"Very possibly," said the vicar; "and who made the protoplasm, Mr. Baxter?"
The man was silent for a minute. "Then, Mr. Byars," he said at length, "you do not believe the Old Testament--the Adam and Eve part, for instance. You do not believe the Book on which your creed is founded."
"There are such things as allegories," he had answered. "The untutored brain must be taught the truth in such a way as it can receive it."
The vicar lit his pipe and began to open his letters with a slight sigh. Of all men, he sometimes felt, he was the least possible one for Walktown. For twelve years he had worked there, and he seemed to make little headway. He longed for an educated congregation. Here methods too vulgar for his temperament seemed to be the only ones.
The letters were all from applicants for the curacy which Gortre's impending departure would shortly leave vacant.
"It will be a terrible wrench to lose Basil," he said to himself; "but it must be. He will have his chance and be far happier in London, in more congenial environment. He would never be a great success in Walktown. He has tried nobly, but the people won't understand him. They would never like him; he's too much of a gentleman. How they all hate breeding in Walktown! There is nothing for it, I can see. I must get an inferior man this time. An inferior man will go down with them better here. I only hope he will be a really good fellow. If he isn't, it will be Jerrold over again--vulgar cabals against me, and all the women in the place quarrelling and taking sides."
He read letter after letter, and saw, with a humorous shrug of disgust, that he would have little difficulty in engaging the "inferior" man of his thoughts.
The best men would not come to the North. Men of family with decent degrees, Oxford men, Cambridge men, accustomed to decent society and intellectual friends, knew far too much to accept a title in the Manchester district.
The applications were numerous enough, but obviously from second-rate men, or at any rate from men who appeared to be so at first glance.
A Durham graduate, 40, with five children, begged earnestly for the £120 a year which was all Mr. Byars could offer. A few young men from theological colleges wanting titles, a Dublin B.A., announcing himself as "thoroughly Protestant in views"--they were a weary lot. A non-collegiate student from Oxford with a second class in Theology, a Manchester Grammar-School boy, whose father lived at Higher Broughton, seemed to promise the best. He would be able to get on with the people, probably. "I suppose I must have him, accent and all," the vicar said with a sigh, "though I suppose it's prejudice to dislike the lessons read with the Lancashire broad 'a' and short 'o.' St. Paul probably spoke with a terrible local twang! and yet, I don't know, he was too great to be vulgar; one doesn't like to think that----"