The church was of old Norman architecture; low and massive outside:
inside, of vast space, only a quarter of which was filled on
ordinary Sundays. The walls were disfigured by numerous tablets of
black and white marble intermixed, and the usual ornamentation of
that style of memorial as erected in the last century, of weeping
willows, urns, and drooping figures, with here and there a ship in
full sail, or an anchor, where the seafaring idea prevalent through
the place had launched out into a little originality. There was no
wood-work, the church had been stripped of that, most probably when
the neighbouring monastery had been destroyed. There were large
square pews, lined with green baize, with the names of the families
of the most flourishing ship-owners painted white on the doors;
there were pews, not so large, and not lined at all, for the farmers
and shopkeepers of the parish; and numerous heavy oaken benches
which, by the united efforts of several men, might be brought within
earshot of the pulpit. These were being removed into the most
convenient situations when Molly and Sylvia entered the church, and
after two or three whispered sentences they took their seats on one
of these.
The vicar of Monkshaven was a kindly, peaceable old man, hating
strife and troubled waters above everything. He was a vehement Tory
in theory, as became his cloth in those days. He had two bugbears to
fear--the French and the Dissenters. It was difficult to say of
which he had the worst opinion and the most intense dread. Perhaps
he hated the Dissenters most, because they came nearer in contact
with him than the French; besides, the French had the excuse of
being Papists, while the Dissenters might have belonged to the
Church of England if they had not been utterly depraved. Yet in
practice Dr Wilson did not object to dine with Mr. Fishburn, who was
a personal friend and follower of Wesley, but then, as the doctor
would say, 'Wesley was an Oxford man, and that makes him a
gentleman; and he was an ordained minister of the Church of England,
so that grace can never depart from him.' But I do not know what
excuse he would have alleged for sending broth and vegetables to old
Ralph Thompson, a rabid Independent, who had been given to abusing
the Church and the vicar, from a Dissenting pulpit, as long as ever
he could mount the stairs. However, that inconsistency between Dr
Wilson's theories and practice was not generally known in
Monkshaven, so we have nothing to do with it.
Dr Wilson had had a very difficult part to play, and a still more
difficult sermon to write, during this last week. The Darley who had
been killed was the son of the vicar's gardener, and Dr Wilson's
sympathies as a man had been all on the bereaved father's side. But
then he had received, as the oldest magistrate in the neighbourhood,
a letter from the captain of the Aurora, explanatory and
exculpatory. Darley had been resisting the orders of an officer in
his Majesty's service. What would become of due subordination and
loyalty, and the interests of the service, and the chances of
beating those confounded French, if such conduct as Darley's was to
be encouraged? (Poor Darley! he was past all evil effects of human
encouragement now!) So the vicar mumbled hastily over a sermon on the text, 'In the
midst of life we are in death'; which might have done as well for a
baby cut off in a convulsion-fit as for the strong man shot down
with all his eager blood hot within him, by men as hot-blooded as
himself. But once when the old doctor's eye caught the up-turned,
straining gaze of the father Darley, seeking with all his soul to
find a grain of holy comfort in the chaff of words, his conscience
smote him. Had he nothing to say that should calm anger and revenge
with spiritual power? no breath of the comforter to soothe repining
into resignation? But again the discord between the laws of man and
the laws of Christ stood before him; and he gave up the attempt to
do more than he was doing, as beyond his power. Though the hearers
went away as full of anger as they had entered the church, and some
with a dull feeling of disappointment as to what they had got there,
yet no one felt anything but kindly towards the old vicar. His
simple, happy life led amongst them for forty years, and open to all
men in its daily course; his sweet-tempered, cordial ways; his
practical kindness, made him beloved by all; and neither he nor they
thought much or cared much for admiration of his talents. Respect
for his office was all the respect he thought of; and that was
conceded to him from old traditional and hereditary association. In
looking back to the last century, it appears curious to see how
little our ancestors had the power of putting two things together,
and perceiving either the discord or harmony thus produced. Is it
because we are farther off from those times, and have, consequently,
a greater range of vision? Will our descendants have a wonder about
us, such as we have about the inconsistency of our forefathers, or a
surprise at our blindness that we do not perceive that, holding such
and such opinions, our course of action must be so and so, or that
the logical consequence of particular opinions must be convictions
which at present we hold in abhorrence? It seems puzzling to look
back on men such as our vicar, who almost held the doctrine that the
King could do no wrong, yet were ever ready to talk of the glorious
Revolution, and to abuse the Stuarts for having entertained the same
doctrine, and tried to put it in practice. But such discrepancies
ran through good men's lives in those days. It is well for us that
we live at the present time, when everybody is logical and
consistent. This little discussion must be taken in place of Dr
Wilson's sermon, of which no one could remember more than the text
half an hour after it was delivered. Even the doctor himself had the
recollection of the words he had uttered swept out of his mind, as,
having doffed his gown and donned his surplice, he came out of the
dusk of his vestry and went to the church-door, looking into the
broad light which came upon the plain of the church-yard on the
cliffs; for the sun had not yet set, and the pale moon was slowly
rising through the silvery mist that obscured the distant moors.
There was a thick, dense crowd, all still and silent, looking away
from the church and the vicar, who awaited the bringing of the dead.
They were watching the slow black line winding up the long steps,
resting their heavy burden here and there, standing in silent groups
at each landing-place; now lost to sight as a piece of broken,
overhanging ground intervened, now emerging suddenly nearer; and
overhead the great church bell, with its mediaeval inscription,
familiar to the vicar, if to no one else who heard it, I to the
grave do summon all, kept on its heavy booming monotone, with which
no other sound from land or sea, near or distant, intermingled,
except the cackle of the geese on some far-away farm on the moors,
as they were coming home to roost; and that one noise from so great
a distance seemed only to deepen the stillness. Then there was a
little movement in the crowd; a little pushing from side to side, to
make a path for the corpse and its bearers--an aggregate of the
fragments of room.