Scenes of Clerical Life | Page 8

wrought without faith--without

the worker's faith in himself, as well as the recipient's faith in him. And
the greater part of the worker's faith in himself is made up of the faith
that others believe in him.
Let me be persuaded that my neighbour Jenkins considers me a
blockhead, and I shall never shine in conversation with him any more.
Let me discover that the lovely Phoebe thinks my squint intolerable,
and I shall never be able to fix her blandly with my disengaged eye
again. Thank heaven, then, that a little illusion is left to us, to enable us
to be useful and agreeable--that we don't know exactly what our friends
think of us--that the world is not made of looking-glass, to show us just
the figure we are making, and just what is going on behind our backs!
By the help of dear friendly illusion, we are able to dream that we are
charming and our faces wear a becoming air of self-possession; we are
able to dream that other men admire our talents--and our benignity is
undisturbed; we are able to dream that we are doing much good--and
we do a little. Thus it was with Amos Barton on that very Thursday
evening, when he was the subject of the conversation at Cross Farm.
He had been dining at Mr. Farquhar's, the secondary squire of the
parish, and, stimulated by unwonted gravies and port-wine, had been
delivering his opinion on affairs parochial and otherwise with
considerable animation. And he was now returning home in the
moonlight--a little chill, it is true, for he had just now no greatcoat
compatible with clerical dignity, and a fur boa round one's neck, with a
waterproof cape over one's shoulders, doesn't frighten away the cold
from one's legs; but entirely unsuspicious, not only of Mr. Hackit's
estimate of his oratorical powers, but also of the critical remarks passed
on him by the Misses Farquhar as soon as the drawing-room door had
closed behind him. Miss Julia had observed that she never heard any
one sniff so frightfully as Mr. Barton did--she had a great mind to offer
him her pocket-handkerchief; and Miss Arabella wondered why he
always said he was going for to do a thing. He, excellent man! was
meditating fresh pastoral exertions on the morrow; he would set on foot
his lending library; in which he had introduced some books that would
be a pretty sharp blow to the Dissenters--one especially, purporting to
be written by a working man who, out of pure zeal for the welfare of
his class, took the trouble to warn them in this way against those

hypocritical thieves, the Dissenting preachers. The Rev. Amos Barton
profoundly believed in the existence of that working man, and had
thoughts of writing to him. Dissent, he considered, would have its head
bruised in Shepperton, for did he not attack it in two ways? He
preached Low-Church doctrine--as evangelical as anything to be heard
in the Independent Chapel; and he made a High-Church assertion of
ecclesiastical powers and functions. Clearly, the Dissenters would feel
that 'the parson' was too many for them. Nothing like a man who
combines shrewdness with energy. The wisdom of the serpent, Mr.
Barton considered, was one of his strong points.
Look at him as he winds through the little churchyard! The silver light
that falls aslant on church and tomb, enables you to see his slim black
figure, made all the slimmer by tight pantaloons, as it flits past the pale
gravestones. He walks with a quick step, and is now rapping with sharp
decision at the vicarage door. It is opened without delay by the nurse,
cook, and housemaid, all at once--that is to say, by the robust
maid-of-all-work, Nanny; and as Mr. Barton hangs up his hat in the
passage, you see that a narrow face of no particular complexion--even
the small-pox that has attacked it seems to have been of a mongrel,
indefinite kind--with features of no particular shape, and an eye of no
particular expression is surmounted by a slope of baldness gently rising
from brow to crown. You judge him, rightly, to be about forty. The
house is quiet, for it is half-past ten, and the children have long been
gone to bed. He opens the sitting-room door, but instead of seeing his
wife, as he expected, stitching with the nimblest of fingers by the light
of one candle, he finds her dispensing with the light of a candle
altogether. She is softly pacing up and down by the red firelight,
holding in her arms little Walter, the year-old baby, who looks over her
shoulder with large wide-open eyes, while the patient mother pats his
back with her soft hand, and glances with a sigh at the heap of large