"I think, Mr. Cartwright," replied the poor schoolmaster, colouring, "that I shall be able to explain to your satisfaction my reasons for not attending your evening lectures. Some of my boys, sir, are almost grown-up lads: I have two hard upon seventeen, and I need not tell a gentleman like you that there is a deal of caution necessary at that age to keep lads out of harm's way. I have had the character of sending home very good, sober, decent lads; and this, I think, has done me more service in getting scholars than even my writing and book-keeping. But perhaps you don't know, sir, and I am sure I don't wish to put myself forward to tell you—but the truth is, Mr. Cartwright, that these late meetings, which break up quite in the dark, do bring together a great many disorderly people. 'Tis an excuse, sir, for every boy and girl that is in service to get out just when they ought to be at home, and altogether it is not quite the sort of thing I approve for my boys."
"But when I tell you, Mr. Marsh," replied the vicar with much dignity, "that it is the sort of thing which I approve, for all the girls and boys too who live under my ministry, I presume that you do not intend to persevere in your very futile, and I must call it, impious objection. If you, sir, paid the attention that you ought to do to the religious object of the meeting, your impure imagination would not be quite so busy about its moral consequences. I am sorry to tell you, Mr. Marsh, that you are splitting on the rock which sends more wrecked and wretched souls to hell than any other peril of this mortal life, let it be what it may."
"Well, sir," replied the schoolmaster mildly, "I must make up my account between God and my own conscience, and trust to his mercy to overlook my deficiencies."
"Overlook your deficiencies?—poor deluded man!—Do you really hope that the Lord will pardon the clinging to works, and neglecting to hear his word?—Do you really doubt that Satan stands ready at the door to seize your soul, and bear it in his poisoned claws to everlasting torture?—Do you really doubt this, Mr. Marsh?"
"Indeed I do, sir."
"This is terrible!" cried the vicar, starting up and attempting to stop his ears. "Such blasphemy cannot be listened to without sin. I leave you, sir, and I will shake the dust off this your carpet from off my feet. But remember this,—I am your pastor and master, appointed to be the minister and guide of all the souls in my parish. As for your soul—I have no hope left for it: it must, and it will have its portion among the condemned, and will exist only to burn in unspeakable tortures for ever.—I have spoken, and you know your doom. But not so is it with the young persons committed to your charge; though, alas! the peril in which they now abide is sore to think of. Nevertheless, I will neither leave them nor forsake them as long as hope is left that a single brand can be snatched from the burning. Wherefore hear me!—This day is Thursday; let me this night see yourself, and every boy abiding in your house, in the gallery which you occupy in the church, or I will set to work to weed the vineyard. Yea! I will cleanse it root and branch from the corruption and abomination of you and your boys. Poor wretches, that you are labouring and striving to prepare for the kingdom of hell! But I speak sinfully in joining you and them together! and may the Lord forgive me, as I will strive to atone for it. I will clear the vineyard of you—but not till I have separated your boys from you. They shall be saved,—by my hand shall they be saved; and when I shall have effected this, you may perchance, while enjoying the leisure that will be your portion, remember this day, and value at its worth the wisdom which made you brave a minister of the evangelical church. Have I softened your hard heart, Mr. Marsh? Will you bring your school to my lecture this evening? Say 'Yes!' and you are forgiven."
"No, sir, I will not!" was the quiet but firm reply of the good man.
Not another syllable was spoken on either side; but well did the vicar of Wrexhill keep his word. Public estimation and private good-will appeared for a time to resist all the efforts he could make to persuade the villagers, and the farmers round about, that Mr. Marsh was a very impious and dangerous man, and one whom it was dangerous to trust with their children. They knew better; they knew that he was honest, pains-taking, intelligent, patient, and strictly attentive to his religious duties. But constant dropping will wear away a stone; and constant malevolence, kept in constant action, by one who was not very scrupulous as to the truth or falsehood of any statement that tended to produce the effect he wished, at length began, like rust upon steel, to cover and hide its true colour and its real brightness. One by one his daily scholars fell away from him,—one by one the neighbouring farmers came with some civil reason for not finding the sending their boys so likely to answer as formerly; and one by one his distant patrons found out the same thing: so that soon after the vicar's marriage he had the great delight of hearing that Mr. Marsh was sent to prison because he could not pay his rent, that his furniture was seized for taxes, and his tidy little wife lying ill of a brain fever at a small public-house near the prison, with her children starving round her.
The sort of inward chuckle with which the prosperous vicar received this bit of village gossip from his valet has no letters by which it can be spelt;—it was the hosannah of a fiend.
The supplying Mr. Marsh's place in Wrexhill was one of the things that now demanded Mr. Cartwright's immediate attention; and notwithstanding the many delicious temptations to idleness which surrounded him, his love of power, stronger even than his love of luxury, led him to hunt for and to find an individual to fill the situation, whose perfect obedience to his will made the dominion of the village school worth counting among the gratifying rights and immunities of his enviable position.