Chapter 7

BY ALFRED BERLYN.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN GULICH.

The Rev. Thomas Todd, curate of S. Athanasius, Great Wabbleton, sat at the table in his little parlour with a local newspaper in his hand and a troubled expression on his face. There was something incongruous in the appearance of the deep frown that puckered the curate's brows; for his countenance, in its normal aspect, was chubby and plump and bland, and his little grey eyes were wont to shine with a benign and even a humorous twinkle. He was not remarkably young, as curates go; but he was quite young enough to be a subject of absorbing interest to the lady members of the S. Athanasius congregation, and to find himself the frequent recipient of those marks of feminine attention which are the recognised perquisites of the junior assistant clergy.

Two or three times, the curate raised the paper from the table and re-read the passage that was evidently troubling him; and each time he did so the puckers deepened, and his expression became more and more careworn. It would have been difficult enough for a stranger to find any clue to the cause of his agitation in the portion of the _Wabbleton Post and Grubley Advertiser_ which the clergyman held before him; and the wonder would certainly have been increased by the discovery that the passage to which the reverend gentleman's attention was directed was nothing else than the following innocent little paragraph of news:--

"Grubley.--We are asked to state that Benotti's Original Circus, one of the oldest established and most complete in the kingdom, will give two performances daily at Bounders Green during the whole of next week."

There seemed little enough in such an announcement to bring disquiet to the curate's mind. Possibly, he cherished a conscientious objection to circuses, and remembered that, as Grubley and Great Wabbleton were only three miles apart, a section of the S. Athanasius flock might be allured next week by the meretricious attraction at Bounders Green. Yet even such solicitude for the welfare of the flock of which he was the assistant shepherd seemed scarcely to account either for his obvious distress, or for the fragments of soliloquy that escaped him at every fresh study of the paper.

"Here, of all places in the world--absolute ruin--no, not on any account!"

At length, throwing down the _Post_, the curate seized his hat, started at a rapid pace for the Vicarage, and was soon seated _tete-a-tete_ with his superior, an amiable old gentleman with a portly presence and an abiding faith in his assistant's ability to do the whole work of the parish unaided.

"Vicar, do you think you can spare me for the next week or so? The fact is, I am feeling the want of a change badly, and should be glad of a few days to run down to my people in Devonshire."

"My dear Todd, how unfortunate! I have just made arrangements to be away myself next week--and--and the week following. I am going up to London to stay with my old friend Canon Crozier. I was just coming to tell you so when you called. If you don't mind waiting till I return, I've no doubt we can manage to spare you for a day or two. Sorry you're not feeling well. By-the-bye, has that tiresome woman Mrs. Dunderton been worrying you? She came here yesterday about those candles, and threatened to write to the Bishop and denounce us as Popish conspirators. Couldn't you go and talk to her, and see if you can bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind?"

The talk drifted to church and parish matters, and, as soon as he decently could, the curate took his leave, looking very much more depressed and anxious than ever. As he raised the latch of the Vicarage gate, a voice, whose sound he knew only too well, called to him by name; and, turning, he beheld Miss Caroline Cope, the Vicar's daughter, pursuing him skittishly down the garden path. Miss Caroline was not young, neither was she amiable, and her appearance was quite remarkably unattractive. All this would have mattered little to the curate, but for the fact that she had lately shown for him a marked partiality that had inspired him with considerable uneasiness. At this moment, when his mind was troubled with other matters, her unwelcome appearance aroused in his breast a feeling of extreme irritation.

"Don't run away from me, you naughty, unfeeling man," she began, with an elephantine attempt at archness. "I was going to ask you to take me down to the schoolrooms, but I shall have to go alone if you fly away from me like this."

Mr. Todd, fervently wishing that flying were just then among his accomplishments, felt that now, while he was in the humour, was the time to free himself, finally if possible, from these embarrassing attentions.

"I am sorry I cannot give myself the pleasure of accompanying you, Miss Cope. I have several sick persons and others to call upon in different parts of the parish, and my duties will fully occupy the whole of my morning. I'm afraid I don't happen to be going in the direction of the schools, so I must say 'good morning' here."

And the curate raised his hat and passed on, fortifying himself with the reflection that what might in an ordinary case have been rudeness was in this instance the merest and most necessary self-defence.

Miss Cope stood looking after his retreating figure with a viperous look in her face, and with a feeling of intense rage, which she promised herself to translate into action at the very earliest opportunity.

Early in the following week, the Vicar started for London, and his curate was left in sole charge of the parish. That there was something amiss with Mr. Todd was evident to all who came in contact with him, both before and after the Vicar's departure. His former geniality seemed to have quite deserted him, and he looked worried, anxious, and ill. The ladies of S. Athanasius were greatly concerned at the change, and speculated wildly as to its cause. There was one among them, however, who made no comment upon the subject, and appeared, in fact, to ignore the curate's existence altogether. Whatever might be the source of that gentleman's troubles, he had, at any rate, freed himself from the unwelcome advances of Miss Caroline Cope.

The third morning after the Vicar's departure, his assistant was sent for to visit a sick parishioner who lived just outside Great Wabbleton, on the high road to Grubley. The summons was an imperative one; but he obeyed it with a curious and unwonted reluctance. As he reached the outskirts of the town and struck into the Grubley road, his distaste for his errand seemed to increase, and he looked uneasily from side to side with a strange, furtive glance, in singular contrast to his usual steady gaze and cheerful smile. He reached his destination, however, without adventure, and remained for some time at the invalid's bedside. His return journey was destined to be more eventful. He had not proceeded far on his way back to Great Wabbleton, when a showily-dressed woman, who was passing him on the road, stopped short and regarded him with a prolonged and half-puzzled stare that ended in a sudden cry of amazed recognition. "Well--I'm blest--it's Tommy!"

She was a buxom, and by no means unattractive, person of about five-and-thirty, with an irresistibly "horsey" suggestion about her appearance and gait. As the curate's eye met hers, he turned deadly pale, and his knees trembled beneath him. That which he had dreaded for days and nights had come to pass.

"Well, I'm blest!" said the lady again, "who'd have thought of meeting you here after all these years--and in this make-up, too! But I should have known you among a thousand, all the same. Why, Tommy, you don't mean to say they've gone and made a parson of you?"

The curate was desperate. His first impulse was to deny all knowledge of the woman who stood gazing into his face with a comical expression of mingled amusement and surprise. But her next words showed him the hopelessness of such a course.

"You're not going to say you don't know me, Tommy, though it _is_ nigh twenty years since we were in the ring together, and you've got into a black coat and a dog-collar. Fancy them making a parson of you; Lord, who'd have thought it! Well, I've had a leg-up, too, since then. I'm Madame Benotti now. The old lady died, and he made me missus of himself and the show. He often talks about you, and wouldn't he stare, just, to see you in this rig-out!"

By the time, the Rev. Thomas Todd had recovered himself sufficiently to speak, and had decided that a bold course was the safest.

"I'm really glad to see you again," he said, with a shuddering thought of the fate of Ananias; "it reminds me so of the old times. But, you see, things are changed with me. You remember the old gentleman who adopted me, and took me away from the circus? Well, he sent me to school and college, and then set his heart on my becoming, as you say, a parson. I haven't forgotten the old days, but--but you see, if the people round here knew about my having been----"

"Lor' bless you, Tommy," broke in the good-natured _equestrienne_, "you don't think I'd be so mean as to go and queer an old pal's pitch; you've nothing to fear from me; don't be afraid, there's nobody coming"--for the curate was looking distractedly round. "Well, I'm mighty glad to have seen you again, even in this get-up, but I won't stop and talk to you any longer, or one of your flock might come round the corner, and then--O my! wouldn't there be a rumpus? Ha, ha, ha!"

She laughed loudly, and the clergyman looked round again in an agony.

"Now, Tommy, good-bye to you, and good luck. But look here, before you go, just for the sake of the old times, when you were 'little Sandy,' and I used to do the bare-backed business, you'll give us a kiss, won't you, old man?"

And before the unhappy curate could prevent her, Madame Benotti had flung her muscular arms round his neck, and imprinted two sounding kisses on his cheeks.

At that fatal moment, a female figure came round the bend of the road, and, to his indescribable horror, the curate recognised the dread form of the Vicar's daughter. She had seen all--of that there could be no doubt, but she came on, passed them, and continued on her way to Grubley without the smallest sign of recognition.

"My goodness, Tommy, I hope that old cat wasn't one of your flock," remarked Madame Benotti, with real concern, as soon as she had passed. "You look as scared as if you had seen a ghost; I hope I haven't----"

But the curate waited to hear no more. With a hurried "Good-bye" he tore himself away, and made his way back to his apartments in a state bordering on desperation.

Locking himself in, he paced the room for some time, groaning aloud in a perfect frenzy of misery and apprehension. Then he flung himself into his chair, buried his face in his hands, and tried to think what was best to be done. After painful and intense thought, he decided that there was nothing for it but to tell Miss Cope the whole story, and appeal to her honour to keep it to herself. But how if she chose to revenge herself upon him by refusing to believe the story, or by declining to keep it secret? He could not conceal from himself that either of these results was more than possible. In that case, there remained only one resource; and it was of so terrible a nature that the curate positively shuddered at its contemplation. But it might even come to that; and better even _that_, he told himself, than the exposure, the ridicule, and the professional ruin that must otherwise befall him.

Hour after hour passed, and he was still nerving himself for the coming interview, when a tap came at the door, and a note, left by hand, was brought in to him. He glanced at the address, and tore open the envelope with trembling hand. It contained these few words, without any sort of preliminary:--

"I think it right to give you warning that I shall take the earliest opportunity of making known your disgraceful conduct witnessed by me in the public streets this morning.

"CAROLINE COPE."

The Rev. Thomas Todd placed the letter in his pocket with an air of desperate resolve, and started forth for the Vicarage without another moment's delay. It was now or never--if he hesitated, even for an hour, he might be irretrievably lost.

The first answer brought to him by the servant who opened the Vicarage door was not encouraging. "Miss Cope was engaged, and could not see Mr. Todd." But the curate dared not allow himself to be put off so easily. "Tell Miss Cope I _must_ see her on business of the most serious importance," he said; and the message was duly carried to the Vicar's daughter. That lady, after a moment's hesitation, felt herself unable any longer to resist enjoying a foretaste of her coming triumph, and ordered Mr. Todd to be admitted.

The interview that followed confirmed the curate's worst fears. He told Miss Cope the whole story, and she flatly refused to believe a word of it. He begged her to go herself to the circus proprietor and his wife for proof of its truth, and she simply laughed in his face. He appealed to her honour to keep the story secret, and she coldly reminded him of the duty that devolved upon her, in her father's absence, of protecting the morals of his congregation.

Then at last, beaten and baffled at all points, the unhappy curate played his final card. He offered the Vicar's daughter the best possible evidence of his sincerity by asking her to become his wife. The effect was magical. It was the first chance of a husband that had ever come to Caroline in her thirty-nine years of life, and she had an inward conviction that it would be the last. The secret she had just learnt was known to no one in the parish but herself, and so, after a brief pretence of further parley to save appearances, she jumped at the offer, and the curate left the Vicarage an engaged man. His last desperate throw had succeeded. He had saved his position and his reputation; but at what a cost he dared not even think.

Within the next day or two, it became evident to all whom he met that there was something very seriously wrong with the Rev. Thomas Todd. His manner became first morose and abstracted, and then wild and eccentric. He was seen very little in the town, and when he did appear, his haggard face, his strange, absent air, and the unmistakable evidences of the profound depression that possessed him, were the objects of general remark. Some of the more charitable expressed a confident opinion that the curate had committed a crime; others decided, with more penetration, that he was going mad. From Miss Cope he kept carefully aloof. It had been arranged at that fatal interview that their engagement should be kept secret until the return of the Vicar, whose sanction must be obtained before the affair could be made public. Miss Cope was aware that the curate had two sermons to prepare in addition to his parish duties--for he would have to preach twice on Sunday owing to her father's absence; so she did not allow his non-appearance at the Vicarage on Friday or Saturday to greatly surprise her.

If she could have seen the way in which the preparation of those sermons was proceeding, she might have found more cause for anxiety. Shut up in his room with some sheets of blank paper before him, the curate sat for hours together, staring vacantly at the wall before him, and occasionally giving vent to a loud, strange laugh. The evening of Saturday passed into night, and still he sat on, looking before him into the darkness with the same vacant stare, and uttering from time to time the same wild, hoarse chuckle.

The light of Sunday morning, streaming into the room, fell upon a weird, dishevelled figure, that still stared fixedly at the wall, and every now and then muttered strange and wholly unclerical words and phrases. Still the hours wore on, until the sun rose high in the heavens, and the bells began to ring for church. Then came a knock at the curate's door. His landlady, surprised by his neglect of the breakfast hour, had been positively alarmed when he showed no sign of heeding the approach of church time. The knock was repeated; and then the clergyman sprang to his feet and unlocked the door.

"Wait a moment," he cried, with a wild laugh. "_Now_ come in!"

The landlady put her head in at the door, and uttered a shriek of horror and amazement. The Rev. Thomas Todd was standing on his head in the middle of the hearthrug.

"God bless us and save us--the poor gentleman's gone clean out of his wits!"

The curate's only reply was a shrill whoop, followed by an agile leap into an upright position, and a wild grab at the terrified lady, whose thirteen stone of solid matronhood he whirled round his head and tossed across the room as if it had been a feather-weight. Then, hatless and unkempt, he tore down stairs into the street, and started at a furious pace in the direction of S. Athanasius.

It was three minutes to eleven, and the last stroke of the clanky church-bell had just died away in a series of unmusical vibrations. The townspeople, in all the added importance of Sunday clothes, gathered in an ever-thickening knot about the gates, greeting one another before they passed on into the church. At that moment, there floated towards them on the breeze a sudden, sharp shout that rooted them to the spot in positive consternation.

"Houp-la! Houp-la! Hey! Hey!! Hey!!!" And in another instant the unfortunate curate, tearing down the road, had flung himself among them and scattered them right and left by a series of vigorous and splendidly-executed somersaults. With a well-directed leap, and a wild cry of "Here we are again!" he vaulted lightly over the church gate, and began to run up the path towards the door, until, at last, the horrified onlookers awoke to the realities of the situation and half-a-dozen sturdy townsmen rushed upon and seized the unhappy man. Then a woman's piercing scream was heard, and the Vicar's daughter, who had just arrived on the scene, fell fainting to the ground.

There was no service at S. Athanasius that morning, and the Rev. Thomas Todd was later on conveyed, still shouting fragments of circus dialogue, to the County Lunatic Asylum. The curate's mind had temporarily given way beneath the strain of the position in which he had found himself placed, and of the horrible future that lay before him, and his insanity had taken the form of an imaginary return to the scenes of his early life. When, some two years later, he was discharged cured, he attached himself to a mission about to start for the South African Coast, and left England without re-visiting Great Wabbleton.

Long afterwards, Miss Caroline Cope, in a burst of confidence, one day related to her special friend, Miss Lavinia Murby, the doctor's daughter, how the Rev. Thomas Todd had proposed to her a few days before his melancholy seizure.

"Ah, my dear, you see he couldn't have been right, even then," was that lady's sympathetic comment.

_People I Have Never Met._

BY SCOTT RANKIN.

ZANGWILL.

"I will show this Anglo-Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I will crush it--not it me. Then some day it will find out its mistake; and it will seize the hem of my coat, and beseech me to be its Rabbi. Then, and only then, shall we have true Judaism in London.

"The folk who compose our picture are children of the Ghetto. If they are not the children, they are at least the grandchildren of the Ghetto."

--"CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO."

[Sidenote: Joseph Hatton on the art of tipping.]

Almost everything has been reduced to an art. You can learn journalism outside a newspaper, playwriting by theory, French without a master. How to succeed in literature and how not; both ways have been laid down for the student. There is scarcely an art or a habit you cannot learn in books. Etiquette, how to make up, stock-jobbing, acting, gardening, and a host of intellectual pursuits, have their rules and regulations; but the mysterious and delicate art of tipping as yet remains unexploited in the social ethics of this much-taught generation. It is high time that the proper method of giving tips should be defined, its laws codified, its many possibilities of error guarded against, and some system set forth whereby the tipper may give the greatest satisfaction to the tipped at the most moderate, if not the least, outlay in current coin of the realm. The art could be illustrated with many examples from the earliest times. Pelagia's tip to Hypatia's father was the dancer's cestus, which was jewelled with precious stones enough to stock the shop of a Bond Street jeweller of our own time. According to the truthful interpretation of the old English days which we find in the drama, the most popular method of tipping was to present your gold in a long, knitted purse, which you threw at the tippee's feet or slapped into the palm of his hand; but this system seems to have lapsed; and no fresh regulation has been established in the unwritten laws of the _douceur_, which goes back even before the days when extravagant and unwilling tips were often enforced with pincers, racks, and other imperative inventions. Monte Cristo gave wonderful tips, and Monte Carlo is lavish to this day. The genius that wrecked Panama has an open hand. Promoters of London companies know how to be liberal. Not much art is required, I believe, to distribute largess of this kind. Nor are certain classes of American aldermen difficult to deal with. The art that should be made most clear is how to pay your host's servants for your host's hospitality; how to show your gratitude to a newspaper man without hurting his _amour propre_; how to meet the requirements of the middleman of life and labour without "giving yourself away"; how to tip the parson when you are married; and, in this connection, one may remark the consolation of dying; the tippee does not trouble you at your own funeral.

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[Sidenote: With reference to waiters, deans, and other public servants.]