Edward Norman had the good fortune, at a comparatively early age, to find himself comfortably established as incumbent of the parish of Bloomford, which comprised some five hundred inhabitants in all, and was delightfully situated in one of the pleasantest of the southern counties. The duties resulting from his position were, as may be imagined, not very arduous, and the compensation, from a purely sordid point of view — that treasure upon earth which the clergy doubtless prize merely as a type of the heavenly treasure which will one day be theirs — was far from doing discredit to those “pious ancestors” of the village, whose liberality, as in all such cases, it was pleasantly understood to represent. It would, however, have been a heart steeped to the very root in the poison of Democracy, Communism, and kindred evils which could have grudged Edward Norman his charming little rectory and the thousand a year which enabled him to keep it in repair, for, in very truth, it would have been difficult to find a clergyman of a sweeter disposition, a kindlier heart, a sunnier intellect than his. His very appearance enforced one to conceive towards him a mingled sentiment of affection and compassion; for though his eye was ever bright, his lofty forehead unwrinkled, his cheek ever answering with a warm flush to the affectionate impulses of his heart, yet the first glance showed you that the man was an invalid, that his days were in all probability numbered. His malady was consumption; it had made its first decided appearance when he came of age, and now that he was almost thirty-five he could entertain no hope of its relaxing the hold it had gained upon his constitution.

The rectory of Bloomford was situated on a gently sloping hill-side, about a quarter of a mile above the church. It was a picturesque old building, with a roof of red tiles and a multiplicity of chimneys and gables, with small latticed windows in the upper story, broad eaves beneath which endless birds made their nests, and, over all, a forest of ivy, so old that the stems were like the trunks of trees. Before the house lay a carefully-tended flower garden, behind it a kitchen garden and an orchard, all around which ran a crumbling brick wall, some six feet high, on the outside thickly overgrown with the abounding ivy, within kept clear for the training of peach and plum trees. Even now, at the end of November, it was by no means a dreary place, for its smallness always gave it a compact and comfortable air; while in the autumn evenings all the front windows would glow with the warm reflection of the setting sun, and the smoke from the high chimneys curl up in many-hued shapes which seemed to bespeak the homelike comfort within. As you viewed the house from the front, there was, indeed, an object which gave it an air of individuality as distinguished from any other pleasantly situated country house; this was a somewhat newly-built tower, mainly of glass, which constituted a modest observatory, containing a large telescope, which was one of the chief delights of the clergyman’s existence. This tower he had had built immediately after his entering upon the living, not without considerable scandal in the neighbourhood, where Mr. Norman was in consequence at first regarded as a species of Dr. Faustus, with whom it might possibly be dangerous, notwithstanding the apparent soundness of his doctrine, to hold much connection. It had indeed been formally decided at a meeting of the Bloomford Ladies’ Sewing Club: “That this club considers the study of astronomy to be a sinful prying into the mysteries of the Almighty, and consequently a wilful tempting of His displeasure; that this club is surprised and grieved that a clergyman of the Church of England should set such an example to the <>weaklings of his flock; and that this club do, in consequence, prepare a memorial on this subject, to be duly presented to the Rev. Mr. Norman on the earliest fitting opportunity.” This resolution was written out, with the due emphasis, by the secretary of the club, but the memorial was never presented, owing, I believe, to the fact that the personal amiability of the reverend gentleman in a very short time succeeded in utterly disarming the suspicions of the fair inquisitors. At that time a large majority of the club were unmarried ladies, and it may not unreasonably be concluded that the fact of Mr. Norman being then a bachelor of twenty-four had an appreciable influence in weakening their zeal for the preservation of the Creator’s privacy. This had been some ten years since, and at present the only memorial of those early prejudices existed in the person of a poor old woman of the village, who, having gone harmlessly crazy just at the time when the rector’s presumption had been the great topic of conversation, still never failed to pass him without asking, with a respectful curtesy —

“What’s the latest news from heaven, my lord?”

The respectable subscribers to our circulating libraries would not owe me much thanks were I to describe in detail the oft-treated history of a clergyman’s search among his fair parishioners for a suitable partner of his cares, or, perhaps I should say, the hot competition among the latter for the possession of the dearly-coveted honour, the position of a parson’s wife. Without unnecessary amplitude of description, therefore, I shall content myself with saying that, before Edward Norman had been a year in his cure, the lot had been drawn, and the happy maid had received her prize; nor could the most envious assert that in choosing Helen Burton for his bride, the clergyman had laid himself open to imputations on his taste or his generosity. Helen had long been, undisputedly, the village beauty, but so humble was her social position that not one of the damsels who boasted of their place in the aristocracy of the district had for a moment dreamed of her as a rival. She was nothing more than the daughter of the principal tailor in Bloomford, but her father was a man of the strictest integrity, even of some intellectual pretensions, and universally respected by all who were so unfortunate as to be tainted with the modern heresy that money does not make the man. Helen had, thanks to this worthy man’s care, received an education which would compare very favourably indeed even with that possessed by the daughters of Sir Bedford Lamb, one of the members for the county, whose seat was only some two miles distant from Bloomford. It was indeed then to the astonishment of all, but to the scandalisation — and that affected — of only the few, that Helen Burton had become Mrs. Norman.

Edward Norman loved his wife devotedly, passionately. Upon her he lavished all the treasures of his dreamy, sentimental, poetical temperament. From his first sight of her she had become the goddess of his thought, the centre of every hope and longing which shed its fragrance upon his calm, contemplative life; and when at length these aspirations were fulfilled, and she had become the goddess of his hearth, the man felt as if life had nothing more to give him. But from the very exuberance of its bounty towards him did life become more than ever dear, and this in face of the fact that it was gradually, hopelessly slipping away from him. But sometimes again this very hopelessness bred within him a refinement of delight to which a healthier man could scarcely have attained. As, during the early months of their marriage, he often sat through the long summer evenings in the quietness of his study, holding Helen’s hand within his own, and both together gazing westwards on the melting glories of the sunset, he felt that to gradually sink into his grave cared for at every moment by this angel whom Fate had sent to bless him, and drink in the ever-deepening fervour of her love as she felt him passing from her side, to hold, when all was over, for ever a sacred place in so pure a mind — at times he felt that these were delights far superior to the possession of the most robust health and hopes of the longest life. To be sure there was a tinge of refined selfishness in this; but that was a part of his nature. And what purest affection is without it?

But in these hopes he had deceived himself. Before his bliss had lasted for a year it seemed about to be crowned by the birth of a child. The child — a girl — was indeed born, but at the expense of its mother’s life.

Edward Norman’s grief was sacred even to the impertinence of village gossip. When, a few weeks after, a beer-muddled rustic happened to stray late at night in the neighbourhood of the churchyard, and next morning spread the report among his fellow-yokels that he had seen a ghost by the new grave stretching up its arms in the moonlight, his story did not attract much comment, for the hearts of the humblest, which, after all, are human, whispered that the agony of a husband over a young wife’s tomb was not a subject for trivial chatter.

But when the period of more or less lachrymose sympathy had waned with the rector’s first year of bereavement, other thoughts began once more to spring in the young female mind of Bloomford. If Mr. Norman had been interesting before, how infinitely more so had he now become. The movement for a fresh attack upon his sensibilities took first of all the ominous form of sympathy for his child, poor little Helen. What a shocking thing it was that the little darling — such an absolute little angel — had no mother to care for it. How was it possible that it should be sufficiently tended by the hired nurse-girl, even though overseered by the rector’s housekeeper, Mrs. Cope, a worthy old lady who had watched Edward Norman’s own cradle, and, shortly after his wife’s death, had gladly complied with his written request that she would undertake the guidance of his household? Of course, such a state of affairs was absolutely contrary to the nature of things — it might even be said to the divine law; for it should be noted that these ladies, who had once been shocked at the clergyman’s astronomical studies, were anything but backward in interpreting the thoughts and the wishes of Providence when it suited them to do so. But then arose the question among the more serious as to whether a clergyman could, consistently with his sacred office, take unto himself a second fleshly comforter. The younger maidens firmly maintained that there was nothing shocking in such a course, and to such an extent did their views preponderate that when, by chance, an inoffensive damsel of sixty summers, whose turn it was to read aloud for an evening to the Bloomford Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Society (a recent development of the Sewing–Club before-mentioned) came, in the “Vicar of Wakefield,” to those unfortunate sentiments of Dr. Primrose on the very question at issue, she was forthwith stopped by a chorus of dissentients, and the book was no more read aloud in the Society; it being whispered by one or two members, that, after all, Goldsmith did not display that delicacy of conception necessary in one whose works are to be fitted for mutual improvement.

Whether Mr. Norman was aware of this and the like matters it would not be easy to say; in all probability not. His life became every day more solitary and secluded; to such an extent, indeed, as to give rise to the remonstrances of his more sensible friends. As his wont was, he listened with amiability to all who found an opportunity of addressing him, but without the slightest effect upon his conduct.

By nature little disposed to social life, he now lived more and more in the company of his books and his thoughts. His grief had, of course, calmed as time wore on; had become, indeed, somewhat of a quiet pleasure, finding its expression in long hours of reverie wherein his thoughts were busiest with multiplying idealisations of his dead wife, and of the bliss he had enjoyed with her; or, at other times, in looking forward to the day when little Helen would revive her mother’s loveliness in the full blush of womanhood, and wondering whether he would live to see it.

Under such circumstances, he was rather glad to avail himself of the popular sympathy in order to provide a pretext for his much-loved retirement. His health was another, and a real cause for abstinence from too active exertions. His malady progressed, very slowly but perceptibly, and, some five years after his wife’s death, a special illness rendered it absolutely necessary that he should have the benefit of a change of air. He accordingly obtained leave of absence from his duties, and passed rather more than a month in the south of France. It was immediately after his return to Bloomford that a letter from Golding came to his hand, resulting in his sudden visit to London, the circumstances of which have been detailed in the last chapter.

Three days after this, Edward Norman was sitting at breakfast in the little morning-room which looked northwards, upon what was in summer the pleasantest part of the garden — a fair lawn, bordered with flower-beds, and enclosed with thick growths of laburnum. The room itself was light and cheerful, the choice and arrangement of its ornaments remaining still a sacred memorial of the taste of its former mistress. Everything bespoke the utmost elegance and refinement in him who now alone used the room, impressing the beholder with ideas fully borne out by the appearance of the clergyman himself.

He was sitting in an arm-chair by the fireside, a small low table bearing the tray which held his simple breakfast. He wore a handsome dressing-gown closely folded around him, from beneath the bottom of which appeared a pair of spotless woollen slippers. A newspaper lay on the table, which had apparently not yet been opened, but an exquisite little copy of Horace formed his companion at breakfast instead, which he perused with a languid pleasure through his gold-rimmed eyeglasses.

It did not, however, seem to engross his attention, for his eyes frequently wandered to the windows and looked out upon the rays of faint sunlight which, struggling through ominous clouds, fell athwart the lawn and upon the leafless laburnums. At one of these glances his face suddenly assumed a look of keener interest. This was caused by the sight of two children, a little girl, perhaps eight years old, with a face of delicate prettiness, and dressed in a handsome little winter costume which became her wonderfully, and by her side a boy, in appearance much older, though in reality about the same age. The clothing had undergone a reformation; but the handsome, pale, attenuated features, and the curling yellow hair were evidently those of poor Golding’s child. He seemed to follow his graceful little companion with reluctance, scarcely ever raising his eyes to look at the objects around him, but keeping them bent upon the grass.

The expression on his face was sorrowful in the extreme; tears seemed momentarily about to start from his eyes. The remarks which the little girl addressed to him he seemed not to understand; at all events, he scarcely attempted to answer them. The two were not quite alone, but were followed at the distance of a few yards by a cheerful-looking middle-aged woman, who knitted as she walked, casting each moment curious glances at the children in front of her. This was Mrs. Cope, the rector’s worthy housekeeper. In her cheeks still lived much of the bloom which had made her not a little admired, when, as a country maiden of sixteen, she had been called to act as handmaid of Edward Norman himself, then aged one year.

Mrs. Cope was now a widow, and among the most active of the plotters against Mr. Norman’s peace in Bloomford there were not a few who looked with a jealous eye upon this lady. If the rector had begun by marrying a tailor’s daughter, who could guarantee that he would not once more bid defiance to the world by taking to wife his housekeeper? The more prudish even whispered that it really was not very delicate in Mr. Norman to permit the residence in his ladyless house of a “female” of Mrs. Cope’s years and appearance.

The rector’s eyes were still fixed upon the figures on the lawn, when a sudden ring at the door-bell announced the arrival of a visitor. A moment after a servant tapped at the door, and proclaimed —

“Mr. Whiffle.”

This gentleman was no other than the curate of the parish. His appearance and character appear to me to merit a few lines of description. In stature he stood some five feet, no more, and his head looked very much too large for this diminutive body. Probably this effect was increased by the peculiarities of his hair, which stood almost on end in large, coarse, reddish clusters over the top of his head; the pressure of a hat seemed to have not the slightest effect upon its stubborn elasticity. He wore extremely stiff whiskers, also red in hue, but no moustache. The habitual expression of his face was irresistibly comic; the eyes being very large and constantly moving in the drollest manner, whilst his nose, slightly celestial in tendency, and the peculiar conformation of his mouth and chin gave his countenance something of a Hibernian cast, though the man was true-born English. His constant attitude was very upright, as if to make the most of his inches, with the fore-finger of either hand inserted in his waistcoat pockets, and with his toes, upon which he regularly rose as he spoke, decidedly turned in towards each other. Such was the outward and visible appearance of Mr. Orlando Whiffle. Of his character I shall not say much at present, leaving it for the divination of the acute reader. I may, however, remark that the man was a living satire upon the Church of which he was a servant, an admirable caricature, far excelling anything that a professed ridiculer of ecclesiasticism could possibly have conceived. His age was about forty, and he had officiated as curate in Bloomford since the arrival of Mr. Norman. At that time, some ten years ago, he already rejoiced in a family of three sons and two daughters, and the circle of his patria potesas had since been widened by the arrival of three more daughters. And yet Mr. Whiffle was a light-hearted man.

He advanced into the room with his usual bow, which, like everything he did, was very much exaggerated and extremely ridiculous, then stepped briskly up to a low arm-chair over against that occupied by the rector, and dropped into it with quite a startling suddenness.

“Good-morning, Mr. Whiffle,” said the rector, not taking the trouble to rise. “Quite a pleasant morning.”

“Remarkably so, sir. The singing of the sparrows quite charmed me as I came along.”

“Of the sparrows, Mr. Whiffle?”

“Possibly they may have been another species of bird, sir. I have never given much attention to natural history. The Church does not encourage it.”

He spoke in a sprightly, jerky manner, twirling his soft, clerical hat in his hand, and constantly shuffling uneasily on his chair.

“Did you come across the lawn?” asked the rector, smiling slightly.

“I did, sir. And I observed there a young gentleman of whose existence here I was not previously aware. May I ask who?”

“He is the child of an old friend of mine — a man in a humble position in life — who has just died and left, as far as he was aware of, no relatives. I have undertaken to take care of the boy.”

“Ah! Interesting, very interesting! You will send him to school, I presume? He is hardly old enough for a boarding-school yet.”

“Nor advanced enough. The poor child has received absolutely no education of any kind.”

“Ah! Interesting beyond expression. Absolutely virgin soil for the ploughshare of instruction; absolutely unturned ground for the seed of fundamental ideas! I think I have already hinted to you, sir, that I am preparing a pamphlet on the subject of ‘Fundamental Ideas,’ in which I prove that there are three such ideas, and three only, which should never fail to be first of all instilled into the youthful mind. The first of these is the Inviolability of the Church as by Law Established; the second is the Immutability of the Poor Laws; the third is the Condemnability of Dissent. These I am wont, in my facetious way, to term my three ‘Abilities,’ — ha, ha, ha! I fancy I shall prove to the satisfaction of all readers that an education grounded upon the basework of these three ideas would be the very ideal of what education should be.”

“I am hardly at one with you as to your second,” said Mr. Norman, “and I imagine that if you had accompanied me in a walk I took the other day in London, you would have replaced it by some more fitting one — say the Immutability of Human Wretchedness. Did you ever happen to walk through Whitecross Street when you lived in London, Mr. Whiffle?”

“Whitecross Street, my dear sir? I had the happiness of officiating for a brief period in the very parish which includes it.”

“Indeed? Then I need not describe it to you. Good God! I shall be haunted to my dying day with the scenes I beheld there last Saturday night.”

“Very bad locality, sir; remarkably bad. Indeed, I may say it surpasses my limited comprehension that such localities should be permitted to exist in a land enjoying the inestimable blessing of a Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Upon my word, sir, that is one of the things that one should preach a crusade against! Yes, if I had the happiness of holding a living in London, I would commence to preach a crusade against Whitecross Street tomorrow — I mean next Sunday.”

Mr. Whiffle, according to his habit, rose to his feet in the excitement of speaking, crushed his hat emphatically upon the table, thrust his fingers deep into his waistcoat pockets, and swayed backwards and forwards on his toes. As he concluded, he plumped down again into his easy chair.

“But I imagine, Mr. Whiffle, that the first step towards abolishing such horrors would consist of a judicious alteration in those Poor Laws which you pledge yourself to maintain.”

Mr. Norman had scarcely a serious air when conversing with his curate. You could see that he took a pleasure in bringing out the man’s eccentricities and internally making merry over them.

“No such thing, sir!” exclaimed Mr. Whiffle, “that is, I mean, if you permit me to urge my opinion against that of my rector. I assure you, sir, I have given thought to the subject. It is not the Poor Laws at fault; it is inherent impracticability in the nature of the lower classes which renders these Laws comparatively inoperative. Depend upon it, sir, the spread of Dissent among these off-scourings of the earth, if I may so express myself, is the origin and root of the evil. They lack respect for the Established Church, sir.”

“Possibly there may be something in what you say, Mr. Whiffle.”

“I have in my head, sir, the details of a pamphlet on the subject of Dissent. I will venture to submit it to you in a short time. If there is one thing against which the Church should at once preach a crusade, it is that canker in the blossom of contemporary society, if I may so express myself — Dissent!”

“It was horrible, horrible!” said the rector, speaking more to himself than to Mr. Whiffle. “The thought oftenest in my mind whilst in that hideous scene was: How can we wonder that men doubt the existence of God?”

“Precisely the same thought has often occurred to myself. Really, one ought to carry about with one small selected volumes of religious evidences, especially for such occasions.”

There was silence for some minutes, during which Mr. Whiffle whistled a Te Deum in a very low tone. Mr. Norman then suddenly seemed to rouse himself.

“But I have been wandering,” he said. “My real reason for begging you to look in this morning was that I might consult you on the subject of Arthur’s education. The child’s name is Arthur Golding. Do you think your leisure would permit of your giving the child two or three hours’ teaching a day?”

“My dear sir!” exclaimed Mr. Whiffle, starting to his feet, “I should be overjoyed to be entrusted with such a duty! It would be the proudest day for me since that ever-memorable one upon which I entered the Church!”

“I am glad it so entirely chimes with your inclinations. As I said, the poor lad is terribly backward. He is, moreover, quite unusually sensitive for a child. I fancy that in any case we must wait some little time before attempting to do anything with him. I never saw a child suffer so as he has done in consequence of his father’s death. Suppose I walk over to you this evening, if it continues fine, and bring Arthur with me? The sight of your children might cheer him.”

“Precisely, precisely!” exclaimed Orlando, who grew more cheery than ever when reminded of his family — for did not a tutorship imply a stipend? “Let us say seven o’clock, my dear sir. At that hour we shall all be gathered round the hearth in domestic peace, I hope.”

“So be it.”

Very shortly after this Mr. Whiffle rose and took his leave. He was, it should be noticed, a man by no means devoid of information, which, when he kept clear of clerical matters, he could make tolerable use of. He was a fair classical scholar, but especially an excellent arithmetician, so that Edward Norman had not acted with such indiscretion as might at first sight appear in proposing to entrust to him such an important matter as a child’s education.

The rector had not seen fit, however, to make Mr. Whiffle his confidant in the exact story of Arthur Golding’s antecedents. Nothing would be gained by doing so; on the contrary Orlando’s active tongue would scarcely fail to circulate among the parishioners stories which were far better kept secret. But that afternoon Mr. Norman, in writing a letter to the only intimate friend he possessed, by name Gilbert Gresham, an artist who was just then travelling in Italy, gave a full account of the evening he had passed in Whitecross Street.

It was only in these letters to his friend that Edward Norman gave utterance to his real feelings. In miscellaneous company he was always under obvious restraints; with such men as his curate and sundry of the neighbouring clergy who occasionally visited him he was at ease, often gravely satirical, but still not himself. Thus it came about that various estimates of his character were in circulation among his acquaintances. Possibly he did not himself possess much more real insight into his own nature than did these superficial observers.

“And whom do you think,” the letter went on, after describing vividly the horrors of Whitecross Street, “whom do you think I discovered in one of the foulest recesses of this Pandemonium? No other than my once dear friend, Arthur Golding. Of course you remember him quite well, though I recollect he was not an intimate acquaintance of yours; he did not belong to your set at Balliol. He was a schoolfellow of mine to begin with, and we never lost sight of each other for more than a few weeks at a time during half a dozen years or so. Little did I imagine then that I should one day find him at the last gasp in a London garret. He had written to me, poor fellow, begging that I would come and see him, as he feared he was drawing to his end; but, by a piece of stupidity on the part of my housekeeper, the letter was not forwarded to me. I found him unconscious. After I had watched by his side for some time his senses appeared partially to return to him. Though he was unable to speak, he pointed to his child, a boy of some eight years, who lay by his side, and I console myself with the idea that rendered his last moments easier by showing that I understood his wish.

“Poor Golding! At his best he was, in appearance, the handsomest youth I ever knew; his beauty, indeed, was almost feminine, and, I suspect, indicated rather plainly the weak parts of his character. I had entirely lost sight of him for many years. Even when I last parted from him in those brighter days he was all but an habitual drunkard; I remember warning him with all the severity I was capable of — Heaven knows that is not saying much! — of the terrible path upon which he was entering. But I could little foresee the horrors through which his brief life would struggle to that pitiful end.

“I found in his pocket, after his death, a long letter, written in an almost illegible hand, and intended for myself; perhaps he meant me to receive it after his death, for it was ready addressed and stamped, though written more than a week before. In this he revealed to me a secret I could never have suspected. It seems that, shortly after the birth of the child, he fell into severe difficulties, in consequence of which he was ultimately compelled to obtain a clerkship of some kind. His salary, however, proved insufficient to his needs, and, in a fatal moment, he yielded to a terrible temptation, and robbed his employers. He was found out, and suffered the punishment for his crime. This was the blow that hopelessly shattered what little of energy and purpose his life had hitherto retained.

“You will wonder how it was that he never applied to me for some kind of assistance before his ruin had become irretrievable, for, with my means and connections, I might well have been expected to help him. Ah! that awakens sore memories, and necessitates the narrative of a part of my own history, which as yet I have never poured into even your friendly ears. You must have wondered who the wretched woman was who, as Golding’s wife, bore a share in this life-tragedy, and had vanished before the close of it.

“Do you remember ‘Laura,’ the laughing-eyed angel of whom I used to prate to you from morning to night; whom I told you I had loved from a child, for whose sake I learned by heart one of Petrarch’s sonnets every day of my life? It makes me miserable to think of her, and I must tell what I have to tell in very few words. Well, at the end of the last term we spent together at the University, Golding came to spend a few weeks with me amid the delights of my Warwickshire home. At that time, as I have said, he was a charming fellow, and a few days sufficed to make him as much at his ease with all my friends and acquaintances as I was myself. He saw Laura, could not but fall madly in love with her; in an evil hour persuaded her to reciprocate his passion, and — to cut the story short — eloped with her. At first I raved against him like a madman, feeling sure he had merely carried off the girl to ruin her. With all my energy I hunted him down, and, to my amazement, found that the two were married. Of course we quarrelled violently, and there you have the explanation of our broken intimacy.

“Now you will not wonder at my determining to adopt his child, whose name is also Arthur, for is he not her child, the child of that Laura who was once — alas! alas! — more than the world to me? Oh, God! what she must have gone through! In his letter Golding did not mention her name; but I have had the courage to ask the boy what he knew of his mother, and he tells me she died in the hospital a long time ago. It was a relief to hear it.

“And so I shall bring the boy up as my own, to be a brother to Helen. Will he grow up imbued with his father’s vices, and make me wish that I had left him to struggle for his bitter existence in the seething sewer out of which I have plucked him? Who knows? He seems rather a strange lad; I half think I shall like him, for it is certain he has something of his mother’s face, though most of his father’s. He is as gentle as a girl, and, I should imagine, of very tolerable natural abilities. Well, I must do all I can for his education, but of course his future lies in the lap of the gods. I will not fail to acquaint you with his progress — the reverse.”