Carling's position was but little affected either way by the change in his life.As a bachelor, his circle of friends had been a small one, and when he married he made no attempt to enlarge it.He had never been popular with the inhabitants of his parish generally.Essentially a weak man, he was, like other weak men, only capable of asserting himself positively in serious matters by running into extremes.As a consequence of this moral defect, he presented some singular anomalies in character.In the ordinary affairs of life he was the gentlest and most yielding of men, but in all that related to strictness of religious principle he was the sternest and the most aggressive of fanatics.In the pulpit he was a preacher of merciless sermons--an interpreter of the Bible by the letter rather than by the spirit, as pitiless and gloomy as one of the Puritans of old; while, on the other hand, by his own fireside he was considerate, forbearing, and humble almost to a fault.As a necessary result of this singular inconsistency of character, he was feared, and sometimes even disliked, by the members of his congregation who only knew him as their pastor, and he was prized and loved by the small circle of friends who also knew him as a man.
Those friends gathered round him more closely and more affectionately than ever after his marriage, not on his own account only, but influenced also by the attractions that they found in the society of his wife.Her refinement and gentleness of manner; her extraordinary accomplishments as a musician; her unvarying sweetness of temper, and her quick, winning, womanly intelligence in conversation, charmed every one who approached her.She was quoted as a model wife and woman by all her husband's friends, and she amply deserved the character that they gave her.Although no children came to cheer it, a happier and a more admirable married life has seldom been witnessed in this world than the life which was once to be seen in the rectory house at Penliddy.
With these necessary explanations, that preliminary part of my narrative of which the events may be massed together generally, for brevity's sake, comes to a close.What I have next to tell is of a deeper and a more serious interest, and must be carefully related in detail.
The rector and his wife had lived together without, as I honestly believe, a harsh word or an unkind look once passing between them for upward of two years, when Mr.Carling took his first step toward the fatal future that was awaiting him by devoting his leisure hours to the apparently simple a nd harmless occupation of writing a pamphlet.
He had been connected for many years with one of our great Missionary Societies, and had taken as active a part as a country clergyman could in the management of its affairs.At the period of which I speak, certain influential members of the society had proposed a plan for greatly extending the sphere of its operations, trusting to a proportionate increase in the annual subscriptions to defray the additional expenses of the new movement.The question was not now brought forward for the first time.It had been agitated eight years previously, and the settlement of it had been at that time deferred to a future opportunity.The revival of the project, as usual in such cases, split the working members of the society into two parties; one party cautiously objecting to run any risks, the other hopefully declaring that the venture was a safe one, and that success was sure to attend it.Mr.Carling sided enthusiastically with the members who espoused this latter side of the question, and the object of his pamphlet was to address the subscribers to the society on the subject, and so to interest them in it as to win their charitable support, on a larger scale than usual, to the new project.
