For God and Gold

by Julian Stafford Corbett

I do not think there had been a parson there since King Henry's time, certainly none that I could remember, except on rare occasions when one came out of Rochester to shiver through a homily or a funeral, as well as the jackdaws and the chilling damp would allow.

It was a place all shunned for its ghostliness, unless they had a special call to go there, which indeed was seldom; for there was not even a door upon which the parish notices could be fixed. The wood had long ago gone to make fires, and the wide-spreading hinges, all bent and rusty, hung down with an air of mourning.

But the pigeons and the jackdaws quarrelled for the place. It was a pleasant spot for them. All that savoured of Popery, which was all the church contained, had been torn down, I think, in Edward's days. Rood-screen and all were gone—perhaps to cook a Reformation pot with the door. Thus the birds could fly in and out as they liked, and rest out of the way of stones and hawks, till Harry hustled them out.

The little painted windows still remained. They were very Popish things, with the Virgin and I know not what saints upon them. But it did not matter, for the spiders and the ivy—good reformers they—had nearly hidden them from sight, so, as it was thought too costly to replace them with white glass, they had been allowed to remain.

A grave had been prepared for my father at the end of the north aisle, where once was a chapel of St. Thomas, and where were still to be seen, moss-grown and time-stained, two or three tombs of the Abbots of Longdene. There was great difficulty, I remember, in getting the coffin so far, because the pavement was all loose, and in some part quite thrust out of place by the rats and the fungus.

As many of the people as there was room for thronged in after us, and jostled each other for the best places with many a rude jest. Such irreverence was very hard for me to bear, but I do not wish to condemn them for it. It was done from no ill-will to me or my father, but only from that same exuberant spirit of joy which was beginning to fill all men's hearts when each day they saw more clearly that England's night was done.

The preachers alone seemed in earnest; for they, good men, had suffered much, and this thing that we were now upon must have seemed too serious and heaven-sent for idle gaiety.

I was more at ease when the scholarly-looking gentleman began the service. His soft, full voice quieted the people directly, and the beautiful words he spoke kept them in rapt attention in spite of their crowding to see what was to be done.

No wonder, for now they heard, many for the first time in God's House, the voice of prayer go up in their own sweet English tongue. The preacher began with a collect, in which he commended the dead man's soul to God, and prayed that his sins committed in this world might be forgiven him, that the gates of heaven might be opened to him, and his body raised up upon the last day. So lovely did the well-balanced, earnest words sound in our dear old speech that I saw tears in many an eye before he had done, and the amen, in which all joined at its end, was half choked with sobs.

Incontinently they lowered then the coffin in the grave, and covered it with earth, while the old preacher read an epistle taken from 1 Thessalonians iv.