Doctor Thorne, Anthony Trollope [best book reader .txt] 📗

CHAPTER XXXII

Mr Oriel

 

I must now, shortly—as shortly as it is in my power to do

it—introduce a new character to my reader. Mention has been made

of the rectory of Greshamsbury; but, hitherto, no opportunity has

offered itself for the Rev Caleb Oriel to come upon the boards.

 

Mr Oriel was a man of family and fortune, who, having gone to Oxford

with the usual views of such men, had become inoculated there with

very High-Church principles, and had gone into orders influenced by a

feeling of enthusiastic love for the priesthood. He was by no means

an ascetic—such men, indeed, seldom are—nor was he a devotee. He

was a man well able, and certainly willing, to do the work of a

parish clergyman; and when he became one, he was efficacious in his

profession. But it may perhaps be said of him, without speaking

slanderously, that his original calling, as a young man, was rather

to the outward and visible signs of religion than to its inward and

spiritual graces.

 

He delighted in lecterns and credence-tables, in services at dark

hours of winter mornings when no one would attend, in high waistcoats

and narrow white neckties, in chanted services and intoned prayers,

and in all the paraphernalia of Anglican formalities which have given

such offence to those of our brethren who live in daily fear of the

scarlet lady. Many of his friends declared that Mr Oriel would sooner

or later deliver himself over body and soul to that lady; but there

was no need to fear for him: for though sufficiently enthusiastic to

get out of bed at five a.m. on winter mornings—he did so, at least,

all through his first winter at Greshamsbury—he was not made of

that stuff which is necessary for a staunch, burning, self-denying

convert. It was not in him to change his very sleek black coat for a

Capuchin’s filthy cassock, nor his pleasant parsonage for some dirty

hole in Rome. And it was better so both for him and others. There are

but few, very few, to whom it is given to be a Huss, a Wickliffe,

or a Luther; and a man gains but little by being a false Huss, or a

false Luther,—and his neighbours gain less.

 

But certain lengths in self-privation Mr Oriel did go; at any rate,

for some time. He eschewed matrimony, imagining that it became him

as a priest to do so. He fasted rigorously on Fridays; and the

neighbours declared that he scourged himself.

 

Mr Oriel was, as it has been said, a man of fortune; that is to say,

when he came of age he was master of thirty thousand pounds. When he

took it into his head to go into the Church, his friends bought for

him the next presentation to the living at Greshamsbury; and, a year

after his ordination, the living falling in, Mr Oriel brought himself

and his sister to the rectory.

 

Mr Oriel soon became popular. He was a dark-haired, good-looking

man, of polished manners, agreeable in society, not given to monkish

austerities—except in the matter of Fridays—nor yet to the

Low-Church severity of demeanour. He was thoroughly a gentleman,

good-humoured, inoffensive, and sociable. But he had one fault: he

was not a marrying man.

 

On this ground there was a feeling against him so strong as almost at

one time to throw him into serious danger. It was not only that he

should be sworn against matrimony in his individual self—he whom

fate had made so able to sustain the weight of a wife and family;

but what an example he was setting! If other clergymen all around

should declare against wives and families, what was to become of the

country? What was to be done in the rural districts? The religious

observances, as regards women, of a Brigham Young were hardly so bad

as this!

 

There were around Greshamsbury very many unmarried ladies—I believe

there generally are so round most such villages. From the great house

he did not receive much annoyance. Beatrice was then only just on the

verge of being brought out, and was not perhaps inclined to think

very much of a young clergyman; and Augusta certainly intended to fly

at higher game. But there were the Miss Athelings, the daughters of

a neighbouring clergyman, who were ready to go all lengths with him

in High-Church matters, except as that one tremendously papal step

of celibacy; and the two Miss Hesterwells, of Hesterwell Park, the

younger of whom boldly declared her purpose of civilising the savage;

and Mrs Opie Green, a very pretty widow, with a very pretty jointure,

who lived in a very pretty house about a mile from Greshamsbury, and

who declared her opinion that Mr Oriel was quite right in his view of

a clergyman’s position. How could a woman, situated as she was, have

the comfort of a clergyman’s attention if he were to be regarded

just as any other man? She could now know in what light to regard

Mr Oriel, and would be able without scruple to avail herself of his

zeal. So she did avail herself of his zeal,—and that without any

scruple.

 

And then there was Miss Gushing,—a young thing. Miss Gushing had a

great advantage over the other competitors for the civilisation of

Mr Oriel, namely, in this—that she was able to attend his morning

services. If Mr Oriel was to be reached in any way, it was probable

that he might be reached in this way. If anything could civilise

him, this would do it. Therefore, the young thing, through all one

long, tedious winter, tore herself from her warm bed, and was to

be seen—no, not seen, but heard—entering Mr Oriel’s church at

six o’clock. With indefatigable assiduity the responses were made,

uttered from under a close bonnet, and out of a dark corner, in an

enthusiastically feminine voice, through the whole winter.

 

Nor did Miss Gushing altogether fail in her object. When a

clergyman’s daily audience consists of but one person, and that

person is a young lady, it is hardly possible that he should not

become personally intimate with her; hardly possible that he should

not be in some measure grateful. Miss Gushing’s responses came from

her with such fervour, and she begged for ghostly advice with such

eager longing to have her scruples satisfied, that Mr Oriel had

nothing for it but to give way to a certain amount of civilisation.

 

By degrees it came to pass that Miss Gushing could never get her

final prayer said, her shawl and boa adjusted, and stow away her

nice new Prayer-Book with the red letters inside, and the cross on

the back, till Mr Oriel had been into his vestry and got rid of

his surplice. And then they met at the church-porch, and naturally

walked together till Mr Oriel’s cruel gateway separated them. The

young thing did sometimes think that, as the parson’s civilisation

progressed, he might have taken the trouble to walk with her as far

as Mr Yates Umbleby’s hall door; but she had hope to sustain her, and

a firm resolve to merit success, even though she might not attain it.

 

“Is it not ten thousand pities,” she once said to him, “that none

here should avail themselves of the inestimable privilege which your

coming has conferred upon us? Oh, Mr Oriel, I do so wonder at it! To

me it is so delightful! The morning service in the dark church is so

beautiful, so touching!”

 

“I suppose they think it is a bore getting up so early,” said Mr

Oriel.

 

“Ah, a bore!” said Miss Gushing, in an enthusiastic tone of

depreciation. “How insensate they must be! To me it gives a new charm

to life. It quiets one for the day; makes one so much fitter for

one’s daily trials and daily troubles. Does it not, Mr Oriel?”

 

“I look upon morning prayer as an imperative duty, certainly.”

 

“Oh, certainly, a most imperative duty; but so delicious at the same

time. I spoke to Mrs Umbleby about it, but she said she could not

leave the children.”

 

“No: I dare say not,” said Mr Oriel.

 

“And Mr Umbleby said his business kept him up so late at night.”

 

“Very probably. I hardly expect the attendance of men of business.”

 

“But the servants might come, mightn’t they, Mr Oriel?”

 

“I fear that servants seldom can have time for daily prayers in

church.”

 

“Oh, ah, no; perhaps not.” And then Miss Gushing began to bethink

herself of whom should be composed the congregation which it must be

presumed that Mr Oriel wished to see around him. But on this matter

he did not enlighten her.

 

Then Miss Gushing took to fasting on Fridays, and made some futile

attempts to induce her priest to give her the comfort of confessional

absolution. But, unfortunately, the zeal of the master waxed cool

as that of the pupil waxed hot; and, at last, when the young thing

returned to Greshamsbury from an autumn excursion which she had made

with Mrs Umbleby to Weston-super-Mare, she found that the delicious

morning services had died a natural death. Miss Gushing did not on

that account give up the game, but she was bound to fight with no

particular advantage in her favour.

 

Miss Oriel, though a good Churchwoman, was by no means a convert to

her brother’s extremist views, and perhaps gave but scanty credit

to the Gushings, Athelings, and Opie Greens for the sincerity of

their religion. But, nevertheless, she and her brother were staunch

friends; and she still hoped to see the day when he might be induced

to think that an English parson might get through his parish work

with the assistance of a wife better than he could do without such

feminine encumbrance. The girl whom she selected for his bride was

not the young thing, but Beatrice Gresham.

 

And at last it seemed probable to Mr Oriel’s nearest friends that he

was in a fair way to be overcome. Not that he had begun to make love

to Beatrice, or committed himself by the utterance of any opinion as

to the propriety of clerical marriages; but he daily became looser

about his peculiar tenets, raved less immoderately than heretofore as

to the atrocity of the Greshamsbury church pews, and was observed to

take some opportunities of conversing alone with Beatrice. Beatrice

had always denied the imputation—this had usually been made by Mary

in their happy days—with vehement asseverations of anger; and Miss

Gushing had tittered, and expressed herself as supposing that great

people’s daughters might be as barefaced as they pleased.

 

All this had happened previous to the great Greshamsbury feud. Mr

Oriel gradually got himself into a