Between the Dark and the Daylight Part 36

Mr. Plumber lived in a cottage. It might have not been without its attractions as a home for a newly-married couple, but as a residence for a man of studious habits, possessed of a large and noisy family, it had its disadvantages. It was the curate himself who opened the door.

Directly he did so the vicar became conscious that, within, there was a colourable imitation of pandemonium. Some young gentlemen appeared to be fighting upstairs; other young gentlemen appeared to be rehearsing some unmusical selections of the nature of a Christy Minstrel chorus on the ground floor at the back; somewhere else small children were crying; while occasionally, above the hubbub, were heard the shrill tones of a woman's agitated voice, raised in heartsick--because hopeless,--expostulation. Mr. Plumber seemed to be unconscious of there being anything strange in such discord of sweet sounds. Possibly he had become so used to living in the midst of a riot that it never occurred to him that there was anything in mere uproar for which it might be necessary to apologise. He led the way to his study--a small room at the back of the house, which was in uncomfortable proximity to the Christy Minstrel chorus. Small though the room was, it was insufficiently furnished. As he entered it, the vicar was struck, by no means for the first time, by an unpleasant sense of the contrast which existed between the curate's study and the luxurious apartment which was his study at the vicarage. The vicar seated himself on one of the two chairs which the apartment contained. A few desultory remarks were exchanged. Then Mr. Harding endeavoured to broach the subject which had brought him there. He began a little awkwardly.

"I hope that you know me well enough to be aware, Mr. Plumber, that I am not a person who would wish to thrust myself into the affairs of others."

The curate nodded. He was standing up before the empty fireplace. A tall, sparely-built man, with scanty iron-grey hair, a p.r.o.nounced stoop, and a face which was a tragedy--it said so plainly that he was a man who had abandoned hope. Its careful neatness accentuated the threadbare condition of his clerical costume--it was always a mystery to the vicar how the curate contrived to keep himself so neat, considering his slender resources, and the life of domestic drudgery which he was compelled to lead.

"Are you acquainted with a publication called _Skittles?_"

Mr. Plumber nodded again; Mr. Harding would rather he had spoken. "May I ask if you are a contributor to such a publication?"

"May I inquire why you ask?"

"It is reported in the parish that you are. The parish does not relish the report. And you must know yourself that it is not a paper"--the vicar hesitated--"not a paper with which a gentleman would wish it to be known that he was a.s.sociated."

"Well?"

"Well, without entering into questions of the past, I hope you will give me to understand that, at any rate, in the future, you will not contribute to its pages."

"Why?"

"Is it necessary to explain? Are we not both clergymen?"

"Are you suggesting that a clergyman should pay occasional visits to a debtor's prison rather than contribute to the pages of a comic paper?"

"It is not a question of a comic paper, but of this particular comic paper."

The curate looked intently at the vicar. He had dark eyes which, at times, were curiously full of meaning. Mr. Harding felt that they were very full of meaning then. He so sympathised with the man, so realised the burdens which he had to bear, that he never found himself alone with him without becoming conscious of a sensation which was almost shyness. At that moment, as the curate continued to fixedly regard him, he was not only shy, but ashamed.

"Mr. Harding you are not here of your own initiative."

"That is so. But that will not help you. If you take my advice, of two evils you will choose what I believe to be the lesser."

"And that is?"

"You will have no further connection with this paper."

"Mr. Harding, look here." Going to a cupboard which was in a corner of the room, the curate threw the door wide open. Within were shelves. On the shelves were papers. The cupboard seemed full of them, shelf above shelf. "You see these. They are MSS.--my MSS. They have travelled pretty well all round the world. They have been rejected everywhere. I have paid postage for them which I could very ill afford, only to have them sent back upon my hands, at last, for good. I show them to you merely because I wish you to understand that I did not apply to the editor of _Skittles_ until I had been rejected by practically every other editor the world contains." The Vicar fidgetted on his chair.

"Surely, now that reading has become almost universal, it is always possible to find an opening for good work."

"For good work, possibly. Though, even then, I suspect that the thing is not so easy as you imagine. But mine is not good work. Very often it is not even good hack work, as good hack work goes. I may have been capable of good work once. But the capacity, if it ever existed, has gone--crushed perhaps by the burdens which have crushed me. Nowadays I am only too glad to do any work which will bring in for us a few extra crumbs of bread."

"I sympathise with you, with all my heart."

"Thank you." The curate smiled, the vicar would almost have rather he had cried. "There is one other point. If the paper were a bad paper, in a moral or in a religious sense, under no sense of circ.u.mstances would I consent to do its work or to take its wage. But if any one has told you that it is a bad paper, in that sense, you have been misinformed.

It is simply a cheap so-called humorous journal. Perhaps not over-refined. It is intended for the _olla podrida_. It is printed on poor paper, and the printing is not good. The ill.u.s.trations are not always in the best of taste and are sometimes simply smudges. But looking at the reading matter as a whole, it is probably equal to that which is contained, week after week, in some of the high-priced papers which find admission to every house."

"I am bound to say that sometimes when I have been travelling I have purchased the paper myself, and I have never seen anything in it which could be justly called improper."

"Nor I. I submit, sir, that we curates are already sufficiently cribbed, cabined, and confined. If narrow-minded, non-literary persons are to have the power to forbid our working for decent journals to which they themselves, for some reason, may happen to object, our case is harder still."

The vicar rose from his chair.

"Quite so. There is a great deal in what you say--I quite realise it, Mr. Plumber. The laity are already too much disposed to trample on us clerics. I will think the matter over--think the matter over, Mr.

Plumber. My dear sir, what is that?"

There was a cras.h.i.+ng sound on the floor overhead, which threatened to bring the study ceiling down. It was followed by such a deafening din, as if an Irish faction fight was taking place upstairs, that even the curate seemed to be disturbed.

"Some of the boys have been making themselves a pair of boxing gloves, and I am afraid they are practising with them in their bedroom."

"Oh," said the vicar. That was all he did say, but the "Oh" was eloquent.

"To think," he told himself as he departed, "that a scholar and a gentleman should be compelled to live in a place like that, with a helpless wife and a horde of unruly lads, and should be driven to scribble nonsense for such a rag as _Skittles_ in order to provide himself with the means to keep them all alive--it seems to me that it must be, in some way, a disgrace to the English Church that such things should be."

He not only said this to himself, but, later on, he said it to his wife. His words had weight with Mrs. Harding, but not the sort of weight which he desired. The fact is Mrs. Harding had views of her own on the subject of curates. She held that curates ought not to marry.

Vicars, rectors, and the higher clergy might; but curates, no. For a poor curate to marry was nothing else than a crime. Had she had her way, Mr. Plumber would long ago have vanished from Exdale. But though the vicar was ruled to a considerable extent by his wife, there was a point at which he drew the line. That a man should be turned adrift on to the world to quite starve simply because he was nearly starving already was an idea which actually filled him with indignation.

If he supposed that his interview with Mr. Plumber had resulted in a manner which was likely to appease those of his paris.h.i.+oners who had objections to a curate who wrote for comic papers, he was destined soon to learn his error. The following morning one of his churchwardens paid another visit to the vicarage--the duty-loving Mr. Luxmare. Mr. Harding was conscious of an uncomfortable twinge when that gentleman's name was brought to him; he seemed to be still more uncomfortable when he found himself constrained to meet the warden's eye. The story he had to tell was not only in itself a slightly lame one, its lameness was emphasised by the way in which he told it. It was plain that it was not going to have the effect of inducing Mr. Luxmare to move one hair's breadth from the path which he felt that duty required him to tread.

"Am I to understand, Mr. Harding, that Mr. Plumber, conscious of his offence, has promised to offend no more? In other words, has he undertaken to have no further connection with this off-scouring of the press?"

Mr. Harding put his spectacles on his nose. He took them off again. He fidgetted and fumbled with them with his fingers.

"The fact is, Mr. Luxmare--and this is entirely between ourselves--Mr.

Plumber is in such straitened circ.u.mstances----"

"Quite so. But because a man is a pauper, does that justify him in becoming a thief?"

"Gently, Mr. Luxmare, let us consider our words before we utter them.

Here is no question of anything even distantly approaching to felony.

To be frank with you, I think you are unnecessarily hard on this particular journal. The paper is merely a vulgar paper----"

"And Mr. Plumber is merely an ordained minister of the Established Church. Are we, then, as churchmen, to expect our clergy to encourage, not only pa.s.sively, but, also, actively, the already superabundant vulgarity of the public press?"

The vicar had the worst of it; when he was once more alone he felt that there was no sort of doubt upon that point.

Whether, intentionally or not, Mr. Luxmare managed to convey the impression that, in his opinion, the curate, while pretending to save souls with one hand, was doing his best to destroy them with the other, and that, in that singular course of procedure, he was being aided and abetted by the vicar. Mr. Harding had strong forebodings that the trouble, so far from being ended, was only just beginning. Those forebodings became still stronger when, scarcely an hour after Mr.

Luxmare had left him, Mrs. Harding, entering the study like a pa.s.sable imitation of a hurricane, laid a printed sheet in front of her husband with the air almost of a Jove hurling thunderbolts from the skies.

"Mr. Harding, have you seen that paper?"

It was the unescapable _Skittles_. The vicar groaned in spirit. He regarded it with weary eyes.

"A copy of it now and then, my dear."

"I have just discovered its existence with feelings of horror. That such a thing should be permitted to be is a national disgrace. Mr.

Harding, you will be astounded to learn that the curate of Exdale is one of its chief contributors.