Neither was the Council Chamber without a certain picturesqueness of its own. Bare it undoubtedly was, for it boasted of only one small table, drawn up cosily across the fire, and flanked on either side by two settees with panelled arms and backs, designed apparently to accommodate the number of the Council; or it may have been that the Council pre-arranged its number to suit the accommodation supplied for it. For myself, as the visitor of honour, one of those fine old chairs that surprise one occasionally in the humblest of cottages had been introduced from the adjoining room.
Of course the Council could not deliberate without the sustenance of beer and tobacco. And the smoke of continuous churchwardens (I include both the man and his pipe) had toned the colouring of the panels into a rich and tawny brown, from which the quivering firelight was reflected as from the ebon mirror favoured by Egyptian palmists.
The proceedings were opened by our drinking the health of the King with solemn enthusiasm. And then, before the business of the sitting was begun, a few words of general conversation were held to be admissible. It was a former Rector who formed the key-note of it, and a strange character he must have been if all the stories were true that I heard of him.
“’Twas a queer christenin’ you had once in this church, Mr. Weyman, or so at least I’m told.” The speaker was one Ebenezer Higgins, an Evangelical of the most pronounced type. For though he represented only a minority of the parish, it was thought right that all phases of belief within the Church should be represented on the Council.
“Aye, ’twas that indeed, Mr. Higgins. You see, our old Rector was gettin’ aged an’ hard o’ hearin’, an’ when Lucy Stone handed ’n the child, he said in his easy-goin’ pleasant way, ‘An’ what be we to call ’n, Lucy?’
“‘Lucy, Sir,’ she whispered—for ’twas her first, ye see, an’ a terrible shy young ’ooman she were—‘Lucy, Sir—same as me.’
“‘Lucifer!’ he cried, ‘’twill never do; ’tis heathenish, an’ wus than heathenish.’
“An’ I had to shout in his ear, while they was a-titterin’ all round, till I hadn’t no voice left in me to lead the hymn.”
“Reminds me, it do,” said Samuel Smiley—landlord he was of the Old Inn where we met—“o’ when we was marryin’ Andrew and Rebecca Blake. Andrew was a shy man—a very shy man he were, same as Lucy Stone. You remember ’n well, Mr. Strong. An’ when the time came for unitin’ them in one, he wouldn’t be pushed to the fore, nohow. While his cousin, what was actin’ for ’n, was that forward that any stranger in the church would ha’ taken he for the bridegroom. So between the two on ’m Rector were fairly puzzled, and afore he saw the right on ’t—’tis true as I sit here—he’d married the wrong man to the wrong ’ooman. ’Twas like to ha’ been a troublesome business for all on us, for once ye joins a couple, there’s no man can’t put ’em asunder. An’ they two would never ha’ jogged along in peace an’ harmony, one with t’ other, as I knows, who’ve lived next door to Rebecca ever since she was a gal. Howsomever, luck was wi’ us that day, for ’twas discovered in the vestry as how his cousin, who was a sailor an’ hadn’t come to Fleetwater not an hour afore, was married already, an’ had two childern. So back us went into Church agin an’ wedded the proper couple. An’ rare an’ thankful we was to ’scape so easily out o’ what might ha’ made a tidy potheration.”
“Aye, you’ve got the story right enough,” said the Chairman approvingly. “An’ now to business, if you please. An’ thank ye kindly, Mr. Higgins, I’ll take another glass afore we begins. It isn’t long that’s left me for the drinkin’ o’ good ale, seein’ I was eighty-four yesterday, an’ (thank God) never a drunkard, an’ not much time for it now. As I told my old gran’mother what died at eighty-six, an’ was real afeard of a spoonful of brandy to stay her stomach: ‘Don’t ye be frettin’ yerself, my dear old soul, ’tis they as begins sooner nor you did what has cause to fear the drink.’”