His brother, the second best preacher, assuming the correctness of the Canon's judgment, though perhaps it might have been reversed on appeal, was rector of one of the parishes, and it was rumoured that he was not disposed at any time to take too humble a view of his claims to distinction, however slow other people might be to admit their validity. It is said that upon one occasion, on his return from a visit to the Holy Land, he preached a sermon giving some striking examples of the fulfilment of prophecy in connection with the topography of Palestine.
“My dear friends,” he said, “I was particularly struck with the accuracy of some of the details of the prophecies, when one day I was among the ruins of one of those cities referred to in the Sacred Writings. I had the Book in my hand, and I read that the land should be in heaps: I looked up, and there were heaps on every side. I read that the bittern should cry there: I looked up, and, lo, a bittern was standing there in its loneliness. I read that the minister of the Lord should mourn there. My dear friends, I was that minister.”
II.—THE “CHARPSON”
The only clergyman in Broadminster who, so far as I have heard, was fully qualified to take a place in one of the Barchester groups was a person named Gilliman. He was a small, stout gentleman with a comical ruddy face and sparse, bristly grizzly hair. He had no benefice, but was one of those unattached parsons who, in the phrase of the servants' registry office, was ready to “oblige” either by the day or as locum tenens for an absent incumbent. He had been left a small competence by his mother—quite enough for a clerical bachelor to live on, and he was a bachelor. He never sought for a job, but when he got one he proved that he held fast to the excellent precept that the labourer is worthy of his hire. If any brother parson expected that he would take his duty out of love or zeal, that parson left himself open to disappointment. I think he would have made a worthy curate to Mr. Quiverful; but Mr. Quiverful would have felt so chastened in spirit by his proximity that he would have got rid of him within a month.
He was a zealous patron of the amateur, whether musical or dramatic. He could always be depended on to buy one of the cheaper, but never one of the cheapest, tickets for a concert or a comedy, and he seemed as pleased with the most incompetent amateur as with the best. He was socially unambitious; no one seemed to invite him to any function, with the exception of the Dean's annual garden party: he went to this, and so did every one else.
It was not until he had been a resident in Broad-minster for several years that people found out why he had settled in that town. It might be supposed that there were enough clergymen here to serve as a reservoir for all the neighbourhood in an emergency. I once heard an American lady who was on a cathedral tour through Europe say just outside Santa Croce on a feast day: “There are priests to burn in Florence if I do my sums right.” Her slang meant that there was a superfluity of the clergy in that city, and perhaps she was right. I will not make use of her slang in referring to Broadminster, but assuredly it might strike anyone that there was a sufficient number of clerics in the purlieu of the Minster to meet the needs of the neighbourhood without making the presence of so accommodating a person as Mr. Gilliman a convenience. In an unguarded moment, however, he confessed to some one that years ago, when he had first come to the town, it was his earnest hope to drop into some vacant stall in the Minster. He had dreams of being appointed to a canonry by some fortunate combination of circumstances, and he had gone on waiting for such an accident, and meantime attending all the amateur performances in the place.
He was a very good preacher, people said who had heard him, and others who had not heard him; but few were aware of how he managed to excel in a direction that seemed just the opposite to the bent of such a man. The truth was that his father had been a zealous rector of a parish in Devonshire, and had bequeathed to him a large sackful of sermons that he had preached to his flock since his ordination; and when the fortunate legatee was called on “to oblige” for an absent cleric, he simply put his hand into the mouth of the sack and drew out a sermon, put it into his pocket, and went away and preached it in due course, dropping it into his sermon sack on his return. Thus it was that people said he preached much better than they expected—and he probably did so; but he could not tell you the next day on what subject he had preached.
That legacy and his impartial system of dealing with it served him in good stead; but upon one occasion it might have caused him to feel some awkwardness if he had not been so completely detached from his duty in the pulpit. The fact was that he had been called away at a moment's notice to take the duty for a clergyman who had knocked himself up by umpiring in a cricket match on a very hot Saturday. He had never been to the place before, so he had to look up trains and connections, and by the time he had got out of this maze the train that he had selected was almost ready to start. He hurried to the faithful sack and pulled out a fat sermon roll, and rushed away for the station.