‘IT IS A BASILISK UNTO MINE EYE.’
Tranquil and monotonous days hung like a cloud upon the little
household of Combhaven. The daily round of labour, of eating and
drinking in a spare and Spartan fashion, of praying and preaching,
went on with pitiless regularity; but of household joys there were
none, of family love but little. A gloomy change had come over
Joshua Haggard. He was still the enthusiastic apostle of Primitive
Methodism; a man ready to go out and preach the Gospel in wild and
barbarous places, to be the bearer of glad tidings to those who
despised and rejected such messengers, to be hooted by a brutal
rabble, if need were, and driven from village to village at peril
of his life, and to escape from his persecutors by the skin of
his teeth, as John Wesley did, more than once, in his long and
difficult career. He was ready to endure all things. Day by day his
discourses grew more fervid, but, alas, more darkly fraught with a
message which was not glad tidings--the message of an offended and
an avenging God. Christ, the Saviour, was almost excluded from the
preacher’s exhortations. When he talked of man’s Redeemer it was as
of one who turned His face from a sinful world, in which there were
very few to be saved. If he had lived in that awful time before the
Deluge, when all the earth was peopled with reprobates, he could
hardly have been more despairing of humanity’s ultimate destiny.
His flock were in nowise offended by this gloomy view of their
spiritual condition, although it implied so mean an opinion of their
personal merits and conduct. The more vehemently threatening Joshua
Haggard’s sermons became, the more eagerly the sinners crowded to
hear him. It was as if they liked to hear themselves upbraided and
denounced. Perhaps everybody saw the barbed shaft fly straight to
the gold of a neighbour’s heart, and did not feel it rankling in
his own. When Joshua talked of the frivolity and extravagance of an
unregenerate race, Mrs. Pycroft thought of Mrs. Spradgers’s last new
bonnet, which was clearly a superfluous and culpable outlay; such
bonnet not being due to Mrs. Spradgers, from an economic point of
view, until Advent Sunday, whereas the lady had flaunted it before
the disapproving eyes of the flock early in October. If Joshua
denounced sensuality and the vile indulgence of earthly desires, Mrs.
Pentelow’s thoughts flew at once to the Polwhele family, who were
known to have hot suppers--squab-pies and other savoury meats--every
night in the week. You could see the grease oozing out of their
complexions on warm Sunday afternoons, as if digestion as well as
respiration were a function of the skin.
From the day when he gave up humanity for lost, and plainly told them
so, Joshua’s popularity increased in a marked degree. The darker his
doctrines grew, the better his congregation liked to hear him. It was
not milk for babes which they wanted, but strong meat for men of iron
thews and sinews, and women with vigorous constitutions and masculine
strength of mind. They liked to hear that the devil was among them,
at their shoulders, prompting them to evil, fighting for the mastery
of their souls.
‘I can see him, I can feel his presence,’ cried Joshua, in a passion
of despairing ecstasy. ‘He is among us; his sulphurous breath burns
me with a foretaste of eternal fire; his whisper hisses in my ear as
the serpent’s hiss stole into the ear of Eve. He will not loose his
hold. He is fighting for the possession of my soul; he is striving
to drag me down into the pit. What shall I do to be saved? How shall
I win the fight against so omnipotent an adversary--omnipotent to
destroy, omnipotent to enthral and enchain souls? He wants to people
hell, my brethren. He is not content with his victory over willing
sinners; the profligates and harlots are too pitiful a prey for him!
He wants to have the virtuous man in his net. He would have liked to
get John Wesley, or George Whitfield, or William Law. He tried for
them, as he is trying for us. He is a fallen angel himself, and it
pleases him to entrap men of high estate--to take the Christian in
his toils--to make the white scarlet, and the wool like unto blood.’
Naomi heard and shuddered. Was this her father, who had once preached
infinite faith in God’s mercy, in Christ’s redeeming grace? He talked
now as if mankind were abandoned as a prey to the Evil One, with no
guardian and champion to protect and save, no all-merciful Judge to
adjust the balance; as if humanity, forgotten by God, were left to
struggle single-handed against the devices of the great Enemy. Of
our ever-interceding Redeemer, of guardian angels and ministering
spirits, and saints who had fought and conquered, Joshua now rarely
spoke. He described a world given over to the Prince of Darkness.
Nor was this the only change which Naomi beheld with remorseful
grief, believing herself in somewise to blame for this gloomy
transformation. In his home as well as in his pulpit the minister
was a new man. It was not in his nature to become a domestic tyrant.
He interfered with no one’s liberty or comfort; but he sat in his
domestic circle like a statue, he banished all cheerfulness by his
silent presence, he breathed an atmosphere of gloom.
Even Judith regretted this alteration in her brother’s temper,
though she had been apt in happier days to think him far too easy
and indulgent a father. She, like Naomi, had her moments of remorse,
thinking the change her work. Better perhaps if she had held her
tongue about that foolish young man, and let time and Providence cure
him of his folly. Naomi’s marriage would have been a feather in the
family cap; and although Miss Haggard had been disposed to begrudge
her niece this exaltation, it was a trial to receive the condolences
of friends whose affected sympathy thinly disguised their inward
satisfaction. Yes, taking all things into consideration, Judith was
sorry she had not held her peace. She had acted for the best, of
course--when had she ever done otherwise?--but the worst had come of
it instead of the best.
Cynthia bore her cross and made no murmur, and had neither kindness
nor pity for any one except James Haggard, who thought it a hard
thing that his pretty young stepmother should lead so dreary a life.
She had not even the business and the delightful consciousness of
increasing profits to console her, nor the power to restore exhausted
nature with a surreptitious handful of figs or pudding-raisins when
the dinner had been more than usually Spartan. James was sorry for
the ‘poor little woman,’ as he called her, and was kind to her
always, for which grace she rewarded him with heartfelt affection.
But her husband--the teacher, master, and friend, whom she had loved
so dearly, reverenced so deeply, and to whom, even when weak enough
to pity and return Oswald’s romantic passion, she had always rendered
homage and affection--had withdrawn his favour from her; he loved her
no longer; he was doubtless sorry that he had linked himself to so
weak and useless a creature.
‘What am I in his life?’ she asked herself, in deepest despondency.
‘I cannot even keep his house for him; others do that. I sit by his
fireside a useless intruder. He will not let me share in his higher
life; if I ask him about the books he reads, or talk to him about
our religion, I can see a disdainful sneer upon his lip. Sometimes I
think that he is getting to hate me.’
This thought was poison. Cynthia searched her life to see in what
article of it she had offended her husband, and could discover no
cause for his anger. That she had erred in letting Oswald love her,
in letting her heart go out to him, she knew, and had repented of
her sin with many tears; and, having bidden the sinner an eternal
farewell, deemed that error a thing of the past, repented of, and
in somewise atoned. She did not believe that jealousy was the cause
of her husband’s estrangement. Jealousy was allied to love, and her
great fear was that Joshua hated her. She did not know that there
is a kind of jealousy, and that which has its root in the deepest
love, which puts on the garb of hate, and has not seldom culminated
in murder--such jealousy as made Othello strike Desdemona before the
Venetian emissaries, the passion of strong natures.
She endured her husband’s unkindness with a sweet submission which
might have softened a sterner temper than Joshua’s, and would
assuredly have melted him but for the corroding influence of a
sleepless jealousy--jealousy of the past, jealousy of a ghost--for
the departed Oswald was nothing more than a shade.
Joshua had said no word to his daughter about Oswald’s letter. All
through that day on which Cynthia went to Matcherly Common, Naomi had
been full of anxiety and fear. How would her father act? Would his
anger against Oswald take any violent shape? That was assuredly a
contingency to be dreaded, an evil she had not foreseen when she gave
Joshua the letter. But passion is fatally blind. The harm being done,
she could see the possible danger plainly enough.
All through the long summer day she was restless and watchful,
fearing she knew not what, or rather not daring to tell herself what
she feared. The morning went by very quietly: Cynthia sitting in the
parlour, sewing; Naomi busy about her usual household labours. She
went in and out of the parlour a good many times, and always found
Cynthia in the same attitude, working assiduously.
Had Joshua spoken to his wife about the letter?
Yes; Naomi thought he had. There was one bright spot of colour on
Cynthia’s pale cheek that told of agitation studiously suppressed.
Once when Naomi spoke to her she answered absently. She must know
something about the letter, Naomi thought.
After dinner Cynthia went up to her bedroom, and came down in five
minutes with her bonnet on. It was a busy afternoon in the shop.
Aunt Judith and Jim had returned to their duties, and Joshua had gone
out. There was only Naomi in the parlour when Cynthia came down ready
for her walk.
‘I am going for a long walk, Naomi,’ she said. ‘I shall be home by
tea-time.’
There was no fear of Naomi offering to accompany her stepmother. They
had not walked together since Oswald Pentreath’s departure. Day by
day the gulf had been widening.
This walk of Cynthia’s set Naomi wondering. Could she be gone to
meet Oswald? That seemed of all things most unlikely. Joshua had the
letter; it was Joshua who would keep the appointment. And then, O
God! who would tell what might be the issue of the meeting!
Naomi went about the house and the garden like a wandering spirit
for the next hour, and then it seemed to her that this suspense was
beyond endurance; she must follow her father to the old shaft--she
made very sure that he had gone there--she must be on the spot or
near it, whatever harm was to come. O, why had she given him that
shameful letter? Blind and wicked rage which prompted so wild an act!
‘Did I want to make my father’s life miserable, or to bring evil upon
Oswald?’ she cried. ‘Yes, I was wicked enough for anything yesterday;
I was mad with anger and jealousy.’
She put on her bonnet, and went out, unseen even by Sally, who was
washing in the cool brick-floored back kitchen. The sun was blazing
upon the neat little town. The white houses were of a dazzling
brightness, the sweet-williams and red roses shone like spots of
fire, the ruddy glow of the forge looked pale against the sun-glory.
Naomi took no heed of the heat; she walked rapidly to the end of the
lane that led to Matcherly, and then ran along the shaded narrow way
till she came to the edge of the wood. Here she paused for a little,
breathless and exhausted. They would be coming homewards by this
time, she thought--Cynthia and Oswald, and he who had gone to watch
their meeting--or to disturb it. She might come face to face with her
false lover. Her heart beat wildly at the thought.
There was one central path through the wood, a clearly defined
cattle track, which she felt assured would be taken by any one going
in the direction of the old shaft. It was easy to skirt this broad
grassy track by a narrow footway that wound through the underwood,
and among the smooth silvery beech boles and the rugged greenish-gray
oak trunks. The path ran like a thread through the bracken. By this
narrow way Naomi went swiftly, till she came to the rising ground
that sloped upwards to Matcherly Common. Here she chose her post of
espial behind a sturdy old oak, bearded with gray lichen and half
strangled with ivy--a Methuselah of trees, from which Time had lopped
limb after limb, but which still held numerous arms aloft, like a
woodland Briareus, and seemed to threaten or denounce surrounding
Nature. So one might fancy some prophetic Druid transformed into a
tree, dumbly prophesying evil to come upon the earth.
Sheltered by this broad trunk, which stood waist high in hawthorn and
bracken, Naomi waited to see her father and Oswald pass by, and to be
assured that all was well with them. They would hardly fail to return
by the cattle track; it was the only direct path to Combhaven,
and on either side the underwood was too thick and wild for the
perambulation of anything but the furred and feathered inhabitants of
the forest.
She waited for what seemed a long and weary time; then, a little
after four o’clock, she saw Cynthia go by, walking slowly. She was
very pale, and the white wan cheeks bore the trace of tears; but she
had a resigned look, as of one whose soul is not lost to peace.
‘She has been to meet him,’ thought Naomi. ‘And yet she does not look
like a shameless sinner.’ Then she began to pray that Joshua might
not have seen that clandestine unholy meeting--that he might have
been spared the temptation to any evil act.
The time she had to wait for her father’s coming hung heavily, so
great had become that burden of nameless dread. Yet it was but half
an hour after Cynthia had gone by that her husband came slowly along
the forest glade, and passed within a yard of the tree behind which
his daughter was watching.
She rose as he approached, and stood leaning against the bulky old
trunk, gazing at her father’s face as she had never looked before
at anything under God’s heaven. Never had any other spectacle
so thrilled, so frozen her being as this one view of a familiar
countenance. To have looked in the face of the dead would have been
less awful.
White to the lips, and with big drops of sweat upon brow and cheek,
the mouth rigid, the dark eyes almost hidden under the lowering
brows--Joshua, the Christian preacher, the man sure of election and
grace, passed under the flickering lights and shadows, like some
horrible vision of sin and vengeance--passed, and was gone. Naomi
leaned against the tree, her hands clasped, her eyes gazing at the
empty air, the shaft of afternoon sunlight upon which a million
atoms, each a life, danced and sparkled; yet still seeing that
blanched and awful face--the face of a man who had come straight from
some hideous death-scene; the face of a man burdened with the secret
of a crime.
‘O God!’ cried Naomi, with an overmastering despair, ‘why didst Thou
create us, predestined sinners, judged, doomed before we were born!
The best of us, the most earnest, the truest, the noblest, given
over a prey to the Evil One! My father, even my father, lowest,
blackest of sinners!’
She stood in the same attitude, supported by the mossy trunk; stood
as in a trance, and saw the sunlight dip lower behind the black
branches and change from gold to rose, from rose to crimson, from
deepest red to tenderest purple. She watched these changes in a kind
of semi-consciousness and a strange feeling of uncertainty as to
her own identity; this Naomi Haggard leaning against a tree seeming
to her--the actual entity--to be a forlorn and stricken creature
sorely to be pitied. She pitied herself and was sorry for herself
with a half-scornful compassion. And so she waited, in a dreamy
watchfulness, till nature gave way, and she sank, worn out, into a
heap at the foot of the tree.
Here, faint and exhausted, but not unconscious, she still watched,
till thick night came down upon the wood, and she heard the owls
hooting and saw the rabbits running within a few feet of her
resting-place. Only when the darkness closed round her did she rise
and go home, too familiar with the wood to lose her way even amidst
the shadows of night. She went homeward slowly, caring little who
might question or wonder at her absence.
And in all the time of her watch she had not seen Oswald Pentreath go
by.