Mrs. Jerome had been frightened at the mention of a mob, and her retrospective regard for the religious communion of her youth by no means inspired her with the temper of a martyr. Her husband looked at her with an expression of tender and grieved remonstrance, which might have been that of the patient patriarch on the memorable occasion when he rebuked his wife.
‘Susan, Susan, let me beg on you not to oppose me, and put stumblin’-blocks i’ the way o’ doing’ what’s right. I can’t give up my conscience, let me give up what else I may.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mr. Tryan, feeling slightly uncomfortable, ‘since you are not very strong, my dear sir, it will be well, as Mrs. Jerome suggests, that you should not run the risk of any excitement.’
‘Say no more, Mr. Tryan. I’ll stan’ by you, sir. It’s my duty. It’s the cause o’ God, sir; it’s the cause o’ God.’
Mr. Tryan obeyed his impulse of admiration and gratitude, and put out his hand to the white-haired old man, saying, ‘Thank you, Mr. Jerome, thank you.’
Mr. Jerome grasped the proffered hand in silence, and then threw himself back in his chair, casting a regretful look at his wife, which seemed to say, ‘Why don’t you feel with me, Susan?’
The sympathy of this simple-minded old man was more precious to Mr. Tryan than any mere onlooker could have imagined. To persons possessing a great deal of that facile psychology which prejudges individuals by means of formulæ, and casts them, without further trouble, into duly lettered pigeon-holes, the Evangelical curate might seem to be doing simply what all other men like to do—carrying out objects which were identified not only with his theory, which is but a kind of secondary egoism, but also with the primary egoism of his feelings. Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution: a self-obtrusive, over-hasty reformer complacently disclaiming all merit, while his friends call him a martyr, has not in reality a career the most arduous to the fleshly mind. But Mr. Tryan was not cast in the mould of the gratuitous martyr. With a power of persistence which had been often blamed as obstinacy, he had an acute sensibility to the very hatred or ridicule he did not flinch from provoking. Every form of disapproval jarred him painfully; and, though he fronted his opponents manfully, and often with considerable warmth of temper, he had no pugnacious pleasure in the contest. It was one of the weaknesses of his nature to be too keenly alive to every harsh wind of opinion; to wince under the frowns of the foolish; to be irritated by the injustice of those who could not possibly have the elements indispensable for judging him rightly; and with all this acute sensibility to blame, this dependence on sympathy, he had for years been constrained into a position of antagonism. No wonder, then, that good old Mr. Jerome’s cordial words were balm to him. He had often been thankful to an old woman for saying ‘God bless you’; to a little child for smiling at him; to a dog for submitting to be patted by him.
Tea being over by this time, Mr. Tryan proposed a walk in the garden as a means of dissipating all recollection of the recent conjugal dissidence Little Lizzie’s appeal, ‘Me go, gandpa!’ could not be rejected, so she was duly bonneted and pinafored, and then they turned out into the evening sunshine. Not Mrs. Jerome, however; she had a deeply-meditated plan of retiring ad interim to the kitchen and washing up the best teathings, as a mode of getting forward with the sadly-retarded business of the day.
‘This way, Mr. Tryan, this way,’ said the old gentleman; ‘I must take you to my pastur fust, an’ show you our cow—the best milker i’ the county. An’ see here at these backbuildins, how convenent the dairy is; I planned it ivery bit myself. An’ here I’ve got my little carpenter’s shop an’ my blacksmith’s shop; I do no end o’ jobs here myself. I niver could bear to be idle, Mr. Tryan; I must al’ys be at somethin’ or other. It was time for me to lay by business an mek room for younger folks. I’d got money enough, wi’ only one daughter to leave it to, an’ I says to myself, says I, it’s time to leave off moitherin’ myself wi’ this world so much, an’ give more time to thinkin’ of another. But there’s a many hours atween getting up an’ lyin’ down, an’ thoughts are no cumber; you can move about wi’ a good many on ’em in your head. See, here’s the pastur.’
A very pretty pasture it was, where the large-spotted short-horned cow quietly chewed the cud as she lay and looked sleepily at her admirers—a daintily-trimmed hedge all round, dotted here and there with a mountain-ash or a cherry-tree.
‘I’ve a good bit more land besides this, worth your while to look at, but mayhap it’s further nor you’d like to walk now. Bless you! I’ve welly an’ acre o’ potato-ground yonders; I’ve a good big family to supply, you know.’ (Here Mr. Jerome winked and smiled significantly.) ‘An’ that puts me i’ mind, Mr. Tryan, o’ summat I wanted to say to you. Clergymen like you, I know, see a deal more poverty an’ that, than other folks, an’ hev a many claims on ’em more nor they can well meet; an’ if you’ll mek use o’ my purse any time, or let me know where I can be o’ any help, I’ll tek it very kind on you.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Jerome, I will do so, I promise you. I saw a sad case yesterday; a collier—a fine broad-chested fellow about thirty—was killed by the falling of a wall in the Paddiford colliery. I was in one of the cottages near, when they brought him home on a door, and the shriek of the wife has been ringing in my ears ever since. There are three little children. Happily the woman has her loom, so she will be able to keep out of the workhouse; but she looks very delicate.’
‘Give me her name, Mr. Tryan,’ said Mr. Jerome, drawing out his pocket-book. ‘I’ll call an’ see her.’
Deep was the fountain of pity in the good old man’s heart! He often ate his dinner stintingly, oppressed by the thought that there were men, women, and children, with no dinner to sit down to, and would relieve his mind by going out in the afternoon to look for some need that he could supply, some honest struggle in which he could lend a helping hand. That any living being should want, was his chief sorrow; that any rational being should waste, was the next. Sally, indeed, having been scolded by master for a too lavish use of sticks in lighting the kitchen fire, and various instances of recklessness with regard to candle ends, considered him ‘as mean as aenythink;’ but he had as kindly a warmth as the morning sunlight, and, like the sunlight, his goodness shone on all that came in his way, from the saucy rosy-cheeked lad whom he delighted to make happy with a Christmas box, to the pallid sufferers up dim entries, languishing under the tardy death of want and misery.
It was very pleasant to Mr. Tryan to listen to the simple chat of the old man—to walk in the shade of the incomparable orchard, and hear the story of the crops yielded by the red-streaked apple-tree, and the quite embarrassing plentifulness of the summer-pears—to drink-in the sweet evening breath of the garden, as they sat in the alcove—and so, for a short interval, to feel the strain of his pastoral task relaxed.
Perhaps he felt the return to that task through the dusty roads all the more painfully, perhaps something in that quiet shady home had reminded him of the time before he had taken on him the yoke of self-denial. The strongest heart will faint sometimes under the feeling that enemies are bitter, and that friends only know half its sorrows. The most resolute soul will now and then cast back a yearning look in treading the rough mountain-path, away from the greensward and laughing voices of the valley. However it was, in the nine o’clock twilight that evening, when Mr. Tryan had entered his small study and turned the key in the door, he threw himself into the chair before his writing-table, and, heedless of the papers there, leaned his face low on his hand, and moaned heavily.
It is apt to be so in this life, I think. While we are coldly discussing a man’s career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labelling his opinions—‘he is Evangelical and narrow’, or ‘Latitudinarian and Pantheistic’ or ‘Anglican and supercilious’—that man, in his solitude, is perhaps shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one, because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word, and do the difficult deed.
Chapter IX.