Shirley
unpretending vintage, moderately enjoyed. Mr. Malone, indeed, would much
rather have had whisky; but Mr. Donne, being an Englishman, did not keep
the beverage. While they sipped they argued, not on politics, nor on
philosophy, nor on literature--these topics were now, as ever, totally
without interest for them--not even on theology, practical or doctrinal,
but on minute points of ecclesiastical discipline, frivolities which
seemed empty as bubbles to all save themselves. Mr. Malone, who
contrived to secure two glasses of wine, when his brethren contented
themselves with one, waxed by degrees hilarious after his fashion; that
is, he grew a little insolent, said rude things in a hectoring tone, and
laughed clamorously at his own brilliancy.
Each of his companions became in turn his butt. Malone had a stock of
jokes at their service, which he was accustomed to serve out regularly
on convivial occasions like the present, seldom varying his wit; for
which, indeed, there was no necessity, as he never appeared to consider
himself monotonous, and did not at all care what others thought. Mr.
Donne he favoured with hints about his extreme meagreness, allusions to
his turned-up nose, cutting sarcasms on a certain threadbare chocolate
surtout which that gentleman was accustomed to sport whenever it rained
or seemed likely to rain, and criticisms on a choice set of cockney
phrases and modes of pronunciation, Mr. Donne's own property, and
certainly deserving of remark for the elegance and finish they
communicated to his style.
Mr. Sweeting was bantered about his stature--he was a little man, a mere
boy in height and breadth compared with the athletic Malone; rallied on
his musical accomplishments--he played the flute and sang hymns like a
seraph, some young ladies of his parish thought; sneered at as "the
ladies' pet;" teased about his mamma and sisters, for whom poor Mr.
Sweeting had some lingering regard, and of whom he was foolish enough
now and then to speak in the presence of the priestly Paddy, from whose
anatomy the bowels of natural affection had somehow been omitted.
The victims met these attacks each in his own way: Mr. Donne with a
stilted self-complacency and half-sullen phlegm, the sole props of his
otherwise somewhat rickety dignity; Mr. Sweeting with the indifference
of a light, easy disposition, which never professed to have any dignity
to maintain.
When Malone's raillery became rather too offensive, which it soon did,
they joined, in an attempt to turn the tables on him by asking him how
many boys had shouted "Irish Peter!" after him as he came along the road
that day (Malone's name was Peter--the Rev. Peter Augustus Malone);
requesting to be informed whether it was the mode in Ireland for
clergymen to carry loaded pistols in their pockets, and a shillelah in
their hands, when they made pastoral visits; inquiring the signification
of such words as vele, firrum, hellum, storrum (so Mr. Malone invariably
pronounced veil, firm, helm, storm), and employing such other methods of
retaliation as the innate refinement of their minds suggested.
This, of course, would not do. Malone, being neither good-natured nor
phlegmatic, was presently in a towering passion. He vociferated,
gesticulated; Donne and Sweeting laughed. He reviled them as Saxons and
snobs at the very top pitch of his high Celtic voice; they taunted him
with being the native of a conquered land. He menaced rebellion in the
name of his "counthry," vented bitter hatred against English rule; they
spoke of rags, beggary, and pestilence. The little parlour was in an
uproar; you would have thought a duel must follow such virulent abuse;
it seemed a wonder that Mr. and Mrs. Gale did not take alarm at the
noise, and send for a constable to keep the peace. But they were
accustomed to such demonstrations; they well knew that the curates never
dined or took tea together without a little exercise of the sort, and
were quite easy as to consequences, knowing that these clerical quarrels
were as harmless as they were noisy, that they resulted in nothing, and
that, on whatever terms the curates might part to-night, they would be
sure to meet the best friends in the world to-morrow morning.
As the worthy pair were sitting by their kitchen fire, listening to the
repeated and sonorous contact of Malone's fist with the mahogany plane
of the parlour table, and to the consequent start and jingle of
decanters and glasses following each assault, to the mocking laughter of
the allied English disputants, and the stuttering declamation of the
isolated Hibernian--as they thus sat, a foot was heard on the outer
door-step, and the knocker quivered to a sharp appeal.
Mr. Gale went and opened.
"Whom have you upstairs in the parlour?" asked a voice--a rather
remarkable voice, nasal in tone, abrupt in utterance.
"O Mr. Helstone, is it you, sir? I could hardly see you for the
darkness; it is so soon dark now. Will you walk in, sir?"
"I want to know first whether it is worth my while walking in. Whom have
you upstairs?"
"The curates, sir."
"What! all of them?"
"Yes, sir."
"Been dining here?"
"Yes, sir."
"That will do."
With these words a person entered--a middle-aged man, in black. He
walked straight across the kitchen to an inner door, opened it, inclined
his head forward, and stood listening. There was something to listen to,
for the noise above was just then louder than ever.
"Hey!" he ejaculated to himself; then turning to Mr. Gale--"Have you
often this sort of work?"
Mr. Gale had been a churchwarden, and was indulgent to the clergy.
"They're young, you know, sir--they're young," said he deprecatingly.
"Young! They want caning. Bad boys--bad boys! And if you were a
Dissenter, John Gale, instead of being a good Churchman, they'd do the
like--they'd expose themselves; but I'll----"
By way of finish to this sentence, he passed through the inner door,
drew it after him, and mounted the stair. Again he listened a few
minutes when he arrived at the upper room. Making entrance without
warning, he stood before the curates.
And they were silent; they were transfixed; and so was the invader.
He--a personage short of stature, but straight of port, and bearing on
broad shoulders a hawk's head, beak, and eye, the whole surmounted by a
Rehoboam, or shovel hat, which he did not seem to think it necessary to
lift or remove before the presence in which he then stood--_he_ folded
his arms on his chest and surveyed his young friends, if friends they
were, much at his leisure.
"What!" he began, delivering his words in a voice no longer nasal, but
deep--more than deep--a voice made purposely hollow and
cavernous--"what! has the miracle of Pentecost been renewed? Have the
cloven tongues come down again? Where are they? The sound filled the
whole house just now. I heard the seventeen languages in full action:
Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in
Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in
Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Jews
and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians; every one of these must have had
its representative in this room two minutes since."
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Helstone," began Mr. Donne; "take a seat, pray,
sir. Have a glass of wine?"
His civilities received no answer. The falcon in the black coat
proceeded,--
"What do I talk about the gift of tongues? Gift, indeed! I mistook the
chapter, and book, and Testament--gospel for law, Acts for Genesis, the
city of Jerusalem for the plain of Shinar. It was no gift but the
confusion of tongues which has gabbled me deaf as a post. _You_,
apostles? What! you three? Certainly not; three presumptuous Babylonish
masons--neither more nor less!"
"I assure you, sir, we were only having a little chat together over a
glass of wine after a friendly dinner--settling the Dissenters!"
"Oh! settling the Dissenters, were you? Was Malone settling the
Dissenters? It sounded to me much more like settling his co-apostles.
You were quarrelling together, making almost as much noise--you three
alone--as Moses Barraclough, the preaching tailor, and all his hearers
are making in the Methodist chapel down yonder, where they are in the
thick of a revival. I know whose fault it is.--It is yours, Malone."
"Mine, sir?"
"Yours, sir. Donne and Sweeting were quiet before you came, and would be
quiet if you were gone. I wish, when you crossed the Channel, you had
left your Irish habits behind you. Dublin student ways won't do here.
The proceedings which might pass unnoticed in a wild bog and mountain
district in Connaught will, in a decent English parish, bring disgrace
on those who indulge in them, and, what is far worse, on the sacred
institution of which they are merely the humble appendages."
There was a certain dignity in the little elderly gentleman's manner of
rebuking these youths, though it was not, perhaps, quite the dignity
most appropriate to the occasion. Mr. Helstone, standing straight as a
ramrod, looking keen as a kite, presented, despite his clerical hat,
black coat, and gaiters, more the air of a veteran officer chiding his
subalterns than of a venerable priest exhorting his sons in the faith.
Gospel mildness, apostolic benignity, never seemed to have breathed
their influence over that keen brown visage, but firmness had fixed the
features, and sagacity had carved her own lines about them.
"I met Supplehough," he continued, "plodding through the mud this wet
night, going to preach at Milldean opposition shop. As I told you, I
heard Barraclough bellowing in the midst of a conventicle like a
possessed bull; and I find _you_, gentlemen, tarrying over your
half-pint of muddy port wine, and scolding like angry old women. No
wonder Supplehough should have dipped sixteen adult converts in a
day--which he did a fortnight since; no wonder Barraclough, scamp and
hypocrite as he is, should attract all the weaver-girls in their flowers
and ribbons, to witness how much harder are his knuckles than the wooden
brim of his tub; as little wonder that _you_, when you are left to
yourselves, without your rectors--myself, and Hall, and Boultby--to back
you, should too often perform the holy service of our church to bare
walls, and read your bit of a dry discourse to the clerk, and the
organist, and the beadle. But enough of the subject. I came to see
Malone.--I have an errand unto thee, O captain!"
"What is it?" inquired Malone discontentedly. "There can be no funeral
to take at this time of day."
"Have you any arms about you?"
"Arms, sir?--yes, and legs." And he advanced the mighty members.
"Bah! weapons I mean."
"I have the pistols you gave me yourself. I never part with them. I lay
them ready cocked on a chair by my bedside at night. I have my
blackthorn."
"Very good. Will you go to Hollow's Mill?"
"What is stirring at Hollow's Mill?"
"Nothing as yet, nor perhaps will be; but Moore is alone there. He has
sent all the workmen he can trust to Stilbro'; there are only two women
left about the place. It would be a nice opportunity for any of his
well-wishers to pay him a visit, if they knew how straight the path was
made before them."
"I am none of his well-wishers, sir. I don't care for him."
"Soh! Malone, you are afraid."
"You know me better than that. If I really thought there was a chance
of a row I would go: but Moore is a strange, shy man, whom I never
pretend to understand; and for the sake of his sweet company only I
would not stir a step."
"But there _is_ a chance of a row; if a positive riot does not take
place--of which, indeed, I see no signs--yet it is unlikely this night
will pass quite tranquilly. You know Moore has resolved to have new