KNAPSTEAD VICARAGE,
BALDOCK,
Aug. 14, 1904.
MY DEAR HERBERT,--A curious little incident occurred to me
yesterday--so curious, so inexplicable, that I cannot refrain from
telling it to you, though it has no solution and no moral so far as I
can see. I am staying with an old family friend, Duncan by name--you
don't know him--who is a parson near Hitchin. We were to have gone for
a bicycle ride together, but he was called away on sudden business, and
as the only other member of the party is my friend's wife, who is much
of an invalid, I went out alone.
I went off through Baldock and Ashwell. And I must interrupt my story
for a moment to tell you about the latter. Above a large hamlet of
irregularly built and scattered white houses, many of them thatched,
most of them picturesque, rises one of the most beautiful, mouldering
church towers I have ever seen. It is more like a weather-worn
crag-pinnacle than a tower; it is of great height, and the dim and
blurred outlines of its arched windows and buttresses communicate a
singular grace of underlying form to the broken and fretted stone. I
fear that it must before long be restored, if it is to hold together
much longer; all I can say is that I am thankful to have seen it in its
hour of decay. It is infinitely patient and pathetic. Its solemn,
ruinous dignity, its tender grace, make it like some aged and
sanctified spirit that has borne calamity and misfortune with a sweet
and gentle trust. A little farther on in the village is another
extraordinarily beautiful thing. The road, while still almost in the
street, passes across a little embankment; and on the left hand you
look down into a pit, like a quarry, full of ash-trees, and with a
thick undergrowth of bushes and tall plants. From a dozen little
excavations leap and bicker crystal rivulets of water, hurrying down
stony channels, uniting in a pool, and then moving off, a full-fed
stream, among quiet water-meadows. It is one of the sources of the Cam.
The water is deliciously cool and clear, running as it does straight
off the chalk. No words of mine can do justice to the wonderful purity
and peace of the place. I found myself murmuring over those perfect
lines of Marvell--you know them?--
"Might a soul bathe there and be clean,
And slake its drought?"
These two sights, the tower and the well-head, put my mind into tune;
and I went on my way rejoicing, with that delicate elation of spirit
that rarely visits one. Everything I saw had an airy quality, a
flavour, an aroma, I know not how to describe it. Now I caught the
sunlight on the towering greenness of an ancient elm; now a wide view
over flat pastures, with a pool fringed deep in rushes, came in sight;
now an old manorial farm held up its lichened chimneys above a row of
pollarded elms. I came at last, by lanes and byways, to a silent
village that seemed entirely deserted. The men, I suppose, were all
working in the fields; the cottage doors stood open; near the little
common rose an old high-shouldered church, much overgrown with ivy. The
sun lay pleasantly upon its leaded roof, and among the grass-grown
graves. I left my bicycle by the porch, and at first could not find an
entrance; but at last I discovered that a low, priest's door that led
into the chancel, was open. The church had an ancient and holy smell.
It was very cool in there out of the sun. I turned into the nave, and
wandered about for a few moments, noting the timbered roof, the remains
of old frescoes on the walls; the tomb of a knight who lay still and
stiff, his head resting on his hand. I read an epitaph or two, with the
faint cry of love and grief echoing through the stilted phraseology of
the tomb, and then I went back to the altar.
On a broad slab of slate, immediately below the altar steps, lay
something dark; I bent down to look at it, and then realised, with a
curious sense of horror, that it was a little pool of blood; beside it
lay two large jagged stones, also stained with blood, which had dried
into a viscous paste upon them. It seemed as if the stoning of some
martyr had taken place, and that, the first horrible violence done, the
deed had been transferred to the open air. What made it still stranger
to me was that in the east window was a rude representation of the
stoning of Stephen; and I have since discovered that the church is
dedicated to him.
I cannot give you the smallest hint of explanation. Indeed, pondering
over it, I cannot conceive of any circumstances which can in any way
account for what I saw. I wandered out into the churchyard--for the
sight gave me a curious chill of horror--and I could see nothing that
could further enlighten me. A few yards beyond stood the rectory,
embowered in thickets. It seemed to be deserted; the windows were dark
and undraped; no smoke went up from the chimneys. It suddenly appeared
to me that I must be the victim of some strange hallucination, So I
stepped again within the church to see if my senses had played me
false. But no! there were the stones, and the blood beside them.
The sun began to decline to his setting; the shadows lengthened and
darkened, as I rode slowly away, with a shadow on my spirit. I felt I
had somehow seen a type, a mystery. These incidents do not befall one
by chance, and I was sure, in some remote way, that I had looked, as it
were, for a moment into a dark avenue of the soul; that I was bidden to
think, to ponder. These tokens of violence and death, the blood
outpoured, in witness of pain, in the heart of the quiet sanctuary,
before the very altar of the God of peace and love. What is it that we
do that is like that? What is it that _I_ do? I will not tell you how
the message shaped itself for me; perhaps you can guess; but it came,
it formed itself out of the dark, and in that silent hour a voice
called sharply in my spirit.
But I must not end thus. I came home; I told my tale; I found my friend
returned. He nodded gravely and wonderingly, and I think he half
understood. But his wife was full of curiosity. She made me tell and
retell the incident. "Was there no one you could ask?" she said; "I
would not have rested till I had solved it." She even bade me tell her
the name of the place, but I refused. "Do you mean to say you don't
WANT to know?" she said. "No," I said; "I had rather not know." To
which, rather petulantly, she said, "Oh, you MEN!" That evening a
neighbouring parson, his wife, and daughter, came to dine. I was bidden
to tell my story again, and the same scene was re-enacted. "Was there
no one you could find to ask?" said the girl. I laughed and said, "I
daresay I could have found some one, but I did not want to know. I had
rather have my little mystery," I added; and then we men interchanged a
nod, while the women looked sharply at each other. "Is it not quite
incredible?" my friend's wife said. And the daughter added, "I, for
one, will not rest till I have discovered."
That, I suppose, is the difference between the masculine and the
feminine mind. You will understand me; but read the story to your wife
and daughters, and they will say, "Was there no one he could have
asked?" and "I would not rest till I had discovered." Meanwhile I only
hope that my maiden's efforts will prove unavailing.--Ever yours,