In "The Vampire of the Village" by G. K. Chesterton, Dr. Mulborough was talking to Father Brown about a Great Scandal in their village, while they were going to a village by a train, saying:
‘Oh, even our scandal is on old-established melodramatic lines. Need I say that the clergyman’s son promises to be our problem? It would be almost irregular, if the clergyman’s son were quite regular. So far as I can see, he is very mildly and almost feebly irregular. He was first seen drinking ale outside the Blue Lion. Only it seems he is a poet, which in those parts is next door to being a poacher.’
I can't get what's meant by "It would be almost irregular, if the clergyman’s son were quite regular".
Does it mean that "what he done would be almost strange and shocking if he was a straight man"?
And how the author used "were" with "a single person"?
And is"the Blue Lion" a pub, or something like that?