THE PARISH TRILOGY - Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood, The Seaboard Parish & The Vicar's Daughter. George MacDonald
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a window which was open, out upon the terrace, and thence down the steps to the lawn below. The servant had just informed Mrs Oldcastle of my visit when I came near. She drew herself up in her chair, and evidently chose to regard my approach as an intrusion.
"I did not expect a visit from you to-day, Mr Walton, you will allow me to say."
"I am doing Sunday work," I answered. "Will you kindly tell me whether you were in London on Thursday last? But stay, allow me to ask Miss Oldcastle to join us."
Without waiting for answer, I went to Miss Oldcastle, and begged her to come and listen to something in which I wanted her help. She rose courteously though without cordiality, and accompanied me to her mother, who sat with perfect rigidity, watching us.
"Again let me ask," I said, "if you were in London on Thursday."
Though I addressed the old lady, the answer came from her daughter.
"Yes, we were."
"Were you in—-& Co.'s, in—-Street?"
But now before Miss Oldcastle could reply, her mother interposed.
"Are we charged with shoplifting, Mr Walton? Really, one is not accustomed to such cross-questioning—except from a lawyer."
"Have patience with me for a moment," I returned. "I am not going to be mysterious for more than two or three questions. Please tell me whether you were in that shop or not."
"I believe we were," said the mother.
"Yes, certainly," said the daughter.
"Did you buy anything?"
"No. We—" Miss Oldcastle began.
"Not a word more," I exclaimed eagerly. "Come with me at once."
"What DO you mean, Mr Walton?" said the mother, with a sort of cold indignation, while the daughter looked surprised, but said nothing.
"I beg your pardon for my impetuosity; but much is in your power at this moment. The son of one of my parishioners has come home in trouble. His father, Thomas Weir—"
"Ah!" said Mrs Oldcastle, in a tone considerably at strife with refinement. But I took no notice.
"His father will not believe his story. The lad thinks you were the ladies in serving whom he got into trouble. I am so confident he tells the truth, that I want Miss Oldcastle to be so kind as to accompany me to Weir's house—"
"Really, Mr Walton, I am astonished at your making such a request!" exclaimed Mrs Oldcastle, with suitable emphasis on every salient syllable, while her white face flushed with anger. "To ask Miss Oldcastle to accompany you to the dwelling of the ringleader of all the canaille of the neighbourhood!"
"It is for the sake of justice," I interposed.
"That is no concern of ours. Let them fight it out between them, I am sure any trouble that comes of it is no more than they all deserve. A low family—men and women of them."
"I assure you, I think very differently."
"I daresay you do."
"But neither your opinion nor mine has anything to do with the matter."
Here I turned to Miss Oldcastle and went on—
"It is a chance which seldom occurs in one's life, Miss Oldcastle—a chance of setting wrong right by a word; and as a minister of the gospel of truth and love, I beg you to assist me with your presence to that end."
I would have spoken more strongly, but I knew that her word given to me would be enough without her presence. At the same time, I felt not only that there would be a propriety in her taking a personal interest in the matter, but that it would do her good, and tend to create a favour towards each other in some of my flock between whom at present there seemed to be nothing in common.
But at my last words, Mrs Oldcastle rose to her feet no longer red—now whiter than her usual whiteness with passion.
"You dare to persist! You take advantage of your profession to persist in dragging my daughter into a vile dispute between mechanics of the lowest class—against the positive command of her only parent! Have you no respect for her position in society?—for her sex? MISTER WALTON, you act in a manner unworthy of your cloth."
I had stood looking in her eyes with as much self-possession as I could muster. And I believe I should have borne it all quietly, but for that last word.
If there is one epithet I hate more than another, it is that execrable word CLOTH—used for the office of a clergyman. I have no time to set forth its offence now. If my reader cannot feel it, I do not care to make him feel it. Only I am sorry to say it overcame my temper.
"Madam," I said, "I owe nothing to my tailor. But I owe God my whole being, and my neighbour all I can do for him. 'He that loveth not his brother is a murderer,' or murderess, as the case may be."
At that word MURDERESS, her face became livid, and she turned away without reply. By this time her daughter was half way to the house. She followed her. And here was I left to go home, with the full knowledge that, partly from trying to gain too much, and partly from losing my temper, I had at best but a mangled and unsatisfactory testimony to carry back to Thomas Weir. Of course I walked away—round the end of the house and down the avenue; and the farther I went the more mortified I grew. It was not merely the shame of losing my temper, though that was a shame—and with a woman too, merely because she used a common epithet!—but I saw that it must appear very strange to the carpenter that I was not able to give a more explicit account of some sort, what I had learned not being in the least decisive in the matter. It only amounted to this, that Mrs and Miss Oldcastle were in the shop on the very day on which Weir was dismissed. It proved that so much of what he had told me was correct—nothing more. And if I tried to better the matter by explaining how I had offended them, would it not deepen the very hatred I had hoped to overcome? In fact, I stood convicted before the tribunal of my own conscience of having lost all the certain good of my attempt, in part at least from the foolish desire to produce a conviction OF Weir rather than IN Weir, which should be triumphant after a melodramatic fashion, and—must I confess it?—should PUNISH him for not believing in his son when I did; forgetting in my miserable selfishness that not to believe in his son was an unspeakably worse punishment in itself than any conviction or consequent shame brought about by the most overwhelming of stage-effects. I assure my reader, I felt humiliated.
Now I think humiliation is a very different condition of mind from humility. Humiliation no man can desire: it is shame and torture. Humility is the true, right condition of humanity—peaceful, divine. And yet a man may gladly welcome humiliation when it comes, if he finds that with fierce shock and rude revulsion it has turned him right round, with his face away from pride, whither he was travelling, and towards humility, however far away upon the horizon's verge she may sit waiting for him. To me, however, there came a gentle and not therefore less effective dissolution of the bonds both of pride and humiliation; and before Weir and I met, I was nearly as anxious to heal his wounded spirit, as I was to work justice for his son.
I was walking slowly, with burning cheek and downcast eyes, the one of conflict, the other of shame and defeat, away from the great house, which seemed to be staring after me down the avenue with all its window-eyes, when suddenly my deliverance came. At a somewhat sharp turn, where the avenue changed into a winding road, Miss Oldcastle stood waiting for me, the glow of haste upon her cheek, and the firmness of resolution upon her lips. Once more I was startled by her sudden presence, but she did not smile.
"Mr Walton, what do you want me to do? I would not willing refuse, if it is, as you say, really my duty to go with you."
"I cannot be positive about that," I answered. "I think I put it too strongly. But it would be a considerable advantage, I think, if you WOULD go with me and let me ask you a few questions in the presence of Thomas Weir. It will have more effect if I am able to tell him that I have only learned as yet that you were in the shop on that day, and refer him to you for the rest."
"I will go."
"A thousand