"'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."