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Tous les autres exemplaires originaux sont film6s en commenpant par la premidre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la dernidre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la dernidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbole -^ signifie "A SUIVRE", le symbole V signifie "FIN". Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre film6s d des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clich6, il est film6 d partir de Tangle sup6rieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la m^thode. rata lelure. H 32X 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 ^r Committed to His Charge A Canadian Chronicle BY R. & K. M. LIZARS (All Rights Reserved) Toronto George N. Morang & Co,, Limited 1900 CONTENTS Chapter Page I.— Her Reverence i II.— The Guild 12 III.— The Gospel of Home- - - - 36 IV.— Politics vs. Religion- - - - 56 v.— Innovations 69 VI.— Miss Sweeting Dines- - - - 88 VII.— The Countryside 102 VIII.— The Choir Terrestrial - - - 127 IX.— A Teapot Tempest - - - - 145 X.— The Church Militant - - - 165 XI.— Victory -188 XII.— The Fatal Kiss 207 XIII. — Afternoon Tears and tea - - 221 XIV.— Mr. Forby's Second Love Affair - 232 XV.— The Burden Resumed- - - - 253 XVI.— lo Triomphe - - . „ . 261 XVII.— The Remittance Man - - - 274 XVIII.— The End of the Sin of Silence - 291 XIX.— Conclusion 298 Cm.'9oil()(» 8on«. COMMiHED TO HIS CHARGE CHAPTER I HER REVERENCE CRISIS had arrived in the history of the Parish of Slowford-on-the-Sluggard. And Miss Sweeting knew it. After much puzzled consideration, she had come to the decision that her interests and those of the parish were identical. For nineteen years she had, practically, ruled. Now the Rector, who had so faithfully done her bidding, lay dying. Soon the king would be dead ; and before crying " Long live the king," it behoved her to see who should be king. Days passed, and the life spent in a round of usefulness for others went out. The weaknesses, the shortcomings of office, were all forgotten, and nothing was remembered but the lovable- ness of the man, as is the way of the world when it is too late to show patience or to I I Committed to his Charge extenuate faults. Easy, indolent, loving parochial visits more than parochial work, winning hearts more easily over a cup of tea than by sound doctrine from the pulpit, the Reverend Caleb Short had managed to slip through life without encountering the sharper edges of its pathways. And why should he encounter them, when one so willing and capable as Miss Sweeting was ever ready to be in advance ? Asa girl near the twenties she had begun her mission of Church work, in a some- what erratic fashion ; but as the excitement of dance and picnic wore off she found that her fervent nature required sustenance of a more enduring kind. She was a good woman, Dulcissima Sweeting, none better, — agreeable to some ; but to others her ways savoured of meddlesomeness, and there were those who went further and said she was a busy-body. However, she did work, Sunday and week-day alike; no one denied it. They only — that is, some of them — wished that she did not. So now In the midst of her grief, and her grief was real, she had an eye to the practical issue as to who was to fill the vacant place. , i h Committed to his Charge There would be war. Every one knew that. The High Church party in the congregation, those who wished to stand during the offertory and have an alms basin, who longed for a sur- pliced choir and a floral cross on the altar at Easter, would make a desperate effort to put in a man of progressive views. This party con- sisted of the bankers and others who were not Slowford people proper. Their man was chosen already — one with a wife given to soup-kitchens and Dorcas meetings, and with daughters who were curates in all but name. Him they should not have. Not because Miss Sweeting was not High herself — circumstances and the Reverend Caleb Short had made her Low, — but she was of such an accommodating disposition to the cloth generally that she might have become anything under guidance. Her reason against this first choice was that his feminine following would mean death to her. Indeed, had he been High of the celibate kind, her objections on that score might have been overcome easily. Celibates ere this had been weaned and converted from their ways ; it would be interesting, too, to convert one. The Low Church party were for a man of <-, Committed to his Charge purely evangelical type, one who would let the stone crosses, intended for the last ornamentation of the church, remain in the cellar where they had been thrust ignominiously by the Building Committee thirty years before, stones which proved that they could do what rolling ones pro- verbially cannot. These crosses were so ornate, so disguised, that it almost would have been necessary to label them ; but ornamentation did not signify to those members who had determined in years gone by to be true till death to their purely Protestant principles. The members still lived and they still protested. Their chosen man seemed eligible ; apart from his views, which, upon hearsay, Miss Sweeting feared were narrow, he had merit in being a bachelor. It was upon him her casting vote should be given. Not that the Parish of Slow- ford was advanced enough to wish that its women had votes in the vestry, far from it. The Women's Guild provided everything as it was required, or bidden, from a school-house or a Sunday-school teacher to a penwiper for a warden ; it was the channel through which flowed that golden stream that came from mite collection, bazaar, concert or lecture funds ; but if Committed to his Charge with working and giving the woman's privilege ceased. She listened to St. Paul and kept silent in the church — unless in such functions as choir service, at which St. Paul is supposed to wink. But there are ways and ways, and a Past-Grand- Mistress-of-Ways was Miss Sweeting. It never entered her mind that with one change might come many, that the time for revolt had arrived and that the parish to a man, or rather to a woman, had determined to have no bachelor, but to have a pastor safely married and out of harm's — that is out of her — way. Even those who had profited most from her work, and presumably liked her best, felt that some effort for freedom should be made. It would be a bad initial step, be his views ever so worthy, if he wished — if she wished — to convert Miss Sweeting into Mrs. Rector. So it turned out that when the meeting to decide all things finally was called. High and Low forgot their animosities and met on a common ground, some compromise by which they might be delivered from Miss Sweeting. It was easy of accomplishment. Each side gave up its man and let the choice fall on one of a middle variety, one who would leave the \ I Committed to his Charge crosses still gathering moss, but who might per- mit a little livelier service ; one safely weighted with a young wife, and four babies under five years of age. He was an Englishman, much older than his wife, clever, said to have been rather erratic, was tired of a mastership in a school and was ready for a living. Slowford was prosperous in a modest way and offered sixteen hundred a year for a suitable man, and felt it was doing handsomely by him. The church was supposed to be in thorough order, the organ had two manuals and over twenty stops, the choir was unlike most choirs, inasmuch as it had existed with the one membership and without any serious civil wars for many years ; and last, but not least, the Rectory was com- paratively new and well appointed after Slow- ford notions. The Reverend Thomas Huntley was " called " ; the Bishop was interviewed, and persuaded that a man from another diocese was necessary. The Guild adopted the method of "calling," and a wise Bishop knows his own Guild. The new man came, and dismay followed. He insisted upon alterations and improvements in the house ; he commented upon the unfinished 6 Committed to his Charge grey walls of the church, and spoke of " dis- temper " and " conventional designs " and carved oak in a way most distressing to the wardens ; he referred nearly everything to his wife and consulted her convenience before committing himself to any plan ; he levelled the lawn with innumerable loads of loam, had it sodded, and on the green expanse set a white net, stretched between stakes, which puzzled the curious and scandalized the knowing ; and altogether he conducted himself in a manner new to Slowford, doubly disconcerting in a clergyman. He brought with hiiri three dogs, and his study walls were hung with a secular-looking assort- ment of fishing-tackle and fire-arms. The old Rector had been almost the cause of a scandal through a fancy for botany, geology, and entomology; but compared with sporting gear and noisy dogs, his beetles and weeds were evidences of piety. Furthermore, Mrs. Huntley was a very pretty woman, and it was whispered that she had a small independent fortune. Almost before the people realized the meaning of the overturn, the new Rector had read him- self in. However the people may have thought that 7 Committed to his Charge the star of Sweeting had set, never to rise again, she held her peace, trusting to circum- stances, to her own guile and to other people's laziness, to bring round a certain part of her old power. She had an unshaken faith in the divine law of compensation, and waited patiently. Her dismay, though strictly hidden, was great. It brought back to her that terrible moment in childhood, when, in a sheltered home-corner, a sudden falling-out had ended in the demolition of her "house" — a rickety packing-case set on end, wherein she displayed fragments of broken crockery, a three-legged chair and two dolls, her " babies," Jerusha and Dorothy by name, who owed their existence to the ordered decapi- tation of her father's gateposts. The anguish of those moments, when the child-mother saw her three-legged treasure sent flying, her packing- case demolished, and Jerusha and Dorothy making an unpremeditated sacrifice in her step- mother's kitchen fire, could never be repeated. Alas, real mother joys were never to be hers ! From many causes the word home had no significance for her, except when by small services, adaptable ways and a capacity for relieving others of unwelcome duties, she could Committed to his Charge win temporary resting places. Then she dropped anchor, sure of quiet occupancy if not always positive welcome, with a girlhood friend who had married successfully. Here, in a room at the top of the house, with one dormer window whence she could see the darting swallows dip into chimneys several feet below her eyrie, and a second window of the skylight kind that let in a stray branch of the Virginia creeper which covered the house, she lived out the portion of her life not spent in Church or school-house. The successors of the three-legged chair and broken crockery adorned the rag-carpeted floor and sloping walls, and the ashes of Dorothy and Jerusha glowed again in her love for the members of her infant class. She was not beautiful enough for a picture, nor to step within the covers of a book, but she was beautiful enough to love, and to wish — Oh, God ! how devoutly — to be loved. This night, when the excitement of a vestry-meeting had cul- minated in a choice of pastor, Dulcie let down her long and still beautiml hair, and brushed it to a mirror-brightness like unto the glass op- posite. Her small, twinkling eyes gazed into the pane which twinkled back at her. Then, Committed to his Charge when the smooth coil lay on top of the narrow- head, she drew her Bible and prayer-book to- wards her, opening the former at words of mercy, love and patience. Closing the book and sinking to her knees, with a grace of which she was unaware, she mechanically repeated those formulas whose beauties sometimes are bereft of force by those who use them. As she knelt she smoothed out the wrinkles on her closed eyelids, with hands which showed traces of past labour. Then began one of those nightly panoramic processions which always closed her day of small excitements. Before her mental vision passed in review her own virtues and the faults of her friends. There are hypocrites and hypocrites. There are some who begin life in that rdle, and by dint of daily practice in virtues they fain would be thought to possess end by really owning them ; others begin humbly, but finding the race for sanctity as numerously entered for as any other, adopts little by little, false aids towards a quick arrivaJ at the goal. Properly, Dulcie belonged to neither class. She was simply an actress in a scene of country parochial life which to her was a stage. She was a mute, inglorious Bernhardt, lO Committed to his Charge because Slowford, not Paris, had been her destination. With her a pastor-choosing was a serious affair, for on the man, be he bad or good, would she pour out all the treasures of her forgotten heart. Her ear was naturally tuned to ever listen for a husband's footstep. And she had listened so long. At last she went into bed, and rested there with a long sigh of content. The day's doing chased themselves through her mind in that last kaleidoscope of thought, when the impulses of one action and the result of another make the strange mingling which precedes the start and fall into space that in their turn herald sleep. Last faint ejacul- ations of piety escaped her; over all was a serene sense of well-doing and security in Divine benediction. A children's picnic arranged, a stab at another woman well planted, a neglected baby baptized, a hoarded ten-cent piece bestowed, the train laid to find out something it was never her business to know — was there ever such a jumble of the good and the bad ? Something accomplished, something done, had earned a night's repose. fi CHAPTER II THE GUILD The Women's Guild sat in full conclave. The new Rector had been installed for weeks now fast passing into months, and opinion thus far had been held in suspense. After reading himself in he had given two sermons every Sunday, appropriate to the season and of suflficient variety in subject, and sound enough in doctrine to satisfy those wishing to be dubbed " High," as well as those who, as " Low," said they required " spiritual sustenance." In this period of the Church's history, under twenty years ago, the Guild covered all small societies, whether the work were domestic or foreign. The congregation had been sitting under the Reverend Caleb Short, nominally; practically, the Reverend Caleb Short had been sitting under the Guild. To-day, bales were to be got ready for the great Algonquin mission^ and the forces were assembled. This was too good an opportunity for comparison and debate 12 Committed to his Charge to let slip; so, little by little, with many diplomatic beginnings made by those who were determined to give things an airing, the Rector, his sermons and his views, the Rector's wife, their children, the Rectory, were put through the mill. At times conversation drifted into other channels, but inevitably it came back to the subject of all absorbing interest. Mrs. Lyte, small, fair, and kindly, held her needle up high to thread it, looked along the line of her spectacles, focussed the steel and put the thread through after many ineffectual dabs. " He seems awfully in love with his wife." " Whose wife else would he be in love with ? '* snapped Mrs. Forby, the dragon of the parish, and out-and-out the best and most useful woman in it — but also owning a tongue from which people turned instinctively as from a flame. " Nobody's, nobody's," Mrs. Lyte hastened to explain. Then a human kind of wish for retaliation made her add, " but it is more than can be said for every man." This meant that Mr. Forby was not as atten- tive as he might be to his wife, and that every- one knew it. But Mrs. Forby had a bold way of her own of checkmating. 13 Committed to his Charge " I should not wonder but every woman gets as much as she deserves that way." "Then," said Mrs. Lyte, "our new lady at the Rectory must be very sweet indeed, very sweet indeed," and she smoothed out a chemise or two intended for some little Indian's outfit. She handed her bundle to Mrs. Lindsay, who packed as the others mended. Mrs. Lindsay folded them, and turned attention to the sermon of the day before. "Beautiful, wasn't it? But there are those who say it a was vile plagarism,whatever that may be — some heresy, no doubt. You are never sure of pure doctrine these times, with their High and Low, and stuff." " Plagiarism ! " gently corrected a slight, grace- ful woman, with deep grey eyes, dressed in a faded black silk. This was Mrs. Stuart, a widow with an only son of whom she was justly proud, whose attainments she was never tired of rehearsing, and with whom she grew daily deeper in love. She spoke with the dignity of knowledge, not pausing in her work. "It is not heresy, it is only copying, and that is scarcely a sin — and, I am afraid, neither High nor Low. My son says his sermon was got 14 Committed to his Charge from the poet Wordsworth." Mrs. Stuart's cloak of humility, in the sleeve of which she often laughed, covered much knowledge. Mrs. Lindsay had a son just as sharp as Mrs. Stuart's, but she had not the modesty of the other mother. She was ever ready to plunge into any subject, and in any language. "That's it," she cried, "that's the man ! Im- itations of Morality was the name of the piece. That's it, but the title had gone clean out of my head. If you want heresy worse'n that I'd like to know where you'd find it." Mrs. Stuart cleared her throat and essayed an explanation. Mrs. Lindsay scarcely paused. "No," dropping her work to think, "that wasn't it neither — it was /wtimations of Immor- ality — I quite clearly remember the Jn and the Im. Now that I come to think of it, maybe it was Invitations! I always felt sure he was a bad man." Now it was known in the parish that, short a time as the Rector had been in office, Mrs. Lindsay had no love for him. He was a man ready with rebuke where he considered it necessary, using his position school master- wise, and more than once she had managed to fall IS I Committed to his Charge foul of him. So now her companions could not tell whether her remark applied to him or to the poet. They all looked up to hear what might follow; but she did not so commit herself. Her hands fell idly in her lap, and her eye squinted in a retrospective way. " My mind misgave me for a moment, but I'm sure that's right. Yes, Intimations of Immor- ality — and that is the man we are to sit under for the rest of our mortal lives. God keep us ! He looks to me as if he might be an English- man with a Past ! " If she had said " an Englishman with horns and a tail," her tone could not have conjured up more possibilities. " Englishman with a fiddlestick," said Mrs. Forby ; " why should an Englishman have a past any more than any other man." " No reason in the world," was the reply : " they've all got 'em right enough ; but an Englishman's is likely to be a trifle spicier, that's all," and she returned with vehemence to her folding and packing. If there was one friend more than another whom Mrs. Forby would not " put up with," it was Mrs. Lindsay. Mrs. Forby knew just i6 II Committed to his Charge U enough herself to dislike the idea that anyone else could know more. So Mrs. Lindsay having, as it were, challenged the company, Mrs. Forby took up the glove. " A very fine man, very fine man indeed, and, as Mrs. Lyte so happily put it, so in love with his wife. Dear little children, too. Four under five. Dear me! and when Mr. Forby asked him if there wasn't a pair of twins he said, so pleasantly — * Oh no, just came in the usual way * — so bright and cheerful ! " " I wonder how bright and cheerful she is over it," and Mrs. Lindsay's red face loomed up like a moon over the side of a packing-case. " It's easy for men to be cheerful." Another prod at the fast filling box. " I do think, in these days of improvement and electricity and what not, it is awful that women have got to go on just the same as ever." Mrs. Forby laughed, an unusual thing. " A kind of electrical baby, I suppose. " " No — o. Not exactly that. But some way of peopling the world more comfortable than the old way." " Now you are blasphemous," said Mrs. Forby, relapsing into habitual sternness. 2 17 li r Committed to his Charge " Well, women want a rest. I don't suppose you deny that ? " " A pretty way they go about it, wanting to vote and take up men's work as well as their own. " Mrs. Lindsay was a widow and had a vote in municipal matters. There were dark rumours that she had exercised her right, and therefore in the eyes of the Guild she had unsexed herself She glanced about to see who might be listen- ing. "What about Miss Sweeting?" she whispered. " Well, what about her ? " Mrs. Forby was prepared to go either way, as determined for her by Mrs. Lindsay's answer. " Well," said the latter, " I once heard you make the elegant re-mark that you hated a He-She, and to my mind Miss Sweeting is not far off that pattern. All she needs is ordina- tion and a low-crowned hat" Mrs. Forby had no particular love for Miss Sweeting. Indeed, there had been times when she wished that that excellent spinster would mind her own business and leave her to do the same. The legend ran that she had so expressed herself to Miss Sweeting's face. But Mrs. Lind- i8 Committed to his Charge say was a woman who in Mrs. Forby's opinion required any amount of sitting upon, and to do Mrs. Forby justice, as far as opportunity was afforded iier, Mrs. Lindsay got it. " Miss Sweeting is a most estimable woman," she said, laying down'her work and adjusting her spectacles in a way which heralded a long address — " a most estimable woman, and this parish will never be able to repay her what she has done. You needn't put up your eyebrows that way. She is a good woman, and her very faults or failings — some of them — come of her being a good woman. When \ sBy good'* — this severely — " I mean a womanly woman. She doesn't want to vote. Her silliness with the last curate, and everything else silly that she has done, comes from what is legitimate longing in every good woman, longing for wifehood, for motherhood, for a home, for all the things we have and she hasn't." She paused, evidently not finished, and no one had nerve to interrupt. " She was an awful fool, though, with that last curate," and Mrs. Forby relapsed into retrospect of the curate's last month in office. " I have watched her day in and day out, when she stays with Mrs. Lucy. You can see the drive-way 19 Committed to his Charge right up to the door from our dining-room window. She would watch for him, in that pale blue gown of hers, all smiles and welcome, and mincing her words — I could see her mince. I caught her pulling a dandelion to bits one day, and I'll be bound she was going through * he loves me, he loves me not.' " Everyone laughed, even Miss Sweeting's best friends. " I guess it was more likely * he cometh not, she said.' Surely she never thought he could love her," said Mrs. Lyte. "Why, he might have been her son ! " " There isn't anything of a He-She in all that, though," concluded Mrs. Forby, going back to the nettling part of Mrs. Lindsay's remark. "She's too sweetly feminine when a curate's about, even for me. But work — I'd like to know where the Sunday school, or the sick, or the poor, or the choir, or anything would have been all the years of the dear Rector's illness — and the dreadful times we put in with those curates — if it hadn't been for her. All the same, it is a mercy we've got a married man now." " I don't see you have said anything to make us admire her more than we did," said Mrs. 20 Committed to his Charge Lindsay. " And why does she stay so much at the Lucys'? Oh, I know the excuse, because her brother lives so far out of town. But the truth is the same house won't hold her and any of her own relations. When things get too hot they just pack her off to the Lucys*. And I don't care who knows I say so." " I wonder how she came to be christened that strange name — Dulcissima." "Her mother was a queer, sentimental kind of thing," said Mrs. Forby. "It was her doing. Means something pretty near Molasses, doesn't it?" Mrs. Lindsay announced, " It's Italian and superlative. We've got an Ollendorf " "Ollendorf?" said Mrs. Lyte, looking up. " That's French. I learned Ollendorf at school." " It's Italian, too," contended Mrs. Lindsay ; " my Jim has the whole of them. German, too. Well, Ollendorf says the c like that in Italian is sounded like sh, so I suppose her name ought to be Dulshishima." "Shish your grandmother," said Mrs. Forby with vigour. She was losing patience again. "No, I won't neither, it's there to read for yourself if you like. With those books you Committed to his Charge could go over Europe in four or five different languages." *' Thank the Lord I have the sense to stay at home and hold my tongue in English/' was Mrs. Forby's retort " Marion Crawford would not agree with you there." Mrs. Stuart had a friend in a large publishing house, and it was one of her few pleasures to receive a package from him. Such a friend was a god-send to a dweller in S'ow- ford who was not Slowford born. True, they had a bookseller, but when an enterprising publisher sent a poster setting forth the merits of some new work, it was his custom to raise a pair of soft black eyes to the inquiring would-be purchaser, and say, "Oh, no, we haven't the book, we only have the poster." But Mrs. Stuart was a lady of a lively wit, albeit she hid it from Slowford. Anticipating Pedro, she called the bookseller a knowledge-stopper, and got her reading matter elsewhere. The last package had contained " Saracinesca " and George Eliot's "Life" by Cross. It was her habit to keep a book near her as she worked, read a sentence or two, do more work, and ruminate as she worked. Mrs. Lindsay had little taste that way. She read Committed to his Charge a certain kind of literature procurable at all circu- lating libraries, and she had a trick of taking down the Encyclopaedia, her OUendorfs and books of reference, when nothing more exciting offered. The jumble of information thus acquired, when newly assorted and partially assimilated, was given out liberally to her friends. Mrs. Forby despised books, and thought reading a waste of time ; she subscribed to two or three Home Journals, but confined herself to the columns treating of garden, kitchen and needlework. She read the editorials in the local papers, but scorned the foreign news. " I hardly ever read their politics, " she once said; "what do I care so long as the Tories remain in ? Of course, there is always ' Mothers Column,' and * Fancies for the Breakfast-table ' — I don't miss them. What do I care whether the Czar is at Gotschina or Peterhof — if my eye was caught by Czar-on-toast it would be a different matter. The poor man seems to be in hot water most of the time. I do like the Princess of Wales, though; I wish they would put in columns about her!* Now, when Mrs. Stuart mentioned Marion Crawford, Mrs. Forby pricked up her ears. 23 Committed to his Charge The name conveyed to her the idea of a stranger come among them. When strangers did come it was always a time of excitement and specul- ation until it was decided whether they joined " the bankers and that lot " or the " church set," of which last-named Mrs. Forby, Mrs. Lindsay and Mrs. Lyte were the leaders and governors. " Marion Crawford — what of her ? What should she know about it — I haven't heard of her. A man ? Marion ! Whatever was his mother thinking of? — some silly goose of a woman like Dulcie's mother, maybe. Well, I thought George Eliot queer enough for a woman, but I don't wonder she wanted to hide herself — I have read quite a bit about her'' The emphasis of Mrs. Forby's remarks was not favourable to the gifted author. " I never could read the books of a woman like that — no, never ! " Mrs. Stuart knew "Silas Marner" by heart, and was then deep in the biography. She shifted uneasily in her chair, but said nothing. " And this Marion Crawford — he writes, too, I suppose^ " continued Mrs. Forby. " It does seem to me such a flying in the face of nature mixing 'em up like that. Male and female 24 Committed to his Charge created He them. Do the creatures never read their Bible, I wonder ? " " Her husband represents her as fond of her Bible ; George Eliot's biography shows her to be a good woman, knowing a good deal." Mrs. Stuart's tone was ironical and had a trifle of temper in it, for George Eliot was one of her divinities. " Husband ! She's got no husband," said Mrs. Forby. " I dont know much about her — I don't want to know, but I do know that much." Mrs. Stuart walked to the window. She said she was tired and wanted to stretch her back. She lived very much apart, and sometimes it pleased her vanity to remember that she so lived. "If I could but tell Alec, "she said to herself, as she looked out on the sloping church green and the tussocks on * Kippan's Island * standing up from it defiantly crooked ; " but I dare not — it would be all through the High School by noon, and who could blame him? If George Eliot could but hear these people — or Dickens — they deserve a Dickens. " She had a note-book at home, in whose bosom might be found many Slowford sayings and her own comments on people and things. She laughed now, as she 25 Committed to his Charge thought of the pages she would fill that evening. She often drew a malicious pleasure from giving her acquaintances a " starter, " so she gave them one now as she returned to her sewing. " They say our Rector was quite a famous lecturer down the country. His series on Shakespeare was noticed in all the city papers." " He had better confine himself to his sermons here^ " said Mrs. Lyte in a warning way. " Oh, I dont suppose there's much harm in Shakespeare." Mrs. Forby meant to be liberal in saying so, and having so demolished George Eliot she could afiford to be friendly to Shake- speare. " For those who like something different," continued Mrs. Stuart, ''he has given some on philosophy and — oh, lots of things. The Canad- ian Review repeated the whole of his lecture on Kant" Mrs. Forby brightened at that. " Ah, there's something sensible — I hope he'll give that here, no place wants it worse, in my opinion." Mrs. Stuart looked up with a wicked gleam in her grey eyes. " Yes but his was different from the Slowford cant. This one is spelt with a K." Cant spelt with a AT/" cried Mrs. Forby, "/ 26 Committed to his Charge don't pretend to be literary, but I know how to spell." A convulsion in a packing-case discharged Mrs. Lindsay, who testily remarked that she didn't see what the bother was about, as most of 'em were dead anyway. Mrs. Lyte puckered her forehead and tried hard to think ; she did not trust Mrs. Stuart. Mrs. Lindsay laboured at a pun — ** It can't be done — you can't spell cant with a K." Mrs. Stuart longed towards the sympathy denied from Alec, but vouchsafed no information. Mrs. Lyte determined to hunt up cant with a K as soon as she should reach home. Mrs. Lindsay's next remark seemed to have some relation in her own mind to the word discussed. " I wonder what has become of Miss Sweeting. She has been at the Rectory all afternoon telling them about our At Home, and getting the new list made out, so that nobody will be forgotten." The Guild had decided at its last meeting to have an entertainment of the kind hitherto called a Social, which should embrace every member of the parish. It was to be called an At Home, meaning that all who came to it were at home to their new Rector and his wife. As if summoned a; I Committed to his Charge to defend herself, Miss Sweeting stood in the doorway — not an unpleasing figure, small, slight and neat, old-maidish to a degree, her bright hair streaked with grey, an all but pretty woman. There was an unpleasant twinkling in her eyes* and her mouth was pinched. Simultaneously all work was dropped in lap, and those in the rear pressed forward. Mrs. Forby greeted her. " It must have been a long list to keep you all afternoon. " " I was doing more than that. " There was an air of being able to impart information, but of doubt as to the expediency of so doing. This little old maid always appeared to know more than any one else of the matter in hand — that she could tell you all about it if she would, and if she thought it good for you to know. There was always present a sense of being entirely at her mercy and discretion. "The character of the entertainment has entirely changed, and I have been addressing envelopes all afternoon — and they are posted — we posted them on the way up." " We " always meant Miss Sweeting and the reigning in- cumbent. "Posted I" a8 Committed to his Charge "Kx " Addressed ! " came in gasps from some of the hearers. " But we meant to invite through the papers and through the Parish Magazine^' said Mrs. Forby, " and what's more, we will." "The Magazine notice was given in this morning, and our cakes all promised," added Mrs. Lindsay. " Mine's made — a plum," said Mrs. Forby. " Well, go on Dulcie. What else have you and the new man been pleased to do with us ? " Miss Sweeting smiled her draw-string smile and twinkled, while Mrs. Forby beat the floor with her foot. " It was not I — I had nothing to do but direct envelopes." " Only envelopes ? " queried Mrs. Forby, with deadly quiet. "The Rector has decided that he and Mrs Huntley, not the Guild, shall be At Home on that evening, and the invitations run that way He struck them off on his typewriter— or rather she did. They say the refreshment arrange- ments can stand just as they were. It will not put anyone out, or need not," she added, at a withering glance from Mrs Forby. a9 Committed to his Charge " He may be At Home on that evening," said the latter, " but so shall I and my plum cake — eight pounds of it I At home on our cake and tea, indeed! I think I see them, or myself either — well, did you ever ! " and she turned to the circle about her where the members sat petrified, and with work laid aside, each trying to frame her mind to the new position. " I must say," said Mrs. Lyte, who was always the mildest of the trio, " I never did like the way he will come poking into our meetings and opening and closing for us, when we have done for ourselves all these years." " Yes, and making her President, first go off." " Honorary President," corrected Mrs. Forby, as one who should say, " Over this dead body first." " Well then, honorary. To be sure, she never opens her mouth but to talk to some of the younger women about her babies. Why, one night you were not here, and the Rector away too, would you believe it — she couldn't say the Lord's Prayer!" " Oh, come now." " True, isn't it ? " and Mrs. Lindsay turned to the circle for corroboration. Most members of the Chapter wagged their heads solemnly. 30 Committed to his Charge " True in a way," said Mrs. Stuart. " She is nervous, poor thing, and very young. And her family is very young," she pleaded in further extenuation. "Most families are, at some period of their existence," snapped Mrs. Lindsay. " I won't go as far as Mrs. Forby and keep my cake — good- ness knows I don't begrudge them a cake or two. But^ if we say we are going to be at home in our own school-house on a certain evening, I don't see why he — and she — and you," turning to Miss Sweeting, "should go and send out invitations such as these. Show them me" — and she held out her hand for the bundle of notes in Miss Sweeting's claw-like little fingers. The Rector and Mrs. Huntley AT HOME On Wednesday Evening, June 20th, In All Saints' School House. " Very much at home, indeed — nothing bashful about them ! Well, what does everybody think ?** " As for At Homes," said Mrs. Forby, " I, for one, don't hold with the custom. In this case they are not at home, but are in the school- house. And as for a woman printing such a 31 Committed to his Charge statement about herself on a card, I should like to know where she would be if not at home ? " Everyone had something to say, but the majority decided that the man meant well, and that it would never do in these early days to seem resentful. " It strikes me," said Mrs. Lyte, " that he finds himself in a position entirely new, and doesn't quite know what to do." "Yes, and bound to do something — he's boiling with energy. Exactly. Never was a Rector before, and thinks we are literally his sheep, to he driven this way and that." " He's like a dog with two tails and trying to wag 'em both at once," said Mrs. Forby. Everybody laughed. " A finger in every pie," added Mrs. Lindsay. "Just you watch Carney on Sunday." Mr. Carney was the organist. " Mr. Huntley is bound to do the choosing of the hymns, and he has begun at the tunes and the chants now. When you see Carney come out and hunch his ears up in his coat collar, and sit with his legs stiff and without getting on the bench till the bell's stopped, then you may know there's been battle, murder and sudden death in the vestry. And now he says the organ wants 32 Committed to his Charge fixing, that he won't rest until he has added a Nox Vomica " "Good Gracious, Mrs. Lindsay," said Mrs. Forby, putting the key in the door, " is the man a homoeopathist too ? " Mrs. Stuart laughed outright ; no one had ever heard her do so before. "Well, I'm no musician," Mrs Lindsay admitted goodnaturedly ; "Miss Sweeting here is, you can ask her — Peter told me about the stop." But Miss Sweeting had distributed her notes and, content with having achieved a purpose unknown to and in defiance of the whole Guild, had quietly gone home. Mrs. Forby turned a wrathful countenance toward the crowd of women ; since Dulcie had escaped she would make a vicarious sacrifice of someone, no matter which one. "That ridiculous old Peter — Nux vomica — I suppose he means vox humana." " Perhaps it is — I daresay," said Mrs. Lindsay with an accent of dont-care. A wicked desire to expose her friend seized Mrs. Forby. "And what does nux vomica mean? Isn't there a Latin Ollendorf ? " 3 33 warn I' ■■ Committed to his Charge "No, I heartily wish there were," said the other, falling into the trap ; " a bit of Latin is sometimes so effective — explicit, you know." "Particularly when you don't know what it means." " Oh. but I do — Nox, night, anybody knows that much — Vomica, er — er — ill in the night, I suppose." " We will spare you further details," and Mrs. Forby let the rest file out, drawing the door to behind her. " As you say, Latin is handy on occasions — and you can go up head." Once free of the listeners, before whom she would not expose Dulcie, for she remembered her championship of an hour before, Mrs. Forby, permitted herself a remark to her two intimates. " That little cat Dulcie is at the bottom of the whole thing." They parted at Mrs. Forby's gate, where her husband, lifting the latch, performed the un- wonted civility of letting her in. The others were by this time at a safe distance. " I do wish that Mrs. Lindsay would confine herself to subjects she understands." "Lord love you, Maria, would you have the woman go dumb ? " 34 r ,i Committed to his Charge But the question was noi answered, for the pan left by the mistress's own capable fingers ready for the oven, with a spotless cloth over an edible which looked toothsome even in raw- ness, now gave forth odours telling of a forgotten committal to the fire, of a pine blaze to hurry matters, and an already scorching carcase. Into the blue smoke which invaded the sacred front of her house Mrs. Forby disappeared, and until she drove in scorched maid and food before her, did Mr. Forby, between the items of his news- paper and at a safe distance in the verandah, alternate the politics of Europe with thoughts of the far more difficult politics of home and Church as understood by his Maria. I ¥i 11 CHAPTER III THE GOSPEL OF HOME The Reverend Thomas Huntley and his wife were in the study at the Rectory. All day they had played tennis on the lawn on which their drawing-room windows gave. The beginning of the week had seen forty-two parochial visits made, two country sermons delivered, and every sick person in the town comforted. To-morrow morning, Saturday, would be devoted to standing in the market-place, for Slowford was a market town of considerable importance, and on Satur- day mornings every farmer from several ridings might be found upon the Square. The good farmers were not quite so picturesque in summer as in winter. In January you might see the Laird MacWillie clothed in the skins of beasts, his coat rivalling Joseph's in variety if not in brightness, his hat fashioned from a coon whose tail, reversed, wagged in a way to account for the expression of the wall eye beneath it. There was his neighbour, Donald Mclntyre, who scorned 36 Jli Committed to his Charge le lr Canadian clothing and stuck to a plaid which crossed and re-crossed his ample bosom, his head covered with a blue bonnet from his former home, surmounted by a knob of a different shade but as red as the locks beneath ; the latter were fiery, the former inclined to vermilion, and the two made a fine contrast in reds. There were Irish farmers in old broad- cloth, long-tailed coats a mile too wide in the shoulders, and the garment below them a mile too wide and too long in the seat. These men were clean shaven, with black-pitted cheeks and sunken, twinkling eyes ; the underlip of each fell to one side from the pressure of the never-absent clay pipe, and thin, small withered hands held themselves as if perpetually fingering tobacco. The head-gear was generally an old silk hat which had been industriously rubbed, sometimes the wrong way, harbouring quantities of dust in summer and of snowflakes in winter. On stormy days the beloved beaver relic was replaced by a tightly-fitting fur cap with ears tied securely under the chin, and the pipe seemingly tied up with it. There were ruddy English farmers, too, with traces of Somerset and Devon in their speech, generally with something disparaging to say of 37 I i: Committed to his Charge the new land or a growling reminiscence of zum- mat that was different in the " hould coontree." The Rector had parishioners everywhere, but his Irish were of a different cast from those of beaver and tail-coats ; his had large heads with curly manes, and knotted hands, looking like the Scotch, and every man Orange. In the old days of the first settlers there had been battles royal betwixt the Scotch and Irish, the former fortifying themselves from their snuff-boxes, the latter with shillaleghs, both with whiskey. But the Orange- Irish got on with his Scotch neigh- bour ; all he bargained for was to be free of the little men in broadcloth and silk hats. And the latter were only too glad to be free of them, for the Orange were powerful and bitter enemies. An Orangeman made a will wherein he bargained that no Roman should be buried within one hundred feet of him, for all time. One of the little old men of the dudheen kind had been persecuted by the maker of the will till it could be borne no longer, and the little man's last defence was shrewd. His primitive dwelling of logs, lean-to, thatch and planking, was never free from attacks, so he painted it green, a vivid, national green. He argued correctly ; for instead 38 , I Committed to his Charge of razing the dwelling, as another might have feared would be the result, the enemy passed by on the other side and would not touch the accursed thing. But the Romish wife, the little Irishwoman with'face the size of a watch, keen black eyes set near together and skin tanned like an Indian's, could make revenge like a practical religionist. One day she was seated in her green cabin, a marvel of cleanliness and poverty-stricken neatness. Her white, double- bordered cap fitted closely round the small, wizened face ; she was clad in her best black gown, and on a chair near by lay her drawn and corded black bonnet and summer shawl. Sud- denly a cat of startling orange hue stood in the doorway, its stripes gaining brilliancy from the hot sun-rays pouring in through the opening behind it. The pot, ready for the potatoes, boiled and hissed on the brisk wood fire. " Bad scran to yez for a divil of a Prodestant cat," and Mrs. McCaffrey had poor pussy in the pot, the lid held firmly down. When the Reverend Thomas Huntley heard of the last addition to the roll of martyrs he laughed heartily. He had yet to learn what such bitterness meant. 39 mss Committed to his Charge » Among people such as this his Saturday morning would be spent. Saturday afternoons were taken up in revising old sermons or writing new ones. It was one of the former that owed its existence to " Intimations of Im- morality." This Friday, then, between the two active portions of the week, had been devoted to tennis and much innocent merriment Ann and her ivuii charges had spent most of the time on the vc ii'dah within sight, and at odd times the childrfc.v -t!\ose who could walk — had come dovn \o VI \ rafter the balls, to be kissed, to tumble about with Ponto and Jim and Ginger, to have a jump on Daddy's high shoulder, feeling themselves a part of that happy time. As Mrs. Forby and others had divined, the pleasure of the sense of possession was new and keen to the Rector. The cloudless June day drew to a close with a chill, and the study fire was lighted. Helen Huntley placed a small table in front of the blaze, and put upon it a smoker's necessities and four packs of cards. " I don't see why we shouldn't close the day as we have spent it — enjoying ourselves." 49 I Committed to his Charge y IS it ,1 "That is a nice declaration of opinion for a clergyman's wife," said Huntley, but at the same time he began to arrange the cards for dealing. "Oh, well, to-morrow is a work-day again. There are your slippers, dear. What was our score last time ? I won — I remember that." " Trust you not to forget a fact of that kind," laughed her husband, as he gave the burning log a kick to send it farther into the fireplace. " It is a good rule to remember the pleasant and forget everything else — that is one of your favourite preachments, in the pulpit and out. Deal me a good hand, there's a duck. I am so thankful that that At Home is over — and so well over. How nicely everything went, not a hitch. Even Mrs. Forby was amiable and smiled," and Helen's own smile broadened into a laugh. " She makes a good plum cake, I know that," said the Rector. " We must have enough cake in the house for another At Home, I should think — if we were so minded." " Yes, niggardliness in the matter of cake can never be laid to their charge ; I wanted it sent to the House of Refuge, but Mrs. Lindsay wouldn't hear of it — she said that House of 41 Mme ='l > i i < (M ll ^ i H Wiii Committed to his Charge II I 1 1 Refuge got more than it deserved. She and Peter are the Mal-a-props of the town. Four queens — a sequence. You had better h'ght your pipe and keep your spirits up, Mr. Huntley. Cake — I should think so. It was an awfully happy thought of Miss Sweeting's, though. We never could have managed without meeting them all, and we couldn't have accommodated a quarter of them here. Besides, think of the carpets. I wonder how she managed the Guild, — she is a wonderful little thing." "Then you do think that even a Rector's hospitality has its limits ? " " We never could have them /tere, for instance.'* Tom looked round the snug elegance of his study, and shuddered. It was as if tramps and a drunkard or two had been suggested in his sanctuary. "Certainly not!" " Tom ! " " Well ? " " I think — perhaps — parish life will improve you." "Thanks awfully." " Don't, dear. What I mean is, you will pro- bably become more human." 4a H I Committed to his Charge " Thanks still more awfully." "Well, you may laugh, but, you know, I think that the Rector's home, as a rule, is the most selfish place to be found in the parish. I do, indeed. You preached to the boys fairly well, but you played cricket with them much better. Now, on Sunday evening last, although I object on principle to sermons of that sort — don't interrupt — you did stand face to face with those about you. It was the first time I ever heard you speak straight from your heart." " Helen ! " " Oh, well, of course I mean from the pulpit. If you could only always do that, Tom." " Well, you sit below the pulpit in that pink bonnet, and I'll try." " Don't be flippant, dear." "And what, pray, did you object to on principle? That I likened life to a land over which the locusts have gone? You don't know " " Tom, what is the use of going through life with head over shoulder like Lot's wife, — always the past, the past ? " "Dear heart, you know not of what you speak." 43 ''I ' 1/ 1 1» , '^^Ji: Committed to his Charge II But I do. n II But you don't. The majority of us wake up at thirty, at thirty-five we chant " too late," and at forty the worm begins." You are forty — I see no worm, You scotched him long ago." I'm glad it was him, not her." If The Rector turned to the fire and gave the logs a kick, a fresh shower of sparks rewarding his vigour. " You are a different man, out of and in your own house," said his wife, returning to the attack. *' I always think you lock your heart behind you when you close the hall door." "This is worse than having one's hand read by a palmist." " It is necessary — for your own good, my dear, as you sometimes say to poor Punch." " Oh, I don't mind ; fire away. It is pleasant to spend one's time with a lady who never looks forward and who never looks back. There is great flattery to the male in the attitude." " What does it matter what one has had, or what one is going to have — I want it now," and Helen's needle gave a vicious stab. " Your practice is pleasant, dear, I bask in the 44 i Committed to his Charge K light of your smiles and sweetness ; but as for morals, conscience, philosophy — whew ! " « Tom ! '• « Well ? " "Don't you think the conscience is like the back, it gets fitted to its burden ? " He looked fixedly at her for a moment. " What makes you ask me that ? " " Nothing. But what is the use of a sermon like that — revenons d nos moutons, otherwise congregation — for to the people with a past it is too late, and the younger ones won't listen to you." « Evidently." " Oh, but I did. Every word of it And I watched the people. It was only the elderly ones who listened. The young faces were vacant or inattentive. I saw that pretty Alice — Alice what's-her-name, leaning back and count- ing something, the patterns in the chancel ceiling, perhaps, and the girl beside her was as usual grinning at some one in the congregation _and " "If you call the lovely Edith's smile a grin it is you who are hardened." " No, give me Eyes Front for a text." 45 BB I * Committed to his Charge " Not Biblical. Nor yet Let Bygones be By- gones." "Well, then— Let the Dead Past bury its Dead." " Helen I " Huntley walked round the room apd back to his place. " Do you really mean it?" " I really do." A long pause was only broken by the crackle of the fire and the clicking of Helen's scissors. " It is sometimes hard to hit it off with these people," went on the Rector, as he struck another match. " Now the other evening yo' were as sweet as a peach and said the rig thing — / thought — every time but once — I could see Mrs. Forby expected you to say something which you didn't, and there was an ominous silence between you." " I suppose I said nothing," said Helen, laying her pretty head back against the cushions, *' simply because I had nothing to say." " Having nothing to say is a state of mind and tongue Mrs. Forby could never understand, and it would be useless to try to explain. They seem a busy, fussy lot, and they like plenty of talk — I can easily see that." 46 ^i Committed to his Charge The fire hissed, the game went on, baby cried and the young mother sped up the staircase. From above soon came the sound of soft crooning, a hushing that rose over the fretful wail, then silence. The Rector lay back in his easy chair, contentment and the light of great happiness in his face. As Mrs. Lyte had remarked, he was awfully in love with his wife. Swift footsteps were heard coming down the staircase, and he turned his gaze to where the bright young face paused within the shadow of the portiere. "Ah, I thought I should catch you napping, and I do so need a pair of new gloves. Don't let's play any r. ore. It's too much like work after such a hard day at tennis — let's talk Parish. Give that fire a poke. It is melting warm, but it does look so nice. Make it blaze — June! think of it, and how good the blankets will feel to-night. Now Tom, put those cards neatly in the box, not all higgledy-piggledy — what a tire- some stupid — you old dear," and she stooped over the chair to give him a peck. He drew the pretty face down to his. " I think our lines have fallen in pleasant places, love. I think we shall get on." 47 Committed to his Charge " Get on — and why not ? " She snapped to the lid of the card box, then drew her work basket towards her, put her feet on the fender and made preparation for comfort with employment. She sewed at some tiny garment, love worked in with every stitch as eye rested on husband or thought travelled to the row of cribs overhead. " I'll tell you what, Tom — it is a thousand pities you gave up your cassock. Between us and the light your legs aren't handsome, either/* The Rector shook his head. " Remember the fate of the Orange cat. If I had been caught in a cassock I might have gone pop into the Kippsin potato-pot. No, I grudged it, and felt precious awkward at first, but it is better nol; to court that kind of trouble." " Court your grandmother," irreverently. " I preferred to court her grand-daughter." They laughed; hearty, innocent laughter at their own jokes. "You must be careful how you quote Mrs. Forby ; one cannot see the quotation marks in speech. It sounds as if you were taking liberties with our own grandmother. God rist her sowl, as Mrs. McCaffrey said to me to-day when talk- 48 V \ Committed to his Charge ing of the old Rector, 'and the free, pleasant man he was, not a bit like a Prodestant.* " " Oh, but you didn't see yourself stalking about that chancel," said Helen, returning to her subject. "Really, last Sunday I made up my mind to send for one or to put a flounce to your petticoat." " I think we'll leave the garment as it is." He spoke between satisfied puffs at his pipe, send- ing curls up to the ceiling. " I had so many warnings, and have heard so many tales on both sides, that it behoves me to tread warily. That cat story scared me horribly. I am like to be between the devil and the deep sea. It would be easier to escape Mrs. McCaffrey and her pot than the Kippans and some of the Guild. That institution is on a perpetual look-out for Ritualism. Mr. Low told me they already think too much music is introduced into the service, and that Miss Webb suggested * Let us sing,' instead of 'Let us pray.' Oh, Miss Webb's solos — and Miss Sweeting's roulades — and poor Carney's extempore playing — and my rival Mrs. Quick — and that dreadful old Webb and his spy- glass — and Peter " "Frumps!" said his wife, dismissing Miss 4 49 \? Committed to his Charge i^\ V . li Webb and airing her own opinions in one word. " I do wish, dear, I could be of some help to you. I felt, and am sure I looked like a perfect fool the night they expected me to open the Guild Meet- ing. I could as easily have said the Lord's Prayer in Greek as in English. I stumbled round in my head for * God save the Queen,' and 'confound their politics,' but it was no good. What must they have thought ? " " The truth, probably — that you were nervous. There's more kindness in the world than we give it credit for." " How nice it will be when the girls grow up and can help you." The girls were in their fifth and third years. " This frock is going to be a beauty. I wish I had a hot iron — it's ready to press. But Mary will be in bed and the fire out." " I am sure Miss Sweeting would help you in any difficulty," said the Rector, ignoring the frock. Mrs. Huntley pursed her mouth, made slits of her eyes, and looked at her husband deprecat- ingly. " I am not sure I want to be helped. I have always an uneasy feeling when she calls that she has come to stay, and that I have not asked her so Committed to his Charge according to her expectations. I think, yes — I really think I like Mrs. Forby better, or even, yes, even Mrs. Lindsay." " Oh, come now ! " " Well, Miss Sweeting has given me a detailed account of everyone in the parish. I find that most of them have something to be ashamed of. But I am so stupid at remembering that I am sure to tack a scandal to some guiltless person." " Forget it all," said her husband with sudden energy, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. " Forget it all, and don't try to keep their nasty little histories sorted. I hate gossip. Gossip comes of the Devil, and Scandal is from Hell ! " " Good gracious, Tom ! This is only Friday, and I'm not a congregation! Don't preach, dear. It wants a pulpit to make it effective — and your petticoated black legs. Hand me that pair of scissors and stop scowling. Your dear Miss Sweeting is a gossip. When I differ or exclaim, she puts her head on one side like a funny little old grandmother-bird, and says, " Who has been longer in this town, you or I ? " " Horrible ! I don't suppose you want to rival her in either longevity or knowledge 1 Shut her up when you can, and endure her when you SI m Iff Committed to his Charge can't. That is the only advice I can give you. We must make the best of her, and credit her good intention in the main. Selfishness makes one lenient ; and from all I can hear she is a kind of perpetual curate, a, walking Parish Directory. She is a very useful person, and I am beginning to wonder what I should do without her." " Upon my word ! — and suppose I begin to determine you sAa/l do without her — poor old thing," and Helen laughed, the thoroughly amiable, fearless laugh that a woman, young and pretty, can afford to bestow on one comparatively old and not pretty. " I am not afraid. She does not escape the others though. TAey say she expected that last curate to marry her." " That is Mrs. Lindsay," said the Rector. " No, Mrs. Forby this time. Indeed, they all like a fling at her. But they let her do lots of work. Mrs. Forby says she has been trying to catch a husband for over twenty years. Odious — the very repetition does sound so vulgar. And of course as time goes on the chances are fewer, and her efforts and despair proportionate." The Rector laughed his easy, good-natured chuckle. " How like women ! Do you remember that story we read in ' Tales from Blackwood ? ' Committed to his Charge A gruesome one, where the hero was shut up in a chamber that had six or seven windows. Every morning as he lay looking for the light it came through one less till but one was left. Then he knew that on the morrow there would be no light at all, and that his narrowing prison would crush him in darkness for ever. Well, I suppose this curate was her last window — poor soul. Isn't it time you put away that sewing ? A small voice is demanding a ' jink * — you may as well go Hrst as last," and he lighted her candle. " Oh, no, Ann is in, I hear her step." " Small blame to you for that," said he, as the heavy foot fall threatened to come through the ceiling. " She is invaluable. The servant question seems to be one of the troubles here. Mrs. Forby has any number of tales. She once had seven in a month — maids, not tails." " She might have seven in a day, if I were the maids," said the Rector; "a fussy, exacting woman, if I do not mistake. She thinks all the ethics of life lie in a scrubbing brush — her servants are required to sweep like avenging angels. My dear, be a good immigrant, but do not take all the fashions of the place, I beseech you." 53 Committed to his Charge j i Helen had visions of Mrs. Quick's " cowbite " as it nodded in the front pew. " I don't think I intend to adopt any of them — I shall stick to my own ways — and milliner. I should as soon copy Mrs. Lindsay's bonnet, or her grammatical construction, as her manner of living. We can surely lead our own lives and keep our position true to them and to our calling, can't we, Tom ? " "Our calling ! Hark to her ! When were you ordained, Madame ? " " You will yet see that I have as much to do here as you. At the school there was nothing for me but to have the boys to tea now and then, and to comfort the home-sick ones; but here it is different. It brings out latent mis- sionary zeal, and all sorts of things. Listen to Punch. Why doesn't Ann give him his jink ? " The Rector took up the candlestick and held it while she hastily folded back the hearth-rug careful of sparks and mindful of possibly thoughtless housemaid service in the morning. She put up her face for a hurried kiss as she took the candle. " Don't read too long, dearest. You will get a frown, and look like an old man." S4 Committed to his Charge Again " Jink ! " was shrilled from above. "Coming, darling, mother is coming — and oh, Tom, do see to the cat She might stay by the fire, and we might find her on baby's chest in the morning ! " " You superstitious goose ! You might as well be afraid of the ghost of the martyred Orange puss." It was half-past ten, a good hour and a half for reading before he, too, went to bed, but he did not seem in any hurry to begin. He took down two or three books, but showed no sign of settling to them until the footsteps overhead had ceased. Then he read and made notes until the cathedral chimes on the mantelpiece struck twelve, when he opened his Greek Testament and read his chapter. Then knelt, his arms resting on the table, his head buried in them, and he prayed. 55 CHAPTER IV POLITICS VS. RELIGION m Nothing more truly conservative can be imagined than a Canadian town of the Slowford type. The Reverend Thomas Huntley thought him- self of that school of politics, but in Slowford he found himself progressive to the extent of Radicalism. He arrived there just as a twenty- two years' record had been broken and a Reform candidate sent to Parliament, a return brought about merely because the Tory was unpopular enough to have made some votes change and others go unregistered. However, they but awaited the man and the hour to be on the winning side again. But what they were politically was not a circumstance to what they were in Church matters and socially. Huntley confided to his wife his opinion that the lines of demarcation between " sets " were rigidly drawn, and were, to the eye of a newcomer, purely arbitrary, without 56 Committed to his Charge birth, education or manners, as precedent for the state of being. There was the large circle, which embraced the entire congregation ; within it all met on a common ground, from the Rector's wife to Granny Quick, from Mrs. Lucy to Peter the sexton, and there was a show of mutual good feeling tempered by many demo- cratic utterances on one side and snobbish acts on the other. At periodical teas and ice-cream festivals many eatables and drinkables were consumed, and much money taken from "out- siders " for the support of the Church. These outsiders comprehended " all Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics " ; their money was ex- changeable, but there their usefulness ceased. There was absolutely no interchange of anything else between the Anglican Church and outside Slowford. When a foreign clergyman once berated the congregation of All Saints' for not giving more freely, showed them their place compared with other congregations, and described the funds furnished by other denominations for missionary purposes, they took it very hardly. He did not mince matters. He was not accustomed to audiences who would not hear anything unpalat- 57 Committed to his Charge able. He spoke admiringly of the freer spirit manifested by Methodists and Presbyterians when they gave to any church need, particularly when the benefit derived was not for home purposes. He quoted the Jesuits ; but he beat the air. " As if," said Mrs. Forby, " there could be a comparison of that kind in bald figures I There are other things to be taken into consider- ation. We have appearances to keep up, and that costs so — ^just look at our social obligations t Those people have none whatever." So Mrs. Forby, President of the Guild, continued, with her aides, to furnish the Algonquin Mission with a bale once a year in the way we have seen ; there her outside obligations ceased. The foreign clergyman might never have come for any result his words ever had. But inside the large circle within which out- siders never penetrated farther than to eat and drink at ten cents a plate and five cents a cup» there were two or three smaller ones, each as inaccessible to the other as the large one was to those poor people named in the Collect already quoted. Mr. and Mrs. Lucy were of two sets. Banker and Church, two cliques that made periodical calls upon each other and met at one 58 Committed to his Charge '' or two so-called social functions during the year — the Lucys' biennial party at which there was whist, followed by music and supper, the Charity Ball, the'Hospital Ball, or large gatherings made for the benefit of the Volunteers when those brave soldiers were at camp. But friendships between the sets there were none. In all the congregation there were but three Liberals. The three belonged to the Bankers' set, and that alone would have settled them with the Church people. " I do not believe," said Mr. Low, the People's Warden, and he truly believed what he said, " I don't believe that a Churchman or a gentleman could be a Grit. If, unhappily^ he became one he would, in my estimation, cease to be one and the other." Gladstone and several Canadians were cited to him as distress- ing examples. " They are no more Liberals or Grits than / am," he replied. "They are merely ambitious men using other men as their tools, handling them in masses to serve their own ends ; and in order to so handle them, have to pretend to be like them." Inside the Church set a Reformer could not win, and, in spite of her sex, it was on account of a scandalous suspicion in that direction that 59 w i Committed to his Charge Mrs. Stuart was left out in the cold. She belonged to no set, and lived a lonely life. Mrs. Lyte once had drawn attention to her quiet manners and pretty speech ; but manners and speech did not avail. " It's my opinion," said Mrs. Lindsay, "that she is a decomposed gentlewoman." This startling observation led to a correction administered by Mrs. Forby, but Mrs. Lindsay contended that decomposed and decayed meant much the same after all. " A gentlewoman she could hardly be," declared Mrs. Forby, " for during the last election I heard her say things which would set such a suspicion at rest for ever. No lady could be so un-Conser- vative." Naturally, some mistakes made by the Huntleys arose from blindness in points of nicety, from stupidity and lack of appreciation of the gravity of such points. For two years of their lives they were to do little but make mistakes and incur ill-will. To them all seemed alike, some more amusing, some more interesting than others, but in the matter of superior none able to call his neighbour to accc when the Huntleys did strike a ba nee, i». was quite likely to be on the wrong side. 60 \ Committed to his Charge As has been said, Mrs. Stuart had a gentle, refined voice, and a quiet manner. She read the current literature of a light kind, and, with her boy, had a passing idea of each month's reviews, of the personal and political gossip of the outside world. Above all, she had an inkling that Slow ford was not the centre of the universe. She had ambitions for her son, to make him a professional man, to see him in a social position where she herself should be. In a sense she despised the persons whom circumstances had placed socially above her; but she was very human, and often longed for what she despised but could Tnot have. She worked conscientiously in the Guild ; but apart from house sewing- meetings or occasional terrible entertainments called Parlour Concerts, where incompetent amateurs displayed their incompetence in music and elocution for the consideration, paid to a charity, of a " silver collection at the door," Mrs. Stuart saw nothing of the thresholds of her fellows. She would not know those whom she could, and the other members of that mysterious Inquisition called Canadian Society had decided that she could not know those whom she would. How far such decisions arose from a sense of her 6i i Committed to his Charge ■1^ ■ ;!, f1. . superiority on some points, it would be hard to say. Mrs. Lyte was a widow of a different caste. She earned her living in several small ways — an occasional boarder, a music-pupil or two, or a lesson in Kensington stitch ; but ^he never, for herself or her children, lost hold for a moment of the position acquired during her husband's lifetime. By a judicious bestowal of coffee and cake after whist she managed to keep abreast of those who gave suppers. She had lived all the years of her married life in a tumble-down house that every day threatened dissolution, with a pretty bit of garden where the hyacinths were first in spring and where tulips, roses and gladioli, made mj sterious appearance, each in its proper season, through a tangle of periwinkle and ground-ivy which covered what once had been borders. The walls, chimneys and roof were weighted with Virginia creeper, clematis and hop vines, in a way highly picturesque but which led to gaps and sudden recourse to tubs and other vessels when the skies emptied any- thing heavier than a summer shower. Inside, the house was a marvel of cheapness and neatness. Seeming decorations covered un- 62 I Committed to his Charge sightly gaps ; a curtain here, an impromptu bookcase there,' things twisted out of original shape to make them fit in untoward circumstances, painted floors, rugs pretending to be Eastern but domestic beyond hope of pretence, lace curtains where darns artfully followed the design, a piano with ivories missing and suggestive of need of a dentist, made up the interior of what was announced by the medium of a gate-post as Dunfillan. The word was on the mistress's card-plate; never an invitation was issued by her without the mystic word in the corner. With the other inhabitants Dunfillan took rank with some old-world Grange or Chace. Not so with the new-comers, those unsatisfactory people who ranked with the Bankers. Some were scoffers, and it happened that one bird - of - passage family, named Delabaugh, alighted and built their nest directly opposite. It was a household of rollicking boys and laughing girls, of abnormal appetites and frequent bread-bakings, and it was not long before the wag of the family had ■"Never done fillin"* in poker-etching on the gate-post. Slowford was rich in widows. Mrs. Lindsay 63 f Committed to his Charge had, as Mrs. Forby would say, hankerings after the New Woman ; but she had many attributes of the Old Woman, and one was a power of waiting. She watched for her opportunity, and seized it at the right moment. Her churchman- ship, or, according to her own view, her churchwomanship, answered, like everything else, to serve her ends. Her husband had followed some humble occupation at the Works, but on the frail fabric of his once having seen better days, his widow, whose speech alone would have condemned her, built up, little by little, a structure of position, prosperity and general well-being, which did credit to her constructive powers. In it all the Church had been of chief use. Bazaars, teas, Christmas decorations, parlour concerts, sick visiting, had been factors in the fashioning of the structure. She entertained foreign clergy, and in her own turn at being billeted away from home she managed so well that she was sent back as an honoured guest from houses where she had gone as a mere Auxiliary member. Everything served. She manipulated such chances as she did the bones for her soup-kettle and the crumbs which were the groundwork of her famous Queen's 64 Committed to his Charge pudding. Through it all she said " I seen " and " I done " and was the local Mrs. Partington. But if she mispronounced her own words she seldom misinterpreted the actions of others ; acute, intelligent, speaking a patois distinctly Canadian as that of the habitant of Canada-en- bas, she was always intelligible and pointed in her utterances. She taught a Sunday-School class and was credited with having satisfied a pupil who was fond of putting awkward questions. The explanation of the name of that Sunday which followed Quinquagesima was new in All Sainto' : " Why, Quadrille Sunday of course, child. Quin, five ; quad, four. Little girls ought to learn their roots, as I did." When another had difficulty in finding a verse Mrs. Lindsay advised her to turn to the Hypocrisy. "She always reminds me," said Mrs. Forby once, "of the time I took my Tommy to the Salt Springs. When I prodded him down in the bath by his shoulders, out would shoot his feet ; and vice versa, out would pop his shoulders and head. It is no use trying to keep her down." r Mrs. Forby, good woman, was ridiculous often, but well-meaning always, her bark worse than 5 6s Committed to his Charge .^■i: i:\ I;; her bite, sometimes saying hard things but in- variably doing kind actions, with a hand ever ready to give help, but with a tongue equally ready to give advice. She was alternately president of this or that society, or " out of it altogether" because she would not "put up with " somebody else or because somebody else refused l;o put up with her. The last did not happen often, for they were all afraid of her, and usually said what they had to say behind her back and at a safe distance. In the privacy of his own study the Rector had said they were all gossips. But much of what appeared to him to be gossip was but the airing of that tremendous capacity for criticism which exists in small places and which was especially strong in Slowford. In all affairs. Church or social, every point was weighed, and the idea was to arrive at a solution of all problems, be they sermonic or purely domestic. To go to Church, listen, profit, and say nothing, would have seemed a direct waste of opportunity. The omiission or rendition of an anthem was sure to give of ^nce to some one ; the Te Deum was too fast or too slow, the hymns were ill- chosen, or Miss Webb had been flat in her solo. 66 Committed to his Charge Without side issues and discussion religious life would have meant stagnation in Slowford. As for the pulpit, some wanted "Old Testament sermons " ; they never tired of the wanderings of the children of Israel or of the slaying of the Amalekites — or, indeed, the slaying of anybody, provided it was terrifying. Others wanted the old, old story, ever new, as it comes in the succession of the Gospels; and a third class wished for a weekly intellectual treat with just enough Bible in it to save conscience-prickings. Where was the man to be found who would furnish enough of each element required to please the different tastes, and yet who would never show partiality or reveal his own bias by undue attention to any one of them ! Huntley's diagnosis was that these good people were sermon-hardened ; they knew not that eloquent hearing is as necessary as eloquent preaching, or that meditation bears much the same relation to hearing that digestion does to eating. The new Rector was an Englishman, a Uni- versity man who came out to fill a mastership in a boys* school. If he had belonged to any pronounced party in the Old Country he had left all trace of partisanship behind him, and on 67 Committed to his Charge rail ii ..'! ':i Si arrival here he seemed ready to do or to speak as circumstances required. As occasional preacher in the Cathedral he was noted for happy thought and language, a good voice and winning manner, more than for any special force in the presentation of doctrine. It was in the Cathedral town that he had met his Helen, just at a time when he had decided that school life did not suit him. He had almost made up his mind to plunge into city excitements, to join the High Church force and seek in work among the poor that contentment in life which his boys and school failed to afford. His passionate affection for his wife and her soothing influence on him turned the tenor of his thought and life, and it was probable no one would ever hear of former unhappinesses again. It was rarely now that he ever reverted to them, even in thought. Then, after six or seven years of married life he yearned towards parochial work ; his name as a preacher was known, and when Slowford tried to find a pathway that would run straight, between the difficulties of High and Low and also out of the way of bachelors, it " called " the Reverend Thomas Huntley. ^ I ( 68 CHAPTER V INNOVATIONS The relations between the Rector and his wife were perfect, because they were born of a mutual perfect understanding. But in a very few months they were convinced that, however well meant their individual intentions or concerted actions might be, they easily made many and serious mistakes. They had come from a place where the ordinary intercourse of life among equals was on a totally different plane and plan from those which obtained in Slowford. Things common there would be uncommon here ; actions taken as a matter of course there would here deserve the dreaded name of innovation. With the Huntkys, afternoon tea had been as honoured an institution as breakfast, a seven o'clock dinner the only dinner they knew. Slowford dined between the mid-day whistles at the Works, and ijever ate between meals. Then, when to suit the many and new engagements peculiar to 69 Committed to his Charge parish work the Rectory dinner became a movable feast between five-thirty and seven, the other institution was still firmly observed ; for Helen was a confirmed tea-drinker, and loved her china next to her children. Now, in novels brought from the lending library, and from travellers* tales told by Mrs Lucy and Mrs. Lyte when they returned from occasional visits to the world, Slowford knew that such a function existed ; but not even Mrs. Lucy herself ever broke fast between one and six o'clock. The entire parish called upon Mrs. Huntley, and at all sorts of odd times. Those whom the shop-keepers called leading ladies did so, en- circled by all the signs of decorum known in their world of fashion. Others chose a morning, perhaps arriving not empty-handed — a cake, or a pot of marmalade, as an offering of good-will. There were discussions as to whether such small gifts, welcome enough in the former reign, would be taken by these new people, tales of whose easy circumstances quickly developed into a romance of wealth. Humble people, like dogs and children, have tacit gauges of their own, and one clear look from Helen's gentle eyes or 70 Committed to his Charge a welcome from the Rector disarmed all fears. Old women who had not crossed the Rectory threshold since they were young, juveniles not yet "out" called; young men in the Banks hunted out their cards and wondered if they had ever had a card-case. Mr. Forby put on his high hat, a sacred tile that never left its box unless to go to a funeral (for Mr. Forby was almost a professional pall-bearer to the parish) ; one and all paid their respects and came away charmed with the changed and pretty rooms, the lovely wife, the interesting children, and even found words of admiration for the dogs. The innocent prattle of the babes won away the judicial glances from the last, and from Mrs. Huntley's most secular muslins and ribbons. Her means were evidently employed in- beauti- fying herself, her home and her belongings. Whether this was orthodox or not would serve as a subject for future debate ; in the meantime, while judgment was suspended, it did not do to be too cordial in the face of possible levity, and Mrs. Forby conscientiously tried to preserve an impartial front. But youth and grace and prettiness are powerful levers in public opinion, and the general verdict expressed satisfaction. 71 Committed to his Charge Mrs. Lindsay and Mrs. Forby walked away together, twins in decorum, tortoiseshell card- cases tightly grasped against those shelves kindly provided by Mother Nature, precise bows tied under the chin. Each lady rustled and glittered as she walked up the stone steps to the street. " I take it this is to be a very different regimy from the last." " Very," assented Mrs. Forby, with an inflection which told that the change was not necessarily for the better. "What I can't make out is why they come here at all," said Mrs Lindsay. Her voice was one of inquiry and courted an answer. " Why, ambition, to be sure, what else ? Isn't it one of the best livings in all Canada ? The loveliest and fattest farming land, the best market-town to be had ? Look at that Rectory, even before they gave it all this fixing which / think unnecessary. Why, it's a home and a position for any man to be proud of." " Not that man," said Mrs. Lindsay, still un- convinced. " They are both awfully nice, though. After all, a change is pleasant." When the parish had made its visit the names 72 li Committed to his Charge X -were all taken down in the Rectory visiting- book, and the time came round to return the attention. Then Mrs. Huntley did a very bold thing. Wednesday had been her day in her late home, the word was on her card -plate, and she found that Wednesday still suited her. The plate was left unchanged, and she armed herself with a couple of hundred cards, newly struck off. Had she never had a day she would have adopted one now, for constant interruptions from the parish made her time not her own for anything but receiving visits. She and the Rector began their rounds, and the bits of paste- board were scattered broadcast. He with his big stick, she with large black lace parasol shading her pretty face and pink bonnet, went every- where that walking was possible, and then, in a hired low carriage, made a tour of the country- side. She told the farmers, in her pleasant way, that although she would be at home to every one on Wednesday afternoon, for them she would have a welcome on any day and at any hour, for she knew they must come when they could. She drank their elderberry wine and ate their curly peters, took home with her small pots 73 ' it ' Bi! ;^- Committed to his Charge of cream and baskets of ferns, kissed wondering children and was keen over the mysteries of butter and poultry. In town she left her card, and made no remark. The necessity for remark did not occur to her. On the afternoon of her visit to Mrs. Forby, Mrs. Lyte also called there, but with knitting- needles sticking out of her pocket so suggestively that Mrs. Forby supposed she would " stay tea." To ensure a rubber after the meal, the maid had been sent across for Mrs. Lindsay, bidding her " come over and bring her work." Helen Hunt- ley sat where the slanting afternoon shadows darkened the lovelier ones under her Irish blue eyes. The pink bonnet was more becoming than ever. God forgive them ; perhaps it was that latent spite which we all bear towards that which we can never be. Helen felt a lack of the warmth with which the preceding afternoon had been favoured, out among the sloping hill- sides of the Mallory and Kippan farms. She told Mrs. Lindsay that they had just come from her house, and that they had been looking at the lovely flowers in Mrs. Lyte's garden. The widows were forced to listen and tridd hard to forgive the pink bonnet. Mrs. Forby, ever 74 Committed to his Charge hospitable, bustled to the sideboard and brought out her raspberry vinegar, for it was a melting September day when everything was in a quiver- ing golden haze, with purple tinges in the dis- tance, the leaves turned to their autumn colour- ing, the maples a blaze of red and golden glory. " Have you ladies begun to think of a Harvest Home or Thanksgiving decorations yet ? " asked the Rector. He was not as happy as his wife in suddenly acquired tastes for unknown liquids, and sipped his refreshment daintily. It is hard to credit, but beyond a tale or two of English country livings, where such things had come in as part of the story and therefore ap- peared more or less mythical, not one of the three knew of either festival. Mrs. Forby was the first to recover herself " We do not have Harvest Homes in this part of Canada," the implication being that they were much too advanced for that. " As for Thanks- giving, I suppose we shall have it when the Bishop and Governor appoint it. We don't decorate." "Not decorate?" said Helen, and brightening at the thought of something new, something hitherto unknown and sure to give pleasure 75 I .:, ii Committed to his Charge launched out into a description of such decora- lions and the materials employed. The three , listened attentively until she came to corn and pumpkins, and then they laughed. " You needn't laugh — a little taste and manage- ment, and anything that grows can be used ; the tassels of the milkweed are beautiful. Your best breadrnaker makes her handsomest loaf of bread, and with it and grapes for the Communion Table — this church is just suited for decoration, isn't it Tom?" She spoke enthusiastically and with know- ledge, but each side felt that there was lack of understanding and little sympathy between Ihem. "The plain glass of our windows will throw out the colours. At home there were so many beautiful memorial windows, but they spoilt the harvest decorations. When a man died there, you know, his widow put up a window. Now all the windows are full, and when we left " "When the Slowford men die," said Mrs. Forby, " their widows teach music." The Huiitleys rose to leave, and Helen put their cards on the hall table. At the door Mrs. Forby pressed them to stay, as she expected Mr. Forby back from the office any moment. 76 ^ Committed to his Charge "No," said the Rector, "we pick up Miss Sweeting on the way home and take her to dinner. One of the many things I find I have to be thankful for in my new work is the number of capable and devoted women-workers you have — we have, here," and he smiled pleasantly. " Well, if you waited for the men," answered Mrs. Forby, "we'd be in the san^e leg hut the Land Company gave with the site Their strength is in sitiing still." This promised a glimpse at history,; so, with hat and stick in hand, whiles Helen continued her harvest descriptions to the others, he stood to listen and ask questions about the pa^t o*' Slow- ford Parish. They had barely taken leave when Mrs. Lind- say pounced upon the cards. " What's this in the corner — Wednesday ? Why Wednesday more tnan Tuesday, I wonder. To-day's neither." "Wednesday?" " Wednesday?" and each held the card in turn, Mrs. Lyte last. "It means she will be at home on that day." " It would have been friendlier if she'd said something about it," sniffed Mrs. Forby. 77 |l! '"ii Committed to his Charge " Oh, but it means any Wednesday." "No!" said Mrs. Lindsay dogmatically ; "she means us to come next Wednesday. Well, I never! What next, I wonder! A bonnet like that, and setting us new fashions all in one after- noon ! " " And her Harvest Thanksgiving ! " said Mrs. Forby. "This church has been thankful for forty odd years without decorating with beets and turnips. Such balderdash ! But she was earnest, poor little thing, and had some good, plain, practical ideas in spite of that bonnet. She is young and pretty, and they say has money. She'll have trouble. But by-and-bye she'll settle down, depend on it." Mrs. Forby spoke hopefully, and as if she would not be above a personal contribution to the trouble. " I think she is a sweet little soul," said Mrs. Lyte ; " such eyes and pretty hair, like a child's. As for Wednesday," and ^ne touched the card, " I shall go, in case that's her intention, but I am pretty sure her idea is only to have a ' day ' as they call it." " Fads and nonsense ! " cried Mrs. Forby " Can't she take her pLin seam and be at home 7« Committed to his Charge any day like the rest of us ! She isn't going to be trapsing about the town every other afternoon in the week, I suppose? I have no room for airs. You two will have to excuse me a bit while I go see to tea. This new maid that came to-day seems all at sea." " She'll soon wish she was," was in Mrs. Lind- say's eye as she looked at Mrs. Lyte for sympathy. " Do you like honey ? " continued the hostesa, turning to Mrs. Lyte with a quickness which made that lady recall her wandering glance; * the bees swarmed last week." They sat down to a substantial meal called tea, with whets to appetite in the shape of snowy cloth and a bowl of Jacqueminot roses in the centre of the table. Mrs. Forby sat before a huge silver tray with lace-pattern edge, set with white Chelsea cups and saucers. With one blow of his carver Mr. Forby demolished the anatomy of the large cold roast chicken, and asked the two ladies their choice in the wreck before him. "The upper part of the leg and a trifle of dressing — and the oyster." Mrs. Lindsay was reputed to know everything that was good. Mrs. Forby's thoughts were still with the church, 79 n >» Committed to his Charge " 1 wonder if they have a string of turkeys and geese for the Harvest Home — hanging in front of the organ, say — or over the pulpit, for choice* Pumpkins! It seems like sacrilege, to my mind. " Vd as lieve have a good pumpkin as a saint, put in Mrs. Lindsay. " I fancy the Rector will soon find out that Saints-Day services won't go down here. Dulcie Sweeting was the con- gregation at the last one, St. — St. — What's-his- name " " St. Matthew," supplied Mrs. Lyte, her mouth full of white meat and thin home-made bread- and-butter. She took a mouthful of the rich creamy tea in the Chelsea cup beside her, in pre- paration for carrying on the conversation. " And what did he do — send her home ? If there was a service in the middle of the night, Miss Sweet- ing would be there." " Send her home — not a bit of him. Mad as a hatter, and went through the whole thing from exhortation to blessing. Said, ' Dearly Beloved,* and left out ' brethren ' of course." "That was quite personal, wasn't it?" said Mrs. Forby. "More tea? Two lumps? He was a bold man to commit himself that far to Dulcie; she would have sued the curate for Committed to his Charge u 11 i breach of promise on less evidence than that — but he was a very wary young man though he did manage to make her do more than half his work for him. He was not protected like Mr. Huntley; the Rector can be bold where the curate had to be full of guile. Well then, what happened next — and who told you, if she was the only one there ? " " Peter did." Peter the sexton was Mrs. Lindsay's great friend and ally. "Well, of course, then came the psalms, good long ones, and he up and read every one of them. She fussed with her prayer-book and went into better light." " It's my opinion she ought to take to glasses — and I told her so." " Of course she should ; she's fifty if she's a day, and has failed fearfully the last year." This was mere friendly licence ; Miss Sweeting was not much over forty. " He put her through every word of them, every response, too ; the only thing he let her off was the sermon. When it came to that he flounced back to the vestry in a huff." "They have Saints-Day services in some places," said Mrs. Lyte, " and I suppose he is accustomed to it. I must say I thought his sermon on the 6 81 Committed to his Charge subject, some Sundays ago, was very reasonable. I would have gone myself that day, but there was a lacrosse match and something to see to for the boys." "Well," said Mrs. Lindsay, laying down her knife and fork beside the bare bone of the upper part of the leg, " he may preach for ever, but he'll never make me think any more of them saints," and she finished the last drop in the Chelsea teacup to emphasize the pledge. Mrs. Forby rang the silver bell at her side as she said, " Oh, come now, there were good people among the saints even if they didn't wash much." Mrs. Lyte laughed. "You are hardly more enthusiastic than Mrs. Lindsay." "Well, I never had much use for them — a fussy lot that hadn't patience to bide their time. To my mind there isn't much merit in being broiled unless you've got to be. Nine out of ten of them were always hunting for trouble ; when they found it they got into a calendar or a red and blue window, and wanted to have services." " There is no doubt about it," said Mrs. Lyte, "that whether they ever arrive at saintship or not, clergymen begin as martyrs. Those students suffer terribly over their first sermons." it ..§»«' Committed to bis Charge 'J |r IS "So do their hearers," put in Mr. Forby unexpectedly. "That is one of the tricks of Providence to even up things and keep the two sides straight." " I never heard tricks associated with Provi- dence before," said his wife. "Didn't you, Maria? Well, I have known but one woman who could see two sides of a case, and she wouldn't admit it when it came to the point." " It is hard to s'^e a good side when both are bad," came from the tea-tray tartly; "your clever women " " I didn't say she was clever — only that she had a trifle more common sense than ordinary." " But the poor things must make a beginning," said Mrs. Lindsay, returning to the students; " they must begin somewhere." " I suppose so. So must dentists. But they shan't begin on me." Again Mrs. Forby rang her bell. " That girl must be deaf. I had a maid last month who thought we were taking too long at dinner and she came in the middle of it with ' Say— don't forget you've got a pie ! ' This one is'as rough as heather, but I told her to come in »3 Committed to his Charge when I rang." Mrs Forby emphasised the word " told" as if to hear was not always to obey. *' What do you think about these Saints-Day services, Mr. Forby?" asked Mrs. Lyte; "a warden ought to have an opinion about saints." "They could have been made pot-pie of for all I care," said the warden ; " they never hurt me. Mrs. Forby here may go as often as she likes; but for me, twice on Sunday was good enough for my father, and it's good enough for me. I don't hold much with week-day religion." "Well, I do," asserted Mrs. Lindsay, half frightened at the pass to which she had brought the saints and shocked at a warden's rejection of religion for week-day use. After all, little as she thought of them, pot-pie was infra dig. for saints. " I do. And what's more, Sunday religion doesn't do much good if it doesn't go through the whole week, washing-day and all, clear to Saturday night. Of course, we all have our notions; but religion that doesn't make us sweeter tempered doesn't do much for the soul. That's my opinion." The assertion seemed to strike both Mr. and Mrs. Forby as forcible, but they exchanged the application. The wife looked up and nodded at 84 Committed to his Charge her husband, as if to advise him to take Mrs. Lindsay's wisdom to heart. " Right you are," said he, with a return nod at the tea-tray. This time Mrs. Forby rang with such force that her pretty bell was threatened with dis- memberment. " These girls are enough to drive one mad." Just then something rushed past the first wide- open window, pausing at the second. The new maid was neat, rough but clean, a capable-look- ing creature, with hair tightly put back from her face, a white apron covering most of her person, and all the outward appearance of a respectable servant. She thrust her head into the room and surveyed the party, elbows resting on the sill. " It's no use your ringing like that. The more you ring the more I won't come!" Having made the announcement, she withdrew. "Well, I'm blest I "and Mr. Forby burst into a hearty laugh. Then he meekly took his own plate to the sideboard and returned for those of the ladies. Mrs. Forby was speechless for a moment — but only for a moment. " Mrs. Huntley did right when she brought one Committed to his Charge with her. That's scalded cream, Mrs. Lyte ; here's honey and bottled peaches, Mrs. Lindsay — a cookie? That savage makes them un- commonly well. Now I come to think of it she looked at me rather queerly when I told her about the bell. You may all laugh, but it's a pretty pass to come to." They gave Mr. Forby an account of the afternoon's visit, the new light on thanksgiving and harvesting, the pink bonnet, the Wednesday card and mafiy small items. " I suppose it's all right," said Mrs. Forby ; " she has money, so they have a right to do as they please with it, but it seems kind of airy to me. I never came across a parson and his wife with means before." " Seems kind of to interfere with your rights, doesn't it, Maria?" said her husband slily. " Well, as regards their ideas, I for one won't interfere with them, but they had better keep the right side of Low. He is completely under the thumb of the Orange crowd, and they see enemies in every bush. For my part I don't see any objection in having things as good-looking and orderly in church as out of it." " That's the first time in my life that I ever 86 Committed to his Charge heard you allow any beauty in orderliness," said Mrs. Forby, glad of a chance to retaliate. Mrs. Lindsay put in a word to ward off retort. "It is a good thing to see a wide-awake, clever man in the church. Most of these parsons are old pokes. Jim was telling me that Mr. Granger at the school the other day, in discuss- ing the shapes of different head-pieces, spoke very handsomely of the Rector's. Said he had a wonderful anterior globe." "Did he, indeed?" Mr. Forby was dreamily letting the conversation go by him, but was determined to be interested in his capacity of chairman of the School Board. Then he woke up, and laughed. " Did he, indeed, Mrs. Lind- say — wonderful man ! " Later in the evening the lady of the kitchen described to her young man how she had taught a lesson to the people in the dining-room — " Sittin' there as if they hadn't a leg among them to take one plate to the sideboard and bring another back ! Such airs — ringin' a bell, indeed ! I'll teach 'em. And such a day's work as I've done — I fairly ache. But I can't hold a candle to the missus herself She works like a catamount." 87 IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) /> (/ 1.0 I.I ^ 1^ 12.0 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 << 6" — ► V V] Hiotographic Sciences Corporation S^ 4 V >v [V 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 145B0 (716)872-4503 ^ "•b^ iV ^ II CHAPTER VI MISS SWEETING DINES The evening meal at the Rectory passed off much more quietly. The room in which it was eaten was kept strictly for dining-room purposes, and therefore was not as pretty as the other. Mrs. Forby's had in it a sofa and easy chairs, and opened upon a small conservatory which was full of blooms, summer and winter. But Mrs. Forby's drawing-room was quite a different affair ; there was an air and odour of sanctity there, quite inconsistent with comfort. Everything in it was good, but nothing was easy or homelike ; not a thread was the worse for wear. In Helen Huntley's room the things originally had been equally good, but of a different atmosphere, and some of them were much the worse for wear. There were easy chairs, used many times by a heavy figure ; vases to hold flowers, and large, strange things for ferns ; soft cushions every- where, and many other articles hitherto unknown in Slowford. 8S ' /, I ( Committed to his Charge I { In the dining-room the Rector, Helen, and Miss Sweeting, sat at a small round table that looked bare compared with Mrs. Forby's pro- fusion of viands ; but it held more decoration, if less evidence of the wants of the inner man. An elderly and terribly respectable serving-woman, in cap and apron, waited. This was old Ann, the servant who followed the Huntley fortunes. She was a relic from Helen's childhood, bound to die in the service of the child of her devotion. The Rector looked tired ; but it was healthy fatigue, with the sense of accomplished work behind it. " Do you know," he said to Miss Sweeting, ■" when I came in from my morning rounds Mrs. Huntley asked me what was wrong — she said I looked vexed. Can you think what vexed me?" Miss Sweeting's small face was full of sym- pathetic inquiry. ' " That I could find no poor people ! " "But I told him," said Helen hopefully, "that winter would bring them out." " That would be much the best time for them to stay in. No ; but what I notice here so much is the absence of all want ; there is a kind 89 r: \ Committed to his Charge of smug, self-conscious prosperity, if you'll ex- cuse the expression." "We have always thought ourselves rather poor as a congregation," said Miss Sweeting meekly. " The Presbyterians, as a body, are much richer, and give much more." "Possibly — the latter," answered the Rector drily, " although, in the matter of home giving, when one counts the age of the place and the difficulties about its beginning, we have done a good deal. All the same, I notice in the Mission Book we come lowest in the list — far behind places of less size and importance." Miss Sweeting sighed and thought it might be so. Her province at home was to tell un- palatable truths and make unwelcome dis- coveries, but in the house of her entertainers she was unvaryingly acquiescent. Her motto might have been **Les absents ont toujours tort]* for her amiability towards those present always conveyed a reflection on some one not at hand to defend himself " I think the poor Rector meant well. He certainly visited well — he spent many a whole afternoon with us. But the Guild has always taken the Home work in hand, and the Mis- 90 Committed to his Charge sionary branch has been the weakest part of it." " Well, you know," said the present incumbent, with a feeling of gallant defence towards his dead predecessor, "they say a house-going parson makes a Church-going people, and once he got them there he should have bled them better. And I am sure it is true regarding the visiting," he hastened to add, as he saw signs of more hints of former shortcomings, " for my only experience of parish work before I came here, a very short, country one, proved it so. The power of my legs in taking me over miles of muddy roads, my memory for the one who had had measles and the one who had not, an aptitude in knowing Mary from Susan and John from Jim, won me more golden opinions than any learning I had gained from books or my solicitude in saving souls. I was expected, too, to eat something wherever I went — some- times eight places a day — and that was where I particularly shone. A little more of that delici- ous pudding, Helen dear, if you please." To Miss Sweeting's ear this was very light talk, an experience as strange as the dinner- table and the dinner. Her ideas of the latter 91 Committed to his Charge ||; r t 1 A it j-i i had been confined to a joint, two vegetables and a pudding ; now, golden-brown balls in silver side-dishes appeared to be potatoes, and a sweet separated itself into jelly and sponge in a way that was most embarrassing. Claret, and a crystal tub of powdered ice, demanded an acquired taste. But the Rector's smile was very winning, and the look on his face as he turned it towards his wife redeemed it from plainness. Miss Sweeting swivelled her cannon and threw her projectile in another direction. " Some people objected to Mr. Short's sermons because he was a scientific man and preached science more than the Gospel." " Well, science is our latest gospel." She looked so really grieved that he paused in his attack on his second helping. "Surely no thorough believer in Christianity can maintain. that the study of God's word in nature can tend to disbelief or generate infidelity? Properly followed, it should strengthen — not weaken. The trouble with the materialist is that his mind dwells upon matter and concentrates thought until his theory becomes limited by it. By degrees the moral and the spiritual fall back until they are forgotten or denied. But that is 92 Committed to his Charge the abuse, not the use. I wish I had known your Rector. From all I hear, he was a very- good man." With Miss Sweeting the Incumbent-in-Office was always the best. " Yes, he was a practically good man," she allowed, as if that was the lowest form of worth, "very moderate in his views, and gave good sermons — as a general thing. Mrs. Forby used to say his life was his best sermon." " A long sermon," said the Rector in a sad voice, eating his pudding abstractedly. " But there are no short cuts to spiritual achievement. As to his sermons, if he had given you the older gospel instead of that one you object to, Miss Sweeting, he might have pleased you still less. Practical exposition of the Gospel is very trying when it bears hard on personal faults. I have winced many a time under my own words when I seemed to be pelting other people. More claret ? " " No, thank you. I am fond of doctrinal ser- mons myself." The Rector looked incredulous. " But you are not like the others, then," said Helen to her guest, hoping to find some 93 1 J Committed to his Charge sympathy in her own leanings towards more ritual. Her husband smiled at her and shook his head as if to say she would find no comfort here. Miss Sweeting paused before committing her- self. She had already found out what she termed Helen's " weakness," and did not wish to be too ready to become a partisan. On the other hand, to be asked to prove herself different from the common herd was too tempting an opening to be refused. The Rector came to her deliverance. "There is doctrine and doctrine," he said smiling at the combat of two forces within her and at the contrast of the two faces before him, one all light and life and youth, the other wizened, suspicious and wary — "and it might happen that the man who gave you the doctrinal sermon might not happen to suit you both. After all's said and done, if religion is to be of practical value it must come into direct contact with the needs of daily life," a remark which echoed one made not long before at Mrs. Forby's tea-table. . " Oh, Tom ! How can you ! As if it hurts daily life to say one's prayers properly, and hear 94 i Committed to his Charge a man preach in a cassock instead of out of one ! I believe you sometimes talk for the sake of tak- ing the opposite side." "Then my arguments must cut their own throats ? " " That doesn't matter, so long as it is an argu- ment" The Rector laughed, and searched in his mind for something that would bring her out again ; she was lovelier than ever when in a glow. " Miss Sweeting is right enough." Miss Sweeting smiled. " In these times worship is apt to displace instruction somewhat. If you are thinking so much of what a man may happen to be in or out of — except, of course, his mind — he ought always to be in that " — Helen threw a bit of geranium stem at him — ^" you are not so much taken up with the matter of what he may be saying." He grew grave again. " I have a deep, deep love for decent order ; but observance must be made subservient to teaching — and several other things. I have an honest sympathy with any side which may be in earnest. Of course, if we teach the doctrine, one would think that hearers would require that that which they learned should be exhibited in the services." 95 ^n Committed to his Charge Miss Sweeting did not like " honest sympathy'* with any side but one, and she liked the conclud- ing portion of his sentence still less. "In that way you would end in pleasing no one. If honest sympathy were so evenly bal- anced you would be neither one thing nor the other, and would be left high and dry by every- body," said Helen. " A cool, reasoning, critical temperament does not generally attract others," he answered, " nor easily adapt itself to environment. Loneliness is the usual penalty of uncompromising in- dependence." " Well, I should have uncompromising in- dependence enough to leave out that odious little prayer at the beginning of the sermon. I am sure, Tom, you never did it before — at least, not since I knew you." " My love, my love, you must not call any little prayer odious! Come to the drawing-room, Miss Sweeting — she is not often as bad as this. There is one thing, though, that I do take ex- ception to, and that is the congregation follow- ing in the General Thanksgiving." "We have always done it so," said Miss Sweeting, as if that were the incontrovertible 96 Committed to his Charge argument why it should be continued. The Rector shrugged his shoulders. " Is that the only thing, Tom ? " asked Helen mischievously. "What about Granny Quick and — oh, a number of things ! " she finished suddenly, as she remembered that Miss Sweet- ing's solos were of the chief offences. In the drawing-room a fresh surprise awaited the guest. A wicker table stood there, one which had drawn forth much comment and which Mrs. Lindsay said " completely non-pulsed her, with all those little shelves and queer rims." Now it held a pretty tea equipment, and old Ann presently appeared with a bright kettle, which was fitted in its stand above burning spirit, and a Japanese teapot, through the like of which Slowford tea had never allowed itself to be poured ; prettier, as Miss Sweeting at once per- ceived, than the best electro-plate. Electro, she "was convinced, always gave a taste to the tea. So now her soul was flooded with the unful- filled longings which the sight of a new house- hold god, be it teapot, baby or kitchen utensil, always has the power to raise into riot in a woman built on the truly feminine, old-fashioned principle, who is without house and belongings 7 97 Committed to his Charge of her own. Nor had she seen such tiny sugar- tongs, and indeed was accustomed to granulated sugar rather than lump. The Rector stood at the window and tried to pierce the twilight, in speculation as to to- morrow's weather. " Good for the farmers," he said, turning to the contrasting brightness of the room and look- ing at that spot of, to him, brightest brightness where Helen sat at her tea-table, her brows puckered over two lumps or one, and the lace from her sleeve falling back to show the lovely wrist beneath it. " Spirit of warmth and light and love, My wife," thought he ; but his next words were addressed to the visitor. " I was trying to talk up a Harvest Home, or decorations, something of that kind, this after- noon ; but you do not seem to have ever gone in much for all that. Apart from the propriety of the custom, I think it would be useful in bringing the country and townspeople together, promote good fellowship, and that sort of thing, you know." Miss Sweeting looked dubious for a moment, then brightened. 98 Committed to his Charge " I think it would be lovely. We must." " It might turn out like the service on St. Matthews' Day," laughed Helen. " Nothing but baby could have kept me away that day. You need not be afraid to support him next time — I'll be sure to go. The Rector is beginning to look upon you as a prop, you know." Miss Sweeting's face beamed as much as nature would permit and the Harvest decorations were assured from that moment. " There is no danger of not having a large enough congregation," she said. "Curiosity sometimes brings them when nothing else will. It is the country people who make a fuss about what would pass with others." " We must try to keep the right side of them, for it is from them most of the decorations will come." Again did the Huntleys go over their scheme for decoration, design and materials, and dis- cussed what would suit this particular Church best. " A sweet little Early English place like that is just the very best one we could have," cried Helen, and Miss Sweeting grew still more enthusiastic, for she dearly loved that building 99 '! I ' Hi \k Committed to his Charge Love had a narrow dwelling-place in that maiden bosom, for, like many other powers, love is shaped as well as shaping. A cramped life, a misfit in her corner of the world., had made this woman many things which perhaps Nature had not planned her to be. By the time they parted for the night, lists had been made of necessary materials, and the names of those best suited for work selected from the Guild membership for a Decoration Com- mittee. The Rector was to set out the next day to endeavour in one visit to predispose the country to the idea and to solicit grain and other produce needed for it. Helen would ac- company him, for he knew, if she did not, how much aid the pink bonnet and her sweet manner might lend. When Huntley returned from leaving Miss Sweeting at the Lucys', Helen was still in the drawing-room. *' I think I do like Miss Sweeting after alf,'* she said : " I will never call her a gossip again. Her sympathy is like a great rock in a weary land. I believe we shall have the Harvest Home after all. I do believe I'll ask her to come over next Wednesday afternoon, and if anyone calls lOO i Committed to his Charge we can talk decorations and thankfulness. Not that anyone will come — thank goodness, they are all paid up and returned, and it will be some time before they'll be here again." " You don't speak as if enamoured of your new friends," said her husband, with hand under her chin, so that the beautiful eyes might be made to look into his own. " Are you ? " she inquired very directly. He laughed. " I don't know what it may be when the novelty wears off; in the meantime they are — some of them — very amusing, if a trifle pro- voking. I am not afraid, though ; there must be some way of breaking down ignorance and pre- judice, surely. If all the tales I hear be true of these Orange farmer fellows, we have stumbled into a bit of the dark ages that has missed civilisation. Is that baby? She has been wonderfully good. Well, goodnight for the present — I must off to my books, and get wisdom for these critical sermon-tasters." lOI v'i I : ii'^ 111 ii v. .V ' i:' CHAPTER VII THE COUNTRYSIDE It took many afternoons to canvass the whole country-side, afternoons of the glorious Sep- tember days full of strange calm tempered by the soft, deep haze peculiar to the month. A languorous glow overspread the face of the land, bathing the tidy fields and stacked grain, the long, level lines of white high-road, and the bronze, purple and many-tinted woods, in an atmosphere of quiver, out of which stood flocks of sheep and soft-toned Jersey cows. It is hard to say why it should be so ; but the one thing sure to make a lasting impression on the pioneer, the foreign writer or tourist, or the visitor in Canada, was and is the winter season in its Canadian aspect. The most loyal native, or the one most gifted of the Muses has only lately begun to sing to Sprin ^. Why we should not have as many pictures of golden harvest, of perfumed fruit fields, or of that 102 Committed to his Charge gorgeous season as wholly Canadian as the fiercest or most beautiful winter, when we See the autumn hand •• Of God upon the maples, is beyond the comprehension of those who love Canada as she is. The Rector and his wife drove under the spreading apple boughs, where the cattle munched their fill of grass and stole the juicy leavings of the apple harvest. The lane was planted on one side with a double row of firs, now reaching maturity, ready to cast a grateful shade in summer or afford protection from the north wind in winter. Along the length of that lane was an epitome of a pioneer's career. First came a log hut, about sixteen feet square, with its one window long ago boarded up, and now serving as a retreat for whatever animals might be grazing near. That was the original dwelling of this now rich homestead, its logs chinked with mud, and roofed with basswood troughs set at an angle to carry off heavy rains. On the snowy morning following his first night's lodging, Farmer Mallory had found at his door four deer, frightened to shelter, perhaps, by greater dangers within the bush, and Mrs. Mallory's first 103 1^ w .^.H^ i ? ^ 1 m., Committed to his Charge marketing had been purchased from Indians who, camped farther on, were glad to divide their venison, bear's meat and maple sugar for the questionable currency of tobacco and firewater. Then a few feet away, a second abode grew up, still of logs but boasting more roof, two rooms downstairs with glazed windows, a loft above for the men and boys, ceilings and plastered walls. The deer came less often, and the Indians had either gone away or had died out ; the orchard bloomed and bore fruit, and the corduroy gave place to a gravel road. One crown in pocket when they landed ; two hundred acres of uncleared land in the heart of an unexplored forest, much of it swamp ; hard work ; a winter or two on diet that would now kill their children ; a succession of toiling years for slow-coming plenty ; big barn-raisings, and in- creasing live-stock ; a stone house, firm of found- ation, commodious, and comfortably furnished, to succeed the second log one, and the Canadian family history of the Mallorys is told. Their children's education began at the Township School, with a winter or two in Slowford to " finish " them. As a result one son went farther still, and after passing through the 104 h r h r Committed to his Charge High School completed his attainments at the nearest Agricultural College; and a daughter, determined to escape the lonely drudgery of farm life, managed to fit herself as a teacher in a public school. It was not long before a reed organ stood in the place of honour in the best room — which, under the unskilled fingers em- ployed upon it, gave forth extraordinary noises. It was always called " the instrument," and to the old farmer's eyes represented music in a concrete form. Later, a piano was added, but it did not, as in many households, supersede the other. To old Mallory, the drone of *' the instrument " was the chief part of the music ; and let who would enjoy the piano, he clove to *' the instrument." Then a younger son beca ne a mechanic, turning his back on the work of his father ; but the eldest, not caring to quarrel with his bread and butter, consented to succeed to the hard-earned competence of his parents. The Huntleys drove leisurely up the lane, past the pump yard with its noisy colony of geese and ducks ; past the barking collie, whose savage greeting turned to fawnings and sharp yelps of welcome ; past the huge frame barns on their stone arches, with reaches of shady los Committed to his Charge interior where the landscape was framed by- further openings ; past labourers, who, glad to see a strange face, nodded an answering good- day ; and still on, to where Mrs. Mallory was to be found on most sunny afternoons. To-day a brilliant red breakfast-shawl was about her shoulders, more in compliment to the month than from necessity. A pan of apples rested between her knees, and as the quarters lost their skins and cores they found place in large pie dishes, in preparation against the coming bee. Her welcome took the form of apology for not having been at church on the previous Sunday, and for having failed to send a promised bag of apples. The doubt that such presents might now be undesired had as yet not entered her rustic mind. Attention was chiefly drawn to her keen face by the stiff curls which garnished it on either side. We all have our ambitions, and our signs whereby we show that struggle i" past and rest is here. Those stiff curls had appeared with Mrs. Mallory's sense of warfare done, and were a continual reminder to herself that she was a woman of leisure. Her countenance indicated mother wit in every one of its many lines. She had had io6 H Committed to his Charge little but that wit on which to lean. Neither she nor her husband could write or read ; but in him the faculty of memory was so developed that, without records of any kind, he knew the dates on every paper in his possession, when a note fell due which one to select from the pile to present to a particular person, and the amount he was to receive. He could pick out his mort- gages and tell to a cent the amount of interest due and the date of payment ; and although he could not count, it was impossible to cheat or deceive him. He would look for his papers without the aid of light, for he " knew 'em by the veelin* of 'em." " It wasn't no use," Mrs. Mallory continued to explain, " try as I might ; for granpa died the forepart of the week, and we threshed the second. Come in, do. Here, Johnnie — tie up the Rector's horse. And Mary, bring in a jug of buttermilk and some cookies. I got the apples ready, if you don't mind takin' 'em back with you. I can give you a jar o' clotted cream, too. We don't get much cream, these times, with the factories ! but there's one pot, surely. Yes, granpa died, poor old soul, and him eighty- eight come next New Year. Took sudden at 107 -r.i)' P Committed to his Charge the last. Yes — yes! You're wonderin* the funeral wasn't to town, but he wanted to be buried nigh his ole woman in the Township buryin' ground by young Jim's farm, and bein' like you were a stranger and he'd know'd the Methodis' parson quite a bit and his wife too we humoured him and let him. Her'n* him come from the same town in the ole country and it seemed friendlier like and more comfortable but mean in' no offence." It was difficult to divine who had died and who had been buried. Mrs. Mallory possessed no commas and only a few full stops. The daughter presently appeared with the milk and cookies. She was an artificial-looking young person, wearing high-heeled shoes and a bang ; her hands, only, indicated her mode of life. " Gems for the Family Circle " stood open on the music rest of the piano, at " Old Hundred with brilliant variations." It was hard to recon- cile those hands with brilliancy of execution. One of the large, work-worn fingers was tied up with a plentiful wrapping of cotton, and the Rector made sympathetic inquiry. " Yes, I been practisin', but I hurted my hand this mornin'. Caff bet me." io8 Committed to his Charge There were no visible traces of mourning for the grandfather. The first Sunday at church would bring that out, on father and mother ; but Miss Mallory had no time to mourn for a grand- parent who had been " took sudden," when her autumn finery was all ready to wear and only needed cooler weather to make it permissible. The subject of harvest decorations was brought forward, and grain, fruit and vegetables were promised readily, so readily that the Rector remembered Miss Sweeting's opinion of the country people, and pronounced her fault-finding and imaginative. Then came hurried farewells, for the sun was on the wane and the Kippan farm was yet to be visited. The cream and apples were stowed away, the collie and the fowls set up their chorus again, and Huntley, once clear of the tortuous lane, flicked his horse to make better time. " Look," said he, as they reached the brow of the hill. He pointed with his whip to the scene below them, where the fields gently undulated to the small stream, across which a trimmed wood, cleared of underbush, gave peeps of sunlight between the boles. " It is like a bit of English scenery." 109 III i H Committed to his Charge ' He sighed, and Helen looked quickly from the pastoral picture to his face. " As I said last night, what plenty, what suc- cess ! Hard work, but wonderful success. A lumpish lot of people, though." She smiled. " I have often heard you say you missed the queer people, and the soap and water more than anything else when you first came out. There seems to be dearth of neither in this place. Fancy associating anything but spotlessness with Mrs. Forby ! And could you wish for anything queerer than Miss Sweeting, or Mrs. Lindsay, or, indeed, any of them ? If we had gone to a city parish how different would have been the work ! " "If we had the true missionary spirit, that is where we should be," he answered, smiling; " there is more sin in a city. But nowadays they say sin is only energy gone wrong." Helen crossed her hands in her lap. " Do let us be thankful Mrs. Forby's head was turned right at the start." The Rector laughed. "There are certainly, according to that belief, great sinning possi- bilities in Mrs. Forby." " The force does not seem to remain equal in no Committed to his Charge the two positions," she said, after a moment's thought. " I mean that although she is a very actively good woman, she is not as much of an angel as she might have been a sinner." " Metaphysics ! Let us be thankful she is as good as she is, and friendly to us. Consider what the parish, the county indeed, would be, if all her energy turned the other way ! The place seems a paradise, but I think her fault is that she is too actively good. From small things I have heard, Forby is not looked upon as a model, like, well, say Low, though I must confess I, for one, like him much better. I really think he is glad to get out of the house." He spoke as of a thing hard to believe. He had had little experience in other homes, and for himself, when he closed his own hall-door behind him, he shut out care and the world. " You mean her continual cleaning and rest- lessness? Surely you would not have anyone dirty ? " " Not exactly dirty, but comfortable. Stress is continually laid on the sins of omission in slatternly women, but we never hear of the men •who have been housecleaned into despair. Many an absentee likens himself to Noah's III I r Committed to his Charge dove, and seeks a snug corner in some hostelry because of a plethora of soap and water at home." Helen laughed. " You may laugh," he continued, " but I have been studying these people, and I find the country man is a slothful-minded creature^ whose living now comes easily to him and to whom comfort is the greatest blessing in life. He doesn't want much trouble about anything." "In this case it is not only the husband who is dissatisfied. When I engaged Mary she gave me Mrs. Forby as reference, when I asked for one. She seemed quite surprised that I did ask. I told Mrs. Forby her name, but she did not remember her. But, I said, she says she lived with you. And then she went on in her down- right fiery way, * Oh, any girl in the country might say that — I should be sorry to burden my mind with a record of all their names and incapacities.' After a bit she remembered and spoke very highly of her. I often wish Mary would volunteer the story of why she did not stay. I am quite curious." "That is just like her, isn't it?" said the Rector. " She is so deliciously honest. I am 112 Committed to his Charge sure she is as good a mother as she is a good most things — to use a localism — but I can never picture her when she was a young mother. Imagine a small bundle lying beside her, and Mrs. Forby reduced to a diet of gruel and arrowroot ! It seems a libellous thought." The Rector was right in his diagnosis. Mrs. Forby's troubles were not of a bitter kind, but, such as they were, were of her own making. The country man is often a sloven. All his devotions are apt to be perfunctory, and at any rate he is sometimes quite willing that all sacrifices at the shrine of the goddess of cleanli- ness shall be vicarious. Thrice happy the priestess who so contrives that causes shall be hidden and only effects seen ! Another fir-planted, one-sided avenue, more barns and remnants of log structures ; another stone house, and the Huntleys were at the Kippan homestead. Farmer Kippan was a North-of- Ireland Orangeman, with a shock of dark red hair which remained bushy and curly in spite of his many years. The glance under his shaggy brows was always sideways ; loss of teeth could not take away the firm look of mouth and chin in the 8 113 Committed to his Charge 1 M I Hi clever but sinister face. Between his knees he held a big thorn stick, knobbed at the end, and with it he emphasized his speech ; the floor, all about the chair in which he usually sat, was marked with the round impressions. He, like the Mallorys, promised stuff" towards the decora- tions, and his wife brought in her offering of new-laid eggs for the Rectory children. Kippan talked politics much more than religion ; in fact, politics was his religion. It was hard to be more of a Tory than the Rector was or wished to be, but talk Toryism as he might, to humour his listener, he could not fulfil Kippan's requirements. Opinion was particularly hard upon one then high in Government who had been Protestant and had " turned." " Naw, don't tell me," said the old man in his mixed Canadian and hard northern tongue, his stick playing a lively tattoo. " I'll stay at home and never vote, and so'll me byes, afore we poll a vote for a renegade like him. A traitor, sir. I'd not mind a rale Frenchman, be he half frog, who wuz born that way and cuddn't help it ; he'd never knowed better. But born English - speakin, and turned a Papist ! " Here he swore 114 Committed to his Charge some good Protestant oaths. "They tell me, sir, there's talk of High Church doin's now — well, I'm goin' to warn ye. Never, while I've th*? breath of life in me, is such goin' to come to Slowford. Come rain, come shine, I go to the Easter Vestry, and once for all, I won't have to do with none such. They'll tell you, any one will, I've carried the Vestry there forty odd years, and the old Rector never crossed me. They knew better. Go see my buryin' plot, and you'll find out. And I'm good for twenty years more, please God Almighty. Dead or alive, Rome has no parts in me. Yes, yes, you can have the wheat and the green stuff. Child's play, it seems to me, but no harm. Here wife, bring your grog — the Rector an* me '11 take a horn, and you take pretty Mrs. Rector in with you." Pretty Mrs. Rector looked half-frightened and was glad to escape from the neighbourhood of this dreadful old autocrat. She gladly followed the wife to a bare, dark room, where light and heat were seldom allowed near the decorations loved, and mostly made, by the mistress. There were cornices made of fir cones, from which stiff lace curtains, blued past all "5 II' 11 ! •fi ■ ¥ r- hi pi i 11 1; *!• i'i )- 5 .1 1 * ' ' ■' ill ! ■ .■i Committed to his Charge whiteness, depended in angular folds ; a clock on the mantelpiece that was never wound and must have forgotten how to tick ; a piano, whose black, polished surface was in keeping with its funereal surroundings ; wonderful baskets and ornaments, made of cut paper and frayed cotton ; mats, where rags were tortured into ghostly likenesses of dogs and cats, that suggested, by their distorted anatomies, the need of a Humane Society ; some chromos of wonderful waterfalls and rocks, and some of still more wonderful ladies and gentlemen ; deep-framed panels holding bouquets of wool work and hair wreaths ; a bunch of home-made wax flowers in an oval glass case, and, chief treasures of all, three frames of unusual size and depth decorating three of the four walls of the room, each con- taining a silver coffin-plate and a long tress of hair. The thrifty Kippan considered silver coffin plates much too good stuff to bury. The identities of the three wives were preserved in the three inscriptions and in the different colours of the three locks of hair — red, flaxen, and brown. It was to be supposed that the full complement of colour would in time be added from the black head of the present ii6 El: Committed to his Charge I Mistress Kippan, on the fourth wall. Money to spend she never had, for Kippan was peculiar in his views of the butter and eggs perquisites, and her joys were the decorations she could manage to convert out of odds and ends. This fourth Mrs. Kippan was still young, strong, and possessed of a power of silence which stood her in good stead for daily life with such a husband and the remnants of three families. Her own brood resembled their mother, pursuing a quiet, determined way of their own amid the mixed family relations. There is a silent strength which offers no resistance to argument, but, like a willow in the pauses of the wind, returns to its first position. Mrs. Kippan brought in a bright red tray and put it on the table beside her husband. On it stood a decanter — full to the stopper — a brass kettle of boiling water, two large tumblers, another with sugar in it, and a plate of cake. The Rector left his smoking brew, and stood before the bookcase. " I see you have lots of books, Kippan. I sup- pose you are fond of reading, now you can afford to give up your more active life. Settled down into a regular old bookworm, I've no doubt." 117 i^i I Committed to his Charge 'PI ':< : 1 . !| li " I alius was fond of it," answered the old man, with a thud of the stick that made the glasses on the tray jingle again, " alius. I've had weak eyes all my life long 'cause I used to steal down- stairs arter the folks were abed, when I was a little lad, and I'd lay in front o* the fire and spell it out as long as the back-log gave enough light. Many's a book I've gone through that way, an' I had to hide 'em in the hayloft in the daytime, so the wimmin wouldn't find 'em — fussin' round the men's garret. I often wonder how I learnt it all. I had one old spellin' book, with readin' lessons at the back, an' when I'd no chores to do at dinner-time — and that was mighty seldom — I'd lie in a snake-fence corner and spell *em out. There was one fellow, good-natured- like, who helped me a bit sometimes." " They say that what we earn hardly we enjoy most," said the Rector, as he looked, not without admiration, at the hard-featured old man. "I guess I ought to have jolly times, then," and the stick rattled up and down while the wrinkled face fell into folds proper to laughter. " Heh-heh ! I must be a jolly old chap ! 'Twas nothin' but earnin' hardly in my time, I can tell ye- ns Committed to his Charge Beside the Family Bible, all evidently in recent use, lay a " Pilgrim's Progress," a set of Church Homilies, and a pamphlet bearing the suggestive title of " Ruin, Rome and Ritualism.'* The Rector got further light on the allusion to the burying plot, but the story is worth telling here. When the schoolhouse was to be built it was considered advisable to remove to the new cemetery as many bodies as possible, whereupon notices to that effect were sent to all known plot- owners. The graves of those whose friends had moved away, died or disappeared, were taken in charge by a committee, and the bodies were re- moved to one vast pit. The horrified and tender- hearted Mrs. Lindsay said, " It's hard lines to think one can't rest quiet even in a grave. But my ! Won't there be a scrambling and a sorting of themselves at the last day ! " The schoolhouse went up, and the sward in a couple of years was a joy to one's eye — that is, all but one plot, and that plot came to be known as Kippan's Island. He scouted his notice and defied them to touch his property ; the wooden railing about it fell during the time of strife ; , the surrounding earth was sloped and levelled ; 119 v1 Committed to his Charge the few stones remaining were laid flat in the sod to become moss-grown spots of whiteness in it ; and at a superior height of a foot and a half was Kippan's Island, where the stone above dearly-beloved wife Number One bowed at an unseemly angle to the stone devoted to Number Two. Number One, with her two babies, was typified by a sheep and two lambs ; Number Two, with one baby, was a modest sheep with but one lamb ; and Number Three, surrounded by half a dozen mounds representing little Kippans, had no decorations beyond a simple register of names and dates. As the long- suffering husband and father had said, " Bless my heart, 'twould be a flock this time, and beyond the power of stonecutter! Besides it's a sight o' money "lo put in fancies." Possibly he meant to say in sentiment. Fond as he was of his Bible, and glibly as some of its sentences fell at most times from his lips, in the matter of burial he had given his preference to secular poetry. Below the sheep and one lamb the broken letters read — Farewell my home and husband dear, I am not dead, but sleeping here, Prepare to die, for die you must, And with me and baby lie in dust. 1 20 i Committed to his Charge ? s I i The sheep and two lambs testified that — A loving wife lies moldering here, She left a home and husband dear. Ready we are, for die we must. And with our partners lie in dust. To their shame be it said, when the Huntleys first stood to read this sad epitome of one man's three-fold effort at matrimony, they laughed until, as Helen said, " they fairly cried." " Notice the Royal We ! It is worthy of Henry the Eighth ! And how he makes the most of his rhymes ! " " And preserves a strict neutrality," said Tom, *' ' Our partners ' — awful thought ! " " Poor Number Three hasn't sheep, lamb or verse," sighed Helen. " Do you remember the epitaph — Here lies the mother of children seven. Five on earth and two in Heaven, The two in Heaven preferring rather, To die with Mother than live with Father? *' That might have been altered to suit, /couldn't blame anyone for preferring to die, rather than live with that dreadful old Orangeman." The unknown surface was covered with tus- socks and wandering arms of briar, a spot of ugliness in a God's-acre of cared-for beauty, " a 121 I M ■ '■ ji!: Jill i 1 ].:ll il il: 1 1 Committed to his Charge public monument to man's foolishness and obstinacy, but, in the owner's estimation, a proclamation of independence and steadfastness of purpose," thought Tom Huntley. " You have a nice house here," said the Rector genially, as he fingered his glass with its modest amount of toddy. " Stone ofif your own place, I suppose." " Every chip of it, sir ; field stone squared with a hammer. My first wife — no, my second, did many a square of it. Yes, my second ; for my first and me, we lived in the log. She got that handy with her hammer that she put by all her own work separate, and a goodly pile she showed. She was a smart woman my second, she as has one lamb to her headstone. We saved the chips for fillin', and the rubble went to the bank barns. Best barns in all the country, t^ey are." " My wife and I were admiring them as we came up. Why don't you plant a few vines here and there on your stone walls ? Have you quite forgotten the Old Country ? " "Twelve years old when I came, sir, and blazed a way through the bush with my uncle and gran'father. Orphan boy I was, and not of much account. No, I don't remember much. 122