THE LADY OF MYSTERY
David thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his short coat, well
cut, but inclined to be somewhat threadbare. He crossed his knees, and
lay back comfortably in the Rector's big chair. An hour and a half
remained before he need start out.
It was inexpressibly restful to have his subject, clear cut and
complete, safely stowed away in the back of his mind, and to be able to
sit quietly in this warmth and comfort, and let his thoughts dwell
lightly upon other things, while Christmas snow fell softly, in large
flakes, without; and gathering twilight slowly hushed the day to rest.
"Yes, undoubtedly my Lady of Mystery will be there," thought David
Rivers, "unless this fall of snow keeps her away."
He let his memory dwell in detail upon the first time he had seen her.
It happened on his second Sunday at Brambledene.
The deadening effect of the mental apathy of the congregation had
already somewhat damped his enthusiasm.
It was so many years since he had preached in English, that, on the
first Sunday, he had allowed himself the luxury of writing out his whole
sermon. This plan, for various reasons, did not prove successful.
Mrs. Churchwarden Jones and Mrs. Churchwarden Smith--good simple souls
both, if you found them in their dairies making butter, or
superintending the sturdy maids in the farm kitchens--seemed to consider
on Sundays that they magnified their husbands' office by the amount of
rustle and jingle they contrived to make with their own portly persons
during the church services. They kept it up, duet fashion, on either
side of the aisle. If Mrs. Jones rustled, Mrs. Smith promptly tinkled.
If Mrs. Smith rustled, Mrs. Jones straightway jingled. The first time
this happened in the sermon, David looked round, hesitated, lost his
place, and suffered agonies of mortification before he found it again.
Moreover he soon realised that, with his eyes on the manuscript, he had
absolutely no chance of holding the attention of his audience.
In the evening he tried notes, but this seemed to him neither one thing
nor the other. So on all subsequent Sundays he memorised his sermons as
he prepared them, and hardly realised himself how constantly, in their
delivery, there flowed from his subconsciousness a depth of thought,
clothed in eloquent and appropriate language, which had not as yet been
ground in the mill of his conscious mind.
On that second Sunday evening, David had entered the reading-desk
depressed and discouraged. In the morning he had fallen out with the
choir. It was a mixed choir. Large numbers of young Smiths and Joneses
sat on either side of the chancel and vied with one another as to which
family could outsing the other. This rivalry was resulting in a
specially loud and joyful noise in the closing verses of the Benedictus.
David, jarred in every nerve, and forgetting for the moment that he was
not dealing with his African aborigines, wheeled round in the desk, held
up his hand, and said: "Hush!" with the result that he had to declaim
the details of John the Baptist's mission, as a tenor solo; and that
the organist noisily turned over his music-books during the whole time
of the sermon, apparently in a prolonged search for a suitable
recessional voluntary.
Wishing himself back in his African forests, David began the service, in
a chastened voice, on that second Sunday evening.
During the singing of the first of the evening psalms the baize-covered
door, at the further end of the church, was pushed gently open; a tall
figure entered, alone; closed the door noiselessly behind her, and stood
for a moment, in hesitating uncertainty, beneath the gallery.
Then the old clerk and verger, Jabez Bones, bustled out of his seat, and
ushering her up the centre, showed her into a cushioned pew on the
pulpit side, rather more than half-way up the church.
The congregation awoke to palpable interest, at her advent. The choir
infused a tone of excitement into the chant, which, up to that moment,
had been woefully flat. Each pew she passed, in the wake of old Jabez,
thereafter contained a nudge or a whisper.
David's first impression of her, was of an embodiment of silence and
softness,--so silently she passed up the church and into the empty pew,
moving to the further corner, right against the stout whitewashed
pillar. No rustle, no tinkle, marked her progress; only a silent
fragrance of violets. And of softness--soft furs, soft velvet, soft
hair; and soft grey eyes, beneath the brim of a dark green velvet hat.
But his second impression was other than the first. She was looking at
him with an expression of amused scrutiny. Her eyes were keen and
penetrating; her lips were set in lines of critical independence of
judgment; the beautifully moulded chin was firm and white as marble
against the soft brown fur.
She regarded him steadily for some minutes. Then she looked away, and
David became aware, by means of that subconscious intuition, which
should be as a sixth sense to all ministers and preachers, that nothing
in the service reached her in the very least. Her mind was far away.
Whatever her object had been, in entering the little whitewashed church
of Brambledene on that Sunday night, it certainly was not worship.
But, when he began to preach, he arrested her attention. His opening
remark evidently appealed to her. She glanced up at him, quickly, a
gleam of amusement and interest in her clear eyes. And afterwards,
though she did not lift them again, and partly turned away, leaning
against the pillar, so that he could see only the clear-cut whiteness of
her perfect profile, he knew that she was listening.
From that hour, David's evening sermons were prepared with the more or
less conscious idea of reaching the soul of that calm immovable Lady of
Mystery.
She did not attract him as a woman. Her beauty meant nothing to him. He
had long ago faced the fact that his call to Central Africa must mean
celibacy. No man worthy of the name would, for his own comfort or
delight, allow a woman to share such dangers and privations as those
through which he had to pass. And, if five years of that climate had
undermined his own magnificent constitution and sent him home a wreck of
his former self, surely, had he taken out a wife, it would simply have
meant a lonely grave, left behind in the African jungle.
So David had faced it out that a missionary's life, in a place where
wife and children could not live, must mean celibacy; nor had he the
smallest intention of ever swerving from that decision. His devotion to
his work filled his heart. His people were his children.
Therefore no ordinary element of romance entered into his thoughts
concerning the beautiful woman who, on each Sunday evening, leaned
against the stone pillar, and showed by a slight flicker of the eyelids
or curve of the proud lips, that she heard and appreciated each point in
his sermon.
How far she agreed, he had no means of knowing. Who she was, and whence
she came, he did not attempt to find out. He preferred that she should
remain the Lady of Mystery. After her first appearance, when old Jabez
bustled into the vestry at the close of the service, he abounded in nods
and winks, inarticulate exclamations, and chuckings of his thumb over
his shoulder backward toward the church. At length, getting no response
from David, he burst forth: "Sakes alive, sir! I'm thinking she ain't
bin seen in a place o' wash-up, since she was----"
David, half in and half out of his cassock, turned on the old clerk in
sudden indignation.
"Bones," he said, sternly, "no member of the congregation should ever be
discussed in the vestry. Not another word, please. Now give me the entry
book."
The old man muttered something inaudible about the Rector and young
_h_upstarts, and our poor David had made another enemy in Brambledene.
He never chanced to see his Lady of Mystery arrive; but, after that
first evening, she never failed to be in her place when he came out of
the vestry; nor did he ever see her depart, always resisting the
temptation to leave the church hurriedly when service was over.
So she remained the Lady of Mystery; and now--his last Sunday evening
had come; and, as he thought of her, he longed to see a look of faith
and joy dawn in her cold sad eyes, as ardently as another man might have
longed to see a look of love for himself awaken in them.
But David wanted nothing for himself, and a great deal for his Lord. He
wanted this beautiful personality, this forceful character, this strong,
self-reliant soul; he wanted this obvious wealth, this unmistakable
possessor of place and power, for his Master's service, for the Kingdom
of his King. No thought of himself came in at all. How should it? He
wanted to win her for her own sake; and he wanted to win her for his
Lord. He wanted this more persistently and ardently than he had ever
desired anything in his life before. He was almost perplexed at the
insistence of the thought, and the way in which it never left him.
And now--the last chance had come.
He rose, and went to the window. Snowflakes were falling gently, few and
far between; but the landscape was completely covered by a pure white
pall.
"Undoubtedly," said David, "my Lady of Mystery will be there, unless
this fall of snow keeps her away."
He paced up and down the study, repeating stray sentences from his
sermon, as they came into his mind.
Sarah brought in the lamp, and drew the maroon rep curtains, shutting
out the snow and gathering darkness; Sarah, stout, comfortable, and
motherly, who--accustomed to the rosy-cheeked plumpness of her
easy-going master--looked with undisguised dismay at David's thin worn
face, and limbs on which his clothes still hung loosely, giving him an
appearance of not belonging to his surroundings, which tried the kind
heart and practical mind of the Rector's good housekeeper.
"He do give me the creeps, poor young gentleman," she confided to a
friend, who had dropped in for tea and a chat. "To see him all shrunk
up, so to speak, in Master's big chair; and just where there would be so
much of Master, there's naught of him, which makes the chair seem fair
empty. And then he looks up and speaks, and his voice is like music, and
his eyes shine like stars, and he seems more alive than Master, or
anybody else one knows; yet not alive in his poor thin body; but alive
because of something burning and shining _h_inside of 'im; something
stronger than a body, and more alive than life--oh, _I_ don't know!"
concluded Sarah, suddenly alarmed by her own eloquence.
"Creepy, I call it," said the friend.
"Creepy it is," agreed Sarah.
Nevertheless she watched carefully over David's creature comforts, and
he owed it to Sarah's insistence, that he weighed nearly a stone heavier
when he left Brambledene than on his arrival there.
She now brought in tea, temptingly arranged on a tray, poured out his
first cup, and stood a minute to watch him drink it, and to exhort him
to wrap up well, before going out in this snow.
"My last Sunday, Sarah," said David, looking at her with those same
deep-set shining eyes. "I sha'n't bother you much longer. I have a
service to-morrow--Christmas-day; and must stay over Boxing-day for two
weddings. Then I'm off to town; and in a couple of weeks I sail for
Central Africa. I wonder how you would like Africa, Sarah. Are you
afraid of snakes?"
"Don't mention 'em, Mr. Rivers, sir," replied Sarah, in a stage whisper;
"nasty evil things! If Eve had been as fearful of 'em as I am, there'd
never 'ave been no Fall. You wouldn't catch me staying to talk theology
with a serpent. No, not me, sir! It's take to m' heels and run, would
have been my way, if I'd 'a lived in Genesis three."
David smiled. "A good way, Sarah," he said, "and scriptural. But you
forget the attraction of the tree, with its luscious fruit. Poor Eve!
The longing of the moment, always seems the great essential. We are apt
to forget the long eternity of regret."
Sarah sidled respectfully towards the door.
"Eat your hot-buttered toast, before it grows cold, sir," she
counselled; "and give over thinking about snakes. Dear heart, it's
Christmas-eve!"
"So it is," said David. "And my sermon is about a star. Right you are,
Sarah! I'll 'give over thinking about snakes,' and look higher. There
can be no following of the star with our eyes turned earthward.... All
right! Don't you worry. I'll eat every bit."