Caught in a Trap

by John C. Hutcheson

The Reverend Herbert Pringle, B.A., Oxon, who now filled the living at Hartwood, was a very young man; but a very great man in his own estimation, and in that of some others also, as to family, talents, and ritualistic attainments in the church. He was the cousin, twice removed, of Sir Boanerges Todhunter the great anti-taxpayer and member of the Opposition, belonged to the extensive High Church party at Oxford, had gained some celebrity at the Union Debating Club; and here he was now the regular incumbent (for a term of only five years be it known, for the Sussex Dowager liked always to have a hold on her tenants in the matter of leases, and stretched her authority to the livings she had in her gift) of a respectable church in a good county, where he could do as he pleased—at an age when the majority of his compeers would be struggling along perhaps in their first curacies.

He had reason to be proud of himself; and really, putting aside a certain priggishness of manner and affectation of style, he was not such a very bad fellow. Take him out of the church, and he would have been a regular jolly fellow, who would have got along capitally in a mess room or in a hunting county, for he was dearly inclined to horseflesh, and had kept his two hunters at Swain’s before he had “gone in” for the High Church party of “young Oxford.” He was a short, well-built, straw-whiskered man of some eight and twenty, although almost boyish in manner and in face. He had pleased the dowager by the way in which he had officiated as curate during the long illness of the late incumbent, and she had determined to put him in the vacant pulpit, if only out of opposition, as has been observed before, to the Reverend Jabez Heavieman, whom she cordially detested.

Herbert Pringle had therefore tumbled upon a snug thing. “His lines had fallen in pleasant places,” so here he was inducted into the living of Hartwood. His first step was to set up housekeeping, in order to do which he had to bring his favourite little sister Lizzie from school to “keep house” for him, and then he set about making further improvements in his district, for which he had carte blanche from the dowager, who, whenever she heard of some fresh innovation, thought to herself, “I wonder what that old hypocrite”—alluding to the Reverend Jabez—“thinks of that now!”

The restoration of the church was effected at the new incumbent’s especial request; and the brass lectern was given by the old lady because the young divine had munificently presented a huge painted window, the subject of which was a large cross, erected just over the chancel. Then a new harmonium was got in place of a wretched old “spinet,” which had previously done duty for an organ, and a choir was regularly established from amongst the school children that sang the responses in church now every Sunday, its members clad in little dirty white surplices.

He was all in favour of ceremonials, was the Reverend Herbert Pringle; and although he perhaps “meant well” according to his judgment, he was very affected, and “High Church” all through the service—to the intense astonishment of the farmers and poor labourers, who used to wonder at the new style of worship adopted in their old church, and be perplexed with all the bowings and genuflections, and especially with the white-surpliced choir.

To give him his due, however, he did not preach a bad sermon, and had a very effective way of appealing to the pockets of his hearers when any charity required his aid; but he read always in a light, jocular, hurried manner, as if he were under an engagement to get over a certain portion of ground in a fixed time, and he always said, or intoned, “Awe-men” instead of Amen at the end of the prayers.

He had now been in possession of his cure for more than six months, and consequently felt at home in it. His improvements, too, had now been got accustomed to; and although he was thought somewhat queer in his notions by the heavy agriculturists around him, he was pretty well liked on the whole. As for his sister Lizzie, she was idolised by poor and rich around: to tell the truth, it is my opinion that a good deal of her brother’s popularity arose from his connection with the young lady with the violet eyes.

Tom’s bad behaviour continued all through the service, and his eyes were not still even during the eloquent discourse which the young divine afterwards delivered, on the “Vanity of human wishes”—would that Tom could have applied the text! In going out of the church, he allowed his mother and Markworth to go on in front, and hung back in the rear. He could see that his charmer had not yet stirred from her pew, although nearly all the congregation were out, and he wondered what made her linger.

Fortunately, he was not long kept in suspense. He passed our old friend “Jarge” in the porch, and incontinently asked that individual “who was the young lady in the rector’s pew?”

“Lor sakes! Measter Tummus, don’t you know un? Whoi, thet’s the porsun’s seestur; that be Missy Pringle, Measter Tummus!”