Frank Oldfield Part 3

"Good night."

Johnson walked homewards sorrowful but calm. Should he take the pledge?

should he boldly break his chains, and brave the scorn of his unG.o.dly companions? He felt that he ought. He murmured a half prayer that he might have strength to do it. He reached his own home; he entered--what did, he see?

Round the fire, slatternly and dirty, with hair uncombed, dress disordered, shoes down at heel, lolling, lounging, stooping in various att.i.tudes, were some half-dozen women, Alice being nearest the fire on one side. Most of them had pipes in their mouths. On the table were cups and saucers, a loaf and some b.u.t.ter, and also a jug, which certainly did not hold milk; its contents, however, were very popular, as it was seldom allowed to rest on the table, while the strong odour of rum which filled the room showed pretty plainly that it had been filled at the public-house and not at the farm. Every eye was flas.h.i.+ng, and every tongue in full exercise, when Johnson entered.

"Well, Thomas," said his wife, "I thought you were down at the 'George.'

Our Betty's not so well, so she's gone up into the chamber to lay her down a bit; and I've just been axing a neighbour or two to come in and have a bit of a talk over our Sammul. Come, sit you down, and take a cup of tea, and here's summat to put in it as'll cheer you up."

"I've just had my tea at Ned Brierley's," replied her husband; "I don't want no more."

"Ah, but you must just take one cup. Reach me the jug, Molly. You look as down as if you'd seen a boggart; [see note 2], you must drink a drop and keep your spirits up."

He made no reply, but threw himself back on the couch, and drew his cap over his eyes. Seeing that he was not likely to go out again, the women dropped off one by one, and left him alone with his wife, who sat looking into the fire, comforting herself partly with her pipe and partly with frequent applications to the jug. After a while Thomas rose from the couch, and took his seat by the fire opposite to her. There was a long pause; at last he broke it by saying,--

"Alice."

"Well, Thomas."

"Alice, you know I have been up at Ned's. Ned's a quiet, civil man, and a gradely Christian too. I wish our house had been like his; we shouldn't have lost our Sammul then."

"Well, my word! what's come over you, Thomas? Why, sure you're not a- going to be talked over by yon Brierley folk!" exclaimed his wife.

"Why, they're so proud, they can't look down upon their own shoes: and as for Brierley's wenches, if a fellow offers to speak to 'em, they'll snap his head off. And Martha herself's so fine that the likes of me's afraid to walk on the same side of the road for fear of treading on her shadow."

"Well, Alice, I've oft abused 'em all myself; but I were wrong all the time. And you're wrong, Alice, too. They've never done us no harm, and we've nothing gradely to say against 'em; and you know it too. They've toiled hard for their bra.s.s, and they haven't made it away as _we_ have done; and if they're well off, it's no more nor they deserve."

"Not made away their bra.s.s! No, indeed!" said his wife, contemptuously, "no danger of that; they'll fist it close enough. They like it too well to part with it. They'll never spend a ha'penny to give a poor chap a drop of beer, though he's dying of thirst."

"No, 'cos they've seen what a curse the drink has been to scores and hundreds on us. Ah, Alice, if you had but seen the happy faces gathered round Ned's hearth-stone; if you had but heard Ned's hearty welcome-- though he can't but know that I've ever been the first to give him and his a bad word--you couldn't say as you're saying now."

"Come, Thomas," said his wife, "don't be a fool. If Ned Brierley likes his teetottal ways, and brings up his lads and wenches same fas.h.i.+on, let him please himself; but he mustn't make teetottallers of you nor me."

"And why shouldn't he make a teetottaller of me?" cried Thomas, his anger rising at his wife's opposition. "What has the drink done for us, I'd like to know? What's it done with my wage, with our Betty's wage, with our poor Sammul's wage? Why, it's just swallowed all up, and paid us back in dirt and rags. Where's there such a beggarly house as this in all the village? Why haven't we clothes to our backs and shoes to our feet? It's because the drink has took all."

"It's not the drink," screamed Alice, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng with rage.

"You've nothing to blame the drink for; the drink's right enough. It's yourself; it's your own fault. You haven't any conduct in your drink like other folk. You must sit sotting at the 'George' till you can't tell your hand from your foot; and then you must come home and blackguard me and the childer, and turn the house out of the windows.

You've driven our Sammul out of the country; and you'll be the death of our Betty, and of me too, afore you've done."

"Death of you!" shouted her husband, in a voice as loud as her own.

"And what odds then? No conduct in _my_ drink! And what have _you_ had in yourn? What's there to make a man tarry by the hearth-stone in such a house as this, where there's nothing to look at but waste and want? I wish every drop of the drink were in the flames with this." So saying, he seized the jug, threw the little that was left of the spirits in it into the fire, and, without stopping to listen to the torrent of abuse which poured from the lips of his wife, hurried out of the house. And whither did he go? Where strong habit led him, almost without his being conscious of it--he was soon within the doors of the "George." By this time his anger had cooled down, and he sat back from the rest of the company on an empty bench. The landlord's eye soon spied him.

"What are you for to-night, Thomas?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Johnson, moodily; "I'm better with nothing, I think."

"No, no," said the other; "you're none of that sort. You look very down; a pint of ale'll be just the very thing to set you right."

Johnson took the ale.

"Didn't I see you coming out of Ned Brierley's?" asked one of the drinkers.

"Well, and what then?" asked Johnson, fiercely.

"Oh, nothing; only I thought, maybe, that you were for coming out in the teetottal line. Ay, wouldn't that be a rare game?"

A roar of laughter followed this speech. But Johnson's blood was up.

"And why shouldn't I join the teetottallers if I've a mind?" he cried.

"I don't see what good the drink's done to me nor mine. And as for Ned Brierley, he's a gradely Christian. I've given him nothing afore but foul words; but I'll give him no more."

A fresh burst of merriment followed these words.

"Eh, see," cried one, "here's the parson come among us."

"He'll be getting his blue coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons out of the pop-shop just now," cried another; "and he'll hold his head so high that he won't look at us wicked sinners."

A third came up to him with a mock serious air, and eyeing him with his head on one side, said,--

"They call you Thomas, I reckon. Ah, well, now you're going to be one of Ned's childer, we must take you to the parson and get him to christen you Jonadab."

Poor Johnson! he started up, for one moment he meditated a fierce rush at his persecutors, the next, he turned round, darted from the public- house, and hurried away he knew not whither.

And what will he do? Poor man--wretched, degraded drunkard as he had been--he was by natural character a man of remarkable energy and decision; what he had fairly and fully determined upon, his resolution grasped like a vice. Brought up in constant contact with drunkenness from his earliest years, and having imbibed a taste for strong drink from his childhood, that taste had grown with his growth, and he had never cared to summon resolution or seek strength to break through his miserable and debasing habit. Married to a woman who rather rejoiced to see her husband moderately intoxicated, because it made him good- natured, he had found nothing in his home, except its growing misery, to induce him to tread a better path. True, he could not but be aware of the wretchedness which his sin and that of his wife had brought upon him and his; yet, hitherto, he had never seen _himself_ to be the chief cause of all this unhappiness. He blamed his work, he blamed his thirst, he blamed his wife, he blamed his children, he blamed his dreary comfortless home--every one, everything but himself. But now light had begun to dawn upon him, though as yet it had struggled in only through a few c.h.i.n.ks. G.o.d had made a partial entrance for it through his remorse at the loss of his son; that entrance had been widened by his visit to Ned Brierley, yet he was still in much darkness; his light showed him evil and sin in great mis-shapen terrible ma.s.ses, but was not so far sufficiently bright to let him see anything in clear sharp outline. A great resolve was growing, but it needed more hammering into form, it wanted more prayer to bring it up to the measure of a Christian duty.

And here we must leave him for the present, and pa.s.s to other and very different scenes and characters essential to the development of our story.

Note 1. "Four lane ends," a place where four roads meet.

Note 2. "Hoggart", a ghost.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE RECTORY.

The Reverend Bernard Oliphant, rector of Waterland, was a man of good family and moderate fortune. At the time when this tale opens he had held the living eighteen years. He had three sons and one daughter.

The eldest son, Hubert, was just three-and-twenty, and, having finished his course at Oxford with credit, was spending a year or two at home previously to joining an uncle in South Australia, Abraham Oliphant, his father's brother, who was living in great prosperity as a merchant at Adelaide. Hubert had not felt himself called on to enter the ministry, though his parents would have greatly rejoiced had he seen his way clear to engage in that sacred calling. But the young man abhorred the thought of undertaking such an office unless he could feel decidedly that the highest and holiest motives were guiding him to it, and neither father nor mother dared urge their son to take on himself, from any desire to please them, so awful a responsibility. Yet none the less for this did Hubert love his Saviour, nor did he wish to decline his service, or shrink from bearing that cross which is laid on all who make a bold and manly profession of faith in Christ Jesus. But he felt that there were some who might serve their heavenly Master better as laymen than as ministers of the gospel, and he believed himself to be such a one. His two younger brothers, not feeling the same difficulties, were both preparing for the ministry. Hubert had a pa.s.sionate desire to travel; his parents saw this, and wisely judged that it would be better to guide his pa.s.sion than to combat it; so, when his uncle proposed to Hubert to join him in Australia, they gave their full consent. They knew that a strong expression of dissuasion on their part would have led him to abandon the scheme at once; but they would not let any such expression escape them, because they felt that they were bound to consult _his_ tastes and wishes, and not merely their own. They knew that his faith was on the Rock of Ages; they could trust his life and fortunes to their G.o.d. For Bernard Oliphant and his wife had but one great object set before them, and that was to work for G.o.d. The rector was warm and impulsive, the fire would flash out upon the surface, yet was it under the control of grace; it blazed, it warmed, but never scorched, unless when it crossed the path of high-handed and determined sin. _She_ was all calmness and quiet decision; yet in _her_ character there ran a fire beneath the surface, sending up a glow into every loving word and deed. She had never been beautiful, yet always beautified by the radiance of true holiness. In her, seriousness had no gloom, because it was the seriousness of a holy love. She made even worldly people happy to be with her, because they felt the reality and singleness of her religion--it was woven up with every hour's work, with every duty, with every joy. She lived for heaven not by neglecting earth, but by making earth the road to heaven. Her religion was pre- eminently practical, while it was deeply spiritual; in fact, it was the religion of sanctified common sense. The true grace of her character gained the admiration which she never sought. As some simple unadorned column rising in the midst of richly-carved sculptures arrests attention by its mere dignity of height and grace of perfect proportion, so in the una.s.suming wife of Bernard Oliphant there was a loftiness and symmetry of character which made people feel that in her was the true beauty of holiness.

And the children trod in the steps of their parents. Mary Oliphant was the youngest; she was now just eighteen--slight in make, and graceful in every movement. Her perfect absence of self-consciousness gave a peculiar charm to all that she said and did; she never aimed at effect, and therefore always produced it. You could not look into her face without feeling that to her indifference and half-heartedness were impossible things; and the abiding peace which a true faith in Christ alone can give, was on those lovely features in their stillness. Such was the family of the Reverend Bernard Oliphant.

Waterland was a rural parish in one of the midland counties. The rectory stood near one end of the village, which was like a great many other country villages. There were farm-houses, with their stack-yards and cl.u.s.ters of out-buildings, with their yew-trees and apple-orchards.

Cottages, with low bulging white-washed walls and thatched roofs, were interspersed among others of a more spruce and modern build, with slated roofs, and neat little gardens. Then there were two or three shops which sold all things likely to be wanted in everyday village life, eatables and wearables nestling together in strange companions.h.i.+p; and, besides these, were houses which would not have been known to be shops, but for a faded array of peppermints and gingerbread, which shone, or rather twinkled, before the eyes of village children through panes of greenish gla.s.s. Of course there was a forge and a wheel-wright's shop; and, equally of course, a public-house--there had been two, there was now but one, which could readily be known by a huge swinging sign-board, on which was the decaying likeness of a "Dun Cow," supposed to be feeding in a green meadow; but the verdure had long since melted away, and all except the animal herself was a chaos of muddy tints. The "Dun Cow," (a sad misnomer for a place where milk was the last beverage the visitors would ever think of calling for), was to many the centre both of attraction and detraction, for here quarrels were hatched and characters picked to pieces. The landlord had long since been dead, of the usual publican's malady--drink fever. The landlady carried on the business which had carried her husband off, and seemed to thrive upon it, for there was never lack of custom at the "Dun Cow." Just a stone's-throw from this public-house, on the crest of the hill along which wound the village street, was the church, a simple structure, with a substantial square tower and wide porch. It had been restored with considerable care and taste by the present rector, the internal appearance being sufficiently in accordance with the proprieties of ecclesiastical architecture to satisfy all but the over-fastidious, and yet not so ornamental as to lead the mind to dwell rather on the earthly and sensuous than on the heavenly and spiritual. Behind the church was the rectory, a quaint old building, with pointed gables, deep bay- windows, and black beams of oak exposed to view. It had been added to, here and there, as modern wants and improvements had made expansion necessary. The garden was lovely, for every one at the rectory loved flowers: they loved them for their own intrinsic beauty; they loved them as G.o.d's books, full of lessons of his skill and tender care; they loved them as resting-places for the eye when wearied with sights of disorder and sin; they loved them as ministering comfort to the sick, the aged, and the sorrowful to whom they carried them.

Such was the village of Waterland. The parish extended two miles north and south of the church, a few farms and labourers' cottages at wide intervals containing nearly all the rest of the population that was not resident in the village.

It has been said that there were once two public-houses in Waterland, but that now there was but one. This was not owing to any want of success in the case of the one which had become extinct; on the contrary, the "Oldfield Arms" had been the more flouris.h.i.+ng establishment of the two, and was situated in the centre of the village.