Our Friend the Charlatan | Page 4

for he took to
heart all human miseries and follies, and lived in a ceaseless mild
indignation against the tenor of the age. Inwardly, Mr. Lashmar was at
this moment rather pleased, having come upon an article in his weekly

paper which reviewed in a very depressing strain the present aspect of
English life. He felt that he might have, and ought to have, written the
article himself a loss of opportunity which gave new matter for
discontent.
The Rev. Philip was in his sixty-seventh year; a thin, dry,
round-shouldered man, with bald occiput, straggling yellowish beard,
and a face which recalled that of Darwin. The resemblance pleased him.
Privately he accepted the theory of organic evolution, reconciling it
with a very broad Anglicanism; in his public utterances he touched
upon the Darwinian doctrine with a weary disdain. This contradiction
involved no insincerity; Mr. Lashmar merely held in contempt the
common understanding, and declined to expose an esoteric truth to
vulgar misinterpretation. Yet he often worried about it--as he worried
over everything.
Nearer causes of disquiet were not lacking to him. For several years the
income of his living had steadily decreased; his glebe, upon which he
chiefly depended, fell more and more under the influence of
agricultural depression, and at present he found himself, if not seriously
embarrassed, likely to be so in a very short time. He was not a good
economist; he despised everything in the nature of parsimony; his ideal
of the clerical life demanded a liberal expenditure of money no less
than unsparing personal toil. He had generously exhausted the greater
part of a small private fortune; from that source there remained to him
only about a hundred pounds a year. His charities must needs be
restricted; his parish outlay must be pinched; domestic life must
proceed on a narrower basis. And all this was to Mr. Lashmar
supremely distasteful.
Not less so to Mr. Lashmar's wife, a lady ten years his junior, endowed
with abundant energies in every direction save that of household order
and thrift. Whilst the vicar stood waiting for breakfast, tapping drearily
on the window-pane, Mrs. Lashmar entered the room, and her voice
sounded the deep, resonant note which announced a familiar morning
mood.
"You don't mean to say that breakfast isn't ready! Surely, my dear, you
could ring the bell?"
"I have done so," replied the vicar, in a tone of melancholy abstraction.
Mrs. Lashmar rang with emphasis, and for the next five minutes her

contralto swelled through the vicarage, rendering inaudible the replies
she kept demanding from a half rebellious, half intimidated servant.
She was not personally a coarse woman, and her manners did not
grossly offend against the convention of good-breeding; but her nature
was self-assertive. She could not brook a semblance of disregard for
her authority, yet, like women in general, had no idea of how to rule.
The small, round face had once been pretty; now, with its prominent
eyes, in-drawn lips, and obscured chin, it inspired no sympathetic
emotion, rather an uneasiness and an inclination for retreat. In good
humour or in ill, Mrs. Lashmar was aggressive. Her smile conveyed an
amiable defiance; her look of grave interest alarmed and subdued.
"I have a line from Dyce," remarked the vicar, as at length he applied
himself to his lukewarm egg and very hard toast. "He thinks of running
down."
"When?"
"He doesn't say."
"Then why did he write? I've no patience with those vague projects.
Why did he write until he had decided on the day?"
"Really, I don't know," answered Mr. Lashmar, feebly. His wife, in this
mood, had a dazing effect upon him.
"Let me see the letter."
Mrs. Lashmar perused the half-dozen lines in her son's handwriting.
"Why, he does say!" she exclaimed in her deepest and most disdainful
chord. "He says 'before long.'"
"True. But I hardly think that conveys--"
"Oh, please don't begin a sophistical argument He says when he is
coming, and that's all I want to know here's a letter, I see, from that
silly Mrs. Barker--her husband has quite given up drink, and earns
good wages, sad the eldest boy has a place--pooh!"
"All very good news, it seems to me," remarked the vicar, slightly
raising his eyebrows.
But one of Mrs. Lashmar's little peculiarities was that, though she
would exert herself to any extent for people whose helpless
circumstances utterly subjected them to her authority, she lost all
interest in them as soon as their troubles were surmounted, and even
viewed with resentment that result of her own efforts. Worse still, from
her point of view, if the effort had largely been that of the sufferers

themselves--as in this case. Mrs. Barker, a washerwoman who had
reformed her sottish husband, was henceforth a mere offence in the
eyes of