BROTHER AUGUSTINE

In 1866 I was appointed to the perpetual curacy of Dalton, near Thirsk in Yorkshire. It was a new parish, cut out of Topcliffe; the church was not built at the time, but an old barn had been converted into a school-chapel, and a little red brick house had been erected, intended eventually to be a schoolmaster’s house, which I was given as parsonage. It was small—containing one sitting-room only, and three bedrooms upstairs. When I went to see the place, the outgoing incumbent said to me, “Would you like to take on Mills?”

“Mills! Who is Mills?”

“I mean Brother Augustine.”

“Brother Augustine!” I echoed; “and who the dickens is Brother Augustine?”

“Well,” replied my friend, “that is not so easy to answer. What he is now is my valet and sacristan. He is a man who can make your clothes, mend anything, wait on you, and be most serviceable in church.”

“What! that fellow who sang in the choir through his nose as though there had been a vibrating metallic tongue in it?”

“The same: very useful, but odd.”

“Where did you pick him up?”

“I advertised for him.”

I took on Brother Augustine or Mr. Mills. Some called him one, some the other, and rightly, for he had two aspects, very distinct.

When I engaged him he was aged, I suppose, thirty-five, but it was impossible to say what his age really was: he was one of those men who look old when twenty, and never alter. He did not tell me his age. He was as coy as an old maid about that, but he was very ready to tell me his story, and it was an odd one.

He had been given when quite a little boy by his father, in Colchester, to the Roman Catholic priest there, who brought him up, and made him serve him daily at the altar, black his boots, and help the old housekeeper to make the beds, and dust the rooms, and clean the dishes. He also brought in the meals.

This went on till, as Mr. Mills said to me, “the dear old priest got so very old that he was fit for nothing but to be chaplain to a convent, so he was moved away, and then I had to be put somewhere. So I was put with Hyams, the tailor.”

How long Mills was with Hyams I do not know, but the swirl of life in freedom after the even and quiet of a parsonage was more than he could bear, and he took it into his head to become a monk.

He entered on his novitiate, “And,” said he, “they shaved my head, and I have been a martyr to neuralgia ever since.”

After a while he was sent to Rome. I cannot now recall what the Order was into which he had entered.

“I got into trouble there,” said Brother Augustine. “You must know that I am passionately fond of cats, and I had not had a cat to pat and coax ever since I had become a monk. Well, one day we were walking in procession down the long street in Trastevere, when I saw a white cat, with one paw black and one ear black, sitting in a doorway of a house. I could not help myself. The sight of that puss was too much for my pent-up feelings—there was a sort of void in me that only a cat could fill. Well, I broke out of the procession and ran to the cat to catch it up. But it was frightened, and made a bolt and was gone. That set all the monks off laughing to see me after the cat. We had been singing a psalm, and they could not get on with it. I was put on bread and water for a week, all because of that cat.”

Brother Augustine was not happy in Rome, and was teased with neuralgia. After a twelvemonth he was sent back to England, and he had made up his mind not to take the vows. So on landing at London he gave the slip to the monk who was sent along with him, and found his way into some sort of refuge for runaway monks and nuns that had been set up, just as there are refuges for stray cats and dogs.

There he made acquaintance with Miss Headly Vicars, who was most kind to him, and of her he spoke with deep regard. By her advice he became a Scripture reader, or if not by her advice, with her consent.

He remained for some little while drawing a salary and doing some off-and-on work, very much against his taste, as Scripture reader, for it was a position for which he was totally unqualified. At last he became uneasy in his conscience, he felt he was earning money he did not deserve, and the work was uncongenial. Then he saw an advertisement from my predecessor at Dalton for a young man to act as man-servant, sing in the choir—(“Bray, rather,” said I to myself)—and attend to the church.

This was exactly what he wanted. He answered, was accepted; and I found him at Dalton, and kept him on.

I have said that Mr. Mills, or Brother Augustine, wore two different aspects.

Usually, about the house and at church he wore a cassock, and a little black square cap set on the back of his head.

When not engaged about the church, he was generally to be seen seated cross-legged on the kitchen table, making a suit for me, or mending or making clothes for himself.

But, when Mr. Mills was dressed to go to Thirsk, the market town, he was as though he had walked out of a bandbox—dapper, spick and span in everything; a masher one would call him now, but in 1866 the word was not invented.

A most disinterested fellow he was. I did not pay him any wage. He had his food and room with me, and nothing else. If he wanted to go to York or Ripon, I gave him his fare, and a shilling to spend as he liked. He never had more whilst with me for two years. His mind was like that of a child. He was happy over the merest trifles, and upset also by trifles. A good-hearted fellow with a limited education, very fond of puss, and devotedly attached to animals. Every one laughed at him, but every one liked him. He would do anything that I asked him to do, and go anywhere.

I had an old housekeeper, a worthy woman who was a widow, and she and Mills were always laughing, and, when not laughing, he was singing. The kitchen was immediately opposite my one sitting-room, and as the door was generally open, they made a good deal of noise, to which I had to become accustomed.

One morning Mr. Mills appeared in lavender small-clothes, a black frock coat, white waistcoat, straw-coloured kid gloves, and a silk hat that shone as if it had been oiled. In his button-hole he wore a stephanotis. His face was twinkling with smiles.

He appeared before me flourishing a Malacca cane.

“Why—Brother Augustine! what are you about?” I exclaimed.

“I have walked through the village,” he replied, “and I want to go into Thirsk.”

“What for?”

“Only to get a rise out of the Daltonians. You should have seen the round eyes they made as I walked past their houses. And I have just been into the school to show myself to the mistress and the children. I really am curious to know to whom they will have married me—for they will all jump to the conclusion that I have gone into Thirsk to be married.”

My predecessor had been accustomed to have the chorister boys go to the parsonage after the Litany, which was sung in the afternoon, and have tea there, and hang about the garden till evensong at half-past six. I found this a burden more than I could bear, and I announced that I was regretfully obliged to discontinue the usage.

After having made the announcement, I was breathing free, when Mills came to me with a blank face.

“They have struck,” he said.

“Struck what?—struck you?” I asked.

“They will not put on their cassocks and surplices and go into the choir this evening.”

“Well, Mr. Mills, then we will manage without them.”

So we did. One, faithful among the faithless found, did put on his surplice. A little fellow who could not read. However, we sang the whole service, psalms, responses, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis, hymns, just as though we had a full choir. I do not think there was any musician in the congregation that evening, for I do not recall any one being carried out fainting.

There was one peculiarity about Mills that I could not break him of. He had learned the Apostles’ Creed in the Roman version, which differed slightly from our form, and he would always bray forth that “form of sound words” which he had acquired in his childhood.

In 1868 there was about to be a change in my domestic arrangements—in fact, I was about to be married—consequently I was forced, much to my regret, to get rid of Mills.

After a little inquiry and some letter-writing, it was settled that he should go to Christ Church and become valet to Dr. Pusey, at that time getting old and infirm.

In the event of sickness, I knew that no one could be a more tender and devoted nurse than Brother Augustine. There was something feminine in his delicacy of touch and in his sweetness of manner. And he would give up his time in the most unselfish manner possible to the doctor. Of that I was quite confident.

So Brother Augustine departed, with tears in his eyes, and there was not a person in the parish who was not sorry to lose him. For although they had laughed at him, all appreciated his goodness and his kindness; and I am not sure but that what they laughed at most was his absolute guilelessness, his utter unworldliness, and that, to a Yorkshireman, is indeed astonishing. I heard next of him as installed at Christ Church, where he figured in the quad in just the same extraordinary costume as he had worn with me; and his funny ways, his old-fashioned politeness, and his simplicity vastly tickled the young students. I believe sundry tricks were played on him, but I never heard any particulars.

That he was very happy I did learn from himself.

He was given a room near Dr. Pusey’s quarters in Christ Church, that adjoined or was under another in which one of the men of the college was lodged.

Now, Brother Augustine had the way of singing the psalms in his discordant bray every night, and one evening the young fellow who was near him, unable to endure the noise, went to his door, knocked, and Brother Augustine appeared at his door half-undressed for bed. The Christ Church man complained—really he could not work—he was going in for his examination, and with that singing—he—he was distracted.

“I beg your pardon humbly! I really am most sorry,” said the poor brother, covered with confusion. “I had no idea—certainly, certainly—you shall not be troubled again.”

So with a bow he saw his visitor depart, shut his door, and with his psalm unfinished went to bed.

He was found next morning dead. He had died apparently painlessly—of heart complaint—gone off in his sleep, to finish his psalm where his voice would give no offence.