There was a revenue that to me represented great wealth.
The place, though very large, could easily be let for the fishing and shooting. I deliberately ran away, and became that accursed thing—an absentee landlord. I salved my conscience by insisting on a policy of foolish generosity to my tenants and found myself equally abused by the Press of all parties in Ireland.
After some rather distracted wanderings I settled down in the Sussex vicarage in which this chapter opens. My researches in Byzantine history which shared my energies with pigeon flying had attracted a little attention from some of the learned, and thus I had met the Bishop at the Athenæum. He was patron of my present living, and as no clergyman in his diocese could afford the upkeep of the large and beautiful vicarage to which a stipend of £200 a year was attached, he gladly offered it to me and I as gladly accepted it.
I had no qualms of conscience, since I was going to give the Church more than I received from her in the way of money; I liked the work of a country parson, and believed I could be helpful to a few fellow human beings. As to doctrine, that came within my category of conventions. I had acted in good faith at the time I took my ordination vows, and if I thought I had grown wiser since, there was no need to make a fuss about it. I wanted no one to believe or disbelieve as I did, but I did want to encourage people to behave well. I had many of my father’s old-fashioned prejudices, and honestly believed it to be a good thing that the Church as well as the Army should be officered as far as possible by gentlemen.
Thus the years passed very placidly for me. I and my house were in the capable charge of Bates and Mrs. Rattray, my housekeeper and cook, one of the best and wisest women I have ever met. Other servants came and went at her discretion, but my household affairs seemed always to run on ball-bearings, and Bates tempered for me the tyranny of the gardener and the coachman.
I acquired four different reputations.
As the breeder of “Amaryllis” who came home fourth in the great cross-channel race already mentioned, my name was familiar in every colliery and public-house in the north of England.
Among a select circle of the learned I was known as a conscientious and critical student of an obscure period of history.
In my parish I was generally esteemed as a kindly and generous priest and friend.
But by my clerical colleagues I was distrusted. If I was only suspected of heresy, I was positively known to be a trimmer in the vital matter of Eastward Position! When I officiated in other people’s churches I always adopted the position and methods to which the congregation were accustomed. Thus both parties united in calling me “Mr. Facing-both-ways,” and a certain very earnest Evangelical once said quite rude things about “Laodiceans.”