The Parson O' Dumford

“Don’t say any more, parson,” said Joe, wringing his hand, with a grip of iron; “it makes me feel ’shamed like o’ my sen.”

“I don’t see why,” said the vicar. “If I had been a father I dare say I should have done the same.”

“Down on your knees to-night, parson, and pray as you never may be,” cried the old man fiercely; “that you may never nurse and bring up and love a bairn whom you toil for all your life, to find she throws you over for the first face that pleases her.”

“But we are not quite certain yet, Banks,” said the vicar, laying his hand on the other’s arm.

“Yes, I am,” said Banks, sturdily. “I know enew to satisfy me; but stop a moment, I meant to have a word about that, and let’s have it at once. It’s all my own doing, I know, but there it is, and it can’t be undone. Tell me, though, parson, can you say from your heart, ‘Joe Banks, you’re mista’en; I don’t think Richard Glaire – Richard Glaire – dal me! I will say it.’”

The old man’s voice turned hoarse, and shook at last, so that he could not speak, as he came to Richard Glaire’s name, when, after an effort, he exclaimed as above, and then went on – “I don’t think Richard Glaire stole away your bairn?”

There was silence in the room, as the vicar looked sorrowfully in the keen eyes of Daisy’s father.

“I say, parson,” he repeated, “can you say fro’ your heart, ‘Joe Banks, you’re mista’en; I don’t think Richard Glaire stole away your bairn?’”

There was another pause, and Joe Banks spoke again.

“Can you say that, parson?”

“No, Banks,” said the vicar, sadly. “I may be mistaken, but I cannot say what you wish.”

“Thanky, parson, thanky,” said the old man, quietly. “You’ll shake hands with me afore I go.”

“Indeed I will, Mr Banks; indeed I will,” said the vicar, heartily. “But you are not going yet.”

“Yes, I’m going now, parson, and if in the time as is to come you hear owt as isn’t good of me, put it down to circumstances. You will, wean’t you?”

“You’re not going away, Banks?”

“Nay, nay, man, I’m not going away. Just do as I say, that’s all.”

“How is your wife? I hope better. She seemed ill yesterday.”

“Ah, ah, you called yesterday, as she said. Thanky, she’s on’y a poor creature now. This job’s unsattled her. Good-bye, parson, good-bye.”

“But is there anything I can do for you, Banks?”

“Nay, parson, nowt as I knows on. Good-bye, good-bye.”

He shook hands, and went quietly out to the garden, and along the path, leaving the vicar wondering.

“Did he mean anything by his words?” the vicar said, “or was it only in connection with asking me to forgive him? He couldn’t mean – oh, no, he’s too calm and subdued for that. He’s like a man who knows the worst now, and is better able to bear it. I should be glad to see the lock-out at an end, but, even if it were, that poor old man would never go to work for Richard Glaire again.”

Volume Two – Chapter Twenty.

At Dumford Church

The vicar used to look sadly at his church every Sunday, at the damp-stained walls, the unpainted high deal pews, with their straw-plaited cushions and hassocks, dotted with exceptions, where the better-off inhabitants had green baize, and in the case of the doctor’s, the lawyer’s, and the Big House pews, scarlet moreen cushions.

It was a dreary, damp place, with a few ugly old tablets, and one large monument, which nearly half filled the little chancel with its clumsy wrought-iron railings, enclosing the gilded and painted marble effigies of Roger de Dumford and Dame Alys, his wife, uncomfortably lying on their backs on a cushion not large enough for them, and turning up the rosetted shoes that they wore in the most ungainly way. Sir Roger was in slashed doublet and puffed breeches, and wore a ruff as stiff as marble could make it, and so did Dame Alys, in long stomacher and farthingale; while their great merits were enumerated, and the number of children they had issue was stated on the tablet on the wall.

This great tomb went pretty close up to the communion-rail, and for generations past the various vicars had hung their surplices on the rails, and changed them for their gowns in the shade, for the vestry was over the porch at the south door, and was only opened for parish meetings, when the officials went in and came out, to adjourn and do business at the big room at the Bull.

Always damp, and smelling of very bad, mouldy cheese, was that church. The schoolmistress, a limp, melancholy woman, always used to give it out to the schoolmaster as her opinion that it was the bodies buried beneath the flags – a matter rather open to doubt, as no one had been interred there for over a hundred years, while the damp-engendered mould and fungi in corner and on wall spoke for themselves.

No stove to warm the place in winter; few windows to open in summer, to admit the pleasant warm air; the place was always dank, dark, and ill-smelling, and from its whitewashed beams overhead to its ancient flag flooring, and again from the stained glass windows on either side, all was oppressive, cold, and shudder-engendering.

Let it not be imagined, however, that there were stained glass windows of wondrous dye. Nothing of the kind, for they were merely stained and encrusted by time of a dingy, ghastly, yellowish tint, and as full of waves and blurs as the old-fashioned glass could be.

The consequence was the people were slow to come to church, and quick to get out. One or two vicars had had ideas of improving the place, and had mooted the matter at public and parochial meetings. The result had always been whitewash – whitewash on the ceilings, and whitewash on the walls.

The question had been mooted again.

More whitewash.

Again, and again, and again, as years rolled on.

More whitewash, and whitewash, and whitewash. Even the two old rusty helmets and pairs of gauntlets hung up in the chancel, said to have been worn by great De Dumfords of the past, had been whitewashed, with a most preservative effect, saving where the rust had insisted upon coming through in stains of brown. The result was that, thanks to the churchwarden’s belief in lime as representing purity, Dumford was the most whitewashed church in the country, and it stood up in waves and corrugations all over the walls, where the damp had not caused it to peel off in plates, varying in thickness from that of a shilling to half an inch; and these scales had a knack of falling into pews during service time, probably from the piercing character of the music causing vibrations that they could not stand.

That music on Sundays was not cheerful, for there was no organ governed by one will, the minstrelsy being supplied by Owd Billy Stocks, who played dismally upon a clarionet, which wailed sadly for the cracks all down its sides; by Tommy Johnson, the baker, who blew a very curly crooked French horn, which he always seemed to fear would make too much noise, so held it in subjection by keeping his fist thrust up the bell; by Joey South, a little old man in tight leather pantaloons, skimpy long-tailed coat, and tight-squeezy hat, turned close up to the sides at the brims, giving him a tighter appearance altogether than the great umbrella, which, evidently an heirloom, he always carried under his arm, as if it were a stiffened fac-simile of himself as he walked to church preceded by a boy carrying his instrument – a thing like a thick black gun, with a brass crook about a foot long coming out of one side – Joey South called it his “barsoon,” but as he sat cuddling it in church, it looked more like some wonderful Eastern pipe that he was smoking, while it emitted strange sounds like a huge bumble-bee stopped constantly in its discourse by a finger placed over its mouth; by Johnny Buffam, the shoemaker, who blew a large brass affair like a small steam thrashing-engine, and boomed and burred in it like “an owd boozzard clock,” as Kitty Stocks said; and lastly, by Trappy Pape, who used to bring a great violoncello in a green baize bag, and saw away solemnly in a pair of round tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles.

These variations of the Christian names of the sacred band were, as before said, common to the town, where every man was a Dicky, or a Tommy, or a Joey, or the like, and generally with an “Owd” before it. The clergyman our vicar succeeded was the Reverend James Bannister, but he was always known as “Owd Jemmy,” and it was a matter of regret to the popular wits of the place that the Reverend Murray Selwood’s name offered no hold for the ingenious to nickname, so they settled down to “Owd Parson,” and so he was called.

But to return to the choir.

They sat in a gallery that crossed the western end of the church, and on Sundays such of them as put in an appearance had it, with the singers and the schoolchildren, all to themselves; and let it not be supposed that the preponderance of bass was noticeable, for it was pretty well drowned by the shrill treble, as the musicians did not get much music out of their instruments, save and excepting Billy Stokes, who always seemed to be dying in agonies, such wails did he send forth in “Portugal,” “Hanover,” and “Old Hundredth,” that it took all the efforts of the basses to smother his piercing cries.

The bells, pulled for a treat by five boys under the direction of Jacky Budd, had had their say; the musicians had blundered and clumped up the dark staircase to their seats, and Trappy Pape was working away with his bow upon a large cake of rosin, while Joey Tight, as he was more generally called, was sucking his brass pipe, and conning over the notes he had known for fifty years, to the great admiration of the schoolboys, one and all longing to “have a blow at that theer big black thing.” The “tingtang” which went for ten minutes in a cracked, doleful, sheep-bell style, was being pulled, and the vicar was standing in his surplice, waiting for the clock to strike – which it would do sometimes with tolerable accuracy – and he was thinking of how he should like to move the people to have something done by way of restoration to the church, when Jacky Budd, with one thumb in his arm-hole, came slinking softly up to try and get a bit of whispered conversation with the parson.

“Strange great congregation this morning, sir,” he whispered.

“Indeed, Budd,” said the vicar, brightening. “I’m glad of that.”

“I counted ’em, sir – there’s two-and-forty.”

“Forty-two, Budd,” said the vicar, with his countenance falling; “and the church holds seven hundred.”

“Two-and-forty, sir, wi’out the schoolchildren.”

“But you counted the singers, Budd?”

“No, sir, I didn’t; two-and-forty wi’out.”

“Ah, Budd, it’s very sad,” said the vicar, sighing. “I hoped for better things by now.”

“Why, we never used to hev such congregations in the owd vicar’s time, sir, as we do wi’ you. We never used to hev more than five-and-twenty o’ wet Sundays, and I hev know’d him preach to six.”

“Hah!” A long sigh and a mental question, “What can I do to bring them here?” as Jacky Budd shuffled as far as the door and back.