Bridmain’s sudden departure, together with the Countess Czerlaski’s installation as a visitor at Shepperton Vicarage, became a topic of general conversation in the neighbourhood. The keen-sighted virtue of Milby and Shepperton saw in all this a confirmation of its worst suspicions, and pitied the Rev. Amos Barton’s gullibility.
But when week after week, and month after month, slipped by without witnessing the Countess’s departure—when summer and harvest had fled, and still left her behind them occupying the spare bedroom and the closets, and also a large proportion of Mrs. Barton’s time and attention, new surmises of a very evil kind were added to the old rumours, and began to take the form of settled convictions in the minds even of Mr. Barton’s most friendly parishioners.
And now, here is an opportunity for an accomplished writer to apostrophize calumny, to quote Virgil, and to show that he is acquainted with the most ingenious things which have been said on that subject in polite literature.
But what is opportunity to the man who can’t use it? An undefecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity. So, as my memory is ill-furnished, and my notebook still worse, I am unable to show myself either erudite or eloquent apropos of the calumny whereof the Rev. Amos Barton was the victim. I can only ask my reader,—did you ever upset your ink-bottle, and watch, in helpless agony, the rapid spread of Stygian blackness over your fair manuscript or fairer table-cover? With a like inky swiftness did gossip now blacken the reputation of the Rev. Amos Barton, causing the unfriendly to scorn and even the friendly to stand aloof, at a time when difficulties of another kind were fast thickening around him.
Chapter VI.
One November morning, at least six months after the Countess Czerlaski had taken up her residence at the vicarage, Mrs. Hackit heard that her neighbour Mrs. Patten had an attack of her old complaint, vaguely called ‘the spasms’. Accordingly, about eleven o’clock, she put on her velvet bonnet and cloth cloak, with a long boa and muff large enough to stow a prize baby in; for Mrs. Hackit regulated her costume by the calendar, and brought out her furs on the first of November; whatever might be the temperature. She was not a woman weakly to accommodate herself to shilly-shally proceedings. If the season didn’t know what it ought to do, Mrs. Hackit did. In her best days, it was always sharp weather at ‘Gunpowder Plot’, and she didn’t like new fashions.
And this morning the weather was very rationally in accordance with her costume, for as she made her way through the fields to Cross Farm, the yellow leaves on the hedge-girt elms, which showed bright and golden against the long-hanging purple clouds, were being scattered across the grassy path by the coldest of November winds. ‘Ah,’ Mrs. Hackit thought to herself, ‘I daresay we shall have a sharp pinch this winter, and if we do, I shouldn’t wonder if it takes the old lady off. They say a green Yule makes a fat churchyard; but so does a white Yule too, for that matter. When the stool’s rotten enough, no matter who sits on it.’
However, on her arrival at Cross Farm, the prospect of Mrs. Patten’s decease was again thrown into the dim distance in her imagination, for Miss Janet Gibbs met her with the news that Mrs. Patten was much better, and led her, without any preliminary announcement, to the old lady’s bedroom. Janet had scarcely reached the end of her circumstantial narrative how the attack came on and what were her aunt’s sensations—a narrative to which Mrs. Patten, in her neatly-plaited nightcap, seemed to listen with a contemptuous resignation to her niece’s historical inaccuracy, contenting herself with occasionally confounding Janet by a shake of the head—when the clatter of a horse’s hoofs on the yard pavement announced the arrival of Mr. Pilgrim, whose large, top-booted person presently made its appearance upstairs. He found Mrs. Patten going on so well that there was no need to look solemn. He might glide from condolence into gossip without offence, and the temptation of having Mrs. Hackit’s ear was irresistible.
‘What a disgraceful business this is turning out of your parson’s,’ was the remark with which he made this agreeable transition, throwing himself back in the chair from which he had been leaning towards the patient. ‘Eh, dear me!’ said Mrs. Hackit, ‘disgraceful enough. I stuck to Mr. Barton as long as I could, for his wife’s sake; but I can’t countenance such goings-on. It’s hateful to see that woman coming with ’em to service of a Sunday, and if Mr. Hackit wasn’t churchwarden and I didn’t think it wrong to forsake one’s own parish, I should go to Knebley Church. There’s a many parish’ners as do.’
‘I used to think Barton was only a fool,’ observed Mr. Pilgrim, in a tone which implied that he was conscious of having been weakly charitable. ‘I thought he was imposed upon and led away by those people when they first came. But that’s impossible now.’
‘O, it’s as plain as the nose in your face,’ said Mrs. Hackit, unreflectingly, not perceiving the equivoque in her comparison—‘comin’ to Milby, like a sparrow perchin’ on a bough, as I may say, with her brother, as she called him; and then all on a sudden the brother goes off with himself, and she throws herself on the Bartons. Though what could make her take up with a poor notomise of a parson, as hasn’t got enough to keep wife and children, there’s One above knows—I don’t.’
‘Mr. Barton may have attractions we don’t know of,’ said Mr. Pilgrim, who piqued himself on a talent for sarcasm. ‘The Countess has no maid now, and they say Mr. Barton is handy in assisting at her toilette—laces her boots, and so forth.’
‘Tilette, be fiddled!’ said Mrs. Hackit, with indignant boldness of metaphor; ‘an’ there’s that poor thing a-sewing her fingers to the bone for them children—an’ another comin’ on. What she must have to go through! It goes to my heart to turn my back on her. But she’s i’ the wrong to let herself be put upon i’ that manner.’
‘Ah! I was talking to Mrs. Farquhar about that the other day. She said, “I think Mrs. Barton a v-e-r-y w-e-a-k w-o-m-a-n”.’ (Mr. Pilgrim gave this quotation with slow emphasis, as if he thought Mrs. Farquhar had uttered a remarkable sentiment.) ‘They find it impossible to invite her to their house while she has that equivocal person staying with her.’
‘Well!’ remarked Miss Gibbs, ‘if I was a wife, nothing should induce me to bear what Mrs. Barton does.’
‘Yes, it’s fine talking,’ said Mrs. Patten, from her pillow; ‘old maids’ husbands are al’ys well-managed. If you was a wife you’d be as foolish as your betters, belike.’
‘All my wonder is,’ observed Mrs. Hackit, ‘how the Bartons make both ends meet. You may depend on it, she’s got nothing to give ’em; for I understand as he’s been having money from some clergy charity. They said at fust as she stuffed Mr. Barton wi’ notions about her writing to the Chancellor an’ her fine friends, to give him a living. Howiver, I don’t know what’s true an’ what’s false. Mr. Barton keeps away from our house now, for I gave him a bit o’ my mind one day. Maybe he’s ashamed of himself. He seems to me to look dreadful thin an’ harassed of a Sunday.’
‘O, he must be aware he’s getting into bad odour everywhere. The clergy are quite disgusted with his folly. They say Carpe would be glad to get Barton out of the curacy if he could; but he can’t do that without coming to Shepperton himself, as Barton’s a licensed curate; and he wouldn’t like that, I suppose.’
At this moment Mrs. Patten showed signs of uneasiness, which recalled Mr. Pilgrim to professional attentions; and Mrs. Hackit, observing that it was Thursday, and she must see after the butter, said good-bye, promising to look in again soon, and bring her knitting.
This Thursday, by the by, is the first in the month—the day on which the Clerical Meeting is held at Milby Vicarage; and as the Rev. Amos Barton has reasons for not attending, he will very likely be a subject of conversation amongst his clerical brethren Suppose we go there, and hear whether Mr. Pilgrim has reported their opinion correctly.
There is not a numerous party today, for it is a season of sore throats and catarrhs; so that the exegetical and theological