Chapter IV: “How very hard it is to be a Christian! Hard for you and me!”

ROBERT BROWNING.

“Now, my dear Mr. Ogden,” said Mrs. Fordington as they drove home after the Mothers’ Meeting, “we shall find that young Mitchell there to-night. A confirmed Ritualist, and a most bad-tempered young man, and rather handsome, which is so dangerous, with a young niece in the house; and I should so like you to take him down a bit. You know my husband—he is too tolerant, far too tolerant—and I can assure you he won’t say a word, though he has told me he dislikes incense, and wouldn’t know how to put on a chasuble if he tried!”

Mr. Ogden could not quite follow all his neighbour said—the fly jolted rather—but he caught the gist of it. “I will endeavour,” he said, “to expose the young man’s ignorance.”

“No one could do it better, I am sure,” said Mrs. Fordington. Mr. Ogden looked a little suspicious. “You have such a penetrating mind,” she went on, “and such a grasp of truth.”

Mr. Ogden looked as if he had, as if, in fact, he would have closed his hand on truth, grasped it to fragments, and never parted with the pieces. “I will uphold the truth,” he assured her, “the Evangelical truth,” he added rather hastily, as if it were the only safe brand, and all imitations fraudulent.

Mrs. Fordington felt that the truth would be all right then; nor did either of them think that a truth, not capable of standing firm by itself, might be a shallow, superficial truth, or perhaps not a truth at all, only a plausible imitation.

Daphne wore a beautiful dinner dress. She had a lovely neck and shoulders, even her aunt was surprised—though she was much irritated by her appearance. She herself was dressed in black trimmed with blue, a good deal of blue.

“My dear child,” she said, when she had passed her large, hard cheek to Daphne, “we dress very simply here. Let me introduce you to our neighbour, Mr. Ogden, and to my husband’s colleague—Mr. Mitchell. I hope you are not tired, dear, after your journey?”

Mr. Mitchell was dark, and undeniably good-looking. He was muscular and athletic, and Daphne also thought he must be quite six foot. He had deep blue eyes that turned almost black when he was angry; at least the young ladies of Overham said so, and they had watched them very carefully.

At Overham the curate’s eyes were tremendously important. They backed his sermons wonderfully, and lent force to all his appeals. They even sold pincushions at bazaars, made by other young ladies. There was no end to their general utility, and it is to his credit that he knew nothing at all about them.

Daphne talked to Mr. Ogden till dinner-time. She asked him how to teach at Sunday School. He told her, and found her most intelligent. “Of course there _are_ other methods besides mine,” he modestly declared.

“But your’s are so clear!” said Daphne, “and so interesting, and that’s a very unusual combination for Sunday School teaching—isn’t it?”

Mr. Ogden found her quite exhilarating to talk to. They went down to dinner. Mrs. Fordington was an economical housekeeper. She gave you plenty to eat, perhaps more than you fancied, but she economized in quality. Sometimes her husband wished it was the other way round, but he never said so. He often frowned when Dora ate no breakfast. Mrs. Fordington frowned too, when she noticed it; but _she_ frowned at Dora.

“What kind of a meeting did you have this afternoon, my dear?” asked her husband.

“We really did very well, I think. Twenty women turned up, and were quite attentive. We had tea afterwards. Of course the poor things are sadly ignorant, but at any rate I spoke plainly to them. I tried to make them understand their duties.”

“And what are their duties?” asked Daphne innocently.

Her aunt looked annoyed. “When you are a mother, Daphne, you will understand,” she said coldly.

“But then, why don’t they understand?” Daphne persisted; “they are mothers, aren’t they—or they wouldn’t—meet?”

“You are quite silly, Daphne; because they are uneducated, ignorant women, of course. Their duties——” Mrs. Fordington paused. (Daphne felt relieved. The curate really had a sense of humour—he was smiling.) “Their duties,” the Vicar’s wife repeated, “are to make their homes happy and comfortable, to keep their children healthy and tidy, and to be good examples and kindly companions to their husbands.”

“Well, for uneducated, ignorant women, that must be a lot for them to learn,” said Daphne smiling. “You must forgive me for asking silly questions, please. It seems so very funny to be in a parish: I don’t believe I ever dined with a clergyman before; if I did he was lost somewhere among the others. You must excuse me if I make mistakes.”

“Miss Fordington,” said Mr. Mitchell quietly, “clergymen are quite like other men, you know.”

“Except,” said Mr. Ogden, seeing his opportunity, “what we may call those sexless creatures, modern Ritualists.”

There was a pause, but before the bomb shell had had time to go off, or Mr. Mitchell to accept the sudden and sweeping challenge of his adversary, Mr. Fordington gently intervened. He hoped, he said, that Mr. Ogden had not forgotten to make him one of his especial flies.

“I go in for trout fishing,” he explained to his niece, “and Ogden goes in for making flies, better than nature, and twice as natural. Of course May is our month, but one ought to get ready in April.”

Her uncle landed his fish, and for ten minutes Mr. Ogden talked about flies, but the danger was not over yet.

“I noticed,” said Mrs. Fordington, “that when I went to church this morning to do the flowers, it was already open. Was it an oversight, or, if not, may I ask for what reason it can possibly have been open at that hour of the morning?”

The curate looked uncomfortable. The Vicar again intervened. “But if you wanted to do the church vases, my dear,” he said mildly, “you must have been pleased to find the door open.”

“I had the keys with me,” said his wife coldly, “and that is not the point, Wilfred: _why_ was it open?”

“Do you not think, Mrs. Fordington,” said the curate bravely, “that it is a good thing to have the church open, all day if possible, so that people may go into it if they choose?”

“Why should people go into it, Mr. Mitchell?” asked the Vicar’s wife severely, glancing across the table to Mr. Ogden.

“They might wish to pray,” said the young man, hating himself for what looked like cant. Daphne liked him for saying it.

Mr. Ogden snorted. “And why, sir,” he exclaimed, “should they pray there? They can pray at home if they want to, though I daresay it would be better for them to do a little hard work, instead of reeling off prayer like a Chinaman’s flying wheel.”

“Do you consider work incompatible with prayer then?” asked the young clergyman defiantly.

“I believe in prayer, sir,” Mr. Ogden replied angrily. “Real, earnest prayer, sir! at the proper times——”

“Ah, and what do you consider the proper times?” asked Mr. Mitchell.

“The proper time,” began Mr. Ogden, who was not quite sure of his footing, and was thinking of a text to floor his adversary, “the proper times are morning and evening in your own home, and on the Sabbath day, in the Lord’s House.”

There were at least three statements in this answer that Mr. Mitchell longed to tear limb from limb—they were to him—the very dragon, and the world’s old enemy, but he contented himself with asking Mr. Ogden a little ironically, and as a preparation for the conflict in store: “Have you chapter and verse for all that—sir—or does the Church teach it?”

Daphne listened with great amusement, but she was almost as startled as the rest of them, when her uncle said in a voice full of pain: “My dear friends! may I ask if this discussion is being carried on in a Christian spirit—and if it is not, would it not be better to refrain?”

“It is a discussion upon Christian topics,” Mr. Ogden at length replied.

“But scarcely I would imagine,” Mr. Fordington said very quietly, with the pained expression deepening on his face, “scarcely for the Glory of God—and so I venture to think, my dear Ogden—unprofitable.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said young Mitchell quickly, “and yours, Mr. Ogden—I fear I spoke hastily and without due consideration.”

Mr. Fordington’s face cleared. Mr. Ogden pursed up his mouth rather stubbornly. He was a firm man, and besides, he felt that the text would have come to him in a minute; he was three years older than the Vicar of Overham, but it was certainly not his place to rebuke him. Aslington was a larger parish.

Daphne turned to her uncle. “What music shall I bring down after dinner?” she asked. Conversation began again—and the truth had been upheld.