The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Friend the Charlatan, by George Gissing

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Title: Our Friend the Charlatan

Author: George Gissing

Posting Date: July 12, 2009 [EBook #4304]
Release Date: July, 2003
First Posted: January 3, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Our Friend the Charlatan

by

George Gissing

CHAPTER I

As he waited for his breakfast, never served to time, Mr. Lashmar
drummed upon the window-pane, and seemed to watch a blackbird lunching
with much gusto about the moist lawn of Alverholme Vicarage. But his
gaze was absent and worried. The countenance of the reverend gentleman
rarely wore any other expression, for he took to heart all human
miseries and follies, and lived in a ceaseless mild indignation against
the tenor of the age. Inwardly, Mr. Lashmar was at this moment rather
pleased, having come upon an article in his weekly paper which reviewed
in a very depressing strain the present aspect of English life. He felt
that he might have, and ought to have, written the article himself a
loss of opportunity which gave new matter for discontent.

The Rev. Philip was in his sixty-seventh year; a thin, dry,
round-shouldered man, with bald occiput, straggling yellowish beard,
and a face which recalled that of Darwin. The resemblance pleased him.
Privately he accepted the theory of organic evolution, reconciling it
with a very broad Anglicanism; in his public utterances he touched upon
the Darwinian doctrine with a weary disdain. This contradiction
involved no insincerity; Mr. Lashmar merely held in contempt the common
understanding, and declined to expose an esoteric truth to vulgar
misinterpretation. Yet he often worried about it--as he worried over
everything.

Nearer causes of disquiet were not lacking to him. For several years
the income of his living had steadily decreased; his glebe, upon which
he chiefly depended, fell more and more under the influence of
agricultural depression, and at present he found himself, if not
seriously embarrassed, likely to be