Part 16 (1/2)
”Glad to see you,” he said hastily, and with great condescension and good humour. ”Fortunate I happened to have a morning free. Now, what can I do for you? No spiritual trouble, I hope? Ritualists been prowling round St. Luke's? If so, say the word, give me the facts, and I'll see you are protected!”
”It is on a question connected with the state of affairs in the district that I called to see you, Mr. Hamlyn.”
”Quite so, Mr. Carr, just what I expected. Well, I've always heard good accounts of you as a loyal Protestant minister--though I can't approve of your using that pestilential book, _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, in your church--and I will do what I can for you. Providence has placed a scourge in my hand to drive the idolaters from the Temple, so tell me your trouble.”
Carr had listened to this, which was delivered in a loud, confident voice, with growing amazement. He hardly knew how to take the man.
”I deplore very much,” he said, making a great effort, ”the state into which Hornham has been thrown. I cannot, of course, approve of much that I understand takes place at St. Elwyn's. Yet I am beginning to fear that the remedy is worse than the disease. I am sure, Mr. Hamlyn, that your great desire must be to see the people led to love the Lord Jesus and to live G.o.dly, sober lives. Well, I find that the crusade of the Luther League is unsettling the minds of weaker brethren. They are becoming excited, forgetful of duty, carried away by the flood of a popular movement. All this is hurtful to souls. Men should have peace to make themselves right with G.o.d. Strife and anger hurt the soul and wound it.
Now I have no concern with any other place but this, in which my ministry is set. But in Hornham, at least, I have come to ask you to moderate your attacks upon the High Church party, to extend to them the same tolerance they extend to us.”
Hamlyn stared at the speaker.
”To moderate MY methods?” he shouted in a coa.r.s.e voice. ”Do you know what you're asking? Do you realise who I am?”
”Perfectly, Mr. Hamlyn,” the clergyman answered with considerable dignity. ”I am speaking, I hope, to a brother Christian, and as such, in the name of our dear Lord, I ask you to cease this strife and discord among us. G.o.d will show his desires in his own way; prayer is a more powerful weapon than public invective. And it is idle to deny that the vicar of St. Elwyn's and his curates are doing good. I believe their teaching on fundamental truths is wrong, I deprecate the ceremonial with which they veil and cover the simple beauties of the Christian faith.
But Mr. Blantyre is a good and n.o.ble-hearted man. He gives his life and his large income--it is a matter of common knowledge--to the service of the poor and needy. He is utterly unselfish, he loves Jesus. Let him work in his own way in peace.”
Mr. Hamlyn's face grew very red. The man was mentally bloated by prosperity and success. Daily he was hailed by fools as the saviour of his country, his name was on many lips, and his sense of proportion was utterly gone.
”Really!” he said, ”of all the mad requests as was ever made me this is the maddest! Are you in your senses, Mr. Carr--you a Protestant minister of the Word? You can't be. You come to me, me, who Providence has set at the head of Henglish Protestantism, and ask me to join a base conspiracy to silence the clarion of Truth! to leave my 'igh ground of Principle and grovel before a petticoated 'priest'! Why, you're asking me to let the Pope and the devil into Hornham. Have you ever cast your eye upon the works of the immortal John Bunyan? What about Mr. Facing-both-ways?”
Mr. Carr kept his temper. He was there upon an important issue. What did it matter if the man was rude? ”But don't you think, as a Christian,” he said mildly, ”that it is hard enough to fight the devil, the world, and the flesh without private differences in the Christian camp?”
”Who's speaking of Christians?” Hamlyn cried; ”not I. Blantyre is no Christian; he is doing the devil's work, which is the work of Rome. He gives away his money because the devil showed him that it was a good move, to win souls to Rome. As for his goodness, how do we know what goes on in the confessional? I've heard----”
Carr stood up. ”Let me tell you at once, sir,” he said in a hard voice and with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, ”that any scandal and slander you make before me about a man I know to be pure and good I will at once repeat to him, and you will have to take the consequences.”
”Ah!” said the agitator sharply and suddenly and with his impudent smile flas.h.i.+ng over his face, mingled with a sneer, ”I see now! I ought to have seen it before. You are a wolf in sheep's clothing! While we all thought you a faithful Protestant, you have secretly joined causes with the enemy. The cloven 'oof 'as peeped out! You come as a sneaking amba.s.sador of Rome in the garb of a Protestant. The Jesuits have been having a go at you, Mr. Carr, and they've got you! I shouldn't wonder if you've got your 'air-s.h.i.+rt on now! Go back to them as sent you and say that I've scourged 'em with whips in the past and I'll give 'em scorpions now. This will make a fine story at our next meeting in the public 'all!”
Carr turned on his heel without a word and left the room. He crossed the hall in a couple of strides, opened the door, and walked quickly over the gravel sweep. As his hand was on the latch of the gate, the reformer's voice hailed him. Mr. Hamlyn was looking round the corner of the door; a genial grin--a clown's grin--lay upon his face. ”Mr. Carr!”
he bawled with unabashed and merry impudence, ”been to Ma.s.s yet?”
Then, with a final chuckle, he closed the door.
The peacemaker walked sadly away. He saw at once the sort of man he had been dealing with, and recognised how futile any protest would be in the case. He saw clearly how una.s.sailable Hamlyn's position was, while the country was full of people who would pay him to keep them in a state of pleasurable excitement. It was better than the theatre to which Hamlyn's subscribers loudly protested that their consciences would not allow them to go! It was a sort of bull-baiting revived; the l.u.s.t of the public at seeing some one hunted was satisfied.
How infinitely better the sober methods of the old-established Protestant societies were! Legitimate propaganda, a dignified and scholarly controversy, these were right and sane. But this clown's business, this noise and venom, was utterly disgusting. He had caught a glimpse into the machinery of the whole movement that sickened him.
He went home to his lonely house and made a frugal lunch. Something ought to be done, but what? He was not a man to fail in any efforts he made in a good cause. He did not propose to cease his attempts to restore Hornham to decent calm, even now. But he could not see, at the moment, what was the next move he should make.
During the afternoon he set out on a round of parochial visiting. He sat by the bedsides of the sick, the querulous, the ungrateful, and told his message of comfort. He heard much of Hamlyn's campaign. The new leaflet with its violent language was thrust into his hand. Every one wondered what would happen next. Would Mr. Blantyre face the Luther Lecturers in the public hall? One old bedridden dame Carr found all agog with excitement and spite. ”It'd come to a fight,” she expected, and ”wot an awful thing it was to have them wicked monsters the Papists so close.
She could 'ardly sleep o' nights thinking of it all.” Carr found that the poor old creature had not the remotest idea of what ”Papist” meant, of what anything meant, indeed; but she would hardly listen to his prayers and Bible-reading nevertheless, so eager was she to discuss the ”goings on.”
About four, as he left the last house he purposed to visit just then, a strange thought came to him suddenly. He was at the extreme end of his parish, not far from St. Elwyn's. Would it not be a good thing to go and visit Blantyre, to express his sympathy and to discuss whether some way out of the present trouble could not be found?
The idea strengthened and grew. He knew Blantyre was a decent fellow--every one said so. But, nevertheless, he had the sense of venturing into the lion's den! He should feel strange among these priests with their foreign ways, their ca.s.socks and berrettas; there would be discomfort in the visit.
It is curious how, in the minds of the least prejudiced, the dislike to the definite and outward symbols that a priest wears still lingers. In another generation, it will have been swept away, but it still survives as a relic of the dark, secularising influences of the eighteenth century. And, again, the man in the street does not like to be reminded that there is a G.o.d and a cla.s.s of men vowed to His service, and the complete distinction of a priest's costume is too explicit a reminder.
Carr thought the matter out for a minute or two and then made up his mind. He would go and talk over the situation with Blantyre. With a vivid sense of how his host of the morning would call his action ”bowing down in the house of Rimmon,” a sense that only quickened his steps and sent a contemptuous curl to his lip, he turned and walked towards the clergy-house.