Israel Rank

by Roy Horniman

The Reverend Henry was none of your new-fangled parsons who carry the teachings of the New Testament uncomfortably into private life. As for testing social conditions from the Book of Books, it had never entered his head. Christianity was an ideal, and you were to get as near to it as possible. As parson, the only difference between himself and his parishioners lay in the fact that it was incumbent upon him to preserve a greater staidness of demeanour than the neighbouring gentry. Not that he was nearly as staid and solemn as his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Hutchins, who sat in the family pew on Sunday mornings and evenings, a monument of respectability and convention.

Neither, judging by the somewhat florid colouring of his face, did the Reverend Henry hold with temperance doctrines. Indeed, I heard that this matter caused some dispute between him and Sir Robert Hutchins, and that the brothers-in-law were not on the best of terms. It pleased Sir Robert Hutchins to hold a sort of informal service in the village schoolroom every Sunday afternoon, when those who were of a Methodistical turn of mind could hold forth and give addresses and so work off their schismatic steam. Sir Robert was of opinion that the Reverend Henry should have fallen into line with his truly statesmanlike scheme, but the Reverend Henry was in the habit of spending his Sunday afternoon with his port, gazing sleepily from his long dining-room windows across the pleasant Lincolnshire landscape, and he informed his brother-in-law that he was not sure that loyalty to the church would permit him to sit and listen to the outpourings of Mr. Butt, the carpenter, or Mr. Shingle, the village grocer; and that a really well thought out and carefully delivered sermon was a greater strain than his brother-in-law had any conception of. He declared that it very often took the whole afternoon before his nerves had fully recovered from the effort. At this Sir Robert murmured something about clergymen being always so ready to take care of those bodies which they taught other people to despise. Then the Reverend Henry grew mightily offended, and replied with cutting sarcasm that he knew that Nonconformity usually had a contempt for the appointed ministers of the church, but that if his brother-in-law wished to show his contempt he had better withdraw to West Lye on Sundays, where there was enough irreverent and blasphemous Psalm-singing and taking of the Lord’s name in vain to satisfy the most egotistical of schismatics. But even when he expressed himself in this highly independent and manly fashion he was so completely the slave of convention as to feel that it was highly improper for an incumbent to be speaking to his patron in such a way; the patron of a living standing—in the sort of nebulous hierarchy which he had constructed in his own head—somewhere between the parson and the Deity.

All of this information I obtained at the village inn from general conversation. It appeared to have been conveyed to the community from the servants at the Rectory and the Hall, and had evidently lost nothing in the telling.

I attended the service, and saw my reverend cousin for the first time. I am bound to say I rather liked him, in spite of the suggestion of good living in his face. He looked frank and honest. He conducted the service in a nice, gentlemanly way, and preached an exceedingly good sermon on scandal and tale-bearing. There appeared, from the knowing looks of the parishioners, to have been some special scandal of late in the village, for everyone glanced at his neighbour as much as to say, “I hope this will be a lesson to you for the term of your natural life.”

I seated myself behind a pillar so that I could get a good view of the parson when he was not looking, and could disappear from sight when his gaze wandered in my direction.

The service over, Mr. Gascoyne retired through the Rectory garden in the company of a lady and a young girl, who I afterwards learned were his sister and her daughter. He was a great sportsman and an excellent shot, but I suppose in deference to his cloth he drew the line at eating the game he killed. From what I could gather I should think he was quite alive to the humour of this inconsistency.

I wandered about the churchyard and watched the verger lock the great doors and shuffle out of the wicket gate across the dusty road to his cottage. A silence descended over the village. As I walked round and round the church, pretending to be absorbed in the gravestones, I was racking my brains for some means of carrying out my design on the estimable cleric who was at that moment sitting down to roast mutton and claret as a preliminary to his afternoon port.

Two schemes arose in my brain simultaneously. At the west end of the church there were some ruined arches, which were no doubt the ruins of the unfinished north and south transept. I looked at them with interest. The stonework was crumbling woefully, and it would not be a very difficult matter to detach a brick. The decaying masonry also suggested that it would be easy to climb to the top of the arch, where there was a buttress, the shadow of which might at night furnish absolute concealment to anyone bold enough to scale it. A large stone thrown accurately on the head of anyone passing beneath it would be almost bound to kill. It was a risky proceeding. Anyone coming from a certain part of the village would inevitably use the short cut, and pass under the arch on the way to the Rectory. How was I to know, however, when the Reverend Henry was likely to pass that way, especially as from all accounts he very seldom went out at night? It seemed as if I should have to give this idea up. I had to consider also that the arch would be by no means a very pleasant thing to climb, and that it might come to the ground under my weight. The risks of the stone not falling on the right spot were also great. On the other hand, it would be sure to look like an accident.

The other method was suggested by my seeing the vestry window open. Looking in, the first thing that struck my eye was a table by the window, on which were a bottle and glass. They had stood at the preacher’s right hand during the sermon, and the Reverend Henry had more than once had recourse to them. Was it possible to doctor the water? The Rector would at least have a dramatic death in the pulpit. I could not help smiling at the idea of his tumbling down the pulpit steps in the midst of one of his most eloquent periods. It was worth thinking out.

There was no more to be done at the moment, and as I did not wish to become well known in the village I returned to London.