THE VISION
It was growing very dark in the little church, almost too dark to see the
carving of the choir-stalls, and Avery gave a short sigh of weariness.
She had so nearly finished her task that she had sent the children in to
prepare for tea, declaring that she would follow them in five minutes,
and then just at the last a whole mass of ivy and holly, upon which the
boys had been at work, had slipped and strewn the chancel-floor. She was
the only one left in the church, and it behooved her to remove the
litter. It had been a hard day, and she was frankly tired of the very
sight and smell of the evergreens.
There was no help for it, however. The chancel must be made tidy before
she could go, and she went to the cupboard under the belfry for the
dustpan and brush which the sexton's wife kept there. She found a candle
also, and thus armed she returned to the scene of her labours at the
other end of the dim little church. She tried to put her customary energy
into the task, but it would not rise to the occasion, and after a few
strenuous seconds she paused to rest.
It was very still and peaceful, and she was glad of the solitude. All day
long she had felt the need of it; and all day long it had been denied
her. She had been decorating under Miss Whalley's superintendence, and
the task had been no light one. Save for the fact that she had gone in
Mrs. Lorimer's stead, she had scarcely undertaken it. For Miss Whalley
was as exacting as though the church were her own private property. She
deferred to the Vicar alone, and he was more than willing to leave the
matter in her hands. "My capable assistant" was his pet name for this
formidable member of his flock, and very conscientiously did Miss Whalley
maintain her calling. She would have preferred to direct Mrs. Lorimer
rather than the mother's help, but since the latter had firmly determined
to take the former's place, she had accepted her with condescension and
allotted to her all the hardest work.
Avery had laboured uncomplainingly in her quiet, methodical fashion, but
now that the stress was over and Miss Whalley safely installed in the
Vicarage drawing-room for tea, she found it impossible not to relax
somewhat, and to make the most of those few exquisite moments of
sanctuary.
She was very far from expecting any invasion of her solitude, and when
after a moment or two she went on with her sweeping she had no suspicion
of another presence in the dark building. She had set herself resolutely
to finish her task, and so energetic was she that she heard no sound of
feet along the aisle behind her.
Some unaccountable impulse induced her to pause at length and still
kneeling, brush in hand, to throw a backward glance along the nave. Then
it was that she saw a man's figure standing on the chancel-steps, and so
unexpected was the apparition that her weary nerves leapt with violence
out of all proportion to the event, and she sprang to her feet with a
startled cry that echoed weirdly through the empty place. Then with a
rush of self-ridicule she recognized Piers Evesham. "Oh, it is you!" she
said. "How stupid of me!"
He came straight to her with an air of determination that would brook no
opposition and took the brush out of her hand. "That's not your job," he
said. "You go and sit down!"
She stared at him in silence, trying to still the wild agitation that his
unlooked-for coming had raised in her. He was wearing a heavy motor-coat,
but he divested himself of this, and without further parley bent himself
to the task of which he had deprived her.
Avery sat down somewhat limply on the pulpit-stairs and watched him. He
was very thorough and far brisker than she could have been. In a very few
minutes the litter was all collected, and Piers turned round and looked
back at her across the dim chancel.
"Feeling better?" he said.
She did not answer him. "What made you come in like that?" she asked.
He replied to the question with absolute simplicity. "I've just brought
Gracie home again. She asked me to tea in the schoolroom, but you weren't
there, and they said I should find you here, so I came to fetch you."
He moved slowly across and stood before her, looking down into her tired
eyes with an odd species of relentlessness in his own.
"It's an infernal shame that you should work so hard!" he said, with
sudden resentment. "You're looking fagged to death."
Avery smiled a little. "I like hard work," she said.
"Not such as this!" said Piers. "It isn't fit for you. Why can't the lazy
hound do it himself?"
Her smile passed. "Hush, Piers!" she said. "Not here!"
He glanced towards the altar, and she thought a shade of reverence came
into his face for a moment. But he turned to her again immediately with
his flashing, boyish smile.
"Well, it isn't good for you to overwork, you know, Avery. I hate to
think of it. And you have no one to take care of you and see you don't."
Avery got up slowly. Her own face was severe in the candlelight, but
before she could speak he went lightly on.
"Would you like me to play you something before we go? Or are you too
tired to blow? It's rather a shame to suggest it. But it's such a grand
opportunity."
Avery turned at once to the organ with a feeling of relief. As usual she
found it very hard to rebuke him as he deserved.
"Yes, I will blow for you," she said. "But it must be something short,
for we ought to be going."
She sat down and began to blow.
Piers took his place at once at the organ. It was characteristic of him
that he never paused for inspiration. His fingers moved over the keys as
it were by instinct, and in a few moments Avery forgot that she was tired
and dispirited with the bearing of many burdens, forgot all the problems
and difficulties of life, forgot even her charges at the Vicarage and the
waiting schoolroom tea, and sat wrapt as it were in a golden mist of
delight, watching the slow spreading of a dawn such as she had never seen
even in her dreams. What he played she knew not, and yet the music was
not wholly unfamiliar to her. It waked within her soul harmonies that
vibrated in throbbing response. He spoke to her in a language that she
knew. And as the magic moments passed, the wonderful dawn so grew and
deepened that it seemed to her that all pain, all sorrow, had fallen
utterly away, and she stood on the threshold of a new world.
Wider and wider spread the glory. There came to her an overwhelming sense
of greatness about to be revealed. She became strung to a pitch of
expectancy that was almost anguish, while the music swelled and swelled
like the distant coming of a vast procession as yet unseen. She stood as
it were on a mountain-top before the closed gates of heaven, waiting for
the moment of revelation.
It came. Just when she felt that she could bear no more, just when the
wild beating of her heart seemed as if it would choke her, the music
changed, became suddenly all-conquering, a paean of triumph, and the
gates swung back before her eager eyes.
In spirit she entered the Holy Place, and the same hand that had admitted
her lifted for her the last great Veil. For one moment of unutterable
rapture such as no poor palpitating mortal body could endure for long,
the vision was her own. She saw Heaven opened....
And then the Veil descended, and the Gates closed. She came down from the
mountain-top, leaving the golden dawn very far behind her. She opened her
eyes in darkness and silence.
Someone was bending over her. She felt warm hands about her own. She
heard a voice, sudden and imploring, close to her.
"Avery! Avery darling! For God's sake, dear, speak to me! What is it?
Are you ill?"
"Ill!" she said, bewildered.
His hands gripped hers impetuously. "You gave me such a fright," he said.
"I thought you'd fainted. Did you faint?"
"Of course not!" she said slowly. "I never faint. Why did you stop
playing?"
"I didn't," said Piers. "At least, you stopped first."
"Oh, did I forget to blow?" she said. "I'm sorry."
She knew that she ought not to suffer that close clasp of his, but
somehow for the moment she was powerless to resist it. She sat quite
still, gazing out before her with a curious sense of powerlessness.
"You're tired out," said Piers softly. "It was a shame to keep you here.
I'm awfully sorry, dear."
She stirred at that, beginning to seek for freedom. "Don't, Piers!" she
said. "It--it isn't right of you. It isn't fair."
He knelt swiftly down before her. His voice came quick and passionate in
answer. "It can't be wrong to love you," he said. "And you will never be
any the worse for my love. Let me love you, Avery! Let me love you!"
The words rushed out tempestuously. His forehead was bowed upon her
hands. He became silent, and through the silence she heard his breathing,
hard and difficult,--the breathing of a man who faces stupendous odds.
With an effort she summoned her strength. Yet she could not speak harshly
to him, for her heart went out in pity. "No, you mustn't, Piers," she
said. "You mustn't indeed. I am years older than you are, and it is
utterly unsuitable. You must forget it. You must indeed. There! Let us be
friends! I like you well enough for that."
He uttered a laugh that sounded as though it covered a groan. "Yes,
you're awfully good to me," he said. "But you're not--in one
sense--anything approaching my age, and pray Heaven you never will be!"
He raised his head and looked at her. "And you're not angry with me?" he
said, half wistfully.
No, she was not angry. She could not even pretend to be. "But please be
sensible!" she begged. "I know it was partly my fault. If I hadn't been
so tired, it wouldn't have happened."
He got to his feet, still holding her hands. "No; you're not to blame
yourself," he said. "What has happened was bound to happen, right from
the very beginning. But I'm sorry if it has upset you. There is no reason
why it should that I can see. You are better now?"
He helped her gently to rise. They stood face to face in the dim
candlelight, and his eyes looked into hers with such friendly concern
that again she had it not in her heart to be other than kind.
"I am quite well," she assured him. "Please forget my foolishness! Tell
me what it was you played just now!"
"That last thing?" he said. "Surely you know that! It was Handel's
_Largo_."
She started. "Of course! I remember now! But--I've never heard it played
like that before."
A very strange smile crossed his face. "No one but you would have
understood," he said. "I wanted you to hear it--like that."
She withdrew her hands from his. Something in his words sent a curious
feeling that was almost dread through her heart.
"I don't--quite--know what you mean," she said.
"Don't you?" said Piers, and in his voice there rang a note of
recklessness. "It's a difficult thing to put into words, isn't it? I just
wanted you to see the Open Heaven as I have seen it--and as I shall never
see it again."
"Piers!" she said.
He answered her almost fiercely. "No, you won't understand. Of course you
can't understand. You will never stand hammering at the bars, breaking
your heart in the dark. Wasn't that the sort of picture our kindly parson
drew for us on Sunday? It's a pretty theme--the tortures of the damned!"
"My dear Piers!" Avery spoke quickly and vehemently. "Surely you have too
much sense to take such a discourse as that seriously! I longed to tell
the children not to listen. It is wicked--wicked--to try to spread
spiritual terror in people's hearts, and to call it the teaching of
religion. It is no more like religion than a penny-terrible is like life.
It is a cruel and fantastic distortion of the truth."
She paused. Piers was listening to her with that odd hunger in his eyes
that had looked out of them the night before.
"You don't believe in hell then?" he said quietly, after a moment.
"As a place of future torment--no!" she said. "The only real hell is here
on earth--here in our hearts when we fall away from God. Hell is the
state of sin and all that goes with it--the fiery hell of the spirit. It
is here and now. How could it be otherwise? Can you imagine a God of Love
devising hideous tortures hereafter, for the punishment of the pigmies
who had offended Him? Tortures that were never to do them any good, but
just to keep them in misery for ever and ever? It is unthinkable--it's
almost ludicrous. What is the good of suffering except to purify? That we
can understand and thank God for. But the other--oh, the other is sheer
imagery, more mythical than Jonah and the whale. It just doesn't go."
Again she paused, then very frankly held out her hand to him. "But I like
your picture of the Open Heaven, Piers," she said. "Show it me again some
day--when I'm not as tired and stupid as I am to-day."
He bent over her hand with a gesture that betrayed the foreign blood in
him, and his lips, hot and passionate, pressed her cold fingers. He did
not utter a word. Only when he stood up again he looked at her with eyes
that burned with the deep fires of manhood, and suddenly all-unbidden
the woman's heart in her quivered in response. She bent her head and
turned away.