Part 4

Our town is composed of a number of smaller towns and boroughs, all now under one city council, but at that time many of the boroughs and urban districts maintained their separate entities and had their own councils and their own newspapers. The district in which St. Paul's was situate was still a separate borough, and it had a newspaper called _The Pendle Times and Lower Brighton Gazette_, which published local news and copious police reports. The editor of this sheet was a fanatical Low Churchman whose whole religious force had gone into worship of a certain Calvinistic divine, the Reverend Humphrey Clay, a rigid temperance reformer, Puritan and moralist, who, perceiving the growing laxness of the new industrial population, flung himself with fierce zeal into the task of castigating their immorality and whipping them up into a state of religious fervour. He had pictured their lives--ugly and stunted as they were in fact--as a gay rout of sin, and he strove to counteract this peculiar fiction of his own mind by a religion of appalling dulness. He had a commanding spirit and found many disciples. He substituted the intoxication of conversion for that of alcohol, and drew hundreds to the corrugated-iron church he had built on a piece of waste land opposite a public-house and a theatre. His sermons were printed week by week in _The Pendle News_--half a page of fierce exhortation, while the other half was filled with racing results and advertisements of rat-pits and coursing. When he died twenty thousand men and women followed him to the grim cemetery overlooking the canal, and the streets were lined for two miles. In his obituary, Flynn, the editor, called him "the Sainted Humphrey Clay," and the name stuck. A movement was set on foot to replace his iron church with a stone building to be called the "Humphrey Clay Memorial Church"--none of your old Romish saints was to give his name to it--and a house-to-house canvas was instituted. The factory hands gave their pence, the better class their shillings and pounds, and after many years of unceasing work the fund was completed. The building was erected and consecrated by the bishop just six months after Francis Folyat came to St. Paul's.

Flynn, the editor, scented the presence of the enemy, and began the attack by the publication of the "Literary Remains of Humphrey Clay," containing stern denunciations of Popish mummery and mediæval witchcraft. The wildest stories flew, and very soon Francis was credited with worshipping the Virgin Mary and maintaining a secret shrine in his vestry. Flynn wrote two denunciatory articles, blindly prejudiced and pitifully ignorant. Francis read them and wrote to the editor to invite him to attend service in St. Paul's and see for himself.

Flynn waited for some weeks until Easter Sunday, when he fully expected to see a statue of the Virgin carried round the church. There was, in fact, a procession, and there was incense which stank in the editor's nostrils. His first impression as he entered had been one of disgust, for the whole place was filled with flowers, in the windows, on the pulpit, on the altar, twined about the lectern--daffodils and tulips and hyacinths and violets and lilies. He sat in his pew at the back of the church and saw men and women enter, cross themselves, and curtsey and bow to the East in the central aisle, and his gorge rose at it all. When the organ began to boom and send music whirring up to the roof and flooding the nave and the chancel, and a young man in a purple cassock and a lace surplice appeared bearing the Cross, and behind him two censer-bearers, and behind them again the choir, the curate, the special preacher, and Francis Folyat, in robe, cope and stole, carrying his biretta, he was fain to scream out upon the blasphemy of it all--blasphemy upon the memory of Humphrey Clay. He watched the procession wind round the church, singing the gladdest of Easter hymns, and move up into the chancel, where the choir, still singing in their harsh, untrained voices, filed into their places, and the three priests stood solemnly upon the altar steps and waited for the last notes of the organ to die away. Two acolytes appeared in purple cassocks and little lace surplices and stood below the priests, and the solemn service began.

Flynn rushed away and walked for miles until he was dog-weary. He took his class in Sunday-school in the afternoon in a sort of dream, and in the evening with wide-staring eyes he sat unheedingly through the sombre evening service in the Humphrey Clay Memorial. He saw the whole town, the whole world, imperilled. He saw in Francis an emissary of the great whore of Babylon that sitteth upon many waters, a man bent upon seducing souls from salvation, the very devil quoting Scripture to his ends.

Flynn's sensations were those of a pious young man who for the first time in his life enters a music-hall, with this difference, that for Flynn the abhorred thing had no charm nor peril for himself, only for others--those others whom his hero's life had been given to save.

On the Easter Monday his wife discovered that their charwoman had decamped with a sheet and two blankets, and he laid that sin at the door of the new source of corruption he had discovered, called for strong tea, wrapped a wet towel round his aching head, and wrote the first of his famous series of articles. The following is an abstract under the heading:

"_Non Angli sed Romani: The Enemy within our Gates._

There is a church in this town, for so long devoted under the leadership of our great and sainted Humphrey Clay, a church where Sunday after Sunday, and on week-days also, blasphemy is committed, blasphemy and a painted mummery. I have been to this church. With my own eyes I have seen the finger-marks of the painted, scented hand of Rome. In this church I saw three priests--_priests_, not _ministers_--clothed like actors in a theatre. They wore purple and fine linen and they carried funny little hats in their hands. They had decked up two young laymen in purple and silk and fine embroidery, and their feet trod upon rich carpets, with gleaming brass stair-rods. The very air was thick and oppressive with the smell of flowers, and to this was added the fulsome stench of incense, carried by conceited, mincing little boys. No pen, least of all mine, could describe the impiousness of the processions, the bowings, the scrapings, the befouling and vulgarisation of things sacred that happen in this church, this so-called church, which is in reality a booth, a theatre. Why, the very costumes are indecent. The choir-boys do not wear surplices, but little laced shirts or shifts which do not even cover their spinal bulbs. Their behaviour, their demeanour, is an affront to all truly religious-minded persons. Had I not remembered that I was in the House of God I should have spat in the face of the arch-mummer as he passed me and bade him begone to Babylon whence he came. Who is this man? Why should he be suffered to defile the religion which he is supposed to practise? Why should this play-actor be permitted to strut and mow and paw the air in the Holy of Holies? Three times at least I saw him change his costume--in public! And each time he was assisted with a mock solemnity by the valet whom he is pleased to call an acolyte. They say this man is a gentleman, the kinsman of a noble family, a rich man, one who has kept his carriage. Let him not play the priest. Humphrey Clay, of blessed memory, was the son of a carpenter, a working carpenter in this town, but before his Maker he was a gentleman indeed. It is but twelve months since our bishop consecrated the memorial which is the crowning edifice that pinnacles the glorious career of Humphrey Clay. Can that same bishop within his diocese tolerate the splendid memorial to the one and the impious practices of the other man? I say he cannot. Such churches as this have not hitherto been tolerated in our part of the town. Citizens, shall we endure it now?

_N.B._--Further articles on the subject will appear until something is done. If those in authority will not move, we shall take the matter into our own hands."

Francis read this effusion and was hurt by it. Since he had thumped his brother William on the nose he had quarrelled with no man and deliberately hurt none. Behind the wild writing he could feel the torment, and he was sorry. He felt that he was to a certain extent to blame because he had invited the man to his church in a challenging spirit, and so had perhaps increased prejudice in him. He tried to write to Flynn but could find nothing to say. As he sifted his thoughts he could only discover that he wished his church to be free. All sorts and conditions of men were free to come and free to stay away. He had once found one of his sidesmen turning a ragged old beggar-woman out, and had reproved him and led the old woman to a pew. She spat on the floor and sat fingering an old clay-pipe, but, to Francis's way of thinking, these things might not be unacceptable to the God he honoured, however distasteful they might be to human creatures. The church, then, was free, and Francis desired only to make it pleasing and attractive to those who came to it, to have it a place of beauty amid so much ugliness. The Saturday before Easter had been one of the happiest he ever remembered--a day of hard work in the church, surrounded with young people all gay and blithe and busy with the flowers and draperies and vestments. One such day, he felt, could do much to redeem the waste and folly of years.

However, it was all odious and disgusting to Flynn, and Francis sighed as he reached out for his tin of bird's-eye and filled his pipe. The parrot scrambled out of its cage, shuffled along the floor and climbed up the back of his chair, perched on his shoulders, and stood combing its beak through his beard.

V

HOSTILITIES

_Thou liftest me up above those that rise up against me; thou hast delivered me from the violent man._ PSALM xviii. 48.

THE dead play a not altogether disproportionate part in the affairs of the living. There are so many more of them. The thought would be desperate but for the reflection that in all probability the most numerous of all are the unborn. The Creator may at any moment get tired of the eternal monotonous repetition of birth and death, but no man or woman will ever believe that. We get joy out of it, and His is the sum of all our joy--the dead, the living, and the unborn.

Humphrey Clay, for all the grimness of his words and works, must have been a joyous man, for his spirit was very powerful and roused many men to action. True, their actions were all ugly, but that came from their stupidity and the squalor of their surroundings. There is no country on the north of our town for thirty miles--only smoked bricks and mortar and tall chimneys and colliery stacks. On the south you must go seven miles before you will find a truly green field, and most of us are quite old before we can make such a pilgrimage, and then clear air and trees and streams and sky and the song of birds are things as separate from our lives as our dreams. They are almost a show to us. Our great holiday is Whitsun-week, and then each church takes its children in wagonettes and char-à-bancs out into the nearest semblance of green country, where they wander and play and laugh and squabble and are fed until they can hardly stand. It is called a "treat," and it gives them a new zest for the streets and their adventurous, strangely independent life.

The Roman Catholic churches organise processions which meet in the centre of the town and wind through the streets, the little girls in white and the little boys in the best they can muster.

In his fourth article Flynn exhorted Francis to be an honest man and take his flock to join them. In the meanwhile there had been appeals to the bishop, who refused to move in the matter, being convinced, from what he had seen, that there was nothing uncanonical in the conduct of the services at St. Paul's. He liked Francis, and if he could not altogether approve of the means, the result was eminently satisfactory. As a result of Flynn's campaign there was hardly ever a seat to be had in St. Paul's on Sundays, and some of the most noted preachers in our town and the surrounding district were glad to appear in the pulpit.

Flynn's paper was doing very well out of it. All sorts of people rushed into the fray and filled his columns for nothing, and when his supporters took to interrupting the services at St. Paul's with vehement protests the other papers took the matter up, and Francis found a sort of greatness thrust upon him. He refused to see reporters, and told one persistent Scotsman that it was Flynn's affair, not his, and that he had no intention of moving against Flynn. He received many letters denouncing him as Anti-Christ, and many more proclaiming him the one Spiritual Hope of the North of England. More than one of his correspondents enclosed poems.

Martha was all in a flutter, and was quite sure that Francis was on the point of being made a bishop. He was invited to preach to the judges when they came on assize, and she had no doubt that that would be the first step. Francis had no such illusions. He was not ambitious for promotion. He took out Sermon No. 112 and delivered it with the full consciousness that it was profoundly dull. Flynn came to hear it, took shorthand notes, and printed an abstract without comment.

This official recognition provoked exasperation, and on the following Sunday as Francis was walking in cassock and biretta to his church he was accosted by a gloomy-faced individual with a sandy complexion, who called him a "spawn of Rome," and when Francis smiled at the grotesqueness of the expression he stooped down and picked up a handful of dung and flung it in his face. Francis went on his way amid the hoots of little boys and the jeering of women.

A few days later the windows of his house were broken and the voice of Flynn in _The Pendle News_ rose to a triumphant scream. Two policemen were mounted on guard in Fern Square, and the attentions of the malcontents were transferred to the school in Bide Street. The railings were torn down and the furniture of the doors wrenched away. Roughs and hooligans joined in, and one Sunday all the doors of the church were found to be screwed up, and the congregation stood in the street, while from the church steps Francis read the service and delivered the first extempore sermon of his life. He was trembling with emotion and his voice cracked, and hardly a soul could hear him, and he broke down altogether when the people sang

_Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee. . . ._

A few days later the authorities made the mistake of arresting Flynn on a charge of inciting to violence. The prosecution failed, but Flynn had the satisfaction and the bitterness of martyrdom, and he returned to the assault with new frenzy.

Meanwhile at home there had been a new development. Leedham, the third son, the one stolid member of the family, had upset his mother by announcing his intention of leaving school and our town and going out to the Brazils. He had made the acquaintance of a family who had connections out there, and he had been fired by their descriptions of Rio de Janeiro. His real reason was a heartfelt desire to get away from Frederic, but of that he said nothing. He observed, with much justice, that he was not doing any good at school and would probably learn no more if he stayed there another two years. (The school was conducted on the principle of forcing the bright boys and leaving the dull ones to pick up what they could.) Further, he argued that if he had to earn his own living, the sooner he began the better. Through his friends, he said, he could obtain a post in a bank in Rio, and he would rather be in a bank there than in our town.

Francis was inclined to approve, but Martha wept. Like so many mothers, she had no notion of her real relation with her children, and lived in a fantasy in which she was the perfect mother who adored and was adored by them. More than once to Mrs. Clibran-Bell she had said:

"There is nothing that my children do that they do not tell me."

And Mrs. Clibran-Bell, being of much the same type, believed her, and together they glowed with rapture over this miracle of domesticity.

Leedham had very little imagination or capacity of invention, and, like his father, had rather a disconcerting way of accepting the facts of his existence for better, for worse. He knew that he was unhappy at home, felt that he was going to be a great deal more unhappy, and saw nothing but the necessity of getting away.

"Darling Leedham," said his mother, "how can you think of entering upon vulgar commerce!"

"What else am I to do?"

"But think of your name! A Folyat in a bank!--a clerk! And with your Christian name too!"

(The Earldom of Leedham was the title which Minna missed sharing when she jilted Willie Folyat.)

"George Clibran-Bell is in a bank," said Leedham.

"But, darling, how can you leave your mother? How can you think of it?"

"People have to leave their mothers sooner or later."

"But you love your mother?"

"Of course," said Leedham sturdily, "but I want to go."

"You cannot go without your father's consent."

"No."

"Very well, then."

And that seemed to end the interview.

Leedham saw his father first and came straight to the point.

"I want to go to the Brazils."

"I know. Your mother is very much upset by it."

"That's not the point."

Francis agreed.

"The point is, what am I going to be if I stay?"

"You might be a clergyman or--or----"

"I don't want to be a clergyman."

"A doctor, then?"

"Can you afford it?"

"No," said Francis, and the admission brought his opposition tumbling down. They discussed ways and means, and Francis delighted in his boy's practical good sense and independence, though he had a feeling of pity and shame that he had not come to know him better before.

"Thank you, sir," said Leedham. "And please, will you ask mother not to cry over me?"

"You can't expect her not to feel it."

"No, I suppose not. But I want her to be glad too."

"Well," said Francis, "I'm glad and I'm proud of you. I wish----"

The thought of Frederic came to him and he said no more.

Mrs. Folyat cried in public at every possible opportunity, and she came in for a great deal of sympathy. Frederic, who had always used Leedham as a butt, and thoroughly disliked the idea of losing him, did his best to make him feel a callous brute. But Leedham was excited and exalted at the prospect of adventure, though he had no one on his side but his father and the boy James, who gazed at him with large envious eyes and promoted him to heroic rank.

During his last few weeks Leedham spent many hours in the study with his father, and they had long friendly talks all about nothing, in which they skirmished round the new affection that had sprung up between them.

On his last Sunday night there was a farewell supper. Mabel and Jessie Clibran-Bell were there and Gertrude and Mary and Minna. Frederic was out, and the boy James had been in bed all day with a cold caught in crawling along the roof in his night-gown from his attic-window to the attic of the boy next door. He had been thrashed for doing it--but when the boy next door had laid in a feast of sardines and raspberry jam the temptation was too great, and he scrambled over in the pouring rain, sat for two hours in his wet night-gown and then slept in it.

With Frederic away Leedham could talk, and he bragged of how he would return in ten years and buy a carriage for his mother and re-build his father's church and set James up in life and bring jewels for Minna. (He was fond of Minna.)

"But suppose you marry?" said Mary.

"Not I," said Leedham.

"I expect," remarked Francis, with a chuckle, "he'll marry a Portuguese."

"Frank! How can you!" protested Martha. "The Portuguese are Catholics!"

"Perhaps she'll be rich," threw in Minna.

"And beautiful, with dark languishing eyes," added Mabel Clibran-Bell. And in a few minutes they had created the future Mrs. Leedham and, rather maliciously, endowed her with a furious temper.

Leedham took all the chaff in good part and made himself especially amiable to his mother.

Mary went upstairs with some supper for James and the talk turned on Flynn, and everybody wondered what he would do next.

"I hate that Flynn," said Martha.

"Oh, come!" replied Francis, "he's filled the church. I couldn't have done it without him."

"But it is horrid," said Mabel Clibran-Bell.

"Certainly; but Flynn is getting what he wants and I am getting what I want. Both his people and my people are more enthusiastic than they would be otherwise."

"Father says," put in Jessie Clibran-Bell, "that he is getting libellous."

"Let him," returned Francis.

"Wouldn't you proceed against him?"

"Not I. I don't think the clergy should squabble even in the Law Courts."

"But," said Martha, "it would be a case for Frederic."

Mary returned saying that James was not in his room and nowhere in the house. She had called through the window to the boy next door, but there was such a terrific wind her voice was blown away. There were two chimney-pots blown down in the square.

Mrs. Folyat went white and her lips trembled. They all looked from one to the other. Leedham left the room and they heard the front-door bang, and the wind moaned in the chimney.

Francis rose to his feet and moved towards the door. Mary ran upstairs again, and Gertrude put the parrot's cloth over his cage because he was beginning to scream. Came a ring at the door, and presently Leedham appeared with his hair blown into his eyes and his face very pale and his teeth chattering. He turned to his father and said:

"Come!"

Mrs. Folyat fainted.

Francis turned sick at heart and went out into the passage. The front door was open and the gas was flickering in the wind, so that it was very dark. There were two men holding a little white bundle between them.

The boy James had been blown from the roof and they had found him on the pavement below. He was quite cold, and it was impossible to tell how long he had been there.

The house was full of whisperings and the guests withdrew, stealing away like ghosts. Leedham stayed to look after his mother. They carried the boy upstairs and laid his poor broken body on the bed in Mary's room, and Francis fumbled out and along the street to beg the doctor to come at once. There was nothing to be done. Thinking was no use. Tears seemed foolish. It was only mechanically that Francis turned to his God and said, "Thy Will be done."

The boy was buried in the grim cemetery over by the canal. The parishioners clubbed together and erected a little marble cross above his grave. They wanted to express their sympathy, and the very poor sent pathetic little wreaths of ivy and hideous wax monstrosities and horrible crosses of iron filagree. The beauty and charm of the boy were discovered after he was dead, and for a little while the house in Fern Square was a sort of temple in his honour. His belongings were gathered together and partitioned, and Leedham took with him to Rio de Janeiro his little brother's christening mug and spoon.

Mrs. Folyat was prostrate with grief, and the shock to her nerves made her for a long time a valetudinarian. She was just recovering when there came the crowning act of brutality.

Flynn was silenced for a space, but it was strangely whispered among his followers that in St. Paul's mass was being said and candles lit for the dead.