Every one liked Daniel Povey; he was a favourite among all ranks.  The leading confectioner, a member of the Local Board, and a sidesman at St. Luke’s, he was, and had been for twenty-five years, very prominent in the town.  He was a tall, handsome man, with a trimmed, greying beard, a jolly smile, and a flashing, dark eye.  His good humour seemed to be permanent.  He had dignity without the slightest stiffness; he was welcomed by his equals and frankly adored by his inferiors.  He ought to have been Chief Bailiff, for he was rich enough; but there intervened a mysterious obstacle between Daniel Povey and the supreme honour, a scarcely tangible impediment which could not be definitely stated.  He was capable, honest, industrious, successful, and an excellent speaker; and if he did not belong to the austerer section of society, if, for example, he thought nothing of dropping into the Tiger for a glass of beer, or of using an oath occasionally, or of telling a facetious story—­well, in a busy, broad-minded town of thirty thousand inhabitants, such proclivities are no bar whatever to perfect esteem.  But—­how is one to phrase it without wronging Daniel Povey?  He was entirely moral; his views were unexceptionable.  The truth is that, for the ruling classes of Bursley, Daniel Povey was just a little too fanatical a worshipper of the god Pan.  He was one of the remnant who had kept alive the great Pan tradition from the days of the Regency through the vast, arid Victorian expanse of years.  The flighty character of his wife was regarded by many as a judgment upon him for the robust Rabelaisianism of his more private conversation, for his frank interest in, his eternal preoccupation with, aspects of life and human activity which, though essential to the divine purpose, are not openly recognized as such—­even by Daniel Poveys.  It was not a question of his conduct; it was a question of the cast of his mind.  If it did not explain his friendship with the rector of St. Luke’s, it explained his departure from the Primitive Methodist connexion, to which the Poveys as a family had belonged since Primitive Methodism was created in Turnhill in 1807.

Daniel Povey had a way of assuming that every male was boiling over with interest in the sacred cult of Pan.  The assumption, though sometimes causing inconvenience at first, usually conquered by virtue of its inherent truthfulness.  Thus it fell out with Samuel.  Samuel had not suspected that Pan had silken cords to draw him.  He had always averted his eyes from the god—­that is to say, within reason.  Yet now Daniel, on perhaps a couple of fine mornings a week, in full Square, with Fan sitting behind on the cold stones, and Mr. Critchlow ironic at his door in a long white apron, would entertain Samuel Povey for half an hour with Pan’s most intimate lore, and Samuel Povey would not blench.  He would, on the contrary, stand up to Daniel like a little man, and pretend with all his might to be, potentially, a perfect arch-priest of the god.