III ST. WITHANS

          Not knowing how to find the open air, But toiling desperately to find it out.         
HENRY VI, Part III.

IF Potsham was somnolent, St. Withans, our parson’s Cornish living, might well have been the home of the Sleeping Beauty. For a time it was a place of enchantment while the charm and novelty of wedded love were upon Francis and his Martha. They were blissfully happy: the county welcomed them, they had a charming house and garden, a carriage, money in plenty, children, and when they were bored with the country they could escape to the gaiety of Plymouth. After they had been married for five years they exchanged duties for a year with the English chaplain at Havre-de-Grace in Normandy, and their fourth child, a daughter, was born there. After that it became a habit with them to go over to the Continent every year for a couple of months.

Their sixth child died in infancy, their seventh only lived to be three years old, but the eighth, ninth, and tenth were as healthy and comely as the first five.

It was a year or so after the birth of the tenth, in 1867, that they began to discover that while their family had grown their income had remained stationary. It was at that moment that for the first time they began to think of what they had done and counted up the number of their offspring, and realised that they had brought nine good lives into the world and had to face the responsibility and, somehow or other, establish them.

These were the names of the young Folyats: Serge, Gertrude, Frederic, Mary, Leedham, Minna, Annette, and James.

[Pg 20]

Serge had early passed out of his parents’ control, though not without expense, for he had been sent into the Navy, from which, at the age of fifteen, he deserted in Labrador and was only saved from court-martial by being bought out of the service, to which end the farm on Dartmoor and a house in Potsham were sold. He was not allowed to come home and, since he refused to stay in America, a situation was found for him in a bank in Kimberley, in South Africa, and his correspondence dwindled and then ceased altogether.

Frederic was at a Lycée in France, and the question of his career was being indefinitely postponed.

The girls were the problem. Gertrude and Mary had suddenly become women and there was no man to ask them in marriage. An occasional Folyat was sent to the Vicarage to be coached for some examination, but they either only flirted or they fell desperately in love with Minna, the beauty of the family, who was only fourteen.

After Serge’s escapade the carriage had to be given up, and since Mrs. Folyat could not pay calls or visit at a distance, the county soon forgot her and fewer and fewer distinguished ladies drove up to the Vicarage. On the other hand, Mrs. Folyat’s aspirations had offended the ladies on whom the county did not call, and when the carriage was disposed of and replaced by a little wicker donkey-cart they did not conceal their rejoicing, and their tattle did not fail to reach Mrs. Folyat’s ears. She was confirmed in her conviction of the vulgarity of trade, and she brooded over the situation without saying anything to Francis. He said nothing to her and they skirted the problem. His anxiety was entirely to make expenditure and income meet, and he rather welcomed than deplored the defection of the county. It meant a garden party the less and two of the servants could be dismissed.

The crisis seemed to be tided over and the financial problem adjusted when they were faced with the fact that Frederic was nineteen, of an age to leave the Lycée, and that a profession must be found for him. Mrs. Folyat decided on the Army, but Francis at once squashed that and, all unconsciously, reproduced his mother’s arguments. [Pg 21]Frederic was a Folyat and weak. Regimental life would be too dangerous for him. The Church? Frederic, who was not a little Frenchified and rather dreadfully freeminded, scornfully rejected the suggestion. . . The Bar? Mrs. Folyat was sure Frederic would look well in a wig and gown, and besides, judges and the law officers of the Crown were always knighted. Frederic saw that this plan would take him to London, and he jumped at it greedily.

Francis went to Plymouth and saw his solicitor, who pointed out that it was a matter of great expense and meant supporting the boy until he was over thirty. Francis felt that the problem was insoluble, gave it up for the time being, and consoled himself with buying a parrot from a drunken sailor and a dog in a fancier’s shop by the docks because it was impossible to tell which was its head and which was its tail. He called the dog “Muff” and the parrot “Sailor.”

Frederic sulked when he learned that he was not to go to the Bar and went down to the village inn and came home very drunk. When he was reproved, he asked what else there was to do in such a dead-alive hole, and his father found it very difficult to reply. It was painfully forced upon his attention that Frederic also had a mind, and that it worked in a way entirely different from his own. This was distressing, because for many years Francis had done all the thinking necessary for his family, and that no great amount. He had an intolerable sense of being cooped up with an enemy, and what bewildered him most of all was to think that the enemy should be his own son. He could not explain it to his wife, or to himself, for that matter, but there it was, and he was thankful when Frederic chose to absent himself from meals.

At last, after much cogitation, he approached his wife with the suggestion that they should make Frederic a solicitor.

“An attorney!” said Martha, and Francis knew that she was thinking of the common, dusty little man in Plymouth.

Parents who have aspired to make their sons physicians [Pg 22]and been forced to stop short at dentistry will understand what torture it was to Martha Folyat, and, in a less degree, to her husband, to descend from the higher to the lower branch of the legal profession—no wig, no gown, no access to the Bench, no prospective knighthood. It was a pill and they swallowed it, putting as brave a face on it as possible, and they were somewhat comforted when they found, upon inquiry, that a family of undoubted gentility in the county had sent their son into a solicitor’s office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London.

Martha’s ambition leaped within her, and she suggested that Frederic also should be sent to London where he was more likely, if not to meet, at least to handle the affairs of, the aristocracy. Who knows? Even the Royal Family had legal business, and there was a great case coming on to decide the succession of the collateral Folyats, somewhat complicated by a bigamous old clergyman who for his third wife had taken a negress in Africa. The case would be ripe just about the time Frederic was qualified, and Willie Folyat, a possible heir, was one of Minna’s most devoted admirers.

Martha only spoke about a hundredth of her musings, but Francis, mindful of Frederic’s recent behaviour and his plentiful lack of character, decided for Plymouth, as being more accessible in case of disaster. (He was surprised to find himself taking account of the difference in expense of the two journeys, having always hitherto had a lordly disregard of money.)

It was settled; the dusty little man in Plymouth accepted Frederic as an articled clerk, and, when he had received his premium, went into the affairs of the family, and presented the horrible truth that such inroads had been made upon capital that the income was reduced by one-third from its original dimensions.

Francis was so relieved at having disposed of Frederic that at first he made light of it and said nothing to his wife. He supposed his difficulties would solve themselves, and this to all appearances they did.

Willie Folyat, the possible heir afore-mentioned, an undergraduate at Oxford, a very worthy and high-souled [Pg 23]son of a pious and very poor father, spent two long vacations at the St. Withans Vicarage. Gertrude fell in love with him first, as by prescriptive right, and then, as she seemed to make no progress, Mary considered herself free to lose her heart. To their amazement and dismay, Willie sought an interview with their father and proposed for the hand of the chit, Minna, not yet out of short frocks. He was besottedly in love and prepared for all sacrifices; however, he was refused on the score of Minna’s youth, but given to understand that in two years or three he might return with every hope of success. Meanwhile there could be no objection to his writing to Minna if he were discreet.

He vowed eternal constancy with all youth’s fervent and curious belief in its possibility, and, by way of proving the breach of his heart, accepted an appointment in a school in Bombay. Then by every mail he addressed the most excellently turned love-letters to Minna, who skimmed through them—being already engaged upon another conquest—and handed them over to her mother, who wept over them, read them to father, and saw herself as the beloved mother-in-law of the Earl of Leedham—the title to which Willie had the remotest possible claim.

All this was very exciting and disturbing, and it set the thoughts of Gertrude and Mary in that direction from which there is no turning back. Gertrude, then Mary, made a long stay in Plymouth, and they returned with new costumes, new accents, new thoughts, and all their talk was of the superiority of town-life over the country. They spent a great deal of money, and the problem of income and expenditure occupied their father’s mind to the exclusion of everything else. In Plymouth Gertrude and Mary had met the most delightful young man, a friend of Frederic’s, named Herbert Fry. On their entreaty he was invited to stay for a holiday. He came and saw and was conquered—by Minna. He was caught kissing her in the shrubbery, his stay came to an end, and the name given him by the nurse—“a reg’lar Apollyon, my dear”—was found to be appropriate. Minna was furious, and in a gust of spite wrote a most offensive [Pg 24]letter to Willie Folyat in Bombay. She told her mother what she had done and robbed her of her most cherished dream. She was found to be conducting a clandestine correspondence with “Apollyon,” and Martha let loose the thought which for some time had been lurking at the back of her head, namely, that they must make a change and, if possible, seek life in some city. She skirmished about with it, never suspecting that much the same thought might be in her husband’s mind also, and she led him to it by easy stages. Really the girls were getting beyond her; they had said things to her which she would never have dared to say to her aunt when she was a girl; and the country certainly was dull for young people, and they had the children to think of, and, of course, parents must make some sacrifices.

Francis looked at her with anxious eyes and muttered something about his duty to his parishioners. He was popular with them, and he liked the peace of the country and the simplicity (also the low cunning) of country people. He liked the figure he cut, with his knee-breeches and black shoes with silver buckles, and silk stockings and tall hat. He had grown used to himself in a back-water and shrank from the prospect of city life. Even Plymouth he found bewildering on his rare visits. On the other hand, there was the perpetual leakage in his finances—Frederic in no way to earn his living for at least four years, and his daughters, like the horse-leech’s, crying “Give! give!” and no man apparently desirous of marrying them; and beyond them the long tail of his family, all of whom might grow up and develop minds which thought along lines different from his own. He was not in the least resentful about it, that was not in his nature; but he hated his own helplessness, the impossibility of doing anything to relieve the growing strain. He loathed quarrelling, and his daughters were always quarrelling with each other and their mother, and that, in a house which should have been a model to the country-side, made him profoundly ashamed. He had begun once more to think in an extra-professional way, to see things in a humorous light which by all tradition were sacred. A curious desire to tease had [Pg 25]taken possession of him, and he fought it with all his might. Further, if he was to continue the war with circumstances in this place he must admit his wife to his inmost thoughts. He tried, but his new failure was the most bitter of all to bear; but yet he would not admit that she was stupid. Still he clung to old memories, and he told himself that he loved her. He did love her—he loved everything and everybody; but he was not and had not been for many years in love with her. She had never understood love, and she had bullied him. When he argued with her she wept; when he agreed with her she wept also, and protested that he was an angel and far, far too good for her.

He came as directly to the point as she would let him, and one night, after a protracted curtain lecture, he proposed that he should consult his bishop and negotiate an exchange of livings with some clergyman desirous of a country life. His only stipulation was that the new parish should be among the poor, and this, unhappily, broke in upon Martha’s dreams of a brilliant social life among rich and more or less “gentle” parishioners. She had mapped out marriages for all her daughters and careers for all her sons, and was drowsing off into a golden slumber when the word “poor” punched into her pillow.

“My dear Frank!” she said.

“I must work,” said Francis.

“But, my dear Frank, the poor!”

“It is easier for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to pass through . . .”

“I am not talking about that.”

“If I go to a town, I must go to the poor,” said Francis, his old ideals stirring in him.

“But think of the girls.”

“I am thinking of the girls. I shall make them work among the poor. It will do them good. It will keep their minds healthy and clear of amorous thoughts.”

“How can you be so coarse?”

This came with almost a scream, and Francis smothered what he was going to add and turned over and pretended to be asleep. His wife went on talking indignantly to [Pg 26]herself. About five o’clock she woke him up and told him that she had been dreaming of water, which she thought meant riches, and also in her dream she had seen her son Leedham crossing the sea, and Mary had made a great match of it with a tall man who looked like a lord, but Minna had appeared very unhappy.

“I do believe,” Martha went on, “that in her heart of hearts Minna really loves Willie Folyat.”

“Nonsense,” replied Francis, “she is much too young to love anything but herself.”

Martha was enraged at this, and harped on the string of her husband’s crazy notion of living among the poor. On that point he was immovable, and Martha’s light skirmishing was fruitless. Francis turned and looked at her, told her that she wanted a clean night-cap, and went off to sleep.

They had many unhappy days, and it was some weeks before they found an incumbent willing to exchange his living for the two in distant Cornwall. This was the rector of St. Paul’s Church, Bide Street, in the darker half of our town on the north bank of the poisoned river, about which we have no pride at all.

Neither Francis nor any member of his family had ever been north of Bristol, and the north of England was to them a place where millionaires grew and factories ground out wealth and a set of ideas associated with the name of Richard Cobden, a Liberal of whom no Churchman could entirely approve. There was a bishop in our town, and he was a person of some celebrity. Also there were two churches which had a certain fame or notoriety for their extreme ritual. Welsh Nonconformists teemed in the town, and the Roman Catholics had a cathedral thirty years old.

Francis visited the place and stayed there two days, during which it rained except for half an hour just before he left. He refused to be depressed by the slums in which his church was situated—a black, stunted Gothic building with a ridiculous little steeple, and a sordid school next door to it—and told himself that it was just what he wanted. There was a fried-fish shop directly opposite [Pg 27]the church, a dirty greengrocer’s shop next to that, and next again three public-houses. Another row of little shops followed on the other side of a bye-street, and for the rest, there were nothing but squat terraces of blackened red-brick cottages, two stories high, with blue slate roofs. In the street were an incredible number of children in curious nondescript garments, and some of them in rags. Many of the women wore clogs and all of them were sallow. The men were pale and ill-nourished and they walked slouchingly. The street was muddy and littered with refuse, and the air was thick and full of smells.

Francis stayed with the rector and met the caretaker of the school and church, the rector’s and the people’s wardens, and a few earnest men who examined him with hard, curious eyes. They asked after his family and how many children he had, and one of them whistled when he said he had eight. Francis wanted to like them, but he felt a stranger amongst them and could not be at his ease. They asked how he liked the church, and he told them very well, and the rector’s warden, Mr. Parsons, said: “Ah! you should see it at ’Arvest Festival.”

Their speech sounded uncouth and harsh after the soft drawl of his Cornish peasants, and it was this that Francis felt as the strongest barrier between them.

The living was worth three hundred and fifty pounds a year, and there were pew-rents, which would bring the stipend up to within a hundred pounds of the joint income of his two livings. Francis ignored that, and calculated that as he would have only one curate, the exchange would be equal, and no doubt his daughters would soon marry, and his sons would quickly earn their living in this money-making town. He was told that there were excellent schools for “them as could afford ’em,” and that settled the matter. Everything was as far as possible arranged and he returned to St. Withans, tussling with himself during the long journey and telling himself that he was not sorry to renounce his old life, and that at last he was going to enter upon work, real work.

He had arranged to take on the former rector’s old house in Fern Square (there was not so much as a blade [Pg 28]of grass growing in it), and when Martha asked him about the town he concentrated on a description of the house in one of the largest and most imposing terraces in the district.

It was arranged that Frederic should finish his articles in Plymouth; and then, on a brilliant spring day, all the furniture, heirlooms, family portraits, and the valuable china inherited at intervals by Mrs. Folyat as her few aged relations one by one departed this life, having gone before, the Folyats set out at seven o’clock in the morning, and at half-past ten the same night reached our town where, at last, their history becomes interesting.