A Child of the Cloth

by James E. Probetts

  “My father had got it so terribly wrong. By my saying that he was not a member of his congregation, he obviously concluded that he could only be one person, the son of his old university friend Wilson, and his now Curate. I completely lost my composure and broke down in tears.

  “My father put what he thought was a comforting arm round me saying it is not a time for tears but a time of joy. I pulled back from Father and said, ‘No Father, it is not your Curate; you’ve got it so terribly wrong’. There was a stunned silence. My father moved back behind his desk and sat deep into his leather chair, holding and looking at the Pewter Tankard with disbelief. He finally broke the silence, saying, ‘I’m at a total loss to understand how it could be, you say, not a member of my congregation, yet you met this young man at my church. As I know of no other young men at the church, could you please explain yourself?’ I took a deep breath in an attempt to compose myself and informed father that his name was Arthur Halfpenny, the assistant to the organ tuner.

  “As my father started to speak, he developed an uncontrollable stammer, after a moment he calmed himself enough to ask me to leave him alone as he needed time to think. I left his study in great uncertainty and decided that I would leave the house for a time to allow my father time to consider what he had been told and to give him an opportunity to speak to my mother.

  “I had always believed that my father would support me but had serious doubts concerning the attitude of my mother. I walked to the village and then on to the War Memorial on the side of the common where I had prearranged to meet Arthur.

  “He was sitting on the steps of the memorial, patiently waiting for me. His reassuring smile gave me great comfort. He was eager to know how the meeting with my father had gone and whether my father had agreed to see him. I could read the disappointment on his face when I told him that my father gave me no opportunity to ask for a meeting. He listened with disbelief when I told him of father’s terrible misunderstanding, thinking I was talking about his Curate. I assured Arthur that at the first opportunity I would tell my father of his wish to speak to him.

  “We stayed together until just after lunchtime, when I suggested that it would be right if I returned home, as I thought that, by now, my father would have had sufficient time to speak with my mother. We arranged to meet at our special place the next day. I entered the house with some trepidation, not knowing quite what to expect, but the last thing I expected was the total silence which greeted me.

  “As I walked down the hall to my father’s study our maid, Lily, met me. I asked her if she knew whether my father was in his study. She said yes, he was in the study but had requested not to be disturbed, and added that the mistress had gone to her room. This unnerving silence continued for some days. Each time I attempted to broach the subject of Arthur and me, it came to no avail. There was now an atmosphere in the house that had never been there before.

  “I even overheard Mrs. Wiggins and Lily speculating on what they thought might be wrong, suggesting that there must be something really terribly wrong. I had never thought for one moment that my parents would accept my involvement with Arthur with the same pleasure they would have done had it had been my father’s Curate, but this total denial was impossible to deal with. I did try to speak to my mother, but her only reply was ‘don’t be so silly, this man is not right for you, he is not of your class, and never could be, your father is in complete agreement with me’. I must admit that it was nothing less than I expected from my mother as she had a very rigid view on one’s station in life but, from my father, it was extremely unnerving, as I had never before heard him referring to anyone’s ‘class’. My father was a man of high principle and intellect and a good Christian. It had been inconceivable to me that he would not offer good counsel and put my happiness first.

  “A week later, quite unexpectedly after breakfast, my father said that he would like talk to me in his study. We walked through the hallway to the study in total silence. I felt extremely nervous, I sat down on the old leather sofa but this time my father did not come and sit next to me. He remained at his desk. I experienced a distance and coldness between my father and me that I had never experienced before. There was one of those awful long moments of silence when no one spoke, and then I could not contain myself much longer and said, ‘Father please help me. I so need your help and your good counsel. Please let me tell you about Arthur, so you may judge him fairly. I know that you and mother must be suffering tremendous disappointment that I did not fall in love with the son of Wilson your old university friend, but I have never had any feelings for him, nor he for me, I did not seek to fall in love with Arthur, it just happened and I can see no wrong in it. Though he has not had the benefit of a university education, he is extremely well read, musical, and highly principled. He has asked me to become his wife, and it is compliant only on your approval and he wishes to speak to you. I am sure if you agreed to meet him you would instantly see in him a man whom you would consider a worthy husband for me’.

  “The coolness that had initially been between us started to disappear, he left his desk and came and sat next to me on the sofa. Taking hold of my hand he told me that he was at a loss as to what to say to me but said he felt some sense of guilt concerning my mother’s attitude, as he had told her of his suspicion when he thought there was a relationship developing between me and the son of his old friend. He said he could now see that his thoughts had been driven by a wish for such a relationship, and now he realised what trouble his mistake had caused. Unbeknown to him, my mother had been confiding in some of her friends, talking of an impending engagement, and she was suffering the embarrassment of having to tell them that no such relationship existed. Father then asked me tell him of this man, as he felt it was wrong of him to judge without knowing anything about him. I told him that his name was Arthur Halfpenny. I told my father what I knew of Arthur’s family and gave a general picture of him as a person.

  “My father then asked the question that I was most dreading, ‘is he of our church; if not, what church does he follow?’ It had all been going so well until that question, I answered as calmly as I could and said he did not follow any religious belief; he was an atheist.

  “My father instantly stood up, repeating the word with anger in his voice, ‘Atheist! You mean Communist! Under no circumstances will I receive such a man as him in our home; I could never give my blessing to you marrying an Antichrist and I urge you to stop seeing him at once’. As I attempted to plead for a fair hearing, my father raised his hand in a stern gesture and said there will be silence on this matter. You will speak no more of this man or of this unwise association. I fled my father’s study in a flood of tears.

  “Later in the day when I met Arthur I hardly knew how to tell him of my father’s attitude. He saw my tear stained face and put a comforting arm around me saying it was as he expected. He did not for one moment think that my parents would accept him. I told him I was not going to be dictated to by my parents.

  “I was nineteen years old and had an independent income from a trust my grandparents had created for me. I said we should marry as quickly as possible to prove to them how wrong they are. Arthur at first agreed but then began to have some doubts because he said he was very concerned that he was causing so much trouble in my family. He felt it would be terribly wrong for us to run away and marry without the consent of my father as in his view this would only confirm to my father that he was a man of no principles.

  “He said it was necessary to demonstrate his true love for me by proving, by his actions, that he was a man of his word, reminding me that our marriage was compliant on my father’s agreement. This was an Arthur I had not seen before. I knew he was right but I was anxious to know what the outcome would be if my father refused to reconsider, and withheld his blessing of our marriage. He said he would write at once to my father confirming it was not his intention to take me from my family and marry without his consent. He said he was convinced that my father, on receiving
such an assurance, would look more favourably on his proposal of marriage.

  “The next day when we met he showed me the letter, it was written in his beautiful copperplate handwriting. My initial reservations about him writing to my father were somewhat overcome. As I read the letter it was obvious that it was not written in the language that my father might have expected from a working man. It was, in fact, written in the language of an educated man who was at peace with himself. Knowing my father well, I was convinced that he would find this letter disarming but my heart stopped when I got to the final line in which he informed my father that he would be going to Tisbury to see his mother, to tell her of his proposal of marriage and would be away for one month to allow my parents time to give his proposal of marriage to me the proper consideration that he felt it was due.

  “I had anxious days awaiting the arrival of Arthur’s letter to my father. The post was usually delivered just after eight o’clock in the morning, while we were at breakfast. I would hear the post being pushed into the letterbox and, each morning, Lily would bring the letters to the dining room on a small tray and place it on the table next to my father. He would look through the letters putting them in order. I suffered anxious days waiting to see if I could spot Arthur’s letter. Then one morning there was no mistaking the letter from Arthur. The handwriting on the envelope stood out above all the others, even to the extent of making my father comment on the handwriting and instantly stopping my mother from speculating on the identity of the sender, he left the dining room with the letter.

  “I had become so used to having Arthur close to me and sharing our thoughts and I found it terribly depressing after he left Wimbledon to see his mother. When I look back now on those two weeks, I still find it hard to believe how my world started to fall apart. With the talk at home and in the streets of the impending possibility of war with Germany, I suppose, like thousands of others, I supported Mr. Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement, attempting to maintain peace with Germany. With the talk at home and in the village of the possibility of impending war with Germany, I remember my father’s sermon on the Sunday a week before war was declared. I have kept my father’s draft of this sermon.” She rose from her chair, crossed the room and opened an inlaid wooden box from which she took an envelope containing the sermon. She said it was the most moving sermon her father had ever given and had a vivid memory of him looking so sad, extremely pale and tired, burdened with worry, slowly walking up the steps to the pulpit. He spoke the opening words of his sermon in Latin; quoting from the ancient ode by Horace, ‘Dulce et Decorum est’. She then unfolded the sermon and started to read from it.

  “No, it is not sweet to die for one’s country, these words that were written millenniums ago perhaps they then had some honour in them when men fought toe to toe, sword in hand, for King and Country but we, as Christians, must never forget the words of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, ‘Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword’ (Matthew 26:52).

  “No! These words must not be used to give credence to such carnage that took the lives of thousands of our young men, killed in a war that they were told and, believed, was a war to end all wars. We now know it was a war of attrition prosecuted by men of business whose only interest was profit and who were safe many miles from the terrible abattoir that their investments had helped to create. In my mind I still see the images that fired the patriotism in the youth of our country, with highly emotive posters showing Lord Kitchener, an arm outstretched, with the caption, ‘Your Country Needs You’ thus making cowards of all those who would not enlist and the cries throughout the country ‘To arms to arms’. What was not generally known was that there were some strong Christian voices in the German government petitioning our government for a peaceful settlement, but our government had created so much monstrous hatred of the Germans and their Kaiser, that they could not pull back from the abyss. We must all pray for the good men of peace like our Prime Minister Mr. Chamberlain. I suspect that once again we will be told that this war will be the war to end all wars! Someone must tell them that we are still looking for our dead in Flanders Field to give them a decent Christian burial.” She then paused to wipe tears from her eyes and carefully folding the pages of the sermon, replaced it in the envelope and handing the envelope to me, asked if I would like to take it with me to read. Written on the envelope were the words ‘Dulce et Decorum est’. I said I would be very pleased to have the opportunity to read the full sermon.

  “I was also concerned that I had not received a letter from Arthur and I had no address to write to him. I also knew with absolute certainty that my father had received Arthur’s letter but he had still made no comment. I was loath to question him as he did not seem quite well in himself and had, finally, taken to his bed and asked for the doctor to call. The doctor prescribed him bed rest and suggested to mother that he was probably working too hard. After two or three days he seemed to improve considerably and resumed his normal routine. The first I knew that anything was wrong was when I was called urgently by Lily, who had heard an unusual sound from my father’s study. I quickly went to the study and was shocked to find my father lying on the floor, in great distress. An ambulance was called immediately; he was desperately trying to say something to me and continually tugging my sleeve in an attempt to bring me closer so I might hear what he was trying to say but he could not form the words. By the time the ambulance arrived, my father had lapsed into unconsciousness. He was never to speak or regain consciousness again and two days later he passed on from this life. The parish demonstrated their love for him by the church being full to capacity for his funeral.

  “Mother had barely spoken to me after my father’s death. I had no one to talk to. If only Arthur could have been with me. I still had not had any contact from him at all and was at a total loss to understand this. Mother then took to her bed. I initially made no comment on this for some days, thinking it was possibly a way of dealing with her grief but when I tried to encourage her to leave her bed; she spoke to me with deep anger in her voice, accusing me of causing the death of my father by breaking his heart.

  “I was shocked and deeply upset by the thought that my mother believed my love for Arthur had caused my father’s death. I knew it was arrant nonsense, but nevertheless it played heavily on my mind, even to the extent that I started to believe it myself. I was still unsure why I had not received a letter from Arthur but came to the conclusion that he had purposely refrained from writing to me until he had heard from my father.

  “When I told you that I found my father’s death certificate, I did not tell you what else I found that day. In a drawer in my mother’s desk, there was an old locked black cash box containing, not money but something that was to prove more valuable to me than any amount of money, the truth!

  “As I unlocked the box and saw what it contained, I knew instantly what should have been my life. I laid the letters out on the desk in date order, the post marks showing the dates were extremely clear. One particular letter caught my eye. It was Arthur’s letter to my father. Just to see his handwriting again took me back all those years to a time of happiness that I thought was mine forever. I turned the letter over and written on the back of the letter in my father’s handwriting, was a draft of his intended reply.

  “Reading the draft letter, I could not believe what happiness could have been mine, if my father had lived to send the letter. He praised Arthur and described him as a good and principled man that he had greatly misjudged; that he was guilty of what he could only describe to his shame as an unchristian and selfish act. His letter said that he held Arthur in the highest esteem for his undertaking in his letter that he would not take me from my loving family and marry in defiance of my parents’ wishes.

  “He wrote that he should not judge a man for not following a particular religious doctrine and call him a heretic or label him an Antichrist and that his lack of fairness in judgment of Arthur troub
led him greatly, saying he did not turn his face away from one of his friends, George Brown, his friend from his university days when in a crisis of conscience he altered his chosen course of ordination and rejected all advice that all would be well after he became ordained.

  “The final sentence of the letter was a warm invitation to meet him. I found great comfort in reading my father’s words. It brought back the father I so loved and respected. I was shocked to find other letters in the box; letters addressed to me that must have been intercepted by my mother, as they were dated after my father’s death.

  “I could not begin to imagine what the effect of my silence must have been on Arthur. Being aware of these letters and their contents, and the knowledge that my mother had concealed them from me, I found it a great test of my Christianity. I felt that she had stolen my life.

  “One day, when returning home. There, on the hall table propped up against a statue, was a letter. The handwriting was unmistakable; it could only be from one person. My hands trembled as I fumbled in my handbag to find my reading glasses. I had thought I would never hear from Arthur again after such a long silence. As I nervously opened the letter, I felt the same warm emotion that I experienced all those years ago.

  “Arthur said he had seen an announcement in The Daily Telegraph, recording the death of Mrs. Stevenson, wife of the late Reverend Stevenson, of St. Mary’s Church in Wimbledon Village. He said he had been unaware of the death of my father and offered his condolences. His letter continued:

  ‘After what must be more years than I care to remember, you are still constantly in my mind and I felt compelled to write to you to try to achieve possible closure. I would like to see you again but firstly I must tell you of my life since we last parted, as there are facts you should be aware of that might make you question whether you wished to see me ever again. I gave up all hope of hearing from you after I received no reply to my letter to your father and no response to my letters to you. I knew when I wrote to your father, giving him my undertaking that I would not seek marriage with you without the agreement of your family, I was taking an enormous risk that I might lose you forever but I felt deep in my heart that asking you to choose between your family and me could be a canker in the love we had for each other.