CHAPTER XII
Joe Voysey walked over one evening to talk with his lifelong friend Thomas Gollop. The gardener felt choked to the throat with injustice, and regarded his dismissal from the vicarage as an outrage upon society; while Mr. Gollop laboured under similar emotions.
Both declared that the ingratitude of Dennis Masterman was what principally stung them. To retire into private life caused them no pain; but to have been invited to do so was a bitter grievance.
Miss Eliza Gollop chanced to be out, and Thomas sat by the fire alone. His Bible stood on the table, but he was not reading it. Only when Voysey's knock sounded at the cottage door did Thomas wheel round from the fire, open the book and appear to be buried in its pages.
He had rather expected a visit from Mr. Masterman, hence these preparations; but when Voysey entered, Thomas modified his devout attitude and shut the Bible again.
"I half thought as that wretched man from the vicarage might call this evening," he said.
"He won't, then," replied Joe, "for he've got together all they fools who have fallen in with his wish about yowling carols at Christmas. Him and her be down at the schoolroom; and there's row enough rising up to fright the moon."
"Carol-singing! I wish the time was come for him to sing to his God for mercy," said Thomas.
Then he went to a cupboard and brought out a bottle of spirits.
"Have he said anything to you about a pension?" asked Voysey.
"No, not yet. I thought he might be coming in about that to-night. My father afore me got a pension—a shilling a day for life—and I ought to have twice as much, in my opinion, though I don't expect it. And when I've got all I can, I'm going to shake the dust off my boots against the man and his church too. Never again, till I'm carried in to my grave, will I go across the threshold—not so long as he be there. I'm going to take up with the Dissenters, and I advise you to do the same."
"That woman have told me about my pension," answered Joe—"Alice Masterman, I mean. I won't call her 'Miss' no more, for 'tis too respectful. She've worked on her brother—so she says—to give me three half-crowns a week. But I doubt she had anything to do with it—such a beastly stinge as her. However, that's the money; and who d'you think they've took on? That anointed fool the policeman's brother! He've been learning a lot of silliness down to a nurseryman at Plymouth, and he'm coming here, so bold as brass, and so noisy as a drum, to show what can be done with that garden. And if I don't look over the wall sometimes and have a laugh at him, 'tis pity!"
Gollop nodded moodily, but he did not answer. Then Joe proceeded with malevolent glee.
"I clear out on the last day of the year," he said; "and if I haven't picked the eyes out of his garden and got 'em settled in my patch afore that day——! She met me taking over a lot of mint plants a bit ago. 'Where be you taking they mint plants?' she said. 'To a neighbour,' I said. 'He wants 'em, and we can spare 'em.' 'You'll ask me, please, before you give things away, Voysey,' she said. And now I ax, humble as a maggot, if I may take this or that to a neighbour afore I move a leaf. And she always says, 'Yes, if we can spare it.' Had her there—eh?"
"As for me," said Gollop, "I shall be the last regular right down parish clerk we ever have—unless the good old times come back later. A sexton he must use, since people have got to be buried, but who 'twill be I neither know nor care."
"Mind you take the tools," said Joe. "They be fairly your property, and you can sell 'em again if you don't want 'em yourself. I've made a good few shillings that way during the last forty years. But as for leaving the church, I shouldn't do that, because of the Christmas boxes. 'Tis well knowed in Shaugh that your Christmas boxes run into a tidy figure, and some people go so far as to say that what you take at the door, when the bettermost come out after Christmas morning prayer, is pretty near so good as what be dropped in the bags for the offerings."
"Lies," declared Thomas. "All envious lies. I never got near what the people thought. Still, I hadn't remembered. That's yet another thing where he'll have robbed me."
When Miss Eliza Gollop appeared half an hour later, she was cold and dispirited.
"What be you doing in here?" she said to Mr. Voysey.
"Having a tell with Thomas. We be both wishing to God we could strike them hateful people to the vicarage. Harm be bound to come to 'em, for their unchristian ways; but me and your brother would like to be in it."
"You'll be in it alone, then," she answered; "for this place have gone daft where they're concerned. They can't do no wrong seemingly—except to us. The people babble about him, and even her, as if they was angels that had lost their wings."
"'Tis all lax and lawless and going to the dogs," said Thomas. "There's no truth and honesty and manliness left in Shaugh. The man found a human thigh-bone kicking about up under the top hedge of the churchyard yesterday. Lord knows where it had come from. I never seed it nowhere; but he turned on me and said 'twas sacrilege, and I know not what else. 'Where there's churchyards, there'll also be bones,' I said to the fool; 'and if one here and there works to the top, along of the natural heaving of the earth, how can a sexton or any other man help it?' A feeble creature, and making the young men feeble too. Carol-singing! Who wants carols? However, I've done with him. I've stood between him and his folly time and again; but never no more. Let him go."
"'Tis a knock-kneed generation," declared Mr. Voysey. "All for comfort and luxury. Tea, with sugar in it, have took the place of the good, honest, sour cider like what every man had in harvest days of old. But now, these here young youths, they say sharp cider turns their innards! It never used to turn ours. 'Tis all of a piece, and the nation's on the downward road, along of too much cosseting."
"For my part, I think 'tis more the weakness of mind than the weakness of body that be ruining us," observed Miss Gollop. "As a nurse I see more than you men can, and, as a female, I hear more than you do. And I will say that the way the people have taken these here doings of that scarlet woman to Undershaugh is a sin and a scandal. At first they wouldn't believe it, though I blew the trumpet of truth in their ears from the moment that Dissenter died; but, afterwards, when 'twas known as a fact and the parties couldn't deny it, and Mr. Waite throwed over Cora Lintern, as any respecting man would when he heard the shameful truth—then who came to me and said, 'Ah, you was right, Eliza, and I was wrong'? Not one of 'em! And what's worse is the spirit they've taken it in. Nobody cares, though everybody ought to care!"
"Every person says 'tis none of their business," explained Voysey.
"More shame to 'em!" declared Thomas. "As if it wasn't the business of all decent men and women. Time was when such an incontinent terror of a woman would have been stoned out of the village in the name of law and righteousness. Yet now, mention the thing where I will, 'tis taken with a heathen calmness that makes my blood boil. And Masterman worst of all, mind! If it wasn't a case for a scorching sermon, when was there one? Yet not a word. And not a word from the Dissenters neither—not in the meeting-house—though 'tis a subject they'm very great against most times. However, I've inquired and I find it has been passed over."
"No godly anger anywhere," admitted Eliza, "and not one word of sorrow to me for the hard things what were spoken when I stood up single-handed and told the truth."
"Religion be dying out of the nation," summed up Thomas. "My father always said that me and Eliza would live to see antichrist ascend his throne; and it begins to look as if the times were very near ripe for the man. And 'twill be harder than ever now—now I'm driven out from being parish clerk. For I shall have to look on and yet be powerless to strike a blow."
They drank in gloomy silence; but Mr. Voysey was not similarly oppressed by the moral breakdown of the times. He strove to bring conversation back to the vicarage, and failing to do so, soon took his leave.
After he had gone the brother and sister debated long, and Thomas gave it as his opinion that it would be well for them to leave Shaugh and end their days in a more Christian and congenial atmosphere.
"There's nought to keep us now," he said; "all have gone down afore that Masterman, and 'tis something of a question whether such as we ought to bide here, simply as common folk with no more voice in the parish. If we go, the blame lies on his shoulders; but once I make up my mind, I won't stop—not though the people come before me and beg on their bended knees for me to do so."
"'Twould be like Adam and Eve being driven out of the Garden if we'm forced to go," declared Eliza.
"With this difference, however, that the blame ban't with us, though the punishment may be. There's nobody can say we've ever done wrong here, or gone outside our duty to God or man by a hair. If we go, 'tis them that drive us out will have to pay for their wickedness."
"They'll certainly smart, if 'tis only in the long run," confessed Eliza. "'Twill be brought home against them at the appointed time."
Thomas nodded drearily.
"Cold comfort," he said, "but the only satisfaction there is to be got out of it by us. Yes, I shall go; I shall shake off the dust for a witness. I wish I thought as 'twould choke a party here and there; but, thank God, I know my place. I never offered to do His almighty work, and I never will. I never wanted to call down thunder from heaven on the evil-doer. But 'tis always a tower of faith to a righteous man when he sees the Lord strike. And to them as be weak in faith, 'tis often a puzzle and a temptation to see how long the Lord holds off, when justice cries aloud to Him to rise up and do His worst."