Thou liftest me up above those that rise up against me; thou hast delivered me from the violent man.
PSALM xviii. 48.
THE dead play a not altogether disproportionate part in the affairs of the living. There are so many more of them. The thought would be desperate but for the reflection that in all probability the most numerous of all are the unborn. The Creator may at any moment get tired of the eternal monotonous repetition of birth and death, but no man or woman will ever believe that. We get joy out of it, and His is the sum of all our joy—the dead, the living, and the unborn.
Humphrey Clay, for all the grimness of his words and works, must have been a joyous man, for his spirit was very powerful and roused many men to action. True, their actions were all ugly, but that came from their stupidity and the squalor of their surroundings. There is no country on the north of our town for thirty miles—only smoked bricks and mortar and tall chimneys and colliery stacks. On the south you must go seven miles before you will find a truly green field, and most of us are quite old before we can make such a pilgrimage, and then clear air and trees and streams and sky and the song of birds are things as separate from our lives as our dreams. They are almost a show to us. Our great holiday is Whitsun-week, and then each church takes its children in wagonettes and char-à-bancs out into the nearest semblance of green country, where they wander and play and laugh and squabble and are fed until they can hardly stand. It is called a “treat,” and it gives them a new [Pg 41]zest for the streets and their adventurous, strangely independent life.
The Roman Catholic churches organise processions which meet in the centre of the town and wind through the streets, the little girls in white and the little boys in the best they can muster.
In his fourth article Flynn exhorted Francis to be an honest man and take his flock to join them. In the meanwhile there had been appeals to the bishop, who refused to move in the matter, being convinced, from what he had seen, that there was nothing uncanonical in the conduct of the services at St. Paul’s. He liked Francis, and if he could not altogether approve of the means, the result was eminently satisfactory. As a result of Flynn’s campaign there was hardly ever a seat to be had in St. Paul’s on Sundays, and some of the most noted preachers in our town and the surrounding district were glad to appear in the pulpit.
Flynn’s paper was doing very well out of it. All sorts of people rushed into the fray and filled his columns for nothing, and when his supporters took to interrupting the services at St. Paul’s with vehement protests the other papers took the matter up, and Francis found a sort of greatness thrust upon him. He refused to see reporters, and told one persistent Scotsman that it was Flynn’s affair, not his, and that he had no intention of moving against Flynn. He received many letters denouncing him as Anti-Christ, and many more proclaiming him the one Spiritual Hope of the North of England. More than one of his correspondents enclosed poems.
Martha was all in a flutter, and was quite sure that Francis was on the point of being made a bishop. He was invited to preach to the judges when they came on assize, and she had no doubt that that would be the first step. Francis had no such illusions. He was not ambitious for promotion. He took out Sermon No. 112 and delivered it with the full consciousness that it was profoundly dull. Flynn came to hear it, took shorthand notes, and printed an abstract without comment.
This official recognition provoked exasperation, and [Pg 42]on the following Sunday as Francis was walking in cassock and biretta to his church he was accosted by a gloomy-faced individual with a sandy complexion, who called him a “spawn of Rome,” and when Francis smiled at the grotesqueness of the expression he stooped down and picked up a handful of dung and flung it in his face. Francis went on his way amid the hoots of little boys and the jeering of women.
A few days later the windows of his house were broken and the voice of Flynn in The Pendle News rose to a triumphant scream. Two policemen were mounted on guard in Fern Square, and the attentions of the malcontents were transferred to the school in Bide Street. The railings were torn down and the furniture of the doors wrenched away. Roughs and hooligans joined in, and one Sunday all the doors of the church were found to be screwed up, and the congregation stood in the street, while from the church steps Francis read the service and delivered the first extempore sermon of his life. He was trembling with emotion and his voice cracked, and hardly a soul could hear him, and he broke down altogether when the people sang
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee. . . .
A few days later the authorities made the mistake of arresting Flynn on a charge of inciting to violence. The prosecution failed, but Flynn had the satisfaction and the bitterness of martyrdom, and he returned to the assault with new frenzy.
Meanwhile at home there had been a new development. Leedham, the third son, the one stolid member of the family, had upset his mother by announcing his intention of leaving school and our town and going out to the Brazils. He had made the acquaintance of a family who had connections out there, and he had been fired by their descriptions of Rio de Janeiro. His real reason was a heartfelt desire to get away from Frederic, but of that he said nothing. He observed, with much justice, that he was not doing any good at school and would [Pg 43]probably learn no more if he stayed there another two years. (The school was conducted on the principle of forcing the bright boys and leaving the dull ones to pick up what they could.) Further, he argued that if he had to earn his own living, the sooner he began the better. Through his friends, he said, he could obtain a post in a bank in Rio, and he would rather be in a bank there than in our town.
Francis was inclined to approve, but Martha wept. Like so many mothers, she had no notion of her real relation with her children, and lived in a fantasy in which she was the perfect mother who adored and was adored by them. More than once to Mrs. Clibran-Bell she had said:
“There is nothing that my children do that they do not tell me.”
And Mrs. Clibran-Bell, being of much the same type, believed her, and together they glowed with rapture over this miracle of domesticity.
Leedham had very little imagination or capacity of invention, and, like his father, had rather a disconcerting way of accepting the facts of his existence for better, for worse. He knew that he was unhappy at home, felt that he was going to be a great deal more unhappy, and saw nothing but the necessity of getting away.
“Darling Leedham,” said his mother, “how can you think of entering upon vulgar commerce!”
“What else am I to do?”
“But think of your name! A Folyat in a bank!—a clerk! And with your Christian name too!”
(The Earldom of Leedham was the title which Minna missed sharing when she jilted Willie Folyat.)
“George Clibran-Bell is in a bank,” said Leedham.
“But, darling, how can you leave your mother? How can you think of it?”
“People have to leave their mothers sooner or later.”
“But you love your mother?”
“Of course,” said Leedham sturdily, “but I want to go.”
“You cannot go without your father’s consent.”
[Pg 44]
“No.”
“Very well, then.”
And that seemed to end the interview.
Leedham saw his father first and came straight to the point.
“I want to go to the Brazils.”
“I know. Your mother is very much upset by it.”
“That’s not the point.”
Francis agreed.
“The point is, what am I going to be if I stay?”
“You might be a clergyman or—or——”
“I don’t want to be a clergyman.”
“A doctor, then?”
“Can you afford it?”
“No,” said Francis, and the admission brought his opposition tumbling down. They discussed ways and means, and Francis delighted in his boy’s practical good sense and independence, though he had a feeling of pity and shame that he had not come to know him better before.
“Thank you, sir,” said Leedham. “And please, will you ask mother not to cry over me?”
“You can’t expect her not to feel it.”
“No, I suppose not. But I want her to be glad too.”
“Well,” said Francis, “I’m glad and I’m proud of you. I wish——”
The thought of Frederic came to him and he said no more.
Mrs. Folyat cried in public at every possible opportunity, and she came in for a great deal of sympathy. Frederic, who had always used Leedham as a butt, and thoroughly disliked the idea of losing him, did his best to make him feel a callous brute. But Leedham was excited and exalted at the prospect of adventure, though he had no one on his side but his father and the boy James, who gazed at him with large envious eyes and promoted him to heroic rank.
During his last few weeks Leedham spent many hours in the study with his father, and they had long friendly talks all about nothing, in which they skirmished round the new affection that had sprung up between them.
[Pg 45]
On his last Sunday night there was a farewell supper. Mabel and Jessie Clibran-Bell were there and Gertrude and Mary and Minna. Frederic was out, and the boy James had been in bed all day with a cold caught in crawling along the roof in his night-gown from his attic-window to the attic of the boy next door. He had been thrashed for doing it—but when the boy next door had laid in a feast of sardines and raspberry jam the temptation was too great, and he scrambled over in the pouring rain, sat for two hours in his wet night-gown and then slept in it.
With Frederic away Leedham could talk, and he bragged of how he would return in ten years and buy a carriage for his mother and re-build his father’s church and set James up in life and bring jewels for Minna. (He was fond of Minna.)
“But suppose you marry?” said Mary.
“Not I,” said Leedham.
“I expect,” remarked Francis, with a chuckle, “he’ll marry a Portuguese.”
“Frank! How can you!” protested Martha. “The Portuguese are Catholics!”
“Perhaps she’ll be rich,” threw in Minna.
“And beautiful, with dark languishing eyes,” added Mabel Clibran-Bell. And in a few minutes they had created the future Mrs. Leedham and, rather maliciously, endowed her with a furious temper.
Leedham took all the chaff in good part and made himself especially amiable to his mother.
Mary went upstairs with some supper for James and the talk turned on Flynn, and everybody wondered what he would do next.
“I hate that Flynn,” said Martha.
“Oh, come!” replied Francis, “he’s filled the church. I couldn’t have done it without him.”
“But it is horrid,” said Mabel Clibran-Bell.
“Certainly; but Flynn is getting what he wants and I am getting what I want. Both his people and my people are more enthusiastic than they would be otherwise.”
[Pg 46]
“Father says,” put in Jessie Clibran-Bell, “that he is getting libellous.”
“Let him,” returned Francis.
“Wouldn’t you proceed against him?”
“Not I. I don’t think the clergy should squabble even in the Law Courts.”
“But,” said Martha, “it would be a case for Frederic.”
Mary returned saying that James was not in his room and nowhere in the house. She had called through the window to the boy next door, but there was such a terrific wind her voice was blown away. There were two chimney-pots blown down in the square.
Mrs. Folyat went white and her lips trembled. They all looked from one to the other. Leedham left the room and they heard the front-door bang, and the wind moaned in the chimney.
Francis rose to his feet and moved towards the door. Mary ran upstairs again, and Gertrude put the parrot’s cloth over his cage because he was beginning to scream. Came a ring at the door, and presently Leedham appeared with his hair blown into his eyes and his face very pale and his teeth chattering. He turned to his father and said:
“Come!”
Mrs. Folyat fainted.
Francis turned sick at heart and went out into the passage. The front door was open and the gas was flickering in the wind, so that it was very dark. There were two men holding a little white bundle between them.
The boy James had been blown from the roof and they had found him on the pavement below. He was quite cold, and it was impossible to tell how long he had been there.
The house was full of whisperings and the guests withdrew, stealing away like ghosts. Leedham stayed to look after his mother. They carried the boy upstairs and laid his poor broken body on the bed in Mary’s room, and Francis fumbled out and along the street to beg the doctor to come at once. There was nothing to be done. Thinking was no use. Tears seemed foolish. It was only [Pg 47]mechanically that Francis turned to his God and said, “Thy Will be done.”
The boy was buried in the grim cemetery over by the canal. The parishioners clubbed together and erected a little marble cross above his grave. They wanted to express their sympathy, and the very poor sent pathetic little wreaths of ivy and hideous wax monstrosities and horrible crosses of iron filagree. The beauty and charm of the boy were discovered after he was dead, and for a little while the house in Fern Square was a sort of temple in his honour. His belongings were gathered together and partitioned, and Leedham took with him to Rio de Janeiro his little brother’s christening mug and spoon.
Mrs. Folyat was prostrate with grief, and the shock to her nerves made her for a long time a valetudinarian. She was just recovering when there came the crowning act of brutality.
Flynn was silenced for a space, but it was strangely whispered among his followers that in St. Paul’s mass was being said and candles lit for the dead.
Francis had encouraged the more devout among his parishioners to use the church for private meditation and prayer. He himself, in his grief, spent many hours there, and this found interpretation in the report that he was instituting the confessional. Flynn did not stop to examine the accuracy or probability of the rumour but hurled thunderbolts. A gang of roughs set on Frederic one day, and he came home with his clothes torn and mucked and his face bloody. Urged by his wife, and much against his own inclination, Francis wrote to Flynn and begged him to confine his attentions to himself. He said:
“I am a priest, but I am proud, and if there is to be suffering as the consequence of my actions I would rather bear it on my own shoulders.”
Henceforth Francis was known as the Proud Priest.
One of the most fanatical of Flynn’s followers discovered that the boy James was buried not twenty yards away from the angel-guarded tomb of Humphrey Clay, and this, when bruited, fell like a spark upon the dry minds of the most ignorant members of the faction. On [Pg 48]a dark evening in November they went up to the cemetery, overturned the little marble cross, effaced the name James Matthew Folyat, and scattered the wreaths and flowers.
Mrs. Folyat took to her bed. The ringleaders were discovered and arrested, and Francis appeared in court, very pale, obviously near breaking-point, and in a very low voice said that he did not wish to prosecute. There was a wave of sympathy for the unfortunate rector of St. Paul’s. Flynn’s paper was boycotted of advertisements and he fell into low water. He had ruined himself in the struggle and he had almost drained Francis of courage and faith in human-kind. He clung obstinately to his work, but was dogged by a sense of the futility of it all and, in his worst moments, saw it only as a mechanical sanctification of birth, marriage, and death. Humanity seemed so primitive—just a base struggle for existence and satisfaction in existence, and silly devastating squabbles about forms. He realised dreadfully what a gulf lay between himself and his wife, and he strove desperately to bridge it, only to discover that she was unconscious of any disparity and had a diabolical skill in coating any uncomfortable fact with a romantic fiction so that it became as a pearl upon her shell. He blamed himself for it, and was kind to her and fought against the exasperation which her prattle aroused in him. Having no friend to whom he could turn—all the men he knew deferred to his cloth and treated him as a creature apart—he tried to find sympathy and interest in his daughters and Frederic, his remaining son. They were absorbed in their youth and their dreams and folly, and seemed to be afraid of him. He watched them, but soon found that he was spying upon them. The one thing he had to love was the memory of the boy James, who became ever more radiant to him, and he used to watch the goings out and comings in of the boy next door and think him a splendid fellow, and regret all that he had missed when his own boy was alive.
For many, many days life seemed to stand still. There was dull routine, Sunday succeeded Sunday. Gradually [Pg 49]gaiety crept once more into the house in Fern Square, but it seemed to Francis so remote—as remote as the woman upstairs, who complained and complained and yet could babble of fashion and the weather and money and the young men who came courting her daughters.