MR. CRASHAW
Uncle Mathew saw Maggie back to her door, kissed her and left her. On
their way home he did not once mention Martin Warlock to her.
He left her as he heard the bolt turn in the door, hurrying away as
though he did not want to be seen. Maggie went in to find old Martha
with her crabbed face watching her sourly. But she did not care,
nothing could touch her now. Even the old woman, cross with waiting by
the fading kitchen fire, noticed the light in the girl's eyes. She had
always thought the girl hard and ungracious, but now that face was
soft, and the mouth smiling over its secret thoughts, and the eyes
sleepy with happiness.
Maggie could have said: "I'm wild with joy, Martha. I know what love
is. I had never thought that it could be like this. Be kind to me
because it's the greatest night of my life."
Martha said: "There's some milk hotted for you, Miss, and some
biscuits. There on the table by the stairs."
"Oh, I don't want anything, Martha, thank you!"
"Your aunt said you was to have it."
Maggie drank it down, Martha watching her. Then she went upstairs
softly, as though her joy might awaken the whole house. She lay
wide-eyed on her bed for hours, then fell into a heavy sleep, deep,
without dreams.
When, in the quieter light of the morning, she considered the event,
she had no doubts nor hesitations. She loved Martin and Martin loved
her. Soon Martin would marry her and they would go away. Her aunt would
be sorry of course, and his father, perhaps, would be angry, but the
sorrow and anger would be only for a little while. Then Martin and she
would live happily together always--happily because they were both
sensible people, and her own standard of fidelity and trust was, she
supposed, also his. She did not think very deeply about what he had
said to her; it only meant that he wanted to escape from his family, a
desire in which she could completely sympathise. She had loved him, as
she now saw, from the first moment of meeting, and she would love him
always. She would never be alone again, and although Martin had told
her that he was weak, and she knew something about men, she was aware
that their love for one another would be a thing apart, constant,
unfaltering, eternal. She had read no modern fiction; she knew nothing
about psychology: she was absolutely happy ...
And then in that very first day she discovered that life was not quite
so simple. In the first place, she wanted Martin desperately and he did
not come; and although she had at once a thousand sensible reasons for
the impossibility of his coming, nevertheless strange new troubles and
suspicions that she had never known before rose in her heart. She had
only kissed him once; he had only held her in his arms for a few
moments ...She waited, looking from behind the drawing-room curtains
out into the street. How could he let the whole day go by? He was
prevented, perhaps, by that horrible sister of his. When the dusk came
and the muffin-man went ringing his bell down the street she felt
exhausted as though she had been running for miles ...
Then with sudden guilty realisation of the absorption that had held her
all day she wondered how much her aunt had noticed.
During the afternoon when she had been watching the streets from behind
the curtain Aunt Elizabeth had sat sewing, Thomas the cat lumped before
the fire, the whole room bathed in afternoon silence. Maggie had
watched as though hypnotized by the street itself, marking the long
squares of light, the pools of shadow, the lamp-posts, the public-house
at the corner, the little grocer's shop with cases of oranges piled
outside the door, the windows on the second floor of the dressmaker's,
through which you could see a dummy-figure and a young woman with a
pale face and shiny black hair, who came and glanced out once and
again, as though to reassure herself that the gay world was still there.
The people, the horses and carts, the cabs went on their way. Often it
seemed that this figure must be Martin's--now this--now this ... And on
every occasion Maggie's heart rose in her breast, hammered at her eyes,
then sank again. Over and over she told to herself every incident of
yesterday's meeting. Always it ended in that same wonderful climax when
she was caught to his breast and felt his hand at her neck and then his
mouth upon hers. She could still feel against her skin the rough warm
stuff of his coat and the soft roughness of his cheek and the stiff
roughness of his hair. She could still feel how his mouth had just
touched hers and then suddenly gripped it as though it would never let
it go; then she had been absorbed by him, into his very heart, so that
still now she felt as though with his strong arms and his hard firm
body he was around her and about her.
Oh, she loved him! she loved him! but why did he not come? Had he been
able only to pass down the street and smile up to her window as he went
that would have been something. It would at least have reassured her
that yesterday was not a dream, an invention, and that he was still
there and thought of her and cared for her ...
She pulled herself together. At the sound of the muffin-man's bell she
came back into her proper world. She would be patient; as she had once
resolved outside Borhedden Farm, so now she swore that she would owe
nothing to any man.
If she should love Martin Warlock it would not be for anything that she
expected to get from him, but only for the love that she had it in her
to give. If good came of it, well, if not, she was still her own master.
But more than ever now was it impossible to be open with her aunts. How
strange it was that from the very beginning there had been concealments
between Aunt Anne and herself. Perhaps if they had been open to one
another at the first all would have been well. Now it was too late.
Tea came in, and, with tea, Aunt Anne. It was the first time that day
that Maggie had seen her, and now, conscious of the news that Martin
had given her, she felt a movement of sympathy, of pity and affection.
Aunt Anne had been in her room all day, and she seemed as she walked
slowly to the fire to be of a finer pallor, a more slender body than
ever. Maggie felt as though she could see the firelight through her
body, and with that came also the conviction that Aunt Anne knew
everything, knew about Martin and the posted letter and the thoughts of
escape. Maggie herself was tired with the trial of her waiting day, she
was exhausted and was beating, with all her resolve, against a
disappointment that hammered with a thundering noise, somewhere far
away in the recesses of her soul. So they all drew around the fire and
had their tea.
Aunt Anne, leaning back in her chair, her beautiful hands stretched out
on the arms, a fine white shawl spread on her knees, asked Maggie about
last night.
"I hope you enjoyed yourself, dear." "Very much, Aunt Anne. Uncle
Mathew was very kind."
"What did you do?"
Maggie flushed. It was deceit and lies now all the time, and oh! how
she hated lies! But she went on:
"Do you know, Aunt Anne, I think Uncle Mathew is so changed. He's
younger and everything. He talked quite differently last night, about
his business and all that he's doing. He's got his money in malt now,
he says."
"Whose money?" asked Aunt Anne.
"His own, he says. I never knew he had any. But he says yes, it's in
malt. It's not a nice hotel, though, where he lives."
"Not nice, dear?"
"No, I didn't like it. But it's only for men really of course."
"I think he'd better take you somewhere else next time. I'll speak to
him. By the way, Maggie dear, Martha tells me you went out yesterday
afternoon all alone--into the Strand. I think it would be better if you
were to tell us."
Maggie's cheeks were hot. She set back her shoulders.
"How does Martha know?" she asked quickly. "I only went for a
moment--only for a little walk. But I'm grown up, Aunt Anne. Surely I
can go out by myself if ..." she stopped, looking away from them into
the fire.
"It isn't that, dear," Aunt Anne said very gently. "It's only that
you've been so little a time in London that you can't know your way
about yet. And London's a strange place. It might be unpleasant for you
alone. I'd rather that you told us first."
Then Maggie delivered her challenge.
"But, aunt, I won't be always here. I'm going off to earn my living
soon, aren't I?"
Aunt Elizabeth drew her breath in sharply. Aunt Anne said quietly:
"You are free, dear, quite free. But whilst I am not quite myself--I
don't want to be selfish, dear--but you are a great comfort to us, and
when I am stronger certainly you shall go ... even now if you wish, of
course ... but my illness."
Even as she spoke--and it was the first time that she had ever
mentioned her illness--she caught at her breast and pressed her hand
there as though she were in great pain. Maggie sprang to her side. She
caught the girl's hand with hers and held her. Maggie could feel her
swift agonized breathing. Then with a little sigh the moment had
passed. Maggie still knelt there looking up into her aunt's face.
Martha's voice was heard at the door.
"Mr. Martin Warlock, Miss. Could you see him? ..."
"Yes, Martha," said Aunt Anne, her voice calm and controlled. "Ask him
to come up."
She had abandoned so completely any idea that he might still come that
she could not now feel that it was he. She withdrew from her aunt's
side and stood in the shadow against the wall.
Although her heart beat wildly her whole mind was bent upon composure,
upon showing nothing to her aunts, and on behaving to him as though she
scarcely knew him, but so soon as he entered the room some voice cried
in her: "He is mine! He is mine!" She did not stir from her wall, but
her eyes fastened upon him and then did not move. He was wearing the
same clothes as yesterday; his tie was different, it had been black and
now it was dark blue. He looked quiet and self-possessed and at his
ease. His rough stiff hair was carelessly brushed as always;
good-humour shone from his eyes, he smiled, his walk had the sturdy
broad strength of a man who is absolutely sure of himself but is not
conceited. He seemed to have no trouble in the world.
He greeted the aunts, then shook hands with Maggie. He gave her one
glance and she, suddenly feeling that that glance had not the things in
it that she had wanted, was frightened, her confidence left her, she
felt that if she did not have a word alone with him she would die.
He sat down near Aunt Anne.
"No, thank you, I won't have any tea," he said. "We're dining very
early to-night because Father and Amy have a meeting right away over
Golders Green way somewhere. It's really on a message from him that I
came."
He did not look at her, placed like a square shadow against the dusky
wall. He sat, leaning forward a little, his red-brown hand on his knee,
his leg bulging under the cloth of his trouser, his neck struggling
behind his collar--but his smile was pleasant and easy, he seemed
perfectly at home.
"My father wonders whether you will mind some friends of Miss Avies
sitting with you in your pew to-morrow evening. She has especially
asked--two of them ... ladies, I believe. But it seems that there will
be something of a crowd, and as your pew is always half empty-- He
would not have asked except that there seems nowhere else."
Aunt Anne graciously assented.
"But, of course, Mr. Warlock, Maggie will be going with us, but still
there will be room. Mr. Crashaw is going to speak after all, I hear. I
was afraid that he would have been too ill."
Martin laughed. "He is staying with us, you know, and already he is
preparing himself. He's about the oldest human being I've ever seen. He
must be a hundred."
"He's a great saint," said Aunt Anne.
"He's always in a terrible temper though," said Martin. "He mutters to
himself--and he eats nothing. His room is next to mine, and he walked
up and down all night talking. I don't know how he keeps alive."
Perhaps Aunt Anne thought Martin's tone irreverent. She relapsed into
herself and seemed suddenly, with a spiritual wave of the hand, to have
dismissed the whole company.
Martin took his leave. He barely touched Maggie's hand, but his eyes
leapt upon hers with all the fire of a greeting too long delayed. His
lips did not move, but she heard the whisper "Soon!" Then he was gone.
Soon! She felt as though she could not wait another instant but must
immediately run after him, follow him into the street, and make clear
his plans both for himself and her.
Then, continuing her struggle of the long day, she beat into herself
endurance; she was in a new world, in a world with roads and cities,
mountains, rivers, seas and forests that had to be traversed by her, to
be learnt and remembered and conquered, and for the success of this she
must have her own spirit absolutely aloof and firm and brave. She loved
him. That must be enough for her, and meanwhile she need not lose her
common sense and vision of everyday life ...But meanwhile it hurt. She
was now twice as lonely as she had been before because she did not know
what he intended to do, and always with her now there was something
strange and unknown that might at any moment be stronger than she.
But by next morning she had conquered herself. She would see him at
Chapel that night and perhaps have a word with him, and so already she
had arrived at her now lover's calendar of dates and seasons. There was
the time before she would see him and the time after--no other time
than that.
The trouble that weighed upon her most heavily was her deceitfulness to
the aunts. Fifty times that day she was on the edge of speaking and
telling them all, but she was held back by the vagueness of her
relations to Martin. Were they engaged? Did he even love her? He had
only kissed her. He had said nothing. No, she must wait, but with this
definite sense of her wickedness weighing upon her--not wickedness to
herself, for that she cared nothing, but wickedness to them--she tried,
on this day, to be a pattern member of the household, going softly
everywhere that she was told, closing doors behind her, being punctual
and careful. Unhappily it was a day of misfortune, it was one of Aunt
Anne's more worldly hours and she thought that she would spend it in
training Maggie. Very good--but Maggie dropped a glass into which
flowers were to have been put, she shook her pen when she was
addressing some envelopes so that some drops of ink were scattered upon
the carpet, and, in her haste to be punctual, she banged her bedroom
door so loudly that Aunt Anne was waked from her afternoon nap.
A scene followed. Aunt Anne showed herself very human, like any other
aunt justly exasperated by any other niece.
"I sometimes despair of you, Maggie. You will not think of others. I
don't wish to be hard or unjust, but selfishness is the name of your
greatest weakness."
Maggie, standing with her hands behind her, a spot of ink on her nose
and her short hair ruffled, was hard and unrepentant.
"You must send me away," she said; "I'm not a success here. You don't
like me."
Aunt Anne looked at Maggie with eyes that were clear and cold like deep
unfriendly waters. "You mustn't say that. We love you, but you have
very much to learn. To-night I shall speak to Miss Avies and arrange
that you go to have a talk with her sometimes. She is a wise woman who
knows many things. My sister and I are not strong enough to deal with
you, and we are weakened perhaps by our love for you."
"I don't want to go to-night," Maggie said, then she burst out: "Oh,
can't I lead an ordinary life like other girls--be free and find things
out for myself, not only go by what older people tell me--earn my
living and be free? I've never lived an ordinary life. Life with Father
wasn't fair, and now--"
Aunt Anne put out her arm and drew her towards her. "Poor Maggie ...
Aren't you unfair to us? Do you suppose really that we don't love you?
Do you think that I don't understand? You shall be free, afterwards, if
you wish--perfectly free--but you must have the opportunity of learning
what this life is first, what the love of God is, what the
companionship of Him is. If after you have seen you still reject it, we
will not try to keep you. But it is God's will that you stay with us
for a time."
"How do you know that it is God's will?" asked Maggie, melted
nevertheless, as she always was by any sign of affection.
"He has told me," Aunt Anne answered, and then closed her eyes.
Maggie went away with a sensation of being tracked by some stealthy
mysterious force that was creeping ever closer and closer upon her,
that she could only feel but not see. For instance, she might have said
that she would not go to Chapel to-night, and she might have taken her
stand upon that. And yet she could not say that. Of course she must go
because she must see Martin, but even if she had known that he would
not be there she would have gone. Was it curiosity? Was it
reminiscence? Was it superstition? Was it cowardice? Was it loneliness?
All these things, perhaps, and yet something more than they ...
All through the afternoon of the lovely November day she anticipated
that evening's services as though it were in some way to be a climax.
She knew that it was to be for all of them an especial affair. She had
heard during the last days much discussion of old Mr. Crashaw. He was
an old man with, apparently, a wonderful history of conversions behind
him. His conversions had been, it seemed, of the forcible kind, seizing
people by the neck and shoving them in; he was a fierce and militant
kind of saint; he believed, it seemed, in damnation and eternal hell
fire, and could make you believe in them too; his accent was on the
tortures rather than the triumphs of religion.
But Maggie had other thoughts, in this, outside Mr. Crashaw. She had
never lost the force of that first meeting with Mr. Warlock; she had
avoided him simply because she was afraid lest he should influence her
too much, but now after her friendship with Martin she felt that she
could never meet old Mr. Warlock frankly again. What he would say to
her if he knew that she meant to take his son away from him she knew
well enough. On every side there was trouble and difficulty. She could
not see a friend anywhere unless it was Caroline, whom she did not
completely trust, and Mr. Magnus, whom her deception of her aunt would,
she knew, most deeply distress. Meanwhile she was being pushed forward
more and more into the especial religious atmosphere of the house, the
Chapel and the Chapel sect. Of no use to tell herself that this was
only a tiny fragment of the whole world, that there, only five yards
away from her, in the Strand, was a life that swept past the Chapel and
its worshippers with the utmost, completest indifference. She had
always this feeling that she was caught, that she could only escape by
a desperate violent effort that would hurt others and perhaps be, for
herself, a lasting reproach. She wanted so simple a thing ... to be
always with Martin, working, with all this confusing, baffling,
mysterious religion behind her; this simple thing seemed incredibly
difficult of attainment.
Nevertheless, when they started that evening for the Chapel she felt,
in spite of herself, a strange almost pleasurable excitement. There
was, in that plain, ugly building some force that could not be denied.
Was it the force of the worshippers' belief? Was it the force of some
outside power that watched ironically the efforts of those poor human
beings to discover it? Was it the love of a father for his children?
No, there was very little love in this creed--no more than there had
been in her father's creed before. As she walked along between her
aunts her brain was a curious jumble of religion, Martin, and how she
was ever going to learn to be tidy and punctual.
"Well, I won't care," was the resolution with which she always brought
to an end her discussions and misgivings. "I'm myself. Nobody can touch
me unless I let them."
It was a most lovely evening, very pale and clear with an orange light
in the sky like the reflection of some far distant towering fire. The
air was still and the rumble of the town scarcely penetrated into their
street; they could hear the ugly voice of the little Chapel bell
jangling in the heart of the houses, there was a scent of
chrysanthemums from somewhere and a very faint suggestion of snow--even
before they reached the Chapel door a few flakes lazily began to fall.
Maggie was thinking now only of Martin. There was a gas-lamp already
lighted in the Chapel doorway, and this blinded her eyes. She had hoped
that he would be there, waiting, so that he might have a word with her
before they went in, but when they were all gathered together under the
porch she saw with a throb of disappointment that he was not there. She
saw no one whom she knew, but it struck her at once that here was a
gathering quite different from that of the first time that she had come
to the Chapel. There seemed to be more of the servant class; rather
they were older women with serious rapt expressions and very silent.
There were men too, to-night, four or five gathered together inside the
passage, standing gravely, without a word, not moving, like statues.
Maggie was frightened. She felt like a spy in an enemy's camp, and a
spy waiting for an inevitable detection, with no hope of securing any
news. As she went up the aisle behind her aunts her eyes searched for
Martin. She could not see him. Their seat was close to the front, and
already seated in it were the austere Miss Avies and two lady friends.
Maggie was maliciously pleased to observe that Miss Avies had not
expected these additions to her number and was now in danger of an
uncomfortable squashing; there was, indeed, a polite little struggle
between Miss Avies and Aunt Anne as to who should have the corner with
a wooden arm upon which to rest. Miss Avies' two friends, huddled and
frightened like fledglings suddenly surprised by a cuckoo, stirred
Maggie's sympathy. She disliked Miss Avies from the very first moment.
Miss Avies had a pale, thin, pointed face with no eyebrows, grey eyes
dim and short-sighted, and fair colourless hair brushed straight back
under a hard, ugly black hat.
At the same time she was nervous, emotional, restless; something about
her was always moving--her lips, her hands, her shoulders, her eyes.
She was fierce and hostile and ineffectual, one felt, so long as she
was by herself. Maggie did not, of course, notice all this at the time,
but in after years she always looked back on the pale, thin,
highly-strung Miss Avies as the motive of most of the events that
followed this particular evening. It was as though she felt that Miss
Avies' weight, not enough in itself to effect any result, when thrown
into the balance just turned everything in one direction. It had that
result, at any rate, upon Maggie herself.
She soon lost, however, consideration of Miss Avies in the wider
observation of the Chapel and its congregation. It was, as it had been
on the occasion of her first visit to it, stuffy, smelling of gas and
brick and painted wood, ugly in its bareness and unresponsiveness--and,
nevertheless, exciting. The interior of the building had the air of one
who has watched some most unusual happenings and expects very shortly
to watch them again. Even the harmonium seemed to prick up its wooden
ears in anticipation. And to-night the congregation thrilled also with
breathless expectation. As Maggie looked round upon them she could see
that they were throbbing with the anticipation of some almost sensuous
delight. By now they had filled the Chapel to its utmost limits, but
there was not one human being there who did not seem to have the
appearance of having been especially selected from other less
interesting human beings. It was not that the forces that surrounded
her were especially interesting, but she felt that all of them had
taken on some especial dramatic character from the occasion. Such
personalities as Aunt Anne and Miss Avies were in any case vivid and
dramatic, but to-night Aunt Elizabeth and the placidly rotund Mrs.
Smith, who was sitting in the front row with her mouth open, and simple
little Miss Pyncheon, Aunt Anne's friend, were remarkable and
exceptional.
Then suddenly Maggie caught sight of Martin. He was sitting in the
extreme right next the wall; his ill-tempered sister was next to him.
Maggie could only see his head and shoulders, but she realised at once
that he had been, for a long time, trying to catch her eye. He smiled
at her an intimate peculiar smile that sent the blood flooding to her
face and made her heart beat with happiness. At the moment of her
smiling she realised that Miss Avies' dim eye was upon her. What right
had Miss Avies to watch over her? She set back her shoulders, sat up
stiffly, and tried to look as old as she might--that was not,
unhappily, very old. That smile exchanged with Martin had made her
happy for ever. Miss Avies was of less than no importance at all ...
The little bell ceased its jangling, the harmonium began a quavering
prelude, and from a door at the back, behind the little platform and
desk, three men entered: first Mr. Thurston; then a little crooked man
who must, Maggie knew, be Mr. Crashaw; finally, in magnificent
contrast, Mr. Warlock. A quiver of emotion passed over the
Chapel--there was then a hushed expectant pause.
"Brothers and sisters, let us pray," said Mr. Thurston.
Maggie had not seen him before; she wondered what strange chance had
led him and Mr. Warlock to work together. In every movement of the
body, in every tone of the voice, Thurston showed the professional
actor--his thoughts were all upon himself and the effect that he was
making. So calculated was he in his attitude that his eyes betrayed
him, having in their gleam other thoughts, other intentions very far
away from his immediate business in the Chapel. Maggie, watching him,
wondered what those thoughts were. His voice was ugly, as were all his
movements; his sharp actor's face, with the long rather dirty black
hair, the hooked nose, the long dirty fingers which moved in and out as
though they worked of themselves--all these things were false and
unmoving. But behind his harsh voice, gross accent and melodramatic
tone there was some power, the power of a man ambitious, ruthless,
scornful, self-confident. He did not care a snap of his fingers for his
congregation, he laughed at their beliefs, he made use of their
credulity.
"Oh God," he prayed, his voice now shrill and quivering and just out of
tune, so that it jarred every nerve in Maggie's body, "Thou seest what
we are, miserable sinners not worthy of Thy care or goodness, sunk deep
in the mire of evil living and evil 'abits, nevertheless, oh God, we,
knowing Thy loving 'eart towards Thy sinful servants, do pray Thee that
Thou wilt give us Thy blessing before we leave this Thy 'ouse this
night; a new contrite 'eart is what we beg of Thee, that we may go out
into this evil world taught by Thee to search out our ways and improve
our thoughts, caring for nothing but Thee, following in Thy footsteps
and making ready for Thy immediate Coming, which will be in Thine own
good time and according to Thy will."
"This we pray for the sake of Thy dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who
died for our sins upon the bloody Cross."
"Amen."
From between her hands Maggie watched those two strange eyes wandering
about the Chapel, picking up here a person, there a person, wondering
over this, wondering over that, and always, in the end, concerned not
about these things at all but about some other more ultimate
loneliness, fear or expectation, something that set him apart and made
him, as are all men in the final recesses of their spirit, as lonely as
though he were by himself on a desert island.
The thrill of anticipation faded through the Chapel as Thurston
continued his prayer. He had not to-night, at any rate, power over his
audience--the thing that they were waiting for was something that he
could not satisfy. A restlessness was abroad; coughing broke out once,
twice, then everywhere; chairs creaked, sighs could be heard, some one
moved to the door. Thurston seemed to realise his failure; with a
sudden snap of impatience he brought prayer to an end and rose to his
feet.
"We will sing," he said, "No. 341. 'Bathed in the blood of the Lamb.'"
The singing of the hymn roused the excitement of the congregation to
even more than its earlier pitch. The tune was a moving one, beginning
very softly, beseeching God to listen, then, more confident, rising to
a high note of appeal:
By all Thy sores and bloody pain Come down and heal our sins again;
falling, after that, to a note of confidence and security in the last
refrain:
By the blood, by the blood, by the blood of the Lamb We beseech Thee--
In spite of the crudity of the words and the simplicity of the tune
Maggie had tears in her eyes. The whole Chapel was singing now, singing
as though the sins of the world could be redeemed only by the force and
power of this especial moment. Maggie was caught up with the rest. She
found herself singing parts of the second verse, then in the third she
was carried away, had forgotten herself, her surroundings, even Martin.
There was something real in this, something beyond the ugliness of the
Chapel and its congregation. She remembered what Mr. Magnus had said:
"If there's something of great value, don't think the less of it
because the people, including yourself, who admire it, aren't worth
very much. Why should they be?"
She looked for a moment at Aunt Anne and saw her in an ecstasy, singing
in her cracked tuneless voice, a smile about her lips and in her eyes,
that gazed far, far beyond that Chapel. Maggie felt the approach of
tears; she stopped singing--softly the refrain of the last verse came:
By the blood, by the blood, by the blood of the Lamb We beseech Thee!
The hymn over, Mr. Warlock read the Bible and then offered up a long
extempore prayer. Strangely enough Mr. Warlock brought Maggie back to
reality--strangely because, on an earlier occasion, he had done exactly
the opposite. She realised at once that he was not happy to-night.
Before, he had been himself caught up into the mood that held the
Chapel; to-night he was fighting against a mood that was then outside
him, a mood with which he did not sympathise and in which he could not
believe.
She saw that he was unhappy, he spoke slowly, without the spontaneity
and force that he had used before; once he made a long pause and you
could feel throughout the Chapel a wave of nervous apprehension, as
though every one were waiting to see whether he would fight his way
through or not. Maggie felt her earlier emotion sentimental and false,
it was as though he had said to her: "But that's not the true thing;
that's cheap sham emotion. That's what they're trying to turn our great
reality into. I'm fighting them and you must help me."
He was fighting them. She could imagine Mr. Thurston's scornful lip,
hidden now by his hands. As Mr. Warlock went on with his dignified
sentences, his restraint and his reverence, she could fancy how
Thurston was saying to himself: "But what's the good of this? It's
blood and thunder we want. The old feller's getting past his work. He
must go."
But it was Mr. Warlock's reality of which she was afraid. As he
continued his prayer she felt all her old terror return, that terror
that she had known on the night her father died, during the hours that
she had watched beside his dead body, at the moment when she had first
arrived at the house in London, during her first visit to the Chapel,
when she had said good-night to her aunt before going out with Uncle
Mathew ... And now Mr. Warlock was sweeping her still farther inside.
The intensity of his belief forced hers. There was something real in
this power of God, and you could not finish with it simply by
disregarding it. She felt, as she had felt so often lately, that some
one was suddenly going to rise and demand some oath or promise from her
that she, in her panic, would give her word and then would be caught
for ever.
"By the love of Thy dear Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the promise
of Thy second coming, we beseech Thee" ... finished Mr. Warlock.
During all this time the atmosphere of the Chapel had been growing
hotter and hotter and closer and closer. It had always its air of being
buried deep under ground, bathed in a kind of sunken heat that found
its voice in the gas that hissed and sizzled overhead; near the door
was a long rail on which coats might be hung, and now these garments
could be seen, swaying a little to and fro, like corpses of condemned
men.
The bare ugliness of the building with its stone walls, its rows of
wooden seats, its grey windows, its iron-hung gas-lamps, its ugly desk
and platform, was veiled now in a thin steaming heat that rose mistily
above the heads of the kneeling congregation and seemed to hide strange
shapes and shadows in its shifting depths. Every one was swimming in an
uncertain world; the unreality grew with the heat. Maggie herself, at
the end of Mr. Warlock's prayer, felt that her test of a real solid and
unimaginative world was leaving her. She was expectant like the rest,
as ready to believe anything at all.
Out of the mist rose Mr. Crashaw. This was a little old man with a
crabbed face and a body that seemed to have endured infernal twistings
in some Inquisitioner's torture-chamber. Maggie learnt afterwards that
he had suffered for many years from intolerable rheumatism, but
to-night the contortions and windings of the body with which he climbed
up onto the platform, and then the grimaces that he made as his large
round head peered over the top of the desk, might have struck any less
solemn assemblage as farcical. He wore an old shiny black frock coat
and a white rather grimy tie fastened in a sharp little bow. His face
was lined like a map, his cheeks seamed and furrowed, his forehead a
wilderness of marks, his scanty hair brushed straight back so that the
top of his forehead seemed unnaturally shiny and bald; his hands, with
which he clutched the side of his desk, were brown and wrinkled and
grasping like a monkey's. His eyes were the eyes of a fanatic, but they
were not steady and speculative like Warlock's or glowing and distant
like Aunt Anne's, but rather angry and restless and pugnacious; they
were the eyes of a madman, but of a madman who can yet calculate upon
and arrange his position in the world. He was mad for his own purposes,
and could, for these same purposes, bind his madness to its proper
bounds.
He seemed to Maggie at first rather pathetic with his little twisted
body and his large round head. Very soon it was emotions quite other
than pity that she was feeling. She saw at once that he was a practised
preacher, and she who had, with the exception of Mr. Warlock, never
heard a fine preacher, was at once under the sway of one of the ablest
and most dramatic orators of his time. His voice was sweet and clear,
and seemed strange enough coming from that ugly and malevolent
countenance. Only the head and the grasping hands could be seen, but
sometimes the invisible body was driven with such force against the
desk that it seemed that it must fling the thing over, down into the
congregation.
"My brothers and sisters," he began, "I have come to-night to give you
a warning, and this warning is given to you not as the expression of a
personal opinion but as the declaration of an assumed fact. Disregard
it or not as you please, but I shall have done my duty in pointing out
to you the sure and certain meaning of my message."
"I, a sinner like the rest of you, live nevertheless in the fear of
hell fire. Hell fire has become, I think, to many of the present
generation a mockery and a derision. I come to tell you that it is no
mockery, that it as surely lies there, a blazing furnace, in front of
us as though we saw it with our own eyes ..."
With his own eyes he had surely seen it. They were fixed now in a
frenzy of realisation upon some distant vision, and, with a shiver, the
Chapel followed his gaze. It is easy enough to laugh at bare and
conventional words stripped of the atmosphere and significance of their
original surroundings. The merest baby in this twentieth century can
laugh at the flames of hell and advance a string of easy arguments
against the probability of any such melodramatic fulfilment of the
commonplace and colourless lives that the majority of us lead, but
Maggie was in no mood to laugh that night.
Before five minutes had passed she found herself shivering where she
sat. The Chapel was convicted of Sin, and of Sin of no ordinary
measure. The head that rested like a round ball on the surface of the
desk thrust conviction into every heart: "You think that you may
escape, you look at your neighbours, every one of you, and say, 'He is
worse than I. I am safe,' but I tell you that not one man or woman here
shall be secure unless he turn instantly now to God and beg for mercy..."
As he continued he did indeed bear the almost breathless urgency of one
who has been sent on in advance to announce the imminence of some awful
peril. No matter what the peril might be; simply through the Chapel
there passed the breath of some coming danger. Impossible to watch him
and not realise that here was a man who had seen something with his own
eyes that had changed in a moment the very fabric of his life. Thurston
might be a charlatan who played with the beliefs of his dupes, Warlock
might be a mystic whose vision was in the future and not in the
past--Crashaw knew.
He painted, quietly, without fine words but with assurance and
conviction, his belief in the punishment of mankind. God was almost now
upon the threshold of their house. He was at the very gates of their
city, and with Him was coming a doom as sure and awful as the sentence
of the earthly judge on his earthly victim.
"Punishment! Punishment! ... We have grown in this careless age to
laugh at punishment. A future life? There is no future life. God? There
is no God! Even were He to come upon us we could escape from Him. We
could make a very good case for ourselves. This world is safe, secure,
founded upon our markets, our treasuries, our laws and commandments,
our conventions of decent behaviour, our police and our ministers. God
cannot touch us. We are secure ... I tell you that at this very moment
this earth in which you trust is trembling under you, at this instant
everything in which you believed is undermined and is betraying you.
You have been given your opportunity--you are refusing it--and God is
upon you."
His voice changed suddenly to tones of a marvellous sweetness. He
appealed, pleaded, implored. The ugliness of his face and body was
forgotten, he was simply a voice issuing from space, sent to save a
world.
"And we here--the few of us out of this huge city gathered together
here--it is not too late for us. Let us surrender ourselves. Let us go
to Him and say that we are His, that we await His coming and obey His
law ... Brothers and sisters, I am as you are, weak and helpless and
full of sin, but come to Him, come to Him, come to Him! ... There is
help for us all, help and pity and love. Love such as none of us have
ever known, love that cannot fail us and will be with us until
eternity!"
He stepped out from behind the desk, stood before them all with his
little stunted, twisted body, his arms held out towards them. There
followed then an extraordinary scene--from all over the Chapel came
sobs and cries. A man rose suddenly from the back of the building and
cried aloud, "Lord, I believe! Help Thou mine unbelief." One of the
women who had come with Miss Avies fell upon her knees and began to
sob, crying hysterically: "Oh God, have mercy! God have mercy!" Women
pressed up the two aisles, some of them falling on their knees there
where they had stood, others coming to the front and kneeling there.
Somewhere they began to sing the hymn that had already been sung that
evening, a few voices at first, then more, then all singing together:
"By the blood, by the blood, by the blood of the Lamb We beseech Thee!"
Everywhere now women were crying, the Chapel was filled with voices,
sobs, cries and prayers.
Mr. Crashaw stood there, motionless, his arms outstretched.
Maggie did not know what she felt. She seemed deprived of all sensation
on one side, and, on the other, fear and excitement; both joy and
disgust held her. She could not have told any one what her sensations
were; she was trembling from head to foot as though with cold. But
behind everything she had this terror, that at any moment she might be
drawn forward to do something, to give some pledge that would bind her
for all her life. She felt as though some power were urging her to
this, and as though the Chapel and every one in it was conscious of the
struggle.
What might have happened she would never know. She felt a touch on her
sleeve, and, turning round, saw Aunt Anne's eyes looking up at her out
of a face that was so white and the skin of it so tightly drawn that it
was like the face of a dead woman.
"I'm in great pain, Maggie. I think you must take me home," she heard
her aunt say.
Aunt Anne took her arm, they went out followed by Aunt Elizabeth. The
fresh evening air that blew upon Maggie's forehead seemed suddenly to
make of the Chapel a dim, incredible phantom; faintly from behind the
closed door came the echo of the hymn. The street was absolutely
still--no human being was in sight, only an old cab stationed close at
hand waiting for a possible customer; into this they got. The pale,
almost white, evening sky, with stars in sheets and squares and pools
of fire, shone with the clear radiance of glass above them. Maggie
could see the stars through the dirty windows of the cab.
They were quite silent all the way home. Aunt Anne sitting up very
straight, motionless, her fingers still on Maggie's arm.
Inside the house there was Jane. She seemed at once to under-stand,
and, with Aunt Elizabeth, led Aunt Anne up the dark stairs.
They disappeared, leaving Maggie alone in the hall, whose only sound
was the ticking clock from the stairs and only light the dim lamp above
the door.