CHAPTER VI.
AT SLOVILLE AGAIN.
It was with rather a heavy heart young Wentworth found himself in the ancient town of Sloville, amongst some hard and elderly deacons, who had little sympathy with him or his ways. Everything in the Dissenting creed was dull and dreary. At that time there were no athletic sports—no outlet for that vigorous animal life which is common alike to saints and sinners, to the young preacher as well as to the young layman. Now, when even curates devote themselves to lawn tennis, a freer life is tolerated, and we do not find fault with even an ordained parson who can run, or play cricket, or display animal as well as intellectual or moral vigour. At the time this history refers to, this was not the case, and much did the Church suffer and the world gain in consequence. Young people must have amusements. It is unnatural to ask them to give them up. Amusements are not only lawful but necessary. But at Sloville this was denied, and our young minister was always in hot water. It is true that he did not dance—that was an outrage on the feelings of the Church too awful to contemplate—but it was known that he enjoyed a game of chess. It was whispered that he had confessed to a knowledge of whist, and had been heard to own to a little time wasted on billiards. If he had said bagatelle, people would not have so much minded. The senior deacon had a bagatelle-board himself in his own house; not that he played, he was far too serious for that, but his young people required amusement, and he was forced to give way. But billiards!—that was quite another matter. That was a game played by wicked men in public-houses and at London clubs. Men had been ruined at it, families had been beggared by it; even suicides had been the result. No, that was not a game on which you could pray for a blessing. Yet Mr. Wentworth had been heard to say that he knew something even of that atrocious game. They were very bilious, and therefore very pious, these good deacons. We have improved a little since then, but types of them are still to be found scattered all over the land.
Under this strict regime, as was to be expected, there was not a little restlessness at Bethesda, as the chapel was called. The young preacher was popular, but not, alas! with the soberer and elder portion of the congregation. The deacons were sorely puzzled how to act; some questioned whether the young student had the root of the matter in him, and many were their meetings. Let us go amongst them, as they are at tea, and in the house of one of them, the leading tradesman of the town, a dear old deacon, who from the time he had known the Lord, as he termed it, had never known a doubt, and to whom no sermon was tolerable that did not begin with ruin and end with regeneration and redemption. The house in which he resided was one of the most respectable in the High Street. It was entered by the side door, and not through the shop—that was of itself a sign of gentility. On the present occasion, all the company have come in by the private door, and, dressed in black, you might have taken them for a gathering of the brethren, so thoroughly clerical was their look and demeanour. Of course, they were all professors, as they were called, not of music or mathematics, but of religion. The head of the party, in whose parlour they were seated, and of whose hospitality they were partaking, was the senior deacon of the Independent Chapel. His parents were very poor, but they had sent him to school, and were specially careful that he should be a Sunday scholar. In a little while he became a Sunday-school teacher, and that was a feather in his cap, and helped him to pray and make speeches in public. One of the friends thus gained was a small shopkeeper, who in consequence took Ned Robins, as he was called, into his employ. The lad was steady, of a cold temperament, very selfish, and ambitious to rise in the world. He had no wish nor temptation to be otherwise. He was always at his post, never went to the public-house, never wanted to go to a race, or a fair, or a rowing match, never wished for a holiday, and, consequently, never took one. He had married his master’s daughter; he had courted her on a Sunday when they went to chapel together—that is, they sat in the same pew and sang out of the same hymn-book—and as everyone said they ought to make a match of it, they did so accordingly. By that match he became proprietor of the business, which grew as the town grew, so as to become really worth having. His boys were in the business; his daughters, with the exception of one of them, rather prettier than the rest, were all members of the church, and had married other tradesmen in the town. A good tea did he give his friends, in the best parlour, with the very best tea-things. Truly, he had much to be thankful for. He had never dishonoured a bill, and his good name was unquestioned. If he occasionally sold adulterated articles, that was the fault of the manufacturer, not his. His favourite verse was,
‘Not more than others I deserve,
Yet God has given me more.’
—apparently quite unaware that, in saying so, he cast a slur upon his Maker.
In the parlour itself there was every sign of comfort, in the way of easy-chairs, and sofas, and good mahogany. Over the fireplace was a good-sized looking-glass. Opposite to it was a bookcase, inside the glass shutters of which was a set of Evangelical Magazines, well bound, a Matthew Henry’s Commentary, an illustrated ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and a large folio copy of Fleetwood’s ‘Life of Christ.’ For the young people there were Cowper’s Poems, those of Jane Taylor, and Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ Perhaps the best-thumbed volume in the collection was the ‘Cookery Book,’ for neither the master nor his wife approved of starving the tabernacle or mortifying the flesh when their pleasure lay in an opposite direction. In the way of ornament the room boasted of portraits of a murdered missionary and a leading London divine, who had been popular in his denomination in his day, and oil-paintings of the master of the house and his missus, by no means flattering to either. The windows were lined with heavy curtains that kept out the cold. The fire burnt brightly on the hearth. The seductive tea-urn sent its rich aroma all round. Plum-cake and hot buttered toast, to say nothing of muffins, were plentiful, while a real Yorkshire ham tempted one to cut and come again.
The deacon and his wife loved to be happy in their way, and it was with pardonable pride they sat down to the feast, and gathered around them their chapel friends. They fell bravely to work, as soon as the compliment had been passed of asking the eldest of the visitors to say grace. The one selected was a chemist, the other who returned thanks was a farmer, who, if goodness was tested by a tendency to sleep all sermon-time, was a saint indeed. His drowsiness, he admitted, was an infirmity, but it was one against which he seemed to make no effort. He was wide-awake enough when he had a horse to buy or a bullock to sell. After the guests had satisfied the wants of their inner man, and discussed the state of the weather, and the corn-market and the crops, they began discoursing. Let us listen to them.
‘Well,’ said Jones, the farmer, ‘I don’t think that young man who preached on Sunday was the sort of man we want for Bethesda. It was all very fine, and, if I had not been a Christian, I should have enjoyed it myself.’
‘Mere morality,’ said Stephens, the chemist and druggist, ‘not a word for the poor sinner.’
‘Yet the chapel was crammed full at night, and I hear we shall have a larger congregation next Sunday.’