VIA Grayfield, Easing and Chettleford the distance to Wellwood was
nearly twenty miles. He might train from Brombridge, but the service
was bad and there would be three miles to walk at the end. So he
decided that old Alice should take him to Grayfield, and then he would
ask Whymper to lend him his car.
But long before he came to Grayfield he felt that this could not be.
At that moment his old Magdalen friend was the last person in the
universe he desired to meet. If he had now to face his kind it must be
some other. Thus, as the stately chimneys and fine gables of the Manor
house, rising proudly behind an enchanted copse of fern and Canterbury
bells, came into view, he urged old Alice past them at her best pace
and on to the Chequers, Grayfield’s model public house. Its landlord,
Hickman, a civil, obliging fellow, was known to the vicar, who in this
dilemma was very glad of his help. It was not fair to ask the full
journey of poor old Alice.
He was able to exchange her temporarily for the landlord’s young mare.
But in the process he had to submit to an ordeal that he would have
given much to be spared.
“I see, sir, in the _Advertiser_,” said Hickman, as he gave the ostler
a hand in the inn yard, “that the Captain’s gone. My boy went the same
day. He was not in the Captain’s lot, but I happen to know that he
thought there was no one like him. He was such a gentleman, and he had
a way with him that had a rare power over young chaps.”
The vicar could not answer the honest fellow, whose voice failed
suddenly and whose eyes were full of tears. But he held out his hand
very simply, and Hickman, his tears now falling softly, like those of a
child, took it.
“Excuse me, sir. Bill was my all. You see, I buried the wife in the
spring. Things are at a dead end for me now.”
The vicar, unable to speak, offered his hand again.
All at once Hickman took him firmly by the coat-sleeve and led him
a dozen paces away from the ostler. “Excuse the great freedom,
sir”--the big, not over-bright fellow’s whisper was excessive in its
humility--“but, as a minister of the Gospel, there’s one question I’d
like to ask you.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington shuddered at the perception of what was coming.
“The only hope for a chap like me is that I’ll meet the wife and the
boy in Heaven. Otherwise, I’m at a dead end as you might say. As one
man to another, what chance do you think there is?”
The vicar grew cold at the heart.
“Of course, I’m not a churchgoer; I am not a religious man or anything
of that kind. My father wasn’t. I’ve always tried to go straight, keep
sober, pay my way and so on, but of course, I’ve never taken Communion
or read the Bible or done anything to curry favor. That’s not my
nature. Still, I reckon myself a fairish, decentish chap; and on Sunday
evening, after the service, I went round to talk to our vicar here, Mr.
Pierce.”
“Yes.” Mr. Perry-Hennington gave an eager gasp. “That was very wise.
What did he say to you?” His lips could hardly shape the question.
“Why, sir, he said that a Christian couldn’t doubt for a moment that
one day he would be with his wife and children in Heaven.”
“Mr. Pierce said that!”
“He did. And I told him I didn’t pretend to be a Christian and I asked
him if he thought I had left it too late.”
“Yes?”
“Well, sir, he said it was never too late to be a Christian. And he
gave me a prayer book--he’s a very nice gentleman--and told me to take
it home and read it.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve tried to read it, sir, but to be quite honest, I don’t feel that
I shall ever be much of a Christian.”
“Well, Hickman--” suddenly Mr. Perry-Hennington found his
voice--“always try to remember this: Jesus Christ came to us here
in order that you might be with your dear wife and your dear boy in
Heaven, and--and--we have His pledged Word--and we must believe in
that.”
“But how is a chap to believe what he can’t prove?”
“We must have faith--we must all have faith.”
“All very well, sir,” said Hickman dourly, “but suppose He has promised
more than He can perform?”
“In what way? How do you mean?”
“According to the Bible He was to come again, but as far as I can make
out there doesn’t seem much sign of Him yet.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington was silent a moment and then he took one of the
landlord’s large hands in both of his own and said in an abrupt,
half grotesque, wholly illogical way, “My dear friend, we are all
members one of another. It is our duty to hope for the best--our duty
to believe that the best will happen.” And as he turned aside, he
added with another curious change of voice, which he could not have
recognized as belonging to himself, “You see, we are all in the same
boat.”
Saying these words, the vicar climbed into his trap with almost the
stagger of a drunken man. He hardly knew what he said or what he did,
but as soon as the mare was out of the inn yard it came upon him that
he had to go to Wellwood, and that the way to get there was through
Easing and Chettleford.
Why at that particular moment that particular place should be his
destination he didn’t quite know, unless it was in obedience to a voice
he had heard in the sky. A modern man, whose supreme desire was to
take reason for his guide in all things, even if the vows of his faith
forced him to accept the supernatural in form and sum, he feared in
this hour to apply it too rigidly.
As the publican’s mare went steadily forward along the winding, humid
lanes of a woodland country, a feeling of hopelessness came upon him.
What did he expect to do when he got to the end of his journey? Such a
question simply admitted of no answer. It was not to be faced by Thomas
Perry-Hennington on his present plane of being. The logic of the
matter could not be met.
That was the case, no doubt, but a compromise was equally impossible.
Something would have to happen. Either he must go forward or he must go
back. A soul in strange, terrible torment passed unseen and unseeing
through the tiny hamlet of Easing and on and on up a steep hill and
then down through a long valley of trees and a gloom of massively
beautiful furze country. There was not a ripple of wind in the tense
air, and in the early afternoon it grew very dark, with an occasional
growl of thunder over the far hills. On the outskirts of Chettleford it
began to rain in large slow drops; and as his sweating face perceived
the soft, cool splash he half dared to take it as the explicit kindness
of Heaven. Upon the wings of that thought came the automatic intrusion
into his mind of the words:
Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave.
And with them came the strange fancy that these tears out of Heaven
were those of his wife and his boy.
A mile beyond Chettleford, at the dark edge of a wood, the sudden fear
struck him that the soul of Thomas Perry-Hennington was about to enter
unending night. A recollection dread and spectral, which might have
been Dante or the far distant ages of the past, engulfed him swiftly
and completely. It was impossible to turn back now or he would have
done so.
The narrow road grew darker and darker as it wound under the heavy,
rain-pattered canopy of the wood. Earth and sky were without form, and
void. He lost touch with time and place; he began to lose touch with
his own identity. He only knew that Thomas Perry-Hennington was his
name and that his destination was Wellwood Asylum.
The rain grew heavier, but there was no comfort in it now. He was
already far beyond any kind of physical aid. A grisly demon was in him,
urging him onward to his doom. His soul’s reaction to it was beyond
pity and terror. Quite suddenly, and long before he expected to see
them, the heavy iron gates of the asylum were before him. At the sound
of wheels an old man, very bent and grim, whom in the wet half-light he
almost took for Charon, came slowly out of his lodge and fitted a key
to the lock.