The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

“I like this part of England so much the best for that very reason. What is the use of a crowded population?”

“The earth has to be peopled, Lady Carbury.”

“Oh, yes,” said her ladyship, with some little reverence added to her voice, feeling that the bishop was probably adverting to a divine arrangement. “The world must be peopled; but for myself I like the country better than the town.”

“So do I,” said Roger; “and I like Suffolk. The people are hearty, and radicalism is not quite so rampant as it is elsewhere. The poor people touch their hats, and the rich people think of the poor. There is something left among us of old English habits.”

“That is so nice,” said Lady Carbury.

“Something left of old English ignorance,” said the bishop. “All the same I dare say we’re improving, like the rest of the world. What beautiful flowers you have here, Mr. Carbury! At any rate, we can grow flowers in Suffolk.”

Mrs. Yeld, the bishop’s wife, was sitting next to the priest, and was in truth somewhat afraid of her neighbour. She was, perhaps, a little stauncher than her husband in Protestantism; and though she was willing to admit that Mr. Barham might not have ceased to be a gentleman when he became a Roman Catholic priest, she was not quite sure that it was expedient for her or her husband to have much to do with him. Mr. Carbury had not taken them unawares. Notice had been given that the priest was to be there, and the bishop had declared that he would be very happy to meet the priest. But Mrs. Yeld had had her misgivings. She never ventured to insist on her opinion after the bishop had expressed his; but she had an idea that right was right, and wrong wrong⁠—and that Roman Catholics were wrong, and therefore ought to be put down. And she thought also that if there were no priests there would be no Roman Catholics. Mr. Barham was, no doubt, a man of good family, which did make a difference.

Mr. Barham always made his approaches very gradually. The taciturn humility with which he commenced his operations was in exact proportion to the enthusiastic volubility of his advanced intimacy. Mrs. Yeld thought that it became her to address to him a few civil words, and he replied to her with a shamefaced modesty that almost overcame her dislike to his profession. She spoke of the poor of Beccles, being very careful to allude only to their material position. There was too much beer drunk, no doubt, and the young women would have finery. Where did they get the money to buy those wonderful bonnets which appeared every Sunday? Mr. Barham was very meek, and agreed to everything that was said. No doubt he had a plan ready formed for inducing Mrs. Yeld to have mass said regularly within her husband’s palace, but he did not even begin to bring it about on this occasion. It was not till he made some apparently chance allusion to the superior church-attending qualities of “our people,” that Mrs. Yeld drew herself up and changed the conversation by observing that there had been a great deal of rain lately.

When the ladies were gone the bishop at once put himself in the way of conversation with the priest, and asked questions as to the morality of Beccles. It was evidently Mr. Barham’s opinion that “his people” were more moral than other people, though very much poorer. “But the Irish always drink,” said Mr. Hepworth.

“Not so much as the English, I think,” said the priest. “And you are not to suppose that we are all Irish. Of my flock the greater proportion are English.”

“It is astonishing how little we know of our neighbours,” said the bishop. “Of course I am aware that there are a certain number of persons of your persuasion round about us. Indeed, I could give the exact number in this diocese. But in my own immediate neighbourhood I could not put my hand upon any families which I know to be Roman Catholic.”

“It is not, my lord, because there are none.”

“Of course not. It is because, as I say, I do not know my neighbours.”

“I think, here in Suffolk, they must be chiefly the poor,” said Mr. Hepworth.

“They were chiefly the poor who at first put their faith in our Saviour,” said the priest.

“I think the analogy is hardly correctly drawn,” said the bishop, with a curious smile. “We were speaking of those who are still attached to an old creed. Our Saviour was the teacher of a new religion. That the poor in the simplicity of their hearts should be the first to acknowledge the truth of a new religion is in accordance with our idea of human nature. But that an old faith should remain with the poor after it has been abandoned by the rich is not so easily intelligible.”

“The Roman population still believed,” said Carbury, “when the patricians had learned to regard their gods as simply useful bugbears.”

“The patricians had not ostensibly abandoned their religion. The people clung to it thinking that their masters and rulers clung to it also.”

“The poor have ever been the salt of the earth, my lord,” said the priest.

“That begs the whole question,” said the bishop, turning to his host, and beginning to talk about a breed of pigs which had lately been imported into the palace styes. Father Barham turned to Mr. Hepworth and went on with his argument, or rather began another. It was a mistake to suppose that the Catholics in the county were all poor. There were the A⁠⸺⁠s and the B⁠⸺⁠s, and the C⁠⸺⁠s and the D⁠⸺⁠s. He knew all their names and was proud of their fidelity. To him these faithful ones were really the salt of the earth, who would some day be enabled by their fidelity to restore England to her pristine condition. The bishop had truly said that of many of his neighbours he did not know to what Church they belonged; but Father Barham, though