Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
An Edifying Sunday.
To account for the remarks of Mr Smeeth and of our heroine, it, is necessary to shift the scene back to the previous Sunday afternoon, and the parish of Dulham. Mr Smeeth was the incumbent of the little village of Flatton, and having no afternoon service of his own, had made an appointment with Athelstan Lockstable to walk over and hear Mr Bristley’s discourse, which was greatly in vogue in the county on account of its polemical character. To hear the articles of the dominant creed pulled to pieces by innuendo was an intellectual pastime calculated almost to make an English Sunday lively, especially as, in a place like Dulham, church services were almost wholly useless for the purpose of displaying new mantles and head dress. Consequently Mr Bristley became so popular a preacher, that in order to save himself the need of replying to the many letters and postcards he received inquiring whether he would preach on such and such a Sunday, he hit upon the device of hoisting a white flag in his garden when he was not absent from home, which bore on it his crest and motto in black and red, a bristling porcupine astride of a sword (we do not attempt heraldic terms), and underneath, a scroll in the original Greek, ‘It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.’ When this flag was up, the neighbourhood knew there would be an afternoon lecture next Sunday.
Our two gentlemen took a footpath to Dulham lying across some wide flat pastures, divided, not by hedgerows but by wet ditches of considerable depth, everyone of which was filled with a thick crop of tall marsh reeds, that rustled gently as they bowed to the breeze.
‘Nice grazing lands,’ observed the parson. ‘Very different from what I remember them some five-and-thirty years ago. None of these ditches cut, and half the place a swamp. Capital sport for the gun, plenty of snipe, ducks too, in hard frosts; but as for farm stock—bless you!’
‘Ah, and even now these rushes thrive well in their close quarters,’ said Mr Lockstable, the path leading them at the moment by a plank and rail across one of the largest cuttings. ‘They look, to my fancy, as if they liked their new place better than spreading wild about pools and moss.’
‘Curious now you should think of that!’ exclaimed Mr Smeeth, halting. ‘The very same idea struck Bristley when he and I passed this way not long ago, and it gave rise to one of his original speculative notions!’
‘What was that?’
‘He said that the case of the rushes in their ditches is an analogue of cosmic economy. Just as these rushes do better for being confined to a set place where they make no waste, so various excesses of human nature which, if allowed to run riot through society, are felt as intolerable, do, when grappled with and organised, become not only harmless but positively useful. Under this conception, the soul has been aptly called a garden, and thus perhaps a key may be supplied to the fable of the garden of Eden. Anyhow, under this view, the phenomenon of the existence of evil, which has been such a stumbling-block to many deep thinkers endeavouring to vindicate belief in a supreme being and divine justice, may be explained and described as wasted and disproportioned good. Put any evil, any kind of suffering, mental or bodily, in its proper place and its right proportions in relation to its environment, and it will at once cease to be felt as an evil—it will have its use. Of course the practical difficulty for us short-sighted and feeble mortals is to find the conditions required; but however long a time may elapse before we can do so, they do exist somewhere, and will eventually be found. It is very simple, meanwhile—any child may comprehend it—when we feel ourselves puzzled to account for the evil that is in the world, to have the answer ready that evil is good misplaced. Certainly, to explain is not to remove it: still mere explanation is a satisfaction to the intellect.’
‘That’s Bristley’s idea, is it?’ said Mr Lockstable. ‘Well, it’s clear enough, I will say. And though I don’t go in for being a thinker myself, I’ve heard clever people say that evil is a mystery beyond them.’
‘They make it more beyond them than it need be, by not going the right way to work. They begin to puzzle their heads as to the cause of evil, without having first inquired into its naturve. But that’s all wrong; before we ask why it is, we should first ask what it is. The what goes some way toward explaining the why.’
‘No doubt.’
‘Great truths show their forms behind this small one,’ resumed Mr Smeeth. ‘It is manifest that a divine universe or a universal deity—it matters not much which you say—must include, not merely oppose, the phenomenon of evil. To set up a god and a devil boxing at each other across a gulf, is childish. You may have—and we do have— antagonism between partial and relative good on the one hand and partial and relative evil on the other. But it is obvious that there cannot be antagonism between universal good and universal evil, or you would postulate two universes, which is a contradiction in terms,—as much a contradiction as it would be to say that two and two make more or less than four.’
‘Frankly, Smeeth, you begin to make me a little groggy. Gods and devils are not much in my line; and of the two, I rather prefer the second. But there! the bell’s stopped; we shall be late for the fun.’
And so they found it.
‘All seats full, sir,’ said the old sexton at the church porch, ‘twenty minutes before service, and very little standing-room now. You’re welcome to my corner, gentlemen, an you care to stand there!’
They managed, however, to edge far enough into the crowd to be within hearing, and what they heard was a discourse on the text ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians,’ wherein the apostle was dexterously likened to ‘an upstart individual from the Cannibal Islands,’ who might be imagined to come into Dulham church where they were now assembled, and begin to denounce the Christian worship.
No hard epithets were used, but the congregation nevertheless left their places when it was over, under the vague impression that the goddess was sacrilegiously wronged, and that the missionary of the Lord was an ill-conditioned cur. This was nothing unusual nor unexpected; it was the sort of thing they came to hear, or four-fifths of them would have stayed away.
The people streamed out; in due course the vicarage party appeared, and each shook hands with the two friends in the churchyard.
‘How do you do, Miss Newman?’ said Lockstable. ‘What a pretty voluntary you played us out with! Was it an impromptu?’
‘Partly; a few variations of an old hymn.’ Then gliding up to him, she whispered,—‘‘King of the Cannibal Islands,’ didn’t you recognise it?’
‘Haw! haw! haw!’ he roared, with a slap on his thigh. ‘Dash my wig, Miss Newman, that’s good, by Jove!’
‘Let me introduce you to my friend Rose Dimpleton, Mr Lockstable,’ said Lesbia, to create a diversion. ‘She is fond of music.’
The new acquaintances bowed, but felt a little embarrassed what to say to each other, so, as soon as politeness allowed, Mr Lockstable again addressed Lesbia,—
‘Well, and how’s the bicycle? You’ve not been out on it to-day, I see,’ observing that Lesbia was not in knicker costume, but dressed in a frock of rich material and peculiar cut, with a hat to match.
‘No,’ said she, ‘I’m not got up for it to-day; in fact, I don’t ride on Sundays just about here. Besides, my machine is laid up for the moment; some grit or rust has got into the bearings, and I don’t quite know how to take them out; I should like to see a machinist, and I’m afraid there’s hardly one in Frogmore; yet there should be, because the bicycling men—’
‘Just so, there’s a man they employ, a very clever one said to be; ironmonger and blacksmith combined, and good at repairing sewing-machines, bicycles, and what not. He’s not been there long,—came last summer, I think.’
‘Indeed! pray what’s his address?’
‘He lives in the High Street, third or fourth corner on the right after the railway bridge, and his name’s eh—ah—um—let me see—stupid I am—what the deuce is the fellow’s name?’ And Mr Lockstable lapsed into silence and study.
The vicar, who had ceased talking to another acquaintance when his ear caught remarks which so much interested his niece as the subject of her disabled bicycle, looked down, biting his lip; while pious Miss Dimpleton turned a sharp frown upon Athelstan, which had no more effect in disturbing his reverie than if he had taken opium.
‘And so you’re to be confirmed next month, I understand, dear,’ said Mrs Bristley, in a soothing tone, wishing to relieve the young lady from the impression made by Mr Lockstable’s invocations.
‘Yes, I hope so; I’m very late, I know; I ought to have been confirmed three years ago, only I could never feel prepared for it. That reminds me—while I think of it—since Mr Bristley is so kind, and papa likes me to talk to him sometimes, there are a few questions about the New Testament history in which I am shamefully ignorant, and if it would not be intruding upon his time—’
‘Certainly, certainly, my dear Miss Dimpleton,’ said the vicar, coming forward. ‘Pray ask me whatever you like; I shall be most happy to be of use to you. Does anything occur to you which I can answer now, or would you rather come and see me at another time?’
‘Thanks, very much, perhaps that would the best, though indeed, while I think of it, there was just one question I should like to ask, and if—’
‘Ask it, by all means,’ said the vicar.
‘Well then,’ she said timidly, ‘which of the Apostles was it who—’
‘Bummincsy!’ roared Mr Lockstable, with a vivid stare into her face and a slap on his thigh that was heard by the furthest of the departing congregation. ‘Bummingby, of course, of course! Who should it be but Bummingby? Bummingby, Bummingby, of course! That’s your chappie, my beauty!’ still at Rose Dimpleton, with another but gentler slap on his thigh.
Poor Miss Dimpleton became white and then crimson, and stood rooted to the spot. The two clergymen turned their backs and covered their faces with both hands in suppressed convulsions; while Lesbia leant against a tree and screamed unrestrainedly. The other ladies choked in their pocket-handkerchiefs; several of the hindermost of the vanishing congregation turned round with a smile at Lesbie’s boisterous merriment. Even Fidgfumblasquidiot, who with her mother was among the last, looked back over her shoulder for ghosts, and then laughed outright.
‘Are you clean out of your mind, Lockstable?’ asked the vicar, as soon as he could speak. ‘The name of an apostle—Bummingby!’
‘Aw no—not an apostle,’ drawled Mr Lockstable, with the utmost composure; ‘not an apostle, bless you! The ironmonger at Frogmore, who can furbish up Miss Newman’s bicycle.
‘Oh, I understand,’ said the vicar, with a bow. ‘The explanation was needed, and is satisfactory.’
‘You have nearly killed poor Miss Dimpleton,’ said Mr Smeeth.
‘Now, Lesbie, hold up, can’t you—you'll hurt yourself if you go on like that,’ remonstrated her uncle, though with difficulty commanding his own countenance.
The young girl made no answer, but still clung to the tree with her mouth wide open, and her eyes invisible.
‘Sorry to have spoken out of season, Miss Dimpleton, apologised Athelstan; ‘but, fact is, we were at cross purposes. You were thinking about the Bible, I was thinking about the bicycle; that’s how the mistake arose.’
‘And pray, sir, which do you consider is the more fitting subject to think about when just out of church on Sunday? she asked sternly.
‘Why, fact is, I can’t ride a bicycle, myself; I suppose the Bible is,’ he said timidly; ‘but, fact is, I’m not much of a Bible man either—at least—what the mischief—excuse me, I’ve such an infernal habit of speaking out my thoughts—what I mean is—only I’m demd if I can ever make myself clear—’
Lesbia, perceiving his discomfiture, and having laughed herself out, came to the rescue.
‘Really ’m much obliged for your information, Mr Lockstable. I shall most certainly get Mr Bummingby to overhaul my machine. There is no fear of my forgetting his name. Now, Rose, are you inclined for a walk with us?