Laddie, and Miss Toosey's mission

by Evelyn Whitaker

MISS TOOSEY'S MISSION.

CHAPTER I.

Miss Toosey always wore a black silk dress on Sunday, and went three times to church. Morning, afternoon, and evening, as soon as the bell changed at the quarter, that black silk dress came out of Miss Toosey's little house in North Street, turned the corner into High Street, crossed the Marketplace, passed under the archway into the churchyard, in at the west door, and up the middle aisle, past the free seats, which occupy the lower end of Martel church, and stopped at the second pew on the left-hand side, one sitting in which has been rented by Miss Toosey for many years. This pew is immediately in front of the church-wardens' seat, where those two dignitaries sit majestically, with a long rod placed conveniently on either hand, ready to be seized at a moment's notice, to execute judgment on youthful offenders in the free seats, though the well-known fact that generations of paint and varnish have made them fixtures somewhat takes off from the respect and awe felt for them. Miss Toosey is short, and the pew-door has a tendency to stick; and when you have a Bible, prayer-book, hymn-book, spectacle-case, and umbrella in your hands, you cannot enter into a struggle on equal terms; and so when Mr. Churchwarden Wyatt happens to be in church in time, he leans over and opens the pew-door for Miss Toosey, "and very kind of him, too, a most gentlemanly man Mr. Wyatt is, my dear."

The black silk was quite a part of Sunday in Miss Toosey's mind, and therefore holy, to a certain extent. She would have considered it disrespectful to the day to put on any other dress, and no stress of weather could prevent her wearing it; indeed, she thought it decidedly a want of trust in Providence to fear the heavy rain or deep snow might injure it.

She would pin up the skirt inside out round her waist with a reckless disregard of appearance, so that you could hardly guess she had any dress on at all under her shawl; but nothing would have induced her to put on another. Of late years, too, she had not felt it quite right to wear it on week-days when she was asked out to tea; it seemed to her inappropriate, like reading a regular Sunday book on week-days, which has something profane about it. It had been through many vicissitudes; not even Miss Toosey herself could accurately recall what it was in its original form; and the first distinct incident in its existence was the black crape with which it was trimmed, in respect to the memory of Miss Toosey's father—old Toosey, the parish doctor. This was fifteen years ago; and since then it had been unpicked and re-made several times, turned, sponged, dipped, French-chalked, cleaned, trimmed, and altered, till it would have required vast ingenuity to do anything fresh to it.

As the black silk was part of Sunday to Miss Toosey, so was Miss Toosey part of Sunday to many of the Martel people. The Miss Purts, the draper's daughters, in the Market-place, knew that it was time to put on their smart bonnets (the latest Paris fashion), when they saw Miss Toosey pass the window, so as to insure their clattering into church on their high heels, tossing and giggling, not later than the Venite.

Old Budd, the clerk, with his white beard and wooden leg, always said "Good morning, Miss Toosey; fine day, mum," as he stumped past her pew-door on his way to the vestry, which made her feel rather uncomfortable as he said it out loud, and it did not seem quite right; but then Mr. Budd is such a good man, and being a church official, no doubt he has a right to behave just as he pleases. Even Mr. Dodson, the late curate, after baptizing fifteen pugnacious babies, all crying lustily, said, as he passed Miss Toosey on his way back to the reading-desk, wiping the beads of perspiration from his good-natured red face, "Warm work, Miss Toosey."

I think that both Mr. Peters the rector, and Mr. Glover the curate, would quite have lost their place in the service if Miss Toosey's seat had been empty, as they neither of them could have preached with comfort without the fat, red-velvet cushion with the tassels, on which they laid their books.

I do not think it ever occurred to Miss Toosey that there was anything amiss in Martel church or its services. She was proud of the fine, old gray stone tower, which had been built when men gave willingly of their best for the service of God, and so built "for glory and for beauty;" and she loved the roof of the nave, which was rich in oak carving, bleached white by time, with angels and emblems of wonderful variety and ingenuity. And all the rest of the church she took for granted, and did not wonder at the narrow, uncomfortable pews, where, as Mr. Malone, the Irish curate, said, "it was quite impossible to kneel down, and very difficult to get up again;" or at the free seats, put behind all the others; or at the large, steep galleries; or at the high pulpit rich in red velvet and dusty fringe on one side, and the reading-desk to match on the other, with the clerk's desk underneath where Mr. Budd did his part of the service, i.e., the responses, as a clerk should do, in a strident, penetrating voice, and took a well-earned nap in the sermon when his duties were discharged. It did not strike her as curious that the seats in the chancel should be occupied by the Peters family on one side and by the Rossitters on the other, while the ladies and gentlemen of the choir displayed their smart bonnets or Sunday waistcoats to great advantage in front of the organ, where, in return for their vocal exertions they were privileged to behave as badly as their fancies led them. You see, Miss Toosey was not critical, and she had not been to any other church for many years, and custom draws a soft curtain over imperfections, and reverence is not quick to see irreverence in others, and prayer fills the air with clouds of incense through which we cannot easily see bonnets, but only Heaven itself; and as Miss Toosey knelt, being very short, you remember, and the pews high she could only with her outward eyes see the angels in the roof and her prayer-book. And it was just the same with the sermons: as church was church to Miss Toosey, so a sermon was a sermon. Whether it was Mr. Peters, Mr. Glover, or Mr. Malone, Miss Toosey looked out the text in her little brown Bible, and put the bookmarker, with "Love the Jews," into the place, and gave her head a little nod, as if to show that the text was there, and no mistake about it; and then took off her spectacles, wiped them, put them into a case, gave her black silk skirt a slight shake to prevent creases, and then settled down to listen. I will not undertake to say that Miss Toosey entered into all the subtleties of doctrine set forth over the red velvet pulpit-cushion; I will not even deny that sometimes the lavender ribbons on Miss Toosey's bonnet nodded, without much connection with the arguments of the discourse, and that the words "election and grace" grew faint and dreamy in her ears, and Mr. Peter's gray hair or Mr. Glover's whiskers disappeared from her sight. I am disposed to think that she did not lose very much; but Miss Toosey took it much to heart, so much so that she could hardly believe herself capable of it, and even contended that she was listening all the time, though she closed her eyes to pay greater attention. But sometimes the sermons kept Miss Toosey awake effectually, and made her feel very uncomfortable for some days afterwards; and this was when they were on the subject of conversion. Mr. Malone was especially strong on this point; and, after one of his powerful discourses, Miss Toosey would have a wakeful night, going through the course of her peaceful, uneventful life, trying to find that moment of awakening which other Christians seemed to find so easily, wondering if she might date her conversion from a day when she was a little child, crying and being comforted at her mother's knee; or in the quiet, sober joy of her Confirmation; or when she followed her mother up the aisle, one Easter Day, in trembling awe to her first Communion; or in the days of her simple, girlish romance long ago, when her heart was overflowing with pure happiness; or to the days following so quickly when it came to an untimely end, and she sobbed herself to sleep, night after night, with her cheek (it was round and smooth then) pressed to that same little brown Bible, with some faded flowers between the leaves; or could it have been when her father died and she stood alone by his grave? None of these events seemed quite to answer to Mr. Malone's descriptions, and sometimes Miss Toosey was driven to fear that she must rank herself with the unconverted, to whom a few scathing words were addressed at the conclusion of the sermon.