My dear Father in his prime taken from a group of sidesman of St. James-the-Less
The malevolence with which she said this was almost inconceivable. But, as my father pointed out to me when she had gone, it raised issues of the profoundest importance that would demand his most serious consideration. For while in his own person—in propria persona[[1]]—it might be his duty to bring her before the magistrates, it might be no less important, as a sidesman of the Established Church, to avoid the contingent publicity. This indeed was the decision to which he ultimately came, and as an instance of what may be called, perhaps, his sanctified statesmanship, it has always seemed to me to shed a peculiar radiance upon one of the sublimest aspects of his character. With regard, however, to the lethargy, little less than criminal, of the vicar of St. James-the-Lesser-Still, I have always been at a loss; and I cannot help suspecting, as indeed my father openly suggested to him, that his relations with Mrs. O’Flaherty were not at all what they should have been. For not only did he deprecate, having heard my father’s narrative, what he weakly described as any precipitate action, but she was actually observed by an acquaintance of my father’s scrubbing the church floor upon the following evening.
[1]. In his own person.
Under such circumstances my father had no choice but to hasten instantly to the vicarage, where he confronted the vicar with the suggestion—an extremely natural one—already referred to. But his reply, as my father has often assured me, was neither Xtian nor even gentlemanly, and my father was obliged therefore, with the deepest reluctance, once more to transfer his worship. It was a serious step, but he had been fortified with the experience previously forced upon him at St. James-the-Less, and in less than five months he had become one of the foremost sidesmen at St. James-the-Least-of-All, Kennington Oval.
CHAPTER IV
Further years of boyhood and additional crosses. Progress in study and music. I excel at the game of Nuts in May. I am to go to Hopkinson House School. But Providence again intervenes. I become a victim of the ring-worm. Devastating effect of an ointment. Mr. Balfour Whey and his sons. A brutal County Court judge. But my father obtains damages.
Physically shattered as I had been by the attack on my person by Desmond O’Flaherty, the mental and spiritual consequences of this assault were far more serious and prolonged. Awakened for the first time to the contemporary existence of a depravity hitherto unsuspected by me, I was unable for several weeks to regain my previous composure, or indeed to venture unaccompanied beyond the precincts of the house. Nor could I bear even to contemplate the introduction of a successor to Mrs. O’Flaherty.
For that reason, although still in poor health, my mother was obliged to resume her former duties, while my father was confirmed in his decision to postpone my schooldays for another three or four years. To this he had already been inclined, partly owing to the representations that I myself had been compelled to make to him, and partly owing to his desire to assist me as far as possible in bearing the crosses with which Providence had entrusted me. Far beyond the average both in weight and number, I can realize now of course what a privilege these were. But in the earlier years of my boyhood they taxed my faith to its utmost powers.
Many were the times, for instance, when after a long morning’s study, merely interrupted by an occasional cup of cocoa, I turned with avidity to a simple but abundant meal of roast pork and open jam tart, only to find myself, an hour or two later, rolling in agony upon the sofa, or even indeed summoned on certain occasions to yield it back whence it came. This was perhaps the hardest lesson of all. But I am happy to say that at last I learned it. And I can well remember the pride with which my father, hurrying into the parlour with a convenient receptacle, first found me consoling myself with some appropriate verses from an early chapter of the book of Job.