands upon his book, his head