LUCY BLANTYRE AT THE CLERGY-HOUSE
Lucy Blantyre left Scarning Court on Thursday morning. James Poyntz
travelled up to town with her. She was to go home to Park Lane for an
hour or two, make one of the guests at a lunch party with Lady Linquest,
and then, in the afternoon, drive down to Hornham.
She was alone in a first-class carriage with James during the whole of
the journey to London. The last three days had marked a stage in their
intercourse. Both of them were perfectly aware of that. Intimacy between
a young man and a girl is very rarely a stationary thing. It progresses
in one direction or another. James began to talk much of his ambitions.
He told her how he meant to carve his way in the world, the place he
meant to take. The Poyntz family was a long-lived one; Lord Huddersfield
himself was only middle-aged, and might live another thirty years. James
hoped that it would be so.
"I want to win my own way by myself," he said. "I hope the title will
not come for many years. It would mean extinction if it came now. You
sympathise with that, don't you?"
She was very kind to him. Her answers showed a real interest in his
confidences, but more than that. There was acumen and shrewdness in
them.
"You know," he said, "I do hate and detest the way the ordinary young
man in my position lives. It is so futile and silly. I recognised it
even at Oxford. Because of one's father, one was expected to be a silly
fool and do no work. Of course, there were some decent fellows,--Dover,
the Duke of Dover, was quiet and thought about things. But all my
friends were drawn from the social class which people suppose to be just
below our own, the upper middle class. It's the backbone of England. Men
in it take life seriously."
He stopped after a time, and gazed out of the window at the flying
landscape. Suddenly he turned to her. "I'm so glad you are my sister's
great friend, Lucy," he said.
It was the first time that he had spoken her first name to her. His tone
was charged with meaning.
She looked up quickly, and saw that his eyes were fixed upon her.
"You are all very kind to me," she said.
"Every one would be kind to you. I have been very happy since you have
let me be your friend. Do you know that my work and my hopes seem dearer
than ever to me now that I have told you so much of them. We have got to
know each other very well, haven't we?"
"Very well."
"We shall know each other better. It is my hope. I wonder if I might
write to you now and then, and tell you some of my thoughts and how
things are with me? Would such letters bore you?"
"I should value them, and think them a privilege. A woman is always
gratified when a man confides his thoughts to her. So many men never
allow a woman friend to see below the surface, and so many men--at any
rate, men that I am in the way of meeting--have no thoughts to tell one
even if they would."
The train began to go more slowly as it rumbled through the dingy
environs, and shook over the myriad points of Waterloo Station. Neither
of them spoke again. There was no doubt in the mind of either as to the
meaning of the situation.
The girl had gathered all his thoughts from his tone. It was very
pleasant to be with him, this sane and brilliant young man with a great
name and such powers. It made her happy to know how he regarded
her--that out of all the girls he knew he had chosen her for a friend.
He would some day ask her to be something more; that also she knew, and
knew that he was conveying it to her. She did not love him, love was a
word not very real to her as yet. Her mental eyes had never visualised
it, it was an abstraction. But she liked and admired him more than any
other man of her set: he was a _man_. Well, there was time enough yet to
think of all that. Meanwhile his deference was sweet; her heart warmed
to him as his, she knew, was warm to her at that moment.
He saw her to the door of the waiting victoria, and stood chatting for a
moment in the hurry of the station, making the footman mount his box
again.
Then he gave the signal to start, and stood upon the platform by his
hansom as she was driven rapidly away. Once she turned and waved a hand
to him.
Lucy lay back in the carriage, pleased with herself and all the world.
She had come on to Victoria, instead of getting out at Vauxhall,
specially to enjoy the longer drive. It was a brilliant day, and as the
carriage came upon Waterloo Bridge, the wonderful panorama of riverside
London was uplifting. Away to her right, the purple dome of St. Paul's
shone white-grey in the sun. The great river glittered in the morning
air, and busy craft moved up and down the tide. The mammoth buildings of
the embankment, Somerset House with its noble façade, the Savoy, the
monster Cecil, the tiled roofs of Scotland Yard all came to the eye in
one majestic sweep of form and colour. And far away to the left, dim in
a haze of light, the towers of Westminster rose like a fairy palace,
tipped with flame as the sun caught the gold upon the vanes and spires.
London! yes! it was, after all, the most beautiful city in the world,
seen thus, at this hour, from this place. How the heart quickened and
warmed to it.
Suddenly the thought of Hornham came to her. She made a little
involuntary movement of disgust. For a whole fortnight she would be
there. It would be intolerable. Why could not Bernard come to Park Lane
for a fortnight? How much more sensible that would be.
Well, it was no good thinking of it. The thing must be done. Yet, from
one point of view how curious it was. How strange that a drive of two
hours would plunge her into a world entirely foreign and alien in every
way to her world.
She was driving up Grosvenor Place now, by the long walls of the King's
Palace Garden, over which the trees showed fresh and green. The stately
street, with the Park gates at the end of its vista, only accentuated
the contrast. She utterly failed to understand how any one could do what
her brother did. There was not the slightest reason for the endurance of
these horrors. His personal income was large, his family connections
were influential. He could obtain a fashionable West End living without
any trouble. She was still scornfully wondering as the carriage stopped
at Lady Linquest's house in Park Lane.
Lucy found her aunt in a little room of china-blue and canary-yellow
which looked out over the Park.
She was a tall woman, of full figure. The face was bright and animated,
though somewhat sensual, inasmuch as it showed that its owner
appreciated the good material things that life has to offer. At
sixty-two, when dames of the middle classes have silver hair and are
beginning to assume the gentle manners of age, Lady Linquest wore the
high curled fringe of the fashion, a mass of dark red hair that had
started life upon the head of a Bréton peasant girl. Art had been at
work upon her face and she was pleasant to look on, an artificial
product indeed, but with all the charm that a perfect work of art has.
She made no secret of it to her intimate friends, and no one thought any
the worse of her in a society where nearly every one who has need of
aids to good looks buys them in Bond Street. Indeed, she was quite
unable to understand what she called "the middle class horror of paint."
"Why on earth," she would say, "any one can possibly object to an old
woman making herself look as pleasant as possible for the last few years
of her life, I can't make out. It's a duty one owes to one's friends. It
sweetens life. At any rate, _I_ don't intend to go about like old Mother
Hubbard or the witch in whatshername."
"Lucy, my dear," said this vivacious dame as her niece entered, "you're
looking your best this morning. And when you look your best my
experience generally tells me that you've been up to some wickedness or
other! How's Agatha, and has James Poyntz been at Scarning, and how's
that poor dear man, Huddersfield, who always reminds me of a
churchwarden? He is the king of all the churchwardens in England, I
think."
Lucy sat down and endeavoured to answer the flood of questions as
satisfactorily as might be, while Lady Linquest took her mid-morning
pick-me-up of Liebig and cognac.
The good lady gave her niece a rapid _précis_ of the news of their set
during the few days she had been away. "So that you'll know," she said,
"what to talk about at General Pompe's lunch--your last decent meal, by
the way, for a fortnight! I shall give orders to the cook to put a
hamper in the carriage for you to take with you to Bernard's. All those
poor young men starve themselves."
She rattled away thus while Lucy went to her own room to dress. For some
reason or other, why she could not exactly divine, she was dissatisfied
and ill at ease. The exhilaration of the railway journey, of the
wonderful drive through sunlit London, had gone. Her aunt, kind
creature as she was, jarred upon her this morning. How terribly shallow
the good lady seemed, after all! She was like some gaudy fly dancing
over a sunlit brook--or even circling round malodorous farmyard
stuff--brilliant, useless, and with nothing inside but the mere muscles
of its activity. James Poyntz's words recurred to her, his deep scorn of
a purely frivolous, pleasure-loving life was present in her brain.
Lucy was genuinely fond of Lady Linquest, but somehow on this bright
morning to hear a woman with one foot in the grave talking nothing but
scandal and empty catchwords of Vanity Fair, struck with a certain chill
to her heart.
To see her sitting there, curled, painted, scented, sipping her tonic
drink, ready for a smart party of people as empty and useless as
herself, was to see a thing that hurt, after the experiences of the
morning.
Lucy had not taken her maid to Scarning. She had wanted to live as
simply as possible there, to live the outdoors riverside life. And she
was not going to take Angelique to Hornham either--where the girl would
be miserable and a nuisance to the grave little community there. She
felt very glad, as the chattering little French woman helped her to
dress, that she was not coming with her. The maid's voluble boulevard
French got on her nerves; the powder on her face, which showed violet in
the sunlight, the strong scent of verbena she wore, the expression of
being abnormally "aware"--all these were foreign to Lucy's mood, and she
noticed them with an almost physical sense of disapproval that she had
never before felt so strongly.
The drive to the smart hotel near Piccadilly only took five or six
minutes, and the two ladies were soon shaking hands with old General
Pompe, their host. General the Hon. Reginald Pompe was an old creature
who was only kept from senile decay by his stays. He was unmarried,
extremely wealthy, and the fashion. In his younger days, his life had
been abominable; now, his age allowed him to do nothing but lick the
chops of vicious memories and prick his ears for scandals in which he
could not share. People said, "Old General Pompe is really _too_ bad,
but where one sees the Duke of ---- and the Prince of ---- we may be
sure that people like ourselves cannot be far wrong."
The other guests comprised Lord Rollington, of whom there was nothing to
be said save that he was twenty-four and a fool; Gerald Duveen, who was
a fat man of good family, and more or less of a success upon the stage;
and his beautiful, bold-looking wife, a judge's daughter, who played
under the name of Miss Mary Horne, and of whom much scandal was
whispered.
After a moment or two in the palm room, waiting for the Duveens, who
were a minute or two late, the six people went in to lunch. The special
table General Pompe always used was reserved for them, decorated with a
triumphant scheme of orchids and violets. Lumps of ice were hidden among
the masses of flowers, diffusing an admirable coolness round the table.
The host drew attention to the menu, which he had composed. He mumbled
over it, and as he bent his head Lucy saw that his ears were quite
pointed, and that the skin upon his neck lay in pachydermatous folds,
dry and yellowish.
"Baked red snapper, red wine sauce," said Mr. Duveen, with the purring
and very distinct voice of high comedy. "Hm--turtle steaks
_miroton_--sweetbreads--_Tadema_, quite the best way to do sweetbreads."
Mrs. Duveen was talking in a low, rapid voice to Lady Linquest. Her
eyes were very bright, and malice lurked in the curves of a lovely mouth
as she retailed some story of iniquity in high places, one of these
private and intimate scandals in which the half-life of the stage is so
rich--actors and actresses more than most people being able to see
humanity with the mask off. How greedy the three men looked, Lucy
thought, as they devoured the lunch in prospect. "Pigs!" she said to
herself with a little inward shudder.
Why was this? She had been at dozens of these functions before now and
had thought none of these thoughts. To-day a veil seemed removed from
her eyes: she saw things as they really were. And as they really were,
these people were abominable.
Any of them would
"Buy a minute's mirth to wail a week,
And sell eternity to gain a toy."
They had the manners of organ-grinders and the morals of monkeys. She
caught some words of what Mrs. Duveen was saying now and again. Lord
Rollington began to tell her, with affected disgust, how he had been at
a burlesque theatre the night before, and the musical-comedy heroine of
the hour had been so intoxicated that she could hardly sing her song.
"Too bad, you know, Miss Blantyre. I spotted it at once. It's always
disgustin' to see a girl take too much to drink, but when she's caperin'
about the stage like that one really has a right to complain. Don't you
think so? Now, if it had been a poor little chorus girl, she'd have been
fired out of the theatre in a second. For my part, I--" and so on for an
interminable five minutes.
General Pompe began to flirt with Lucy in that elderly
"you-are-only-a-little-girl" sort of manner, that is so difficult to
repel and which is so offensive. She saw his horny eyes roving over her
person with appreciation.
A great many of Lady Linquest's particular set were like this. Not all
of them, thank goodness, but so very many! And the worst of it was that
society mingled and overlapped so strangely. The sheep and the goats
were not separated in any way. People like the Huddersfields stood
almost alone, and even Agatha, when she was with the St. Justs--her
mother's family--constantly met this sort of people. But, then, Agatha
didn't seem to care, she didn't realise. She laughed at everything and
thought it "awfully good fun." In fact, Lucy realised Agatha was
exactly the same as she herself had always been--with the very slightest
intervals--until this moment. It was startling to think that the words
of Lord Huddersfield's son had worked this revolution in her point of
view. For she was quite persuaded that they were the reason of it. She
could find no other reason.
She did not realise then, as she was to realise with humble thankfulness
and awe in the future, the august influence that was at work within her.
She was not gay at lunch. Usually she was a most welcome member of any
such gathering as this. Her sayings were pointed, she entered fully into
the spirit of the hour, her wit adorned the charm of her personality,
and she was universally popular and voted "good fun" in the
comprehensive epitome of her associates. This was the highest praise
they knew, and they gave it her without stint.
To-day the party fell flat--there was no doubt about it. The radiance of
the early morning had given place to a heat which became terribly
oppressive, and the sky was overclouded. Thunder was in the air, and
London awaited a storm.
The electric lights began to glow in the restaurant.
Lady Linquest did her best to rouse her niece to gaiety, but her efforts
were futile. The old man who was entertaining them grew sulky, and Lord
Rollington drank glass after glass of champagne. The beautiful actress
was frankly bored, and became more cynical and bitter with every
scandalous story she told.
Only Mr. Duveen preserved his equanimity. He ate and drank and purred
with secure complaisance. It was his rôle in life. Ever since he had
been a little lick-trencher fag at Eton he had been thus. It was said by
his friends in society--after his back was turned--that on one occasion,
having discovered the Earl of ---- kissing his wife, he had murmured an
apology, saying that he had come to find his cigarette case, and
hurriedly retired from the room. This, no doubt, was scandal and untrue,
but it showed the estimation in which he was generally held.
Lucy knew this unpleasant story--Lady Linquest had told her. She thought
of it as she watched the man pouring _mandarin_ into his coffee. Once
more she felt the shrinking and repulsion that had come over her more
than three hours ago.
She knew, or once had known, her Dante. She had had but little time for
anything but frothy reading during the last year or two, but once she
had kept up her Italian. A passage from the _Inferno_ came into her
brain now,--a long-forgotten passage:
"Quest i non hanno speranza di morte,
E la lor cicca vita è tanto bassa
Che invidiosi son d'ogni altra sorte."
She saw the people of whom the Florentine spoke before her now, the
people for whom the bitterest fate of all had been reserved,--these who
"have no hope of death, and whose blind life so meanly drags that they
are envious of every other fate."
Before she left Park Lane, it had been arranged that the small brougham
should call for her at the restaurant, and take her on to Hornham. Her
luggage was small. This smart society girl was going to take her plunge
into the great London _Hinterland_ with a single trunk, like any little
governess driving to her new situation, where she would learn how bitter
the bread of another may taste, and how steep are the stairs in the
house of a stranger.
The carriage arrived just as lunch was over, and she left all of them
with immeasurable relief.
Driving up Shaftesbury Avenue to find her northward route was like
driving into a black curtain. It was terribly hot and dark, the horses
were uneasy, and the people moving on the pavements seemed like phantoms
in some city of dreadful night.
London began to grip and hold her then as it had never done before. Seen
under this pall, its immensity and the dignity it gained by that was
revealed in a new aspect. _Her_ London, her corner of the town, the mere
pleasure-city, became of no consequence, its luxury, its parks and
palaces, shrank and dwindled to nothing in her consciousness.
She was attuned to thoughts more solemn than were wont to have their way
with her. Her eyes and ears were opened to the reality of life.
She had lost her dislike for the visit she was going to pay. Below her
frequent irritation at her brother's way of life there had always been a
strong affection for him. And more than that, she had always respected
him, though often enough she would not admit it even to herself. As the
brougham turned into the surging arcana at Islington her curiosity
about the next few days was quickened: the thought of personal
discomfort--discomfort of a physical kind--had quite gone. She felt that
she was about to have experience of something new, her pulses quickened
to it.
The vicarage of St. Elwyn's was one of those stately old red-brick
houses, enclosed in a walled garden of not inconsiderable extent, that
are still to be found here and there in north London. They date from the
florid Georgian times, when that part was a spacious countryside where
wealthy merchants withdrew from commerce in the evening of their days
and lived a decorous life among the fields and trees. Here and there, in
the vast overgrown and congested districts, one or another of these old
freeholds has been preserved inviolate--as may be seen in the ride from
Hackney to Edmonton--and becomes an alien in a wilderness of mean little
houses and vulgar streets.
Father Blantyre had bought one of these few remaining mansions in
Hornham, at a high price, and had presented it to the parish of St.
Elwyn's as its vicarage. Here he lived with his two curates and a staff
of four servants,--a housekeeper, two maids, and a man-of-all-work. The
personal wants of the three clergymen were very simple, but the servants
were useful in many parochial affairs. In times when work was scarce,
the vicarage staff boiled soup, like any cheap restaurant-keeper. The
house was open at all times of the day or night to people who wanted to
be quiet and alone for a time; social clubs and guilds had their
headquarters there.
Indeed, the place was the centre of a diversified and complex life--how
complex, neither Lucy, nor any outsider, had the least conception.
The carriage stopped at the heavy square porch with its flight of steps,
and the footman ran up them and rang the bell.
Lucy noticed with amusement that the man's face expressed a mild wonder
at the neighbourhood in which he found himself, and that he winked
solemnly at the coachman on his box.
Lucy stood on the steps for a moment. The sky was quite dark, and the
little side street in which she was, showed in a dim and sulphurous
half-light--like the light round the House of Usher. A piano-organ close
by was beating out its vibrant mechanical music with an incongruous and
almost vulgar disregard of the menace of the heavens.
The housekeeper opened the front door, and Lucy entered a big panelled
hall, now in a gloom that was almost profound, and with a tiled floor
that clicked and echoed as the high heels of her shoes struck upon it.
"The vicar is in his study, Miss," the housekeeper said. She was a tall,
gaunt, elderly woman, with a face that always reminded Lucy of a horse,
and her voice was dry and hesitating.
Lucy crossed the hall, opened a door of oak and another of green baize,
and entered her brother's room.
It was a large, lofty place. The walls were covered with books in sober
bindings,--there must have been several thousands there. A soft carpet
covered the floor, in the centre of which stood an enormous
writing-table crowded with books and papers.
Hardly any light came into the place through the long window, and two
candles in massive silver holders stood upon the writing-table, throwing
a soft radiance around.
The light fell upon a tall crucifix of silver that stood upon the table,
a beautiful specimen of English Pre-Reformation work. A small couch had
been drawn up close to the table, and on it the priest lay asleep. The
face was lined and drawn with worry and with work, and all its secrets
were told as the man slept. One hand lay hanging from the side of the
sofa--a lean, strong hand, with a coil of muscle upon the back. Seen
thus in an abandonment of repose, Lucy's brother showed as a man worn
and weary with battle, scarred and battered, bruised, but how
irrevocably rich!
A rush of tenderness came over the girl as she looked at him. Here was
the man who had not winced or cried aloud, whose spirit was unbowed
beneath the bludgeonings of life.
A high serenity lay over the pain upon the face. It was a face vowed, a
saint's face, and even as he slept the great soul which shone like a
monstrance within him, irradiated the mask that hid it.
Lucy saw all this, received some such impressions as those in two or
three moments. Some attraction drew her eyes from the sleeper to the
shining symbol of God's pain upon the table. Then they went back to
Bernard Blantyre. To her excited fancy there seemed some subtle sympathy
between them, an invisible shuttle that was flying to and fro.
Then Blantyre awoke and saw her. He did not come from the kingdom of
sleep gradually, as most people do, loath to leave those silent halls.
He sprang suddenly into full consciousness, as soldiers upon fields of
battle, as old veterans used to sudden drums and tramplings are known to
do.
His eyes lighted up with merriment and triumph, his mobile face was one
great smile. He caught her by the arms and kissed her repeatedly. "It's
splendid to have you again, me darling," he said, with a slight Irish
accent that came to both of them when they were excited. "Ye little
wretch, staying away so long! Why, ye're prettier than ever! Ye'll have
all the Hornham boys waiting for ye outside the church door after Mass,
for we don't see your sort down our humble way--the rale West End
product!"
Laughing and chattering, putting on the most exaggerated brogue, the
brother and sister moved out into the hall. Father Blantyre called
loudly, "King! Stephens! where are ye? she's come!--I don't know where
my boys are at all, mavourneen--We'll dress um down for not being in to
welcome the new clergywoman. Now, come up to your room, sweetheart, and
Bob'll bring your box up. Bob! bring me sister's trunk up-stairs."
The little man ran up the wide stairway, an odd, active figure in his
black cassock, laughing and shouting in an ecstasy of pleasure and
excitement. No schoolboy could have been more merry, more full of simple
joy.
Lucy followed him, half laughing, half inclined to sob at this happy
welcome. She was carried off her feet by it all, by this strange arrival
under lurid skies at the dingy old house which suddenly seemed so
home-like.
Reproach filled her heart at her long neglect as she heard her brother's
joy. Simplicity!--yes, that was it. He was utterly simple. The thought
of the people she had left so short a time ago was more odious than
ever.
She found herself alone in her bedroom, a big, gloomy place with solid
mahogany furniture in the old style. There was nothing modern there save
a little _prie-dieu_ of oak by the bedside. But the sober colours and
outmoded massiveness of it all no longer troubled her. She did not give
a single thought to her own luxurious nest in Park Lane--as she had done
so often during her first visit to St. Elwyn's a year ago.
When she went down-stairs once more, both the assistant priests had come
in and were waiting with the vicar in the study, where some tea was
presently brought.
Stephens was a tall, youthful-looking man, rather slangy perhaps, with a
good deal of the undergraduate about him still, but obviously in
earnest. King was square-faced; the clean-shaved jaw showed powerful and
had a flavour of the prize-fighter about it, while his general
expression was grim and somewhat forbidding. He was much the elder of
the two. His expression, the outward shell, was no index to the man
within. A tenderer heart never beat in a man; a person more
temperamentally kind never lived. But he had more capacity for anger,
righteous anger, than either the vicar or Stephens. There were moments
when he could be terrible, and some savage strain in him leaped to the
surface and was only curbed by a will which had long been sanctified to
good.
The two men seemed glad to see Lucy again. She had seen little of them
on her first visit; neither of them had made any impression on her. Now
they interested her at once.
"Now, then, Bernard," Lucy said as she began to pour out the tea, "what
is all this I hear about a scene in church? Lord Huddersfield was full
of it. He was most distressed."
"He has been awfully good about it," Blantyre said. "He was down here on
Tuesday morning going into the matter. A man named Hamlyn, the editor of
a little local paper, threw the church into a miserable state of
confusion during Mass last Sunday, just after I had said the Prayer of
Consecration. He read a document protesting against the Blessed
Sacrament. We had him ejected, and yesterday he was fined ten shillings
in the local police court. The magistrate, who is a pronounced
Protestant in his sympathies, said that though the defendant had
doubtless acted with the best intentions, one must not combat one
illegality with another, and that the law provided methods for the
regulation of worship other than protests during its process!"
"Pompous old ass!" said Stephens.
"Well, I'm glad they fined him," Lucy said.
"'All's well that ends well!' You won't have the services disturbed
again."
"On the contrary, dear, we are all very much afraid that this is the
first spark of a big fire. We hear rumours of an organised movement
which may be widely taken up by the enemies of the Church. All through
the ranks there's a feeling of uneasiness. Lord Huddersfield is working
night and day to warn the clergy and prepare them. We cannot say how it
will end."
He spoke with gravity and seriousness. Lucy, who privately thought the
whole thing a ridiculous storm in a teacup, and was utterly ignorant of
the points at issue, looked sympathetic, but said nothing. She was not
in a flippant mood; she realised she was quite an outsider in the
matter, which seemed so momentous to the three intelligent men she was
with, and, unwilling to betray her lack of comprehension or to say
anything that would jar, she kept a discreet silence.
"We all get shouted after already, when we go into the worst parts of
the parish," said Stephens cheerfully. "They've been rousing the
hooligan element. It's an old trick. Lazy bounders, who don't know a
Christian from a Jew and have never been in a church in their lives,
shout 'papist' after us as we go into the houses. Just before I came in,
I was walking up the street when a small and very filthy urchin put his
head round the corner of a house and squeaked out, 'Oo kissed ve Pope's
toe?' Then he turned and ran for dear life. As yet, I haven't been
assaulted, but King has! Haven't you, King?"
Mr. King looked rather like a bashful bulldog, and endeavoured to change
the subject.
"Do you mean any one actually struck you, Mr. King?" Lucy said,
absolutely bewildered. "How awful! But why should any one want to do
that?"
The vicar broke in with a broad grin that made his likeness to a
comedian more apparent than ever.
"Oh, King was splendid!" he said with a chuckle. "That ended very well.
A big navvy chap was coming out of a public-house just as King was
passing. He looked round at his friends and called out something to the
effect that here was another monkey in petticoats--we wear our cassocks
in the streets--and see how he'd do for um! So he gave poor King a clout
on the side of the head."
"Oh, I _am_ sorry," Lucy said, looking with interest upon the priest,
and realising dimly that to be a clergyman in Hornham apparently ranked
as one of the dangerous trades. "What did you do, Mr. King?"
King flushed a little and looked singularly foolish. He was a bashful
man with ladies,--they did not come much into his pastoral way.
Lucy thought that the poor fellow had probably run away and wished that
she had not asked such an awkward question.
"Oh, he won't tell ye, my dear!" Blantyre said, "but I will. When the
gentleman smacked um on the cheek, he turned the other to him and kept's
hands behind's back. Then the hero smacked that cheek too. 'Hurroo!'
says King, or words to that effect, 'now I've fulfilled me duty to me
religion and kept to the words of Scripture. And now, me friend, I'm
going to do me duty to me neighbour and thrash ye till ye can't see out
of your eyes.' With that he stepped up to um and knocked um down, and
when he got up, he knocked um down again!"
Mr. King fidgeted uneasily in his seat. "I thought it was the wisest
thing to do," he said, apologetically. "You see, it would stop anything
of the sort for the future!"
"And the fun of the whole thing, Miss Blantyre," Stephens broke in, "was
that I came along soon after and found the poor wretch senseless--King's
got a fist like a hammer. So we got him up and refused to charge him to
the policeman who turned up after it was all over, and we brought him
here. We sponged him and mended him and fed him, and he turned out no
end of a good sort when the drink was out of him. Poor chap gets work
when he can, hasn't a friend in the world; hadn't any clothes or
possessions but what he stood up in, and was utterly a waster and
uncared for. We asked him if he knew what a papist was, and found he
hadn't an idea, only he thought that they made love to workingmen's
wives when their husbands were at work! He'd been listening to our
friend, Mr. Hamlyn, who called a mass-meeting after the police-court
proceedings and lectured on the three men of sin at the vicarage!"
A flood of strange and startling ideas poured into the girl's brain. A
new side of life, a fourth dimension, was beginning to be revealed to
her. She looked wonderingly at the three men in their long cassocks; she
felt she was in the presence of power. She had felt that when James
Poyntz was talking to her in the train, in the fresh, sunlit morning,
which seemed a thing of the remotest past now. Yet this afternoon she
felt it more poignantly than before. Things were going on down here, in
this odd corner of London, that were startling in their newness.
"And what happened to the poor man?" she said at length.
"Oh," answered the vicar, "very fortunately we are without a man of all
work just now, so we took him on. He carried your trunk up-stairs. He's
wearing Stephen's trousers, which are much too tight for um! and an old
flannel tennis coat of King's--till we can get his new clothes made. He
was in rags!"
"But surely that's rather risky," Lucy said in some alarm. "And what
about the other servants? I shouldn't think Miss Cass liked it much!"
Miss Cass was the housekeeper, the woman with the face like a horse. She
always repelled Lucy, who, for no reason than the old, stupid "Dr. Fell"
reason, disliked her heartily.
To her great surprise, she saw three faces turned towards her suddenly.
On each was an expression of blank surprise, exactly the same
expression. Lucy wanted to laugh; the three men were as alike as
children are when a conjuror has just made the pudding in the hat or
triumphantly demonstrated the disappearing egg.
The taciturn King spoke first. "I forgot," he said; "of course you don't
know anything about Miss Cass. How should you, indeed! Miss Cass is a
saint."
He said it quite simply, with a little pride, possibly, that the
vicarage which housed him housed a saint, too, but that was all.
"Yes," the vicar said, his brogue dropping away from him, as it always
did when he was serious, "Miss Cass is a saint. I'll tell you her story
some time while you're here, dear. It is a noble story. But don't you be
alarmed about our new importation. Bob will be all right. We know what
we are doing here."
"It's wonderful, Miss Blantyre," Stephens broke out, his boyish face all
lighted up with enthusiasm. "You know, Bob'd actually never been in
church before yesterday morning, when he came to Mass."
He stopped for a moment, out of breath in his eagerness. Lucy saw that
he--indeed, all of them--took it quite for granted that these things
they spoke of had supreme interest for her as for them. There was such
absolute _conviction_ that these things were the only important things,
that no excuse or apology was necessary in speaking of them. She found
she liked that, she liked it already. There was a magnetism in these
men that drew her within their circle. She saw that, whatever else they
were, they were absolutely consistent. They did not have one eye on
convention and the world, like the West End clergymen she knew,--some of
them at least. These men lived for one aim, one end, with tremendous
force and purpose. They simply disregarded everything else. Nothing else
occurred! Yes, this was a fourth dimension indeed. She bent herself to
listen to the boy's story, marking, with a pleasure that had something
maternal in it, the vividness and reality of his interest and hopes.
"Before he went," the young man said, "I explained the Church's teaching
exactly to him. Don't forget that the poor chap hadn't the slightest
idea of anything of the sort. He was astounded. A mystery that I could
not explain to him, a mystery for which there were no _material_
evidences at all, came home to him at once. _I saw faith born._ And they
say this is not an age of miracles! Think of the tremendous revolution
in the man's mind. He talked to me after the service. It was all
wonderfully real to him. He was absolutely convinced of the coming of
our Lord. There isn't a rationalist in London that could shake the
man's belief. I asked him why he was so sure--was it merely because I
had told him, because I believed in it? His answer was singularly
touching. 'Nah,' he said, scratching his head,--they all do when they
try to think,--'It wasn't wot you said, guvnor, it was wot I _felt_. I
_knowed_ as 'E wos there. Why, I ses to myself, _It's true!_'"
"It is very wonderful," Lucy said. "It's more wonderful by far than a
man at a Salvation Army meeting or a revival. One can understand that
the sudden shouts and the trumpets and banners and things would
influence any one. But that a service which is inexplicable even to the
people who conduct it should influence this poor uneducated man is
strange."
"Now, I don't think it strange, Lucy, dear," the vicar said; "it's far
more natural to me than the other. The wonderful power of the Church
lies in this, _that her mysteries appeal to quite simple people whose
minds are a blank on religious questions. They appeal to the simple
instantly and triumphantly._ They feel the power of the Blessed
Sacrament. And _only_ Catholicism can do this in full and satisfying
measure. We find that over and over again. The jam-and-glory teas, the
kiss-in-the-ring revivals, have a momentary and hysterical influence
with the irreligious. But it doesn't last, there is no system or
discipline, and above all, _there is no dignity_. Only priests realise
thoroughly how the poorer and less-educated classes crave for the proper
dignity and beauty of worship. It has always been so. It is the secret
of the power that the Roman Church has over the minds of men."
"Then why are there so many Salvationists and Dissenters?" Lucy asked.
"For a multitude of reasons. A dislike to discipline chiefly. People
don't go to church because the novelties of thirty or forty years ago
have filtered down into the omnibuses and people who are naturally
irreligious prefer to make a comfortable little code for themselves. The
Church says you _must not_ do this or that; its rules are thoroughly
well defined. Folk are afraid to come as near to God as the Church
brings them. Their cry is always that the Church comes between them and
God. Often that is a malevolent cry, and more often still it's pure
ignorance. The silly people haven't an idea what they're talking about.
It would be just as reasonable for me to say, 'I hate and abominate
Nicaragua, which is a pernicious and soul-destroying place,' when I've
never been nearer to Nicaragua than Penzance."
"There is one thing that we do see," King continued in his slow,
powerful way. "Whenever we have open-minded men or women come to church
to pray and find help, they find it. Dozens and dozens of people have
come to me after they have become members of the Church and said that
they could not understand the anti-Church nonsense they themselves had
joined in before. '_We never knew_,' that is the cry always."
"The thunder's beginning!" Father Blantyre said suddenly, realising
apparently that the talk was straying into channels somewhat alien to a
young society lady presiding at afternoon tea.
"Lucy, me dear, it's tired you'll be of sitting with three blathering
old priests talking shop in a thunderstorm--there's a flash for ye!"
A sheet of brilliant steel-blue had flashed into the room as he spoke,
showing every detail of it clear and distinct as in some lurid day of
the underworld. The books, the writing table, the faces of the three
clergymen, and the tall silver crucifix between the candles, which had
momentarily faded to a dull and muddy yellow, all made a sudden tableau
which burned itself upon the retina. Then came darkness once more and
the giant stammer of the thunder far overhead.
The thunder ceased and they waited, expectant of the next explosion,
when the penetrating and regular beating of an adjacent bell was heard.
"There's the bell for evensong!" Blantyre said; "I did not know it was
so late." He put on his berretta and left the room, the other men
following him. Lucy rose also. She felt that she would make one of them,
and going up-stairs to get a hat, she presently found herself in the
long, covered passage that connected the vicarage with the church.
The idea of a house which was but an appanage of the church was new to
her. The passage had been built since her last visit. And as she entered
the huge, dim building, she saw clearly how powerful in the minds of her
brother and his friends its nearness must be. All their life, their
whole life, centred in this church. Its services were as frequent and
natural as their daily food. How strangely different it all was to the
life of the outside world! She herself had not been to church for six
weeks or more. Even people who "called themselves Christians" only
entered a pew and enjoyed a hebdomadal siesta in church. But these men
could not get on without it. Every thought and action was in communion
with the Unseen. And she was forced to acknowledge it to herself,--if
one actually did believe in a future life, in eternity, then this was
the only logical way in which to prepare for it. If life was really like
a sojourn of one night in an inn, then the traveller who made no
preparation for the journey, and spent the night in careless disregard
of the day, was an utter fool. But no one called worldly people
fools!--it was all very puzzling and worrying, and common-sense did not
seem like common-sense in Hornham.
And was James Poyntz a fool?
It was the last question she asked herself as she turned into the side
chapel where evensong was to be said. Some twenty kneeling figures were
there. The place was dimly lighted save for the tall gas standards by
the priests' seats in front of the altar.
High up before the painted reredos hung a single lamp that burned with a
dull red glow. There were many sick folk in the parish of St. Elwyn's:
at all hours of the day and night, the clergy were sent for to help a
departing soul upon its way hence, and the Blessed Sacrament was
reserved upon this altar in the side chapel.
* * * * *
The simple and stately service was nearly over. The girl had listened to
the sonorous words as if she heard them now for the first time. As she
knelt, her heart seemed empty of the hopes, fears, and interests of
daily life. It seemed as a vessel into which something was steadily
flowing. And the fancy came to her that all she experienced was flowing
to her from the dim tabernacle upon the altar. It was almost a
_physical_ sense, it was full of awe and sweetness. She trembled
exceedingly as the service ended and her brother prayed for the
fellowship of the Holy Ghost.
For a time after the echoing footsteps of the clergy had died away, she
remained upon her knees. She was praying, but without words; all her
thoughts were caught up into one voiceless, wordless, passionate
ejaculation.
When at length she bowed low,--it was the first time she had ever done
such a thing,--before the altar, and left the church, it was by the west
door.
She had a fancy for the street, and she found that the thunder had all
passed away and that a painted summer's evening sky hung over the garish
town.
As she finally turned into the vicarage, she cast one look back at the
church. It rose among the houses high into the air. The sunset fired the
wet tiles of the roof and gilded the cross upon the lantern. She thought
of That which was within.