i think, perhaps, uncle jenico foresaw it no more than i. without doubt, at first, he would have laughed to scorn the idea of sinking all his eager interests in this little suffolk fishing village, whose communications with any town of even fifth-rate importance, such as yokestone, were by seven miles at least of villainous roads. our settlement was gradual; our departure postponed, in the beginning, week by week, probably like that of the man who went to venice for a fortnight and stayed for thirty years. the initiatory step towards our continued residence was certainly my uncle’s acceptance of mr. sant’s offer to instruct me. that was, as the french say, le premier pas qui coûte. afterwards, the offer—being extended, with infinite consideration for our means, to one for my general tuition by the clergyman—grew to confirm our attachment to the place, until it came to be tacitly understood that dunberry was to see me through my education.
but there was another reason. uncle jenico seemed never quite to recover from the stun inflicted upon him at his landing. his affection, his geniality, his inventiveness were no whit impaired; yet somehow the last, one could have thought, had relapsed from the practical upon the theoretic. he was a trifle less restless; a trifle more inert. he appeared to bask in a sort of luminous placidity, and more and more his concern in his patents diminished. i do not mean by this to imply that his schemes for our enrichment were all forgotten. on the contrary, they concentrated to an intensity as pathetic as it was single in its object. i know at this date that uncle jenico was a lovable failure. i recognize, moreover, as i hardly recognized then, that a wistful realization of this fact—minus its qualifying adjective—was beginning to dawn upon him, and that he was inclining to consider his “lame and impotent conclusions” a right judgment upon him for his self-seeking. god bless him, i say! he thought to atone for this, his egotism, dear charitable soul, by devoting all his remaining energies to the task of making the fortune of the little trust committed to his care. he wrought, in fact, that he might die content, leaving me rich; and, in the furtherance of this object, his schemes were not, as i say, forgotten, but transferred. they were consolidated, in short, into one, which in the end was to become an obsession. but of that i will treat in its place.
as soon as we were settled, i began at once to go to mr. sant’s for my daily lesson, the scope of which imperceptibly enlarged itself from catechism to the classics. the rectory stood inland beyond the playstow, in a rather lonely position under the drop of the hill. it was a dark, mossy old building, shrouded in trees, and a by-road went past its gates up to the woods beyond, in the depths of whose shadows lay the court manor-house and its bed-ridden old squire.
mr. sant was a bachelor, a tough militant churchman and church reformer. he taught me the uses of my fists as well as of the decalogue. no doubt it was this constitution of his which made such way with the villagers, for englishmen respect piety the better for its being knocked into them. i took my share of his excellent influence, and i trust it helped to make a man of me. you shall hear by-and-by about the first practical use to which i put it.
he had the motto from cicero framed and hung over the mantelpiece in his study. i will quote it to you, because it speaks the man more perfectly than i can do. quidquid agas, agere pro viribus! whatever you do, to do with your whole strength—that was it. it was a maxim very apt to one whose own strength, both of will and body, was of tempered steel.
one among his many characteristic innovations was “the feast of lanterns,” as he called it. a lecture, to combine instruction with amusement, would be called for delivery in the church after dark. whosoever listed might, on a single condition, attend this. he would find set up, spectrally discernible in the chancel, which, like the rest of the building, would be unlighted, a screen of white linen, on which had been roughly sketched in crayon, by the courageous lecturer himself, a number of objects—to become, in their turn, subjects—which might range, say, from a leg of mutton to the dome of st. paul’s. the condition of attendance was simply that each comer should bring his or her own lantern, with the natural consequence that the greater the company the brighter the illumination. now, with the first arrival began hymns, and were so continued until sufficient lights were congregated to reveal the drawings on the screen, a right identification of any one of which, by any member of the audience, at the close of any verse, put a period to the singing and started a disquisition on the object named. it must be said that the identification was not always accurate, in which case the singing was continued. for religious and artistic fervour are not necessarily associated, and the splendid daring which mr. sant put into his work sometimes obscured its intentions, as when his bellows, designed to introduce a dissertation on pulmonics, were taken for a ham. but the vigour and resourcefulness of the lecturer neither allowed an impasse, nor, while he was always quite ready to join in the laughter over his own artistic shortcomings, permitted criticism to degenerate into fooling. he did not object to laughter; on the contrary (i am afraid it will scandalize some people), he credited the almighty with an almighty sense of humour, only he insisted upon its being tempered to the sacredness of the place in which it was evoked. and, for the rest, he had a fund of bright and ready information at his constant disposal.
such is an example of his methods, and, if any pious reactionaries object, i can only say that in the result it was educational; that it won tavern-loafers to at least one wholesome evening in the week; that, in short, it attained such popularity, that any dissipated seceder attempting to sneak out of the church, and thereby obscure the light by so much as the loss of a taper, would be roughly grabbed back by his fellows, and forced, willy-nilly, to hear the lecture out.
mr. sant, to sum him up, was a zealot without being a bigot, and a devoted servant to his master without prejudice to human nature. he was also a capable boxer. i came to love as much as to respect him.
