Trimblerigg

MR. TRIMBLERIGG’S call to be minister to the true Believers of Horeb was independent of the theological test of his College which qualified him for election to a pastorate among the Free Evangelicals. But practically it gave him a two-years’ start; the Free Evangelicals did not as a rule adopt pastors unless they were either twenty-three, or married. Mr. Trimblerigg was only twenty-one, but there among the True Believers the vacancy was waiting for him, and he reckoned that two preliminary years devoted to establishing his fame as a preacher and emancipating himself from the narrower doctrines of True Belief would not be spent amiss.

In the short while which must elapse before his marriage with Caroline, she and Davidina changed places domestically; and brother and sister lived queerly together at the house adjoining the chapel; an arrangement which, more than anything else could have done, decided Mr. Trimblerigg that his engagement should be short.

Of course it was impossible from the first that Horeb should absorb all his energies. He started at once as a mid-week missioner, first among the neighbouring chapels of the connection, then going further afield; and so as to avoid for the present the problem of an exchange of pulpits with easier denominations contrary to the traditions of True Belief, speaking in hired halls where connection did not count; thus, without taking up the revolutionary standpoint, he began to sit loose to the exclusiveness into which the True Believers had reduced themselves, and to make himself known among the Free Churches.

He had passed his theological degree brilliantly; a brilliancy slightly reduced in his own estimation by the fact that Miss Isabel Sparling had tied with him for first place. Thus, except for the sex-barrier, her qualification for the ministry was mathematically the same as his own.

Now among Free Believers the idea of women in the ministry had been so unthought of that in their constitution there was no word against it; and Mr. Trimblerigg was, by his outspoken advocacy of their claim during his college career, a predestined champion of the cause.

He had not occupied his pulpit a month before Miss Isabel Sparling reminded him. She asked for three things: that he would circulate a Women’s Ministry petition to the Annual Conference for the signatures of his congregation, that he would himself present the petition and make an accompanying motion in his ministerial capacity, and that meanwhile he would invite her as a lay-preacher to his own chapel.

Mr. Trimblerigg was of a divided mind: had the proposition at that time been welcome among the Free Evangelicals, he could not have wished for a better means of effecting a breach between himself and the True Believers, when occasion was ripe for it. But among the Free Evangelicals vacancies in the pastorate were not going begging as they were among the True Believers; and for that and other reasons the rank and file of Free Evangelicalism were either opposed or indifferent. The question had indeed already been debated in that great body of Free Churchmen, and they had decisively turned it down as inopportune. The opposition ranged from support of the Pauline doctrine of womanly silence in the assembly, to the argument that as they could not go out as missionaries to be eaten by savages they had not a complete qualification for ministerial office; and when some protested that they were quite willing to take their chance of being eaten like the rest, it was pointed out that savages did other things to women besides eating them; at which point it was considered that the discussion had become unsuitable for open debate; and the previous question was moved and carried.

After considering the matter for awhile, therefore, Mr. Trimblerigg decided to plead his youth and inexperience. It was the only time that he ever did so; as a rule he revelled in the sense of freedom attaching to both, finding inexperience quite as valuable as youth in the formation of those momentary opinions on which he ran his career. Tentatively, however, as a sop to self-approbation he put the matter to his own chapel-members,—did they wish to have a woman come and preach to them? The shade of Uncle Phineas presided over the gathering: they were startled—emphatically they did not.

Mr. Trimblerigg, fortified by this verdict, told Miss Sparling that being nothing if not democratic, and his own local democracy having decided against it, he could go no further at present in that particular direction; but that in his own time and in his own way he would work for the enlargement of popular opinion, and as soon as he saw an opening resume advocacy of the cause.

Thereupon ensued a long dispute between Mr. Trimblerigg and Miss Sparling as to what ‘democracy’ really meant. Was democracy, in matters spiritual, the will of a single congregation or community, or of the whole Church Militant? Mr. Trimblerigg said that democracy was merely what you could make it, a thing not of theory but of practice; and the whole Church Militant being highly divided on party lines, democracy was divided also.

Miss Sparling then created an argumentative diversion by asking, ‘Why did you kiss me when you converted me to True Belief?’ And thereafter the duel which went on between them was mainly upon those two questions—what democracy meant, and what the kiss had meant. Mr. Trimblerigg gave to both alike a spiritual and a brotherly interpretation. Whereupon Miss Sparling adumbrated a letter in which he had signed his name with five crosses after it: what did the five crosses mean? Mr. Trimblerigg said that they stood for an unfinished communication—unfinished for lack of time; and that educated people called them ‘asterisks.’ Miss Sparling refused to be so educated, and thenceforward was his enemy.

In the holiday season she took lodgings in the neighbourhood, and became a member of his congregation. Mr. Trimblerigg found that he could no longer preach and pray freely, while Isabel Sparling sat with her eye upon him, saying ‘Amen’ in a loud voice whenever he came to a full stop, pretending to think then that his prayer had finished. Thus by attacking his nerves she destroyed his spiritual efficiency. Constantly he received letters which he did not answer.

She followed him up on weekdays also, attended his mission services in the neighbouring villages and towns; and though he had ceased to speak to her, was to be seen following him at a few paces distance, as though somehow he belonged to her.

Mr. Trimblerigg walked fast, and sometimes, on turning a corner, ran to get quit of her. One day, in front of his gate, she was seen to make five crosses in the mud, indicative of an unfinished communication. She left it at that.

In desperation he was driven at last to consult Davidina, who had remained silently aware of what was going on, amused but saying nothing.

Davidina asked how many crossed letters she had had from him. Only one, he assured her. ‘One may be enough,’ was her comment, which he did not deny.

Davidina thought awhile, then said:

‘Have you forbidden her the house?’

‘She has never come.’

‘If you forbade it, she would.’

‘Then I won’t.’

‘You had much better. Tell her that you are in to-morrow between four and five, and that you will not see her.’

‘And what if she comes?’

‘You have only got to be out; I’ll see to her myself. It’s a pathological case, and the sooner you get married the better.’

For once he trusted her; and as Davidina arranged it, so the thing happened. Miss Sparling called; Davidina opened the door, and said, in reply to inquiry, that Mr. Trimblerigg was out. Miss Sparling, not believing her, walked in. Davidina requested her curtly but civilly to walk out again; and when she refused, closed the door and fell upon her.

In the struggle that ensued Miss Sparling was no match for Davidina. Within two minutes her bosom was rifled of its guilty contents, and so far as written documents were concerned Mr. Trimblerigg’s reputation was safe again; that is to say Davidina had it in her keeping.

She explained her course of action quite coolly to the flabbergasted Isabel: ‘You forced my door; I forced your buttons. Now we are equals; you’d better go.’

She opened the door again as she spoke. Eye to eye they looked at each other; then Miss Sparling walked out. And as Davidina watched her depart, she said to herself, ‘I wonder whether she’s going to be the making of him?’

Davidina had got it firmly into her head that it was better to provide Jonathan with enemies than with friends. She saw that popularity might be the ruin of him; it was sisterly partiality which made her think that unpopularity would be a corrective.

In the event Isabel had the making of him in a direction that Davidina could never have dreamed.

When Mr. Trimblerigg came home, creeping in by the back way after dark, Davidina presented him with the letter ending in five crosses, saying that Miss Sparling had left it for him.

‘Have you read it,’ he inquired uncomfortably.

‘No; did you want me to?’ said Davidina in a calculated tone of surprise.

He could not quite credit her with not having read it; but it was a great comfort to pretend she had not read it, and to have the pretence shared.

And if a human can understand that state of mind he will understand a good deal of the mind of Mr. Trimblerigg.

Mr. Trimblerigg as soon as he was alone, read the letter carefully through. He remembered the occasion of it, but had forgotten the actual phrasing; he was astonished at its moderation.

‘I don’t believe she could ever have used it!’ he exclaimed to himself. Then he put it into the fire and watched it burn; and as he did so, he remembered Davidina’s advice: ‘The sooner you get married’ (meaning to Caroline) ‘the better.’

It may be—I am not quite sure—that this was what really decided him to marry Caroline. His feelings toward Caroline had undergone, since his uncle’s death, not a revulsion, but a diminution. He had begun to have his doubts whether he was the right husband for her; if she could find another and a better, he did not wish to be selfish. There were episodes in their courtship which had disappointed him; she was still pleasant to touch; but her mind was the sort which seemed only capable of responding with a ‘just so’ to whatever was said to it: equable, comfortable, and contented, but not stimulating.

Like a soft cushion, leaning on which you leave an impression, and the mark stays for awhile then slowly effaces itself, so she. Looking ahead he could see the sort of wife and mother that she would be; and if ever it should chance that one of her children were taken from her, or if he himself were to die young—she would be more like a mother cow separated from its milk than from its calf. Caroline was uneventful.

It was not an exciting prospect to look forward to. Nevertheless—and perhaps Miss Sparling had something to do with it—within a year of his uncle’s death, Jonathan Trimblerigg married Caroline.

And Davidina, out of her newly inherited wealth, gave them £100 to start their housekeeping; returning herself to the parental roof, where she stayed till a couple of years later Mr. and Mrs. Trimblerigg senior shared an influenza and died in the same week, and in the same bed.

After that, for some while Mr. Trimblerigg was comfortably rid of her. She developed a craze for travelling. But regularly every year, when a new child was born to them, Davidina sent them a present of £20.