“Poor Golding!” exclaimed Mr. Gresham, during a conversation in which his friend had been recalling the strange incidents of little Arthur’s history. “I was not so intimate with him as you were, Norman, but I always looked upon him as a good-natured fellow, and rather a clever fellow, too, if I remember aright. But I’ll be hanged if I can spend so much sympathy on his fate as you do. He fell too low. However dissipated a man becomes, let him at least remain in respectable company. If a poor devil runs over head and ears in debt through living in too high a style, and then blows out his brains comfortably in his dressing-room — well, I can spare him some sympathy. But to let oneself be starved to death in a noisome garret — bah!”
Mr. Gilbert Gresham was a man of some thirty-six years of age, of tall and well-proportioned figure, and blessed with features, to adopt the easily-comprehended phrase, of an aristocratic cast. There was something in his tone and manner a trifle too supercilious to be altogether agreeable to one who did not know him intimately, but from time to time, as he grew warm in conversation, he would cast aside this manner and allow the indications of a warm heart and acute brain to make themselves pleasantly conspicuous. In his talk he mostly affected extremely aristocratic sentiments, the cause of this doubtless lying in an exquisitely refined taste which could not tolerate anything savouring of coarseness. And yet the listener could not help suspecting that these sentiments were only affected, an impression aided by the somewhat theatrical air and gesture with which he was fond of delivering them. It was this that led Mr. Norman to smile as he listened to the above utterances with regard to Arthur’s father.
“I don’t know that it matters much where such a man meets his end,” he replied, with a slight sadness in his voice. “He has been equally a sinner against the great law of the fitness of things, and has equally broken loose from the bonds of that duty which should bind us all, and which, I fear, in reality binds so few.”
“Why, my dear fellow,” interposed Mr. Gresham, “what is duty, after all? If it be not the impulse to reconcile gratification of our most ardent longings, whatsoever they may be, with at all events a tolerable measure of respect for our fellow-creatures, I confess I scarcely know what to understand by it.”
“I can tell you what duty is not, Gresham,” returned Mr. Norman, earnestly. “It is not to continue year after year the paid servant of masters whom you despise or detest, masking with a hypocritical countenance your disgust for the offices which you only half perform.”
Mr. Gresham looked sharply at the speaker, and there was silence for a moment.
“You take this matter too much to heart, Norman,” he said, at length. “Do you think you are the only clergyman in the Established Church who goes through the prescribed routine with only half a heart? What paragraph of the rubric have you violated? I maintain that you fulfil your duties to the letter.”
“To the letter, perhaps; but by no means in the spirit. Do you know what I ought to do, Gilbert Gresham, if I would earn the privilege of considering myself an honest man? I should walk down to the church next Sunday morning, mount the pulpit as I am, devoid of ecclesiastical mummery, and proclaim aloud to the congregation: ‘Behold! Here am I, Edward Norman, who have been your pastor for so-and-so many years, preaching the Gospel to you day after day without in reality believing a word of what I preached! Now I come to show myself in my true colours. Find some one else who will preach to you with more conscientious earnestness — if you can. For my part, I have done with preaching for ever!’ That is what I should say, and what prevents me from doing it?”
“A most prudent distaste for the interior of lunatic asylums, my dear Norman,” replied the other, smiling.
“Say rather,” returned Mr. Norman, bitterly, “a most clinging taste for the income of my benefice.”
“I tell you, Norman, you altogether deceive yourself. Do you imagine that you would deserve any credit for adopting the insane line of conduct you have just depicted so graphically? Why, you would merit the laughter of the universe! You forget that you live in the England of the nineteenth century, when ‘only not all men lie.’ I tell you, the world is not worthy of such self-sacrifice. Morality, remember, is but comparative; and the most moral man in an age like ours is, I repeat it, he who best reconciles enjoyment of life with external decency.”
“I wish I could persuade you to think seriously of this question, Gresham; but you are always full of satire, even though it be at a friend’s expense. Why, even, according to your dictum, I am a most immoral man, for my life affords me anything but the maximum of enjoyment. I grow more miserable every week. Now look at Whiffle, the curate. What would I give to have that man’s energy and interest in his work!”
“Whiffle!” exclaimed Mr. Gresham, with a burst of laughter; “that sophisticated ass with an ecclesiastical bray! Why, do you for a moment imagine that he is any more convinced of the dogmas of his Church than you are yourself?”
“I don’t know,” replied the other, with a sigh. “At all events, he has the appearance of being whole-hearted in his work.”
“Now I tell you what the matter is, Norman,” said Mr. Gresham, more seriously. “You are very far from well in bodily health. You want a thorough change. What do the doctors say?”
“They allow me some four or five years of life yet,” returned Mr. Norman, with a melancholy smile.
“Under the present circumstances, yes. But you are fretting yourself away, my good fellow. I tell you, you must have a change.
“It is too late, Gresham, to hope for any considerable prolongation of my life. I am perfectly well aware that the old ladies are already beginning to finger the shears with an eye to my especial thread, and only one thing in the prospect troubles me. What will poor Helen do?”
“Do you think, Norman,” replied Gilbert Gresham, with a touch of nature in his tone, “that my theories extend to my conduct when a friend’s wishes or a friend’s interests are concerned? You know I make no great account of the majority of the tasks I imposed upon myself when I became godfather to your child, and I believe a somewhat modest computation would suffice to calculate the quantity of Catechism I have exerted myself to teach her; but as long as I remain in the land of the living, don’t distress yourself with regard to Helen’s future.”
Mr. Norman pressed his friend’s hand with a satisfied smile, and the sound of the dinner-bell very shortly terminated their conversation.
On the following day the visitors were to depart, and the consciousness of this made the dinner somewhat less lively than usual. But the dessert was destined to be relieved from the unusual silence, for as Mr. Whiffle happened to call whilst it was being placed upon the table, he was immediately invited to join the company, which he did without hesitation.
It soon appeared that the cause of the curate’s arrival was a weighty one. He stated it thus, directing his conversation to Mr. Gresham, as to one who would be more likely to be impressed with its novelty than his usual auditor, the Rector.
“You see, sir, my mind is at present perplexed on what I may venture to call, perhaps, a not unimportant question of ecclesiastical discipline. To state the matter in a few words, the proposition has been made by the congregation’s churchwarden that we should, in future, employ for the purpose of the offertory small bags — if I may so express myself — in preference to the open plates which have hitherto received that portion of treasure which the congregation desire to lay up out of the reach of moth, rust, and — ahem! — thieves. You will at once observe, Mr. Gresham, that the proposition involves momentous issues. As you are, doubtless, well aware, the passage in the rubric having reference to the points at issue runs thus: ‘Whilst these sentences are in reading, the deacons, churchwardens, or other fit person appointed for that purpose shall receive the alms for the poor, and other devotions of the people in a decent basin, to be provided by the parish for that purpose,’ and so on. We have here, you observe, explicit mention of a basin, which, if I may trust my technical knowledge, always conveys the idea of a vessel hollow on the inside to the depth of not less than, let us say, one inch and a half. Should the depth be less than this, the vessel, in my humble opinion, Mr. Gresham, falls more properly in the class of those domestic utensils which we are wont to designate as plates. Now, as it happens, it is a plate which has hitherto been used in the Church for the offertorial purposes, and, if I mistake not, the church of St. Peter, Bloomford, is not by any means singular in this country in the use of such a vessel. Hence, Mr. Gresham, we arrive at the logical conclusion that, although the Rubric expressly stipulates the use of a basin, it has become customary in the Church of England to substitute a plate therefore — doubtless owing to considerations of conveniency into which it is at present scarcely necessary to enter.”
Mr. Whiffle delivered the last remark in a half apologetic, half interrogatory tone, shuffling on his seat as he arrived at the period, thrusting his fingers repeatedly through his thick masses of red hair, and looking first at Mr. Gresham, then at his rector, then at the children, with an air of undisguised satisfaction. Never was the curate so thoroughly at home as when suffered to enter at length upon the discussion of a question such as the present.
“Certainly unnecessary, Mr. Whiffle,” said the rector, suppressing a smile. “Mr. Gresham follows you with attention.”
“And with pleasure, allow me to add,” put in the artist. “Your exposition, sir, is lucid in the extreme, as becomes the importance of the matter.”
Mr. Whiffle bowed, and continued with a gratified smile —
“Having arrived at this conclusion — viz., that the strict prescription of the rubric has already submitted to modification in obedience to the dictates of conveniency, we have, as you will recognise, Mr. Gresham, established a precedent — a precedent, sir.” The curate dwelt on the word with satisfaction. “So far then, sir, there is nothing whatever objectionable in the proposition that Mr. Vokins, the churchwarden, has felt called upon to make; that I must in fairness admit. But when we examine the motives which Vokins urges as in favour of the substitution of — so to speak — a bag or wallet, in the place of the present plate, it appears to me that we trench upon very debatable ground. Mr. Vokins — ahem! — makes the statement, Mr. Gresham, that many members of the congregation who would be glad to contribute their mite on the occasion of collections are restrained from doing so by the fear of public opinion; in other words, they prefer not to give at all to depositing on an open plate, in the full view of their neighbours, for the time being, a coin which, by its diminutive value, would seem to lay an imputation either upon their liberality, or, what is still worse, upon the condition of their finances. Now, gentlemen, this is a frame of mind singularly human, it must be confessed, and one which, though raised above those ordinary frailties of the flesh by our position as servants in that glorious Temple which we denominate the Church of England as by law established, it behoves us to take into consideration. I, individually, still hold my judgment in suspense, though I confess to having spent considerable thought on the subject. On the one hand we must weigh whether it is consistent with the dignity of The Church to make concessions to human weaknesses, such as those so acutely observed by Mr. Vokins; on the other, I opine that we ought to consider whether such concession may not appear justified by the, doubtless, not inconsiderable accession of voluntary offering which would accrue to St. Peter’s in the event of bags — so to speak — being substituted for plates. Might I venture to ask your opinion, Mr. Gresham, as that of a disinterested observer?”
“You do me too much honour, Mr. Whiffle,” responded the artist, in a tone of fine sarcasm, wholly unrecognisable as such by the vanity of the curate. “There is, doubtless, much to be said on both sides; but, if I may express an opinion, I think it just possible that history, if well searched, might afford a precedent — a precedent, sir — for the dignity of the Church giving way before such very important considerations as those which we, in worldly phrase, denominate pecuniary.”
“I think you are right, sir!” exclaimed the curate. “Allow me to compliment you on your delicate penetration in so nice a matter. And, possibly, since you have so expressed yourself, I may venture to declare that I rather incline to Mr. Vokins’s opinion in this matter. We are well aware, Mr. Gresham, that twelve of those humble coins called halfpence amount to the value of a silver sixpenny-piece; as also that twelve of the but slightly more dignified pennies represent the value of a silver shilling; and I have yet to learn, gentlemen, that the curre............