The Duchess of Trent was amazed. Her works of charity had never brought her into this part of the parish, and she had always kept herself from contact with the religious activities of St. Jermyn’s.
“If that is not Popery, I should like to know what is?” she exclaimed bluntly to her young friend. “Did you see that boy bowing to the Virgin Mary? I have no doubt they are taught to pray to her as well.”
This surmise was perfectly just. Such slight control as the episcopate, or at least the lay judges of the Privy Council, exercised over the services in St. Jermyn’s Church, appeared to cease altogether on the threshold of the school. Within that building Dr. Coles was supreme, and taught what religion he pleased. If it had suited him to set up an image of Siva for the adoration of his scholars, or to inculcate the most degrading beliefs of primitive savagery, no one would have interfered with his discretion. Thus, while the Vicar maintained some of the forms of Anglican worship in the parish church, in the schoolroom he had long laid them aside. The catechism taught to the boys was one prepared by a clerical secret society, and was carefully contrived to fill the learner’s mind with hatred for the Protestant heresy, and to turn it in the direction of Catholic Unity.
A special liturgy, compiled by the same hands, was also provided for the use of the scholars. In it the Mother of God figured as the principal, though not the sole, object of worship, the Apostle Peter taking the second place. Among the prayers, precedence was given to one for the Patriarch of the West—“Thy servant Leo, that he may be inspired rightly to define and zealously to defend the faith once delivered to Thy saints.” After this came petitions on behalf of a personage discreetly referred to as “the lawful Sovereign of these realms,” the souls of the dead “now awaiting Thy judgment,” and the reunion, “under one visible Head on earth,” of all branches of the Holy Catholic Church. Dr. Coles himself was responsible for a supplementary prayer in which “our blessed patron, Saint Jermyn,” was complimented on his influence with the Mother of God, due to the continence of his life on earth, and implored to use that influence on behalf of the area for which he was, as it were, the spiritual County Councillor.
It was a document breathing the spirit of the Dark Ages, when God figured in men’s minds as a sort of Byzantine Emperor, surrounded by a court of heavenly chamberlains and eunuchs, each dispensing favours to his own train of followers, and none incapable of being bribed.
Miss Vanbrugh, regarding the symbolical sculpture with the indifference born of ignorance, smiled at her friend’s indignation.
“Let us go in,” she said; “I don’t think it’s so bad inside.”
The whitewashed walls of the room in which they found themselves offered a curious medley of science and religion, evidencing a painful struggle in the mind of Dr. Coles between proselytizing zeal and a desire to earn the grants of an heretical Government. A large crucifix over the teacher’s desk was flanked by a geological map of Great Britain, and a glass case containing silk in various stages from the cocoon to the finished skein. The Ten Commandments on one wall were faced by the two hemispheres on the other; and an illuminated calendar of Holy Days was half concealed by a chart depicting screws, wedges, levers, and other mechanical appliances. The cloven, or at least the clerical, hoof peeped out in a series of cartoons illustrative of English history, the scenes chosen being all in one category—the landing of Augustine, the martyrdom of Edmund, Thomas à Becket defying Henry II., and Langton, with a formidable crozier, extorting Magna Charta from King John apparently by the threat of physical violence, while the barons respectfully looked on.
On this particular occasion the eye was quickly distracted from these mural decorations by the exhibition beneath. The room, which was large enough to contain one or two hundred people, was lined round three sides by stalls loaded with that extraordinary description of articles which are manufactured specially for sale at bazaars, and in which the greatest possible uselessness is combined with the greatest possible fragility. Children’s frocks, which no child could wear for an hour without damaging them, embroidered tobacco-pouches sufficient to dismay the most stout-hearted smoker, weird contrivances of paper and cheap ribbon described as toilet-tidies, ridiculous pin-cushions, and impossible patchwork quilts formed the staple of the display. In one corner a lottery was being conducted by the Rev. Aloysius Grimes, happy in that immunity from the law which newspaper editors cannot obtain; and pretty little choristers, in their sacred vestments, were passing to and fro among the ladies doing a roaring trade in the sale of tickets. But the great attraction of the afternoon was the theatre, which had been organized in an adjoining classroom, and in which it was announced that a Miracle Play would be produced at four o’clock, under the direction of Egerton Vane, Esq.
As soon as Mr. Grimes caught sight of the Duchess of Trent and her companion, he handed over the care of the lottery to a young lady assistant, and hastened forward to greet them. He was just shaking hands, when a stir in the doorway announced the arrival of Dr. Coles.