Gildas Haven, Page 3

  But when they get outside they look grave and troubled, and Mr. Hornby says solemnly, "He is very different from what he used to be. I doubt if he will ever be the same man again."

  "I fear he is getting beyond the work of the pastorate now," says Mr. Weston mournfully, in tones subdued because it seems revolutionary to them to think of Rehoboth without Gilead Haven. "I see dark days ahead. The commencement, I fear, of the dispensation of tribulation."

  A little uneasy in his conscience, being a pronounced abstainer, Mr. Weston proceeds to the brewery to look at the horse that has fallen lame; and things seem far less dreary somehow by the time he has used his knowledge of equine ailments on behalf of the great black creature that, bathed with lotion and bandaged, lays its huge head trustfully on his shoulder.

  Chapter 3

  Rehoboth Anniversary

  MEADTHORPE Rectory is a low-built, spreading country house in the midst of a walled garden, sweet and fragrant with the old-fashioned flowers the Rector loves, and rich with fruit in the autumn of the year. Life has led Mr. Bertram, the Rector, in pleasant places. His is a picturesque, cosy home around which just now the Christmas roses steal, and that later will be garlanded with tulips rare and gorgeous.

  Mr. Bertram has glebe land fair and fertile adjacent to his house, and many an overworked, town-worn cleric, coming to preach on special occasions, has only just remembered in time the Tenth Commandment as concerns this peaceful, vine-wreathed dwelling, and the cure of souls in Meadthorpe.

  The Rector is a good tempered, bland, easygoing old gentleman, devoted to his roses and his peaches, and to the book he has been writing for years concerning Nineveh. A quiet life is his idea of blessedness, and his enthusiastic self-sacrificing new curate, who counts life itself as nothing compared to the glory of the Church, seemed at first a crumpled rose leaf in the calm of Mr. Bertram's existence.

  "But the lad will subside," he thinks resignedly, twenty-four years of life being but wild boyhood to the hoary-headed Rector. "I had similar visions when I was fresh from Oxford. And heaven forbid that I should damp the glow of his ardour. Gifted as he is as a preacher, and with his marvellous fund of energy, there ought to be a brilliant career in store for Bernard Pendrill. His capacity for work meanwhile will set me free to attend to my book."

  Bernard Pendrill is distantly related to the Rector, but they knew little of each other until an advertisement in a Church paper led to mutual correspondence, and the connection as rector and curate of Meadthorpe parish church.

  Pendrill lodges in the High Street, with the mother of Miss Haven's defector Band of Hope boy, Willie Abbot. He is necessarily a great deal of time at the Rectory, however, and this particular morning the Rector's spinster daughter and housekeeper, Miss Rowena, glances occasionally up from her task of cutting out garments for the mothers' meeting, desirous of having a few words with the curate on his entrance.

  "Miss Rowena" is so called in Meadthorpe in memory of her sister, one year older, who went out to India as the wife of a judge, and whose young son Gilbert, a boy of eleven, is at present established at the Rectory, studying with his grandfather occasionally, and every afternoon with Jasper Ruthven. At this moment he is engaged in the various occupations of learning his Latin declensions, and swelling gelatine lozenges in a tumbler of water.

  A crash in the hall causes the Rector's daughter to lay down the shirt in progress, and so startles Gilbert that the water goes over on his Latin grammar; but he dries it with his sleeve, glancing with innocent preoccupation at his aunt, of whom he stands in wholesome awe.

  "Shall I go and see what is the matter, Aunt Rowena? Perhaps grandfather has fallen down the stairs."

  "Continue your lessons, Gilbert. I wish you understood the value of continuity. You're far too ready to forsake one occupation for another,'' says Miss Rowena, gravely. Then, with her habitual self-control, she rises slowly from her seat.

  "I don't believe Aunt Rowena would hurry if ... if ... if ... there was a circus coming along," reflects Gilbert, conjuring up the most exciting possibility that imagination can conceive. "I wonder how she and Mother come to be sisters. Aunt Rowena's awfully good, I know, but she's not a bit like Mother. Mother's always got such a nice, smiling face and eyes that look so loving at a fellow," and here the homesick boy blinks hard, and swallows a swollen gelatine to subdue the unmanly lump that afflicts his throat.

  Out in the hall stands a girl of fifteen, red-faced and sullen, surveying -- with a determination to "give as good as she gets" if scolded -- the coals that repose on the white skin rug at the drawing room door. To set Anna Stutts to fill a scuttle is, as a rule, to hear the premature descent of the coal on its way to its destination. She is one of the many whom Miss Rowena Bertram has taken from hunger and need to train for domestic service.

  Miss Bertram's heart sinks within her, beholding the offering outpoured to the rug, but hers is a religion that makes her slow to wrath, and keeps undue emotions repressed. Although cook who is passing by tells Anna contemptuously that her fingers are all thumbs, Miss Rowena only reminds her she has often been told not to overfill the scuttles, and bids her take up the coal and shake the rug in the garden.

  "Something's always a-happening," grumbles Anna. "I never did see such a house. One can't take up a plate but it cracks, and one can't pick up a scuttle but what the whole lot of----"

  "That will do," says Miss Rowena, with dignity. "I think, Anna, you forget the subject of the lesson the Rector read at prayers this morning, where Saint Paul admonishes servants not to answer when reproved. Oh, Mr. Pendrill, I didn't see you. I'll take care of the coal. The Rector has left the club books for you. Will you come and warm yourself in the breakfast room?"

  "Well, young fellow!"

  "Hello, Mr. Pendrill." Gilbert's face lights up as the curate lays his hand on his shoulder. Next to Jasper Ruthven, who is Gilbert's ideal, the boy adores the curate, who played cricket with him in the hall for an hour when a cold kept him indoors, and whose sermons that are fast filling the hitherto half-empty church are comprehensible and clear to Gilbert's eager mind.

  "I'm making jelly," confides the boy. "Mr. Pendrill, if when you go to bed you leave a gelatine in your tumbler, the next morning it's as big as a half-crown."

  Then Gilbert's face grows suddenly grave, remembering that his only half-crown is forfeited by order of Miss Rowena, for exchanging grimaces with the verger's children in church. All fines at the Rectory go to the waifs and strays, and Gilbert feels sorely guilty in not being able to rejoice that his two-and-sixpence should gladden the soul of Miss Charrell, the district waif-collector.

  "Take your book into the library, Gilbert," says his aunt, "and mind you touch none of your grandfather's papers. ... The Rector indulges him so," she remarks to Bernard Pendrill as the boy retires. "I'm obliged to maintain the balance by strictness. The care of a boy like Gilbert is a great responsibility. I only hope I will be enabled to do my duty by him."

  "You have a great deal on your hands altogether," says Pendrill. "What with Anna and her predecessors and prospective successors, and the Guild and Girls' Friendly, and mothers' meeting and Dorcas, to say nothing of the parish library and the penny readings. Sometimes I think I overtax you, Miss Rowena, but your help is simply invaluable. In the development of Church influences it cannot be sufficiently estimated. By the way, isn't Forest Cottage in your district -- where young Jasper Ruthven lives, I mean?"

  "Yes, but of course I only visit the poorer people. And besides, Mr. Ruthven is a Dissenter. I believe he goes to Rehoboth Chapel."

  "Rehoboth? Oh, that unofficial place of worship!" says Pendrill. Such places have no part in his thoughts at all. He sees but the one Church -- historical, apostolic, national. All other resorts of worship are to him conventicles, unauthorised gatherings.

  "I thought I'd not seen Ruthven at church. What a pity for a capable fellow like that to imbibe such extraordinary notions. What about his infecting Gilbert with dangerous ideas?"


  "Oh, nothing in the way of doctrine ever arises between them. The Rector told Mr. Ruthven that must be understood," answers Miss Rowena. "But do you have any special reason for enquiring as to Forest Cottage?"

  "Only that I hear the baby is very delicate, and I wondered if it had been baptized. Perhaps you could urge the matter on the attention of.... Is there a lady of the Ruthven house?"

  "No," replies Miss Rowena. "I believe Mr. Jasper Ruthven is like a father and mother to the children, taking care of them with the help of some old body who was his own nurse once. His father was a man of good position until his premature death, one of the partners in Windon's Bank that failed some years ago. The young man is now left in sole charge of these little ones. Up to last year he had his father's mother on his hands as well -- an old lady quite in her dotage, and ill with chronic rheumatism. He appears to be a hard-working, deserving young man, and I have heard the report that he is somewhat of an author, but I know so little about any of the Rehoboth people."

  "It is a cruel thing for him to neglect the soul of that delicate child,'' says Pendrill warmly. "Why, if it dies unbaptized, it cannot lie in consecrated ground!"

  ''The chapel people are careless in these matters," says Miss Rowena. "And while we are speaking of them, Mr. Pendrill, may I suggest that you alter the date you fixed the other day for our new institution -- the parochial tea and entertainment?"

  "Alter the date! My dear Miss Rowena, we went care­fully through our mutual diaries, and found the twenty-first is the only evening for which it could conveniently be arranged. Indeed, I have already had the handbills printed concerning it."

  "Oh dear, I quite forgot it was the evening of Rehoboth Chapel anniversary, an occasion always popular with the Meadthorpe people. I fear our concert will seem to clash with their arrangements, and that some may take offence."

  "That Rehoboth seems a very important place, Miss Rowena," says the curate lightly. "Is it that peculiar-looking structure with the tombstones in front that stands back from Station Road?"

  "Yes; it's the largest chapel in the neighbourhood, and Mr. Haven, the minister, is a very good man, I believe. He has been there since he left college. I'm sure the Rector would be very sorry in any way to hurt his feelings, though of course we cannot let Miss Haven dictate to us."

  "Is Miss Haven the minister's sister?"

  "No, his only child. The son died three years ago in his first charge as minister. I believe he was thought a great deal of in his denomination. The fact is," she adds, looking earnestly and thoughtfully at the curate, "Miss Haven has been talking, I hear, to Josephs, our under-gardener, who was once in the Rehoboth school. I suppose she was asking why they never see him at Rehoboth, and he told her he'd joined himself to the Church, where his master administered the Communion, and he quoted to her your words last Sunday, that only the priest duly ordained by the bishop and entitled to claim apostolic succession can rightfully administer the Communion. Of course, Mr. Haven's daughter pro­tested against such teaching, but I have been telling Joseph he must listen to what you, his spiritual teacher, counsels him in the name of the Church. As I understood you, you are distinctly of opinion none but the regularly ordained priest has a right to administer the Holy Eucharist."

  "Absolutely," answers Bernard Pendrill, the light from the stained-glass door that leads to the garden falling on his sunny hair, and deep, dark, earnest eyes, as for a while the solemn thoughts within him hush him to silence. Deep in his reverence for all pertaining to the Sacraments, and as he thinks of any ministering therein save the priest, "by Thine anointed heralds duly crowned," he is reminded of Uzzah of the Old Testament and the holy Ark of the Covenant.

  "No irregular, unauthorised hand should lightly touch the sacred offices of holy Church," he says earnestly. "Oh, if these people around us only knew what they missed in hanging back from the blessings of their Mother Church offered through the priest!"

  "Dissent is all-powerful here," says Miss Rowena sadly. "My father's weak throat has always hindered special activity on his part, and your predecessor was absorbed in his books. Since then, Gildas Haven has been back from school and college, and she's been here, there, and everywhere, working up Rehoboth Chapel, so the parish church has been at a dis­advantage."

  "I see signs of daybreak, though," says Pendrill, with the smile that is the sweeter, perhaps, because it is so rare -- his habitual expression being one of serious earnestness. "There are nine baptisms next Sunday afternoon, and there will be quite a long list of names for confirmation. The worst feature I think is the small attendance we get at the Sunday and day schools. I hold education on Church lines of untold import­ance nowadays. Ah, there comes your father. I wanted to see him about the Workmen's Guild."

  "Then," says Miss Rowena, "you mean to leave the date of the parochial tea as it stands? You're not afraid of creating enemies, I see!"

  "Most people who try to do their duty know something of adverse criticism," he answers. "The chapel people must indeed be sensitive if they take offence so easily. In making our church arrangements we are no more called upon to note their various engagements than to consult the devotional appointments at the Roman Catholic Mission Chapel!"

  * * *

  The parochial festive entertainment draws a good many from Rehoboth on the evening of the anniversary, and the secret wrath of the office bearers is only equalled by the indignation of Gildas who is distinctly of the opinion that someone should write to the Bishop to complain that the new curate of Meadthorpe fixes engagements purposely to weaken the influences of the Dissenters in the place. Since Mr. Bertram, the Rector, will not put down the deplorable bigotry of this insufferable young man, the hand of authority should be invoked to repress him before he pollutes Meadthorpe with his superstitions!

  "It's shameful, this attempt to frustrate our meeting," she exclaims to Miss Mundey, as they fan themselves with the anthems after their efforts for an hour and a half to supply with tea and food the hungry multitude that has poured in from outlying villages. "Last year there were quite a number crowded out, and you know we ran short of everything. This year we have enough and to spare. I only hope Father will allude to the subject in his sermon. Someone ought to make that bigoted, interfering young man feel ashamed of his underhanded trickery!"

  Mr. Haven's anniversary sermons are traditionally quoted for miles around, long after they are only a memory, and somehow it has become a matter of general expectation that today the pastor of Rehoboth Chapel will speak openly of that which is on every tongue: namely the aggressive tactics of the new curate at Meadthorpe Parish Church, and the doctrines he is spreading critical of Dissent.

  The minister looks weak and ill as he ascends the tall, old-fashioned pulpit. Some who remember him in the vigour of youth, and the grandeur of his prime, look wistfully at the thin white hair, the sunken cheeks, and the quivering hand that rests on the Bible. A few more years, and a stranger will fill the old man's place, but they shrink from the thought, and hang the more on his lips, because already it seems to them he sees the Promised Land.

  Mr. Haven's text is that of the apostle John: "Little children, love one another." Beginning in evident faintness and weakness, his voice grows fuller and stronger as he proceeds, and there is a ring of the old trumpet note of power as he appeals to the Master's disciples, for His glory, and to light the beacon fire of witness-bearing to the world that knows Him not; to be pitiful, tender hearted, patient, forgiving, fighting the wrong alone, and, heart knit with heart, "shaking hands over the lowered walls of separation."

  No mention is made of the bitterness that has arisen between church and chapel in Meadthorpe. The sermon is full of love and of the loving Lord, and somehow that parochial tea does not seem such an irritating arrow by the time pastor and people join to sing the hymn he selects:

  "Lo, what an entertaining sight

  are brethren that agree!

  Brethren whose cheerful hearts

  Unite in bands of piety."

/>   Charrell, the tailor, who was "born and baptized Church," and brings all the reverend fathers to bear on his neighbour, Mr. Mundey, at times has denied himself the parochial festivities to hear what Mr. Haven has to say against the Church of England, and sits alert and prepared to hurl back any stones of reproach through the medium of the local newspaper.

  When the sermon closes and the deacons offer prayer, there is still the prick of suspicion in Charrell's ears for phrases of accusation or offence; but that echoing appeal, "love as brethren," is ringing through the hearts of the petitioners, and even Mr. Weston forgets priestcraft and the Vatican, and prays only that of the increase of His kingdom there may be no end. And he who came to wax indignant goes out by-and-by into the peaceful starlight, and bares his head in the old, still graveyard, as Mr. Haven's best loved hymn floats up triumphantly:

  Behold the glories of the Lamb

  Amidst His Father's throne:

  Prepare new honours for His Name,

  And songs before unknown.

  Thou hast redeemed our souls with blood,

  Hast set the prisoners free,

  Hast made us kings and priests to God,

  And we shall reign with Thee.

  Chapter 4

  "When Greek Meets Greek."

  "IS Mr. Jasper Ruthven here?"

  At the door of Forest Cottage, within the porch wreathed in summer days with jasmine, stands the curate of Meadthorpe, commissioned by his Rector with a message for Gilbert's teacher.

  "Gordon, here's a man!"

  Away runs the flaxen haired child in Holland blouse that looks chilly, Pendrill thinks, this frosty weather, and a grave-eyed boy of eight or nine takes his place at the door, surveying the curate with the earnest scrutiny of childhood.

  "Brother will be home directly," he says, politely. "He has only gone for the groceries. Won't you come in and wait?"

  Bernard Pendrill is doubtful if these little ones could remember his message aright, and thinks he had better deliver it personally. He follows Gordon into a small bright living room, so full of winter sunshine that the small fire in the grate, the worn carpet and shabby furniture escape the visitor's notice at first. He is intensely fond of children, and advances with almost eager tenderness to the blue-eyed boy who is marking in crimson thread the motto, "I love Jasper."