Certain Saints, after tasting for years the privilege of fellowship, had left us: for chapel, or church, or nowhere. Others were becoming irregular in their attendance or took part in our devotions without fervour. There was moral backsliding too: chambering and wantonness. Blind Joe Packe had been discovered by Brother Quappleworthy in a drunken stupor on the floor of the attic in which he lived, when the latter was paying him one of his customary visits of Bible-reading and exhortation. There walked abroad also a vaguer, darker sin than drink that I did not clearly apprehend, of which certain of the younger Brothers who were "keeping company" with certain of the younger Sisters were whispered to be guilty. The most flagrant example, I gathered from a shrouded conversation between Grandmother and Aunt Jael, was Sister Lucy Fry, who had a baby, but no husband. I thought this a curiosity rather than a crime. For whatever reason, it aroused a sharp difference of opinion; Aunt Jael denounced the awfulness of Lucy's sin, Grandmother urged that she was more sinned against than sinning.
Then Sister Prideaux had been to some concert or "theatre" during a holiday at Exeter. The precise nature of the godless entertainment was not ascertained. Nor was it clear how the news had reached us, though most thought it was wormed out of Sister Quappleworthy by Sister Yeo. The latter openly taxed Miss Prideaux with it.
"So you went to the theayter did you, over to Exeter? Next time you're there I suppose you'll be a-going to the Cathedril!"
Then there were the parliamentary elections in which some of the Saints had been taking an unsaintly interest, voting for and championing this candidate or that; a form of meddling with this world's affairs which Pentecost regarded with special disfavour. Indeed Rumour had it that one or two of the younger Brethren took part in the famous polling-day brawl in the vegetable market. Several of even the most prominent Saints expressed preferences. Brother Browning being a draper was Radical, Brother Quappleworthy being an intellectual was Whig, Brother Briggs being an oilman was Tory.
Aunt Jael was an unbenevolent neutral. "They're all much of a muchness and none of 'em any good to folk, neither in the next world nor in this either. In our family, if we had been anything at all, we'd always have been Whig—except the child's mother. She was Tory, or liked to think she was. All the gentlefolk belonged to the Tories, and that was always enough for Rachel."
I was henceforward a fanatical Tory, though I had not the dimmest notion what it meant, except that it was somehow connected with London and the Parliament. Aunt Jael refused to explain; Grandmother said it was not worth explaining.
Brother Brawn related how on the occasion of a visit from some canvassers he had struck a blow for righteousness. "They knocked at my front door," he told Aunt Jael, "folk as I'd never spoken to avore, nor so much as seen; 'Good mornin' sir,' said one of them, a tall, thin man with spectacles he was, 'whose side are you on? Davie and Potts[2] I trust.' 'No,' I said, 'I'm on the side of the Laur Jesus Christ,' and I slammed the door in their faces. 'Twas a word in season."
About this time there was an epidemic of minor illnesses, which Grandmother said could only be the hand of the Lord extended in chastisement for sins which the suffering ones had committed. More modern folk would have sought explanation in low vitality, indoor habits or bad drainage, but point was given to my Grandmother's contention by the fact that Sister Prideaux and Lucy Fry, prominent among the sinners, were about this time laid low with illness—the latter not unnaturally. Her own attack of bronchitis, she attributed to the selfish indulgence she had shown of late in perpetually studying her own favourite portions of the Word and neglecting (comparatively) those she favoured less.
Worst of all, that piece of sugar which for nineteen years—the period is always the same in my memory—had been placed in our offertory as an insult to the Lord had now for two Sundays past become four pieces, one in each of the four partitions, a little bit of sugar for Expenses, a little bit of sugar for Foreign Field, a little bit of sugar for Ministry, a little bit of sugar for Poor. It had been serious enough years ago when the box with the narrow slits had been substituted for the bag, and the sinner had merely retaliated by putting a small piece through one of the slits instead of a large lump down the gaping abyss of the bag. But now—four pieces, one in each partition,—what deftness in utter sin! What zeal in ill-doing! Who was this wolf in sheep's clothing, this sinner who could sit at the Lord's table for nineteen years and harden his heart Lord's day after Lord's day by offering this mockery of an oblation to his Saviour? Who was this evil spirit slim-fingered enough to perform this fourfold naughtiness, and yet remain undetected, unguessed? We all peered at our neighbours. Brother Brawn even began following the box in its voyage round the Meeting, instead of merely handing it to the first giver and taking it from the last; for all his spying he could find nothing. Was he the man?
Thus in devious ways was the Devil active in our midst. He must be exorcised.