I
He came to his own and his own knew him not.
THE vicar of the parish sat at his study table pen in hand, a sheet of
paper before him. It was Saturday morning already and his weekly sermon
was not yet begun. On Sundays, at the forenoon service, it was Mr.
Perry-Hennington’s custom to read an old discourse, but in the evening
the rigid practice of nearly forty years required that he should give
to the world a new and original homily.
To a man of the vicar’s mold this was a fairly simple matter. His
rustic flock was not in the least critical. To the villagers of
Penfold, a hamlet on the borders of Sussex and Kent, every word of
their pastor was gospel. And in their pastor’s own gravely deliberate
words it was the gospel of Christ Crucified.
There had been a time in the vicar’s life when his task had sat lightly
upon him. Given the family living of Penfold-with-Churley in October,
1879, the Reverend the Honorable Thomas Perry-Hennington had never
really had any trouble in the matter until August, 1914. And then,
all at once, trouble came so heavily upon a man no longer young, that
from about the time of the retreat from Mons Saturday morning became a
symbol of torment. It was then that a dark specter first appeared in
the vicar’s mind. For thirty-five years he had been modestly content
with a simple moral obligation in return for a stipend of eight hundred
pounds a year. He had never presumed to question the fitness of a
man with an Oxford pass degree for such a relatively humble office.
A Christian of the old sort, with the habit of faith, and in his own
phrase “without intellectual smear,” he had always been on terms with
God. And though Mr. Perry-Hennington would have been the last to claim
Him as a tribal deity, in the vicar’s ear He undoubtedly spoke with
the accent of an English public school, and used the language of Dr.
Pusey and Dr. Westcott. But somehow August, 1914, had seemed to change
everything.
It was now June of the following year and Saturday morning had grown
into a nightmare for the vicar. Doubt had arisen in the household of
faith, a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, but only a firm will and a
stout heart had been able to dispel it. Terrible wrong had been done to
an easy and pleasant world and God had seemed to look on. Moreover it
had been boldly claimed that not only was he a graduate of a foreign
university, but that he had justified the ways of Antichrist.
After grave and bitter searchings of heart, Mr. Perry-Hennington had
risen, not only in the pulpit but in the public press, to rebut the
charge. But this morning, seated in a charming room, biting the end of
a pen, a humbler, more personal doubt in his mind. Was it a man’s work
to be devoting one’s energies to the duties of a parish priest? Was it
a man’s work to be addressing a few yokels, for the most part women and
old men? As far as Penfold-with-Churley was concerned Armageddon might
have been ages away. In fact Mr. Perry-Hennington had recently written
a letter to his favorite newspaper in very good English to say so.
For the tenth time that morning the vicar dipped his pen in the ink.
For the tenth time it hung lifeless, a thing without words, above a
page thirsting to receive them. For the tenth time the ink grew dry.
With a faint sigh, which in one less strong of will would have been
despair, he suddenly lifted his eyes to look through the window.
The room faced south. Sussex was spread before him like a carpet. Fold
upon fold, hill beyond hill, it flowed in curves of inconceivable
harmony to meet the distant sea. To the right a subtle thickening of
sunlight marked the ancient forest of Ashdown; straight ahead was
Crowborough Beacon; far away to the left were dark masses of gorse,
masking the delicate verdure of the weald of Kent. There was not a
cloud in the sky. The sun of June, a generous, living warmth, was
everywhere. But as the vicar gazed solemnly out of the window he had
not a thought for the enchantment of the scene.
Suddenly he rose a little impatiently and opened the window still
wider. If he was to do his duty on the morrow he must have more light,
more air. A grizzled head was flung forth to meet the strong, keen
sun, to snuff the magic air. A clean wind racing by made his lips and
eyelids tingle, and then, all at once, he remembered his boy on the
_Poseidon_.
But he must put the _Poseidon_ out of his mind if he was to do his
pastoral duty on the morrow. Before he could draw in his head and
buckle to his task, an odd whirr of sound, curiously sharp and loud,
came on his ear. There was an airplane somewhere. Involuntarily he
shaded his eyes to look. Yes, there she was! What speed, what grace,
what incomparable power in the live, sentient thing! How feat she
looked, how noble, as she rode the blue like some fabled roc of an
eastern story.
“Off to France,” said the vicar. He took off his spectacles and wiped
them, and then put them on again.
But the morrow’s sermon was again forgotten. He had remembered his
boy in the air. The graceless lad whom he had flogged more than once
in that very room, who had done little good at Marlborough, who had
preferred a stool in a stockbroker’s office to the University, was now
a superman, a veritable god in a machine. A week ago he had been to
Buckingham Palace to be decorated by the King for an act of incredible
daring. His name was great in the hearts of his countrymen. This lad
not yet twenty, whom wild horses would not have dragged through the
fourth Æneid, had made the name of Perry-Hennington ring throughout the
empire.
From this amazing Charley in his biplane, it was only a step in the
father’s mind to honest Dick and the wardroom of the _Poseidon_. The
vicar recalled with a little thrill of pride how Dick’s grandfather,
the admiral, had always said that the boy was “a thorough Hennington,”
the highest compliment the stout old sea dog had it in his power to pay
him or any other human being. And then from Dick with his wide blue
eyes, his square, fighting face and his nerves of steel the thoughts
of the father flew to Tom, his eldest boy, the high-strung, nervous
fellow, the Trinity prize man with the first-class brain. Tom had left
not only a lucrative practice and brilliant prospects at the Bar, but
also a delicate wife and three young children in order to spend the
winter in the trenches of the Ypres salient. Moreover, he had “stuck
it” without a murmur of complaint, although he was far too exact a
thinker ever to have had any illusions in regard to the nature of
war, and although this particular war defied the human imagination to
conceive its horror.
Yes, after all, Tom was the most wonderful of the three. Nature had
not meant him for a soldier, the hypersensitive, overstrung lad who
would faint over a cut finger, who had loathed cricket and football, or
anything violent, who in years of manhood had had an almost fanatical
distrust of the military mind. Some special grace had helped him to
endure the bestiality of Flanders.
From the thought of the three splendid sons God had given him the mind
of the vicar turned to their begetter. He was only just sixty, he
enjoyed rude health except for a touch of rheumatism now and again,
yet here he was in a Sussex village supervising parish matters and
preaching to women and old men.
At last, with a jerk of impatience that was half despair, he suddenly
withdrew his head from the intoxicating sun, the cool, scented wind of
early June. “I’ll see the Bishop, that’s what I’ll do,” he muttered as
he did so.
But as he sat down once more at his writing table before the accusing
page, he remembered that he had seen the Bishop several times already.
And the Bishop’s counsel had been ever the same. Let him do the duty
next him. His place was with his flock. Let him labor in his vocation,
the only work for which one of his sort was really qualified.
Bitterly this soldier of God regretted now that he had not chosen
in his youth the other branch of his profession. Man of sixty as he
was, there were times when he burned to be with his three boys in the
fight. His own father, a fine old Crimean warrior, had once given him
the choice of Sandhurst or Oxford, and the vicar was now constrained
to believe that he had chosen the lesser part. By this time he might
have been on the General Headquarters Staff, whereas he was not even
permitted to wear the uniform of the true Church Militant.
At last with a groan of vexation the vicar dipped his pen again. And
then something happened. Without conscious volition, or overt process
of the mind, the pen began to move across the page. Slowly it traced
a succession of words, whose purport he didn’t grasp until an eye had
been passed over them. “Let us cast off the works of darkness, let us
put on the armor of light.”
Sensible at once of high inspiration he took a vital force from the
idea. It began to unseal faculties latent within him. His thoughts came
to a point at last, they grew consecutive, he could see his way, his
mind took wings. And then suddenly, alas, before he could lay pen to
paper, there came a very unfortunate interruption.