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قراءة كتاب Dorrien of Cranston
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his eyes. “How on earth would they emphasise their arguments without a goodly number of ‘churchwardens’ to smash?”
“Now, father, you know I don’t mean that kind of churchwarden, so don’t try and be sarcastic,” cried Sophie. And the rector burst into a hearty laugh.
It is a pleasant sight that quartette wending homewards along the sunny street already given over to the stillness of a provincial town at the Sunday dinner hour. The girls in their light, tasteful summer dresses looking as fresh and cool as roses on which the dew yet lingers, grouped around the tall upright form of their father, who, with one hand thrust in easy attitude through the sash of his long flowing cassock, walked among them looking supremely happy and contented, now and again bestowing a nod and a pleasant smile in response to the greeting of some passer-by.
“Father,” said Olive, thrusting her hand through the rector’s arm and nestling up to his side with the most bewitchingly affectionate gesture. “Do you know you’re a dear, sweet old dad, and I’m very proud of you?”
“And wherefore this sudden honour, darling?” enquired he, gazing down into her upturned face with a fond smile. He was afraid to own to himself how he loved this beautiful, wayward second daughter, who tyrannised over him in all things domestic, to an incredible extent. For the fact must be recorded that this one was the spoilt child of the house.
“You sang the service beautifully to-day—and it was worth something to hear you,” she replied. “And yet you want to make us believe you are losing your voice—like Mr Medlicott, who can’t even monotone on G without getting flat.”
“My dear little critic, perhaps it is that Medlicott has more to worry him than I. Though to be sure he is spared such a dreadful little plague as this,” rejoined the rector with his sunny laugh, pressing the arm, passed through his, to his side.
“Oh, indeed! Well then, for that let me tell you you gave us too long a sermon,” she retorted.
“Did I? It was only eighteen minutes.”
“Far too long. Look now. We are done out of our walk all through that. And just look what a heavenly day it is.”
“Poor little things!”
Margaret, turning her head, encountered her father’s ruefully comic, mock-penitent glance, and was hardly reassured. She regarded his sacred office as so great—so tremendous—a thing, that to hear him taken to task by this giddy child in his discharge of it always grated upon her. And all accustomed to this kind of talk as she was, yet she felt uncomfortable under it. For she was pre-eminently one of those who took life seriously. But the rector and his favourite daughter thoroughly understood each other.
“Goodness!” cried Sophie, as a neat brougham drawn by a pair of fine greys swept past them. “Why if that isn’t the Dorriens’ carriage.”
“Surely they weren’t in church!” said Margaret wonderingly.
“Hardly, I think,” said the rector, with a lurking smile and a flash of quiet merriment in his dark eyes. “Poor Mrs Dorrien looks upon the parish church as a very well of iniquity—and myself, the Pope, and a certain personage who shall be nameless, as an excellently matched trio.”
“Old pig!” muttered Olive to herself.
“Why then, it must have been Hubert Dorrien after all,” said Sophie. “I thought it was, but he was too far back to be sure. Every time I looked round I caught that detestable eyeglass glaring at me.”
“‘Every time’—ahem! And pray how many times was that?” said her father, drily.
“Oh, there now, I’ve done it,” cried Sophie with a laugh and a blush. “But it was only once or twice as the procession was coming round, and that was all behind us, so we couldn’t see anything of it unless we did look back. Will that satisfy you, dad, dear?”
“Well explained!” said the rector with a hearty laugh. “We must let her down easily on a great occasion, mustn’t we, Margaret?”
“But all the same that Hubert Dorrien angers me—he looks so conceited and supercilious always,” went on Sophie. “He’s a horrid boy?”
“‘Boy!’ Why hear her! Why he’s five years older than you, Sophie,” laughed her father.
“Well then he doesn’t look it,” retorted she. “And he’s always tied to his mother’s apron-string.”
“I wonder what Roland, the eldest one, is like,” said Margaret; “the one in America. I wonder he doesn’t come home.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t get on well at home,” suggested Olive. “But I wish he would come. He’s sure to be nice, if only as a change from his utterly horrid family. And nice people—or at any rate nice men—are conspicuous here by their absence.”
The rector frowned ever so slightly—for his favourite daughter added to her other peccadilloes a decided penchant for flirtation. But like a wise man he said nothing, and by this time they had reached the gates of their pretty and cheerful-looking home.
Chapter Four.
The Rector of Wandsborough.
The Rev. William Ingelow, Doctor of Divinity of the University of Oxford, had, at the time our story opens, held the living of Wandsborough about fifteen years.
On the face of the foregoing chapter, it is needless to explain that Dr Ingelow was a very “advanced” Anglican indeed. He was even too advanced for the bulk of his clerical brethren of his own way of thinking, who were wont to shake their heads while declaring confidentially among themselves that “Ingelow went too far,” and was likely to do more harm than good to “the Cause” by going to such “extremes” and so forth. He was a regular Romaniser, they declared. Instead of trying to re-Catholicise the Church on good old Anglican lines, he boldly adopted Roman ceremonial in every particular. And his teaching—that, too, was far too outspoken. Invocation, auricular confession, and the like, he taught too openly. English people were not quite prepared to swallow pills of this nature without such a coating of silver leaf as would completely and effectually disguise the salutary medicine within. Ingelow was an admirable parish priest in every way—but—a Romaniser. Thus his clerical brethren.
But the rector only laughed good-naturedly to himself. He candidly admitted the terrible impeachment—even owning that his sympathies, liturgical and disciplinary, were entirely with the enactments which proceeded from the City on the Seven Hills. Liturgical matters in the Church of England had been handed down to them in a state of hotch-potch, and the “restoration on good old Anglican lines” theory of his Ritualist brethren meant every man doing what was right in his own eyes. There must be some rule in these matters, argued the rector. The “Roman Use” was the rule of Western Christendom. Moreover it was teachable, fairly simple, dignified and impressive, he declared. Therefore he carried it out in its entirety in his fine parish church and was in every way satisfied with the result. His colleagues would fain have followed his example, but lacked the courage of their convictions—Anglican clergymen not uncommonly do. So they continued to shake their heads and declare oracularly that “Ingelow went too far.”
Wandsborough Church was old, but