CHAPTER VII.
THORSBY’S FALL AND CONVERSION.
The early married days of Letty Woodburn seemed perfect in their felicity. Often she used to drive over in the handsome open carriage which Thorsby kept chiefly for her use, and whenever she came it was with all the flush of happy life and gaiety about her. She seemed to like her town life, and the new circle of friends that her marriage had introduced her to, yet she always appeared to inhale a fresh draught of joy as she sat in the old rooms, rambled round the old garden, and saw the accustomed objects and people about her as formerly. “Oh!” she would say, “how charming are these dear old scenes—how glad am I that I can so readily come back to them!” She and Thorsby generally spent their Sundays there, and he was ever in the best of spirits, and even Betty Trapps had somewhat relented towards him—It was observed that he scarcely ever had a jibe at Methodists, evidently out of care not to hurt Betty’s feelings, though, as he expressed it, he often trod on her corns by laughing at her friends, Sylvanus Crook and David Qualm. He had bought somewhere, and brought one day, a highly coloured engraving, all bright blue, red, and yellow, of Shon-ap-Morgan-ap-Shenkin-ap-Gwillim, a shentleman of Wales—as the inscription under it expressed it—going to take possession of his father’s estate, riding on a goat. This he said he was going to present to Howell Crusoe, the village schoolmaster, as a pleasing memento of his native country. All the Woodburn family begged of him not to do it, saying it would hurt the worthy schoolmaster’s feelings, and Betty Trapps said she saw that Mr. Thorsby had some of th’ owd aggravating spirit in him. But Thorsby would take it to Crusoe: and to the astonishment of all the Woodburns the schoolmaster accepted it, and hung it up in his house, as a pleasant joke of Mister Thorsby’s. He seemed to think it an honour to have so much notice from him. He presented Thorsby with the little book, already mentioned, that he had printed in Castleborough, of all things and subjects—on etiquette! It was meant for the help of country schoolmasters like himself in forming the manners of village children. It was founded on his practice, and certainly was a curiosity in its way. Copies of it, I believe, are yet to be procured in the midland counties. Thorsby was convulsed with laughter at its rules, and read them with infinite gusto, not only at the Grange, but among his friends in Castleborough.
Besides the fun Thorsby found in Howell Crusoe’s “Book of Etiquette,” he often brought amusing anecdotes from Fair Manor, where he and Letty frequently took tea. Sylvanus, he said, told him seriously that he was very much concerned to find an utter want of conscience in dogs. They are called, he said, very faithful and affectionate animals, but it was, he added, a lamentable fact, that, like too many of their masters, they had no conscience whatever; they were really nothing but time-servers. This he discovered by watching a number of puppies that he had been training. He had tutored them to avoid going on the garden beds, and they knew their duty so well, that as long as any one was in sight they never set a foot on the beds. Yet somehow he observed that there were prints of their feet all over the newly-dug ground. How could this be? He resolved to watch. He walked about the garden with these young dogs, now half grown. Not one ever offered to wander from the walks, but no sooner did he enter his house, and look cautiously out of the window, than he saw them all deliberately walk on to the beds and behave very badly there. A very slight rap at the window, and they all ran off, and looked very much taken in. Yet, time after time, as he tried the experiment, he found them still ready to run on the beds whenever they thought nobody saw them. “They know their duty,” said Sylvanus, “as well as I do—but the fact is, they have no conscience.”
Sylvanus, Thorsby said, sincerely believed that spirits appeared sometimes, and the reason he gave for it was, that it is said in the Scriptures that the souls of the righteous shall see the fruits of their labours and be satisfied, and from the same rule, he expected, he said, that the wicked would be sent back to see the fruits of their labours, their avarice, their spending their lives in folly, their abuses of their power; and that this was part of their torment. He thought it must be a very racking thing for miserly men to see their heirs wasting their gold in folly and sin.
He related with great glee the dilemma into which such a grave Friend and acute man of business as Mr. Heritage had fallen. A lady of the Society, a woman of fortune, living some miles out of town, had come under the dealings of the meeting for her infringements of its practices, in dressing gaily, and having much free and easy intercourse with the aristocratic families around her. As she did not reform after repeated official visits and admonitions, even committing the enormity of going to the theatre, she was formally disowned—that is, excommunicated. In drawing up the minute of disownment, the Friends had unadvisedly worded the cause of disownment as for “disorderly walking.” This imputation on a lady, Mrs. Jerram noticeably resented, and as Mr. Heritage was the clerk of the meeting, she commenced an action against him at law for defamation. The trial, which took place in Castleborough, went in her favour, and brought her heavy damages. The damages, of course, were borne by the Society, but Mr. Heritage was so much annoyed at being thus made so prominent in the case against a lady, and his own cousin, too, that he resigned the office of clerk, lest he might fall into other such snares. Mrs. Jerram begged her cousin Heritage not to think for a moment that she bore the least ill-will to him personally on account of this offensive document; she excused him on account of his only discharging his official duty. To show her perfect freedom from resentment, but not, perhaps, without a little triumph on the occasion, she often drove over to Fair Manor, and made herself as agreeable as possible. “But,” said Sylvanus, “thou canst imagine that these visits were not quite so agreeable to my master. People don’t like, the best of them, to be publicly beaten, and ridiculed, as they are in such cases.”
“Well,” said Thorsby, “but you Friends should be more regenerate and forgiving than all that.”
“True,” replied Sylvanus, “it would be better, but it is difficult to purge the old Adam quite out of us. I fear that there may be a little of the old Adam in myself, but I try to keep him down, and I trust he will not be permitted to obtain undue influence. I earnestly desire to be led and guided right.”
“Ah, don’t trust too much to that leading and guiding you talk so much about,” said Thorsby; “for two of your friends came to my house awhile ago, saying they were moved to come and speak to me as a wild young man, and these were no other than your William Fairfax and David Qualm; and, would you believe it? in going out they took a wrong door, and Fairfax fell down my low kitchen stairs and hurt himself confoundedly. Mind, Sylvanus, that you are better led and guided than that.”
“Thou likes a jest, friend Thorsby; but I was going to tell thee the clever way my master got rid of Mary Jerram’s visits.”
“Ah, by all means,” said Thorsby.
“Well, thou sees,” continued Sylvanus, “Mary Jerram drove up one day, ordered her horses to be taken out, and laid herself out for a long day of it. She stayed all morning; she stayed dinner. The master came home, and, notwithstanding, she stayed tea. She sat and talked, and talked, and particularly directed her discourse to master. At length, as it was getting late, master said to her, ‘Mary, although thou hast left Friends, I suppose thou still remembers something of Scripture.’
“‘To be sure,’ replied Mary Jerram. ‘Remember Scripture! What do you mean? I am not so disorderly in my walk as to forget that.’
“‘Then,’ said master, ‘thou knowest that the Scriptures say, “If thine enemy hunger, give him meat, if he thirst give him drink;” but I don’t think it says anything about lodgings.’
“Thou shouldst have seen the effect of that,” said Sylvanus, highly delighted. “Since then Mary Jerram has not found her way to Fair Manor again.”
Thorsby was never without some jocose talk of this kind at his visits to the Grange. But time rolled on, and there were rumours that the charge of being a wild young man, which the Friends had made against him, was not entirely without foundation. His old jovial companions had drawn him again too much into their society and convivialities. Letty made no complaints on this head, though as time went on her own family thought they saw occasionally a more careful expression on her countenance. Nothing, however, could exceed the affectionate terms on which they seemed to be; nothing could betoken more love and admiration than Thorsby’s manner to his wife. There appeared no reserve, no concealment between them, and the Woodburns thought there could be no serious cause of complaint betwixt two so obviously happy. But time still rolled on, and in due course a little son was born. With what pride Letty on her next visit to the Grange showed the newest Woodburn to the grandfather,—mother and sister and George had already taken their view of the miniature youth in Castleborough. With what pride she told her father that she was charmed with the opportunity of giving the name of Leonard—Leonard Woodburn Thorsby—to a fresh claimant of the honours and virtues of the house! Thorsby was himself no less proud of the young aspirant to manhood. It was, according to him, the finest, the largest, the cleverest child of its age that he had ever seen; but, in fact, before he had never paid much attention to very young children, but seemed to think them something very like fat caterpillars, with apple-dumpling faces.
But was it the joy and pride of his heart that often sent him out in an evening amongst his jolly companions, and sent him home late, sometimes not very good-tempered? True it was that though Thorsby was one of the best of husbands, tender, kind, anxious, solicitous that his wife should have everything to make her happy, yet his ways of making himself happy caused, by degrees, serious inroads into Letty’s happiness. Often he not only came home late, but in a condition that he called prime and gay as a lord, but which created very serious fears in his wife’s mind. When he was in a less lordlike mood she continued to intreat him to stay with her and read to her at her needlework, or to go and see some of his more domestic friends. What must become of her, she asked, if he contracted an unconquerable habit of taking too much wine?
“Too much wine!” he would reply. “What are you talking about, my dear child? Too much wine! Why, I tell you, we are all as sober as judges. It is not wine, it is only a little hilarity that we like at the club. When a man has been fagging all day in the counting-house, why, dear me, one must have a little talk and laughter to brighten one up. But never do you fear. I know what I am about. I am not going to make an ass of myself.”
Letty thought that he used to find her society refreshing and enlivening once. “And so I do now,” he would say; “but one cannot always be tied to one’s wife’s apron-strings. But I know what it is, Letty: it is these old fogies and Quakers that you have got acquainted with; they make you think all mirth is a sin, and they go about saying I am a wild young man. That’s it, Letty dear, that’s it. Now I am not going to be a wild young man; in fact, I think I am getting rather old and serious; but I’ll ‘wild-young-man’ those frouzy Quakers—mark me, if I don’t.”
With these ideas rankling in his mind, Thorsby one day riding from Woodburn where his wife was staying a few days, saw coming on the road towards him Mr. Jasper Heritage, a tall man, on his tall horse, and little squabby David Qualm on his stout and squably Welsh pony. Thorsby well knew that all Welsh ponies are, more or less, skittish, and that Taffy, Qualm’s pony, was excessively so. As the two Friends drew near, therefore, Thorsby took off his hat as if in compliment to them. The moment he lifted it from his head Mr. Heritage shouted, “Keep on thy hat, Henry Thorsby! keep on thy hat!” But Thorsby not only did not put it on again, but he gave it a great flourish as if in extreme politeness; and, it was the work of a moment,—David Qualm’s pony started sideways to the farther side of the road, and left him lying on his back in the middle of it.
Thorsby, who was now afraid, seeing the heavy little man lying motionless, that he might have done more mischief than he intended, sprang from his horse, and ran to lift up the man of silence. But as he nearly reached him, David found the use of his limbs and his tongue, and raising himself on one elbow, his three-cornered hat and brown wig having deserted him; with bare head and wild staring eyes, he swung his one arm furiously, and cried like a maniac,—“Avaunt! son of Belial! Avaunt! Touch me not, man of sin!”
Mr. Heritage, who had also descended from his horse, gently pushed Thorsby away, saying, “Let alone! Take thyself away, Henry Thorsby. This is what I could not have expected of thee.”
Thorsby would still have assisted to lift up and wipe the dust from David Qualm, but Mr. Heritage would not let him, but carefully raised his old friend and relative, and began to beat the dust from his coat. Thorsby muttered some sort of an apology—something about his not meaning any harm—but David cast a lion’s glance at him, and said, “Thou liest, man! Thou liest! Thou meant it, and nothing less.”
Thorsby, who did not think David was much hurt, mounted and rode rapidly off. When he was out of hearing, he gave vent to an uproarious laughter, and said, “A wild young man, indeed! Not so wild but he can keep his seat better than some people.” He was so elated with his exploit that he that evening told the story with much humour and some embellishment at the club, to the exquisite delight of his friends, and the next day it was all over the town. Amongst the lighter and more giddy of the population it was thought a very clever paying-off of the censorious Friend; amongst the older and more thinking people it was regarded in a very different light, and such a dangerous trick played off on a very quiet and inoffensive man, by no means told in favour of Thorsby. The serious manner in which Mr. Heritage spoke of it amongst his friends made a deep impression, and it was regarded as a very impolitic act in Thorsby, who, though his wife stood so well with the wealthy banker, might, in times of commercial depression, find it much to his inconvenience to have sunk in his esteem.
Many things were spoken out on this occasion which had evidently lain for some time in people’s minds. Wonder was expressed at the growing dissipation of Thorsby. Of his notoriously riotous and bacchanalian evenings with some of the richest but most immoral young men of the place. Some people wondered that his wife did not appear to see it; more uttered words of pity for her. Others said “What a fool that man is, with such a wife, with a splendid business, with a circle of acquaintances of the very first class in the town and neighbourhood, and to be running such a course. But it was only the course his father ran, and which made it a short one for him.”
The news flew to Woodburn. Sukey Priddo told it that evening on the way from the class-meeting to Betty Trapps, and Betty told it right out to Letty. As she waited on the family at supper, she said, “Well, Mr. Thorsby is a fine playful boy yet, is not he?”
“Is what?” said Letty, eagerly.
“A fine, frocksome boy,” said Betty.
“What do you mean, Betty?” added Letty, alarmed.
“I mean only that he has whisked his hat over his head, and made Mr. Qualm’s pony send him over his head.”
“Are you dreaming?” said Mr. Woodburn, somewhat angrily.
“No, sir, I am not dreaming, what I say I say; and there lies poor Mr. Qualm in bed, all shaked to a mummy, and the doctor’s bled him and said it is a bad case.”
All called on Betty to explain how it took place, and Letty was greatly agitated.
“Oh!” said George, “I see how it is. Harry has taken off his hat to the Friends as they passed, and that scamp of a pony has shied. But he cannot have hurt the old man; falling from that little brute is only like falling from a chair.”
“What does a sober man like that ride such a skittish thing for?” asked Mr. Woodburn.
“Because,” said George, “I was going to say, he is an old fool; but the fact is people always do ride animals like themselves.”
“What! Do you think a man like a horse?” exclaimed Ann.
“To a certain degree,” said George, “a little podgy man like David Qualm is sure to select a little podgy horse, a tall slim fellow fancies only a tall slim horse, and so on. It is the same with sticks; men always carry sticks very like themselves, slender or stout, clean or knotty and gnarled: and dogs too, have always a certain resemblance to their masters. And wives—people wonder that husbands and wives are often so alike. It is because men see a likeness to themselves in a woman, and that delights them. They fall in love with their own dear selves in falling in love with a woman. But enough; you can discuss this bit of philosophy while I run up and see how poor old David really is.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you, George!” said Letty, as George took down his hat and disappeared. In a very short time he returned, and said—
“I’ve seen Qualm. He has not much amiss with him, but he is very angry with Harry, who, however, only seems to have taken off his hat to compliment the gentlemen as they passed. True, David says they cried out to him to keep his hat on, but the fact was, the hat was off when they cried out. You might as well tell a man not to shoot when he has already pulled the trigger.”
“I don’t see, then,” said Letty, “that Harry was really to blame; it was only his courtesy.”
“Of course not,” said George; and Letty, much relieved, went off with the other ladies to bed.
When she was gone, George said to his father, “I would not make Letty anxious, or she would be tormenting herself all night, but I don’t at all like this doing of Thorsby’s. It was clearly a designed thing of his, from what I hear. I know he has a pique against David Qualm; and, in fact, I am very anxious about Thorsby. I hear in Castleborough continually of his wild goings-on with that scapegrace set of young fellows that I hoped he had long ago cut.”
“I have heard the same,” said Mr. Woodburn, “and have spoken more than once to Thorsby on the subject, and he has always promised to reform; but my opinion is that he is just as weak as a bulrush. He can’t help himself. It is a very serious affair.”
“Well,” said George, “there always was an excitable nature in Thorsby. He has very quick feelings for good, and if not for evil, at least for pleasure, and what he calls jollity. I had hoped that Letty would have been able to keep him more at home, but he always says he must have a little innocent larking, he should go daft without it.”
“He will go daft with it,” said Mr. Woodburn, “if he does not mind.”
Leonard Woodburn had had other causes of annoyance of late to try his temper, of which anon, and he felt very keenly the conduct of Thorsby towards his daughter.
“I have long thought,” he said “that Letty is far from happy. I see a gravity about her, a shade over her countenance sometimes, that I never saw before her marriage.”
“Yes, but remember, dear father, that she is now a wife and a mother; we cannot expect people to remain always the lightsome beings of their boy or girlhood.”
“I expect nothing of the sort,” said Mr. Woodburn, rather tartly; “but I did expect that this fellow would not be such a fool. It is a confounded bad job, George, and makes me very cross and very miserable. Good-night.” And Mr. Woodburn withdrew to bed.
It was soon found that great censure was cast on Thorsby for his conduct in this affair, and the knowledge of it seemed to anger him, and to drive him into further excesses. For the first time he turned almost savagely on Letty, when, on her return home, she expressed regret at what had happened.
“An old fool,” he said; “he should ride a safe horse, and not such a will-o’-the-wisp as that Welsh pony, and then no harm could happen to him.”
“But you knew, dear Harry, what the pony was,” said Letty. “I wish you had not done it. But as it is done, do, pray, call on Mr. Qualm and apologize to him: a soft word, you know, turneth away wrath. And call on Mr. Heritage and express your regret. We were on such good terms with them all, and they are such worthy people.”
“Do you think me such a sneak, Letty?” said Thorsby, taking up his hat to go out to business. “Don’t you believe it.”
Letty knew a great deal more of Thorsby’s life than had yet reached Woodburn, but she had buried it and the sorrow of it in her heart, and would not breathe a syllable of it except to God, which she did with most fervent prayers and scalding tears. Many a report had come to her from a most faithful quarter, and that was Thomas Barnsdale, the manager of Thorsby’s business, a man who regarded the concern and the reputation of his employer as his own. He was a Methodist in religion, and a great reader of books of general literature of a solid kind. He had grown up from a boy in the concern, and was ever at his post, and ever regardless of his own labour to conduct it to advantage. The unsteady life of Thorsby was all brought to his knowledge, and he had not hesitated to speak seriously to him and repeatedly, even at the risk of dismissal. He asked him earnestly to recollect the shortened life and injured name and fortunes of his father; and to act as he ought to do with such favour as God had showered on him in such a wife, and in such friends all round. Thorsby had taken these sermons, as he called them, not amiss, but he had not altered. Every day Mr. Barnsdale heard of some wild exploit of Thorsby and his comrades—practical jokes of the most daring and expensive kind. One of these they had carried on at the expense of a young surgeon of the town, whose vanity they had excited by a letter written to him as from a lady of fortune at Bristol, who had seen him at Castleborough, and fallen deeply in love with him. A long correspondence had been kept up between the young man and the imagined lady, the letters purporting to be from her having been duly posted, and the young surgeon’s received by an accomplice at Bristol. At length the dénouément was to take place. The lady was to meet him at Cheltenham; relays of horses were engaged for him at the lady’s cost all the way from Castleborough to Cheltenham, where he was to proceed in a private carriage, and there the marriage was to take place by special licence. All was found by the young man arranged as stated, and away he posted free-cost to Cheltenham, only to find at the appointed rendezvous a letter from the improvised lady, saying she had changed her mind.
This could not have been carried out except at an expense which none but very foolish and very mischievous fellows would have incurred, but the delight which it occasioned them, and the hints which they from time to time gave to the hoaxed inamorato, that they knew of the affair, seemed ample satisfaction to their perverted minds.
Time rolled on. Thorsby was looked very coldly on at Woodburn Grange, at Fair Manor, and by many leading and right-thinking people in Castleborough. Thomas Barnsdale felt it his duty to make Letty acquainted with the downward course of her husband, that it might not come in a more sudden and unexpected manner upon her. He could now counsel with her, and work with her in attempts to check this career, and it was a comfort to Letty to have such a faithful and reliable friend to open her distressed mind to.
Providence at length sent one of those contretemps which, if properly weighed, lead to retracement. Thorsby, attending the hunt, was thrown from his horse, and the shock that he received, owing probably to the state of his system from intemperance, produced pleurisy, and brought him to the brink of death. The physicians looked very gloomily on the case, and Thorsby, with that quick sensitiveness of feeling natural to him, fell into the greatest condition of terror and despair. He made the most touching and agonised confessions to his wife of his unworthiness of her, of his folly and wickedness. Poor Letty only too freely forgave him, and cheered him with hopes of life yet, or of forgiveness by an ever good God, if he was taken away. Thorsby begged that she would send for Mrs. Heritage that she might pray for him, and that through her he might send his avowal of deep contrition to Mr. Heritage and David Qualm. Letty at once sent the carriage for Mrs. Heritage, and that ever-ready minister of love was speedily at his bed-side.
The repeated conversations and prayers of this good woman produced in Thorsby a sense of remorse and kind of burning desire to live and enact a new and nobler life, which were very edifying. In a few days the doctors pronounced the crisis past, and Thorsby, in a calmer state, was insatiable of the readings in the New Testament which Letty afforded him. He recovered; but the effect of this serious danger and alarm remained. A new phase of character now revealed itself in him. He continued extremely burdened in spirit, and zealously religious. He abandoned his club associates, and accompanied his wife and Thomas Barnsdale to the meetings. But he could not satisfy himself with merely attending religious services, he felt himself compelled to stand forth and testify to the mercy of God in thus again raising him up. Town and neighbourhood were one day astonished beyond measure by seeing large placards posted all over Castleborough and the neighbouring villages that Mr. Henry Thorsby was going to preach at the Methodist Tabernacle.
We may imagine the laughter, the jibes and scoffs which ran amongst his old associates and the profaner portion of the population at this announcement. Thorsby turned preacher! Saul amongst the prophets! Balaam’s ass about to open its mouth; were but a few of the witticisms afloat. All his old associates were resolved to go and hear Saint Harry’s conventicle whinings, which they prophesied would last as many nights as days. At Woodburn, the state of mind on the hearing of this news it would be difficult to analyse. Astonishment was great, but not the uppermost feeling. As Church-people, there was a touch of shame, of disgust, of mortification at Thorsby exhibiting himself as an amateur preacher of dissent. Something of all these, and something more. Would it last? David Qualm, when he heard of it, and who, by the by, was all right again, and still riding that ticklish pony, said, “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.” After that great effort of oracular speech, he closed his mouth again and was silent for a week.
But David Qualm’s utterance had an uneasy echo in the minds of many, and the inmates of Woodburn Grange were amongst them. Letty, however, said, “Anything, anything, rather than that old life of his,” and her family, therefore, waited for what time should bring forth. On the Sunday named, there was a general stream of life flowing towards the tabernacle. Every possible atom of space in it was crowded. Many of the leading people of the place were seen amongst the expectant concourse. Letty herself was not there. The trial to her nerves was too severe.
The regular minister opened the service by prayer and a hymn, and then Thorsby ascended the pulpit, opened his Bible, and took his text from the Psalms—“Thou hast brought me up from the gates of hell.” The silence was profound. He then began by reference to his past life and his late illness. There was no nervousness, no hesitation about him, as in one unaccustomed to such a public display. He said, doubtless much wit and many pleasant sarcasms had been and would be expended over the change which had taken place in him. He would only say, let those thus disposed only come into the crisis through which he had passed, and they would then hear what he had to say. Now he boldly came forth to return thanks to God for his mercy to him, and devote his life to the service of Christ, the friend of sinners. He then drew a picture of his past condition; of the valley of the shadow of death, of the terrors of Almighty judgment through which he had passed, and appealed to his hearers to follow his example, and think nothing of scorn, or ridicule, or persecution for the advocacy of the most momentous interests of the human race. As he proceeded he warmed into a tone of eloquence which surprised every one; and before he had done, few were the eyes that were not drowned in tears.
As the vast congregation streamed away from the chapel, many of the old members of it said they had heard many wonderful sermons in that chapel from great preachers, but nothing like that. Many said they had no idea that Thorsby had so much in him; and all admitted that at all events he had discovered a new and amazing talent in himself, and would, if he held on, be truly a burning and a shining light. The ascent of such a brilliant meteor into the religious horizon of Methodism produced immediately numerous calls to visit other towns—Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds, &c. &c.,—and everywhere the same enthusiasm was excited by Thorsby’s addresses. He might have gone from town to town on a triumphal round of religious service; much time he was, in a measure, obliged to devote to such engagements, and well was it for him that he had a man like Thomas Barnsdale to attend to his business affairs. For some months Thorsby continued to astonish and electrify the public by his impassioned discourses. Fair Manor expressed a quiet hope that it would continue. Woodburn Grange was in a condition of mind fit subject for metaphysical plumblines to explore, half astonished and half acquiescent in the strange phenomenon. Letty, with tears and smiles, when there, continued to say, “Anything, anything, so that Harry continues as steady and kind as now.”
Betty Trapps alone expressed no enthusiasm, and avowed no faith in this grand metamorphosis. She had heard Mr. Thorsby, she said, at Hillmartin Chapel. It was very fine what he said, but then she knew that he awlis could talk finely, even when he made so many “skits” on the Methodists. For her part she looked on this as a judgment on him for his fleering at good people so often. She and Sukey Priddo had seen something that satisfied them.
“What have you seen, Betty?” asked Mrs. Woodburn. Betty didn’t seem in a hurry to answer; but when urged by all the family she said,
“Well, if you must know, we saw the shadder of th’ Owd Youth,”—a familiar name for the Devil in the midland counties,—“behind him in the pulpit as he were preaching. That was enough for us.”
“Nonsense,” said Ann, “it was merely some particular placing of the lights that cast an odd shadow. How absurd, Betty, about the Old Youth.”
“As you please, Miss,” said Betty; “I’ve my own notions; but I niver, in all my born days, expected to see Mr. Thorsby preaching in Hillmartin chapel, nor to hear Mr. Nockels the local preacher saying niver was such preaching. No, truly! William Penn’s ‘No Cross, no Crown,’ was not such stuff as they got every day at Hillmartin.”
“‘No Cross, no Crown,’” said Ann. “What makes you think it was ‘No Cross, No Crown?’”
“Sukey Priddo,” said Betty, “knows ‘No Cross, no Crown’ well enough. Mr. Heritage made her a present of it, and she’s read it through five times.”
With Betty Trapps’s opinion of Thorsby’s spiritual appearances, we may close this chapter, and leave the reader to think of it a little.