Beauchamp; or, The Error.

by G. P. R. James

"I see, I see," answered the lady, and the chaise stopped to change horses.

CHAPTER XXI.

The quiet little town of Tarningham was more quiet than ever about the hour of twelve each day; for, according to good old primeval habits, noon was the period for feeding. Men ate, beasts ate, and birds ate, and we all know that eating is a silent process. It is the greatest mistake in the world for doctors to tell you to talk while you are eating, or else it is the bitterest sarcasm. They must either mean that your digestion should be spoiled, or else that you are in the habit of talking without thinking. But we, will make a sort of corollary of it. "Man should not think when he is eating, man should not talk without thinking; ergo, man should not talk at his dinner." Therefore the people of Tarningham were wise; for never was there such a silent town at the hour of twelve o'clock, when they were eating. Doctor Miles could hear his own footfall with the most perfect distinctness, as he walked along the High-street; and a good broad foot it was, with a square-toed shoe and a buckle in it.

But Doctor Miles did not attend to the sound of his footfall; he was, indeed, busily thinking of something else, with his eyes bent down--but not his head--he rarely bent his head--holding it upright and straight, and a little stiff, by the natural effect of mind on body. His meditations were very deep, so much so, that it required an extraordinary apparition to rouse him from his reverie. The sight, however, of a human being in the streets of Tarningham a little after twelve, was quite enough to produce that effect; and at the distance of about two hundred yards from the door of the White Hart, he was startled by beholding the diminutive form and somewhat contorted person, of the poor little pot-boy, Billy Lamb, coming towards him with an empty jug in his hand. Nobody attended to Billy's meals. He got them how he could, where he could, and when he could. When all the rest were eating, he was sent with a jug of beer here, or a pint of gin there, and came back to feed upon the cold remnants of what the rest had eaten warm, if, indeed, they left him anything; but yet the fat landlord, ostlers, stable-boys, and barmaids, all thought that Billy was very well off. The landlord thought so, because he declared he had taken the boy in from charity; and the ostlers, and the post-boys, and the barmaids believed it. O, charity! charity! thou perverted and misused term. Since the first words that were uttered by Adam in his garden, down to the moment when one of the world's great men declared that language was intended to conceal men's thoughts, no word in the whole dictionary has ever been applied to cover so many sins as thou hast. Thou art the robe of vanity every day; tricking it out in subscription lists, almshouses, hospitals; thou art the cloak of pride and haughtiness, the pretext of every petty tyrant who seeks a slave, the excuse of avarice, and greed, and narrow-mindedness--ever, ever coupled with a lie! In what human heart art thou ever found pure and unadulterated? The foul-mouthed slanderer of a neighbour's fame, who gives a sixpence to a beggar or a pound to an infirmary, is a charitable person. The scoffing sneerer at virtue he cannot imitate, who flings away money profusely for the sole gratification of a loose habit, is called charitable. The hard-hearted man who denies others their rights, or he who cheats his followers of their due reward, or he who grinds the faces of his workmen with excessive toil, or he who is harsh and stern in his own household, fierce and censorious to others, a despot with his wife, a tyrant with his children, dies, and, in a pompous will, bequeaths a portion of his ill-gotten wealth to build an asylum, and perpetuate his name, and is praised and honoured as a charitable man.

That boy, forced to labour day and night, without consideration, without comfort, without a kind word, fed upon refuse, palleted on straw, yet doing more than the whole household altogether, was taken in from charity! Believe it, reader, if you can. For my part, I don't believe a word of it. I am quite sure that worthy Mr. Groomber wanted somebody particularly, of an active and willing disposition, to carry out the beer, and to attend to all those little matters which Mr. Groomber could not do himself, and which his servants did not choose to do, and that in taking in Billy Lamb for his own convenience, he persuaded himself, and tried to persuade the public too, that he was doing an act of charity. It is an extraordinary thing to consider how often in the great tragic farce of the world we are our own spectators; or, in other words, how continually, when we act a part, we consider ourselves one of the audience, and strive to deceive that individual the very first.

However that might be, there was Billy Lamb, the pot-boy, just before Doctor Miles, with an empty tankard in his hand; and the good doctor no sooner beheld him, than he stopped, and, in a kindly tone, asked him how the world went with him. Now Doctor Miles was a great man in the neighbourhood; he had property of his own of not very great extent, but which rendered the living that he held but an accessory to his principal means of subsistence. He did not live by the altar, but for the altar; and there are no such keen drawers of distinctions as the lower classes. Of this thing all clergymen may be sure, that he who makes a trade of his profession, who exacts the uttermost penny which he has a right to, and something more, who increases burial fees, and makes broad the borders of all his dues, will always be held in contempt. Of the butcher, the baker, and the grocer, the lower orders expect such things. The exaction of a farthing on half-a-pound, more than is really just, they know is a part of the privileges of the knife, the oven, and the scales and weights. But with the ministers of a pure and holy religion, whose grand and fundamental principle is charity and abnegation of self, they expect a higher and a wider sense of benevolence, a more large and disinterested view of the relations of a pastor and flock. Thick must be the veil that covers from the eyes of the humble and the needy that greedy and grasping spirit which too frequently, like the ghoul of Eastern fable, preys among the sepulchres of the dead, and takes advantage of the moment of overwhelming distress and agony of mind, to urge the coarse claims of priestly avarice; claims, but too frequently, untenable in law and always barbarous, even when not illegal--dues which should be swept away for ever, which should no longer exist as a constant source of heart-burning and complaint between pastor and people, making the one derive a portion of his living by laying a tax most onerous and hard to be borne, either upon the joys or the sorrows of his parishioners, and the others to look upon their teacher as one who sets at defiance the first principles of the Gospel that he preaches, following "avarice which is idolatry," and forgetting charity, "which covers a multitude of sins."

Luckily, both by position and inclination, Doctor Miles was exempt from all such reproaches. His necessities did not force him into meannesses, and his natural disposition would never have suffered him to fall into them, whatever his circumstances might have been. One heard nothing in his parish of enormous charges for a brick grave, swollen surplice-fees, that would make a cholera, a plague, or a pestilence so rich a harvest, that the minister who would pray in his desk against plague, pestilence, and famine, would be the grossest of hypocrites. He did not look upon his churchyard as the most valuable and productive part of his glebe, to be manured by the corpses of his parishioners, and bear a cent-per-cent crop in monuments and grave-stones. The consecration of the bishop he did not look upon as fertilising the land for his own enrichment, but contented himself with the bare amount of the moderate fee awarded by the law, and neither asked nor received a penny more. Many of the neighbouring clergy called him a weak and prejudiced man, and exclaimed loudly against him for neglecting the interests, or, as they called them, "the rights of the church." But, somehow, his parishioners loved him, though he was rather an austere man, too, and never spared invective or exhortation in case of error and misconduct. The secret, perhaps, was, that they were convinced of his disinterestedness. He took from no man more than was his due; he required of no man more than he had the warrant of Scripture for requiring. His private fortune gave him the means of charity, and to that object all his private fortune was devoted. Every one in the neighbourhood knew that Doctor Miles could have a finer house, could keep a better table, could maintain a smarter equipage; but, at the same time, they were aware of two things, first, that his income was not as large as it might have been had he chosen to exact the uttermost farthing; and, secondly, that it was not for the purpose of hoarding his money that he did not spend it upon himself.

Thus Doctor Miles, as well may be conceived, was very much reverenced in the neighbourhood; his rebukes were listened to, and sometimes taken to heart; his advice was sought, and sometimes followed; his opinions were always respected, if his injunctions were not always obeyed; and his severity of manner was very well understood not to imply any real harshness of heart.

The cap was off Billy Lamb's head in a moment, when he approached Dr. Miles; but he did not venture to speak to him till the doctor, after gazing at him for a moment in a fit of absence, exclaimed, "Ah, William, how goes it with you? and how is your poor mother?"

"Oh, quite well," replied the youth, in his peculiarly sweet, low voice; "mother's better than she was, though she has never been so well since poor Mary's death."