Difficulties of pocket had certainly had something to do with the absenteeism of the Rev. Eli Mallow, but there had been other troubles as well in connection with his sons, whom he had made several efforts to start in life and get away from Lawford. They were the sons of a clergyman, but two more unclerical youths never troubled father, and so unfortunate were his efforts, so persistently did the young men return home to their fond and indulgent mother and their proud weak father, that the Lawford people, famous among themselves for nick-naming those that they did not like, called Frank Mallow, the elder brother, “The Bad Shilling,” while Cyril, consequent upon a visit to Australia, they named “The Boomerang.”
They were an old-fashioned people at Lawford, and the “owd rector” had been old-fashioned too. It was past the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty, and Victoria was seated upon the throne, but the old rector thought it no wrong to go to one of the inns and sit and drink his mug of ale and chat and gossip with any townsman who came in.
As to the church, a colder, damper, more musty-smelling place could not have been found. Its glory was its whitewash, which was so rich and fat and thick that every here and there it bore a crop of curious spindly mushrooms, which grew and flourished and died, leaving great black patches on the walls like hatchments to record their vegetable deaths, till about once in a generation the whitewash brush came into use again, and a new coat was laid on to moulder and grow damp, and fall in patches of a goodly thickness upon the stained stone pave.
The worst of that whitewash was that it was not white, only a dirty wash that covered the ceiling and face of the wall, great blank patches of which used to be mentally studied by the schoolboys as maps of unknown regions, for the moisture that streamed down from the roof soon marked black rivers, while dark boundary lines seemed to be traced by cracks and mould of strange continents, islands, and seas, upon which in summer-time bluebottle flies and spiders made islands or cruising barks.
In the moist autumn times the place always broke out into a cold perspiration, the wet standing in great tears upon the flat tombstones and even upon the broad slab of old blackened oak that served for Sammy Warmoth’s desk, where his books, like those above his head, were patterned on their covers with white mould-spots exhaling an odour of mushrooms not fit to eat.
The pews were of dull white deal; the sacramental table was covered with a ragged green baize in the sere and yellow leaf, and as worthy of being called green as the church whitewash was of being termed white. Taken altogether, there was a strong suggestion on entering Lawford church of going into a cellar without the sawdust, and wanting in the wine; and old Mrs Marley, lately gone to her rest, and over whom as a very ancient friend Sammy Warmoth had affectionately patted down the earth with his spade, moistening it a little with his tears to make it stick, afterwards building up her grave with a mound of the finest, most velvety turf he could cut, that he protected with brambles from the sheep—old Mrs Marley, when she was schoolmistress, always made a point in winter of taking a large stone bottle of hot water with her to the church, smuggling it regularly beneath her cloak, and pitying the four-and-twenty blue-nosed little children, whom she led, because only two could sit by her at a time and warm their hands.
Humphrey Bone, the schoolmaster, also made a point of taking a bottle to church, but his was small, and he made occasions for bending his head beneath the front of the pew and imbibing portions of its contents through a very long turkey quill.
The church had remained in statu quo during the Rector’s stay abroad, but now that he had returned, it was with ideas similar to the new broom—he meant to sweep clean. Perhaps the Rev. Eli Mallow was a little conscience-stricken for past neglect. At all events the Rector had now set himself to work on a general reform, but his absence had embittered a by no means friendly people.
“Taking that great wage out of the place year after year,” said Tomlinson, one of the townspeople, “and leaving that curate to do all the work on eighty pounds a year; I haven’t patience with him.”
Several other fellow-townsmen expressed their opinions that it was a shame, and declared that they had not patience with the parson, and the consequence was that he was so talked over, that when he came back and set about his work of reformation he was met at his very first movement by a hedge of thorns that regularly surrounded the church. Every one of these thorns was a prejudice which he had to fight.