For a moment he was silent. For a moment the chord of Self sounded in his soul, suggesting the query— “Is this the help a wife should give her husband in hours of difficulty?” And then he bravely put the thought aside.
“You shall do as you like, Azalea,” — he said, kindly— “Only, — remember that if you go away just now it will look as if you really thought Dan Kiernan’s wild and wicked words had sober justice in them. Why should you be afraid of a drunkard? You are perfectly innocent of any harmful intention, — you spoke to Mrs. Kiernan as nineteen out of twenty women would have spoken under the circumstances, — and my chief regret is that I did not know the whole story — as I might have perhaps been able to suggest a different course for you to take. Kiernan is probably much more enraged by the loss of Jacynth Miller than by the death of his wife — and you certainly have nothing to do with that. I confess I don’t like the idea of your going away. I would much rather you stayed at home and went on with your ordinary duties in your usual manner, like a brave little woman—”
Her lips quivered, and more tears fell.
“I’m not brave,” — she said, pathetically— “I never was and I never shall be! I think it — will be — simply dreadful — if I have to go about the village — hearing all — the details — of Mrs. Kiernan’s death over and over again, and all the story of Jacynth Miller’s running off with one of the other men—”
“One of the other men?” repeated Everton, surprised, “What other men?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure!” and she sighed wearily— “It’s all quite strange to me, and quite horrid, — but Mrs. Adcott said, when speaking of Jacynth, that there were plenty of men who would take her, even knowing everything about her, — so I can only suppose she has gone with one of them. And I think it will be really cruel to you, Dick, if after what that awful man Kiernan has said, you force me to stay here—”
“I? I ‘force’ you!” he said, wonderingly— “My dear Azalea, can you imagine my applying ‘force’ to you in any way, save the force of love?”
She did not hear, or rather she did not choose to hear, the little touch of reproach in his accents.
“Well then, let me go!” she pleaded— “It would make me perfectly ill to be shut up here, — (for I know I shouldn’t dare to go out) — while all the people are fussing over Mrs. Kiernan’s funeral, and that dreadful drunkard is reeling about the village saying such horrid wicked things about me, — I’d much rather be away—”
“You’ll find the dreadful drunkard reeling about just the same when you come back,” — he said.
She wiped her eyes and smoothed her hair, and the shadow of a returning smile flitted over her face.
“Perhaps not!” she rejoined, hopefully— “Perhaps he will have reeled after Jacynth Miller, and gone out of the place altogether!”
Her words annoyed him, — and yet he could not have reasonably expressed annoyance. He took a couple of minutes to consider, and then made up his mind.
“Very well, Azalea,” — he said— “Have it your own way! You shall go. You can start to-morrow morning for Weston, — that’s not so very far off — with Laurence and the nurse — I daresay the change will do all three of you good—”
She interrupted him by throwing her arms round his neck and kissing him.
“Oh, you are a dear old Dick!” she exclaimed, her eyes sparkling with a sudden sunshiny gayety that effectively dispersed all traces of her recent tears and terror— “It will be simply lovely to get out of Shadbrook for a little while, — because — well! — you know, though it’s ever so pretty, it’s dull — awfully dull sometimes! There are no shops, and no people worth looking at, — and when there’s nothing but funerals going on, it’s a little trying! — it is, really, Dick! You don’t mind it, because you have such grand ideas about duty and all that, — but I’m afraid I haven’t any grand ideas, and I do mind it, often! If this house and garden could only be moved into some nicer place—”
He looked at her earnestly.
“You don’t like Shadbrook then?” he said.
She shook her fair head very decisively.
“Not at all!” she replied— “How could any one like a dreary little village where the people do nothing from one year’s end to another but get drunk and quarrel and die?”
He smiled, a trifle bitterly.
“It’s a small epitome of a very large part of the world around us, Azalea, — look at it how you will,” — and rising from beside her, he paced the room in an effort to quiet his struggling sense of impatience— “And think how many such ‘dreary villages’ there are in Great Britain, where often the most promising men among the clergy have to work for the best part of their lives! Shadbrook is by no means the worst example of such lonely parishes, — and when I came here first, I thought myself a very lucky man. For the possession of the living enabled me to marry you, Azalea!” — and his voice trembled a little— “And — and we have been very happy! — and our boy was born here—”
“Oh, I know all that!” and she smiled radiantly up at him— “And it’s all lovely and sentimental and nice to think about, — but you can’t deny that it’s dull, Dick, you know you can’t! There are about two garden-parties a year to which one can go, — just for form’s sake — not for pleasure, because no one ever goes to a provincial garden-party for pleasure, of course! — and nobody ever gives a nice dinner, because it’s too expensive, and too much trouble to get hired waiters for the occasion — besides, there are no people to ask — and you can’t set out a dinner without people to eat it! There’s nothing, in fact, for us but the village and the church — and we must make the best of them, I know! Indeed I do make the best of them — but when it comes to a drunken brute like Kiernan saying I’ve killed his wife, well, really, Dick, I do feel that it’s about as much as I can bear! And I don’t think I’m asking too much of you to let me go out of it all for a few days!”
“My dear child, it’s settled that you go,” — he answered quietly— “And there’s nothing more to be said about it.” He paused, — then added— “It’s past eleven o’clock — fully bedtime. You’d better see Nurse Tomkins on your way upstairs and tell her of your intentions for to-morrow—”
“Oh yes, — of course! She’ll have to pack Baby’s things.” And without another word she ran off fleetly, full of delight at the prospect of a journey and a change of scene. No thought for her husband entered her head — no sudden tenderness moved her to look back and say: “I wish you were coming with me,” — or— “I’m sorry to leave you alone.” A man was always ‘all right,’ she thought, under any circumstances, and she would have been genuinely surprised and possibly distressed had she known that the heart of the man who loved her was as heavy as lead, and aching sorely in its heaviness as though a poisoned arrow had flown to its core. He went to the table where he had been reading when Brand’s visit had interrupted him, and mechanically took up the book he had laid down there. Glancing casually at the open page, his eyes fell upon the words— “Love does not always lead to marriage, and marriage is sometimes the end of love. The most lasting passion is that which remains ungratified — and the truest lovers throughout all history are those that never wedded.”
This passage stung him with a curious sense of personal irritation — the book was a novel, and he flung it down with a gesture of aversion.
“Ridiculous!” he said— “Wrong-sided and utterly ridiculous! No wonder modern fiction is so often condemned! The statement is utterly false, for marriage is the very fulfillment of love — and married life the perfect making of a perfect home.”
And he would not allow himself to think any further as to whether ‘fulfillment’ did not, after all, imply an end to aspiration; — or whether ‘the perfect making of a perfect home’ was secured to him by his own married experience. The pursuit of a logical inquiry often leads to unexpected results, and he was not in the mood to follow out any argument suggested by Sense, preferring to remain p
ained and perplexed by Sentiment.
CHAPTER VIII
NEXT day Azalea went away as arranged, — and so far as her husband was concerned, the Vicarage became a dreary waste of desolation. Yet he was the embodied spirit of cheerfulness itself to the last moment of her departure, helping to place her, with the cherubic Laurence and his nurse, all comfortably together in the high dogcart, which, — drawn by one slow and somewhat asthmatical mare and driven by the gardener’s lad, — took them to the station some four miles distant from the village. Never, so he thought, had he seen his pretty wife looking prettier; she was full of laughter and sparkling animation, like a child leaving school for the holidays. ‘Master Laurence’ too had a new and radiant light of pleased wonder in his angelic blue eyes, — a larger world than Shadbrook was: opening out before him, — and his father almost envied him the fact that he was going to look at the sea for the first time. Whether he would be impressed by it was quite’ another matter, for whatever his emotion might be at the glorious scene presented to his awakening intelligence, he would have no means of expressing it. Yet Everton was foolish enough to wish he could have watched his little son’s face when the rolling mass of glittering waters first broke upon his young vision. Azalea’s ideas on the point: were what all ordinary people would have termed ‘sensible’ ideas, — they were limited to the building of sand-castles and the carrying about of toy pails wherein to capture specimens of the infant crab, — and of what the real effect of the grandeur and immensity of ocean might be on the mind of a more than usually thoughtful child, she cared not to inquire. ‘Baby dear’ was too young to think at all, so she imagined, — a mistake made by most mothers, often to their own detriment. Anyway the little party seated in the dog-cart and drawn by the old mare, looked an irresistibly happy one, and Everton could not flatter himself that his presence was either desired or missed. Off they went, jogging down the Vicarage drive, Azalea waving her hand and blowing kisses to him till a turn in the road hid him from her sight, — and it was with a very decided sense of pain and loss that he re-entered his house — alone.
Once in his study he shut the door, and seating himself at his desk, went steadily to work, determined to think of nothing save his duty, — nothing except church and school and parish affairs. There were many trifling matters to attend to, — how trifling only the incumbent of a country living knows. The ludicrous local quarrels, — the mean and petty injuries, — the malicious attempts of one ‘Christian’ neighbor to annoy another, — all these things come more or less under the notice of the Vicar set in authority over a rural community, and if he be not a man as small-minded as the majority of the rustic folk around him (which he too frequently is), he must needs often be moved to a wondering and well-nigh despairing pity for the infinitely little stupidities of poor human-kind. For though large cities show precisely the same low animosities and attenuated jealousies, they are not brought so closely under the eye as in the restricted circle of a village. Mrs. Loftylids may give herself as many airs as she likes in London and London sees her not, — but Mrs. Loftylids on her high horse in the country is quite a different and much more observably odious person. The smaller the place, the more narrow the life. And so Richard Everton was beginning to find it.
He sorted the various letters and papers on his table, with a settled precision which indicated that he was forcing his attention to dwell on matters distasteful to his immediate humor, and among them he came upon a respectfully worded intimation from the village carpenter, who was also the undertaker, to the effect that Mrs. Kiernan having died, it was proposed, ‘according to the wishes of Mr. Kiernan, the widower,’ to have the funeral next day, if he, the Vicar, would name a convenient hour. He answered this at once, fixing the ceremony for three o’clock in the afternoon, and sent the letter to its destination straight away by one of his servants as a personal messenger. There should be no delay, he thought somewhat drearily, in burying all that was mortal of Mrs. Kiernan, — poor, long-suffering, wretched Jennie Kiernan, who had been killed by sheer brutality. The brutality of blows — or the brutality of words? — ah no, no! Azalea could never be ‘brutal’ — she was thoughtless, but not unkind, — she had done no harm — she had not the smallest share of blame in the woman’s death — it was cruel to suggest it — cruel to say it! He shuddered at his own thoughts, which like swarming bees buzzed round the whole miserable incident, — an incident beginning more or less trivially, and deepening into something of a tragedy. And, as usual, he laid all the blame on his own shoulders. His endeavor to save Mrs. Kiernan from further assault by her drunken husband had surely, so he declared to himself, led to the present disastrous result, and all suddenly he asked:— “Is it just of the Almighty to allow a kindness to be brought back in the shape of a curse?” He recoiled from his own temerity as this demand leaped up in his brain like a flash of fire. Yet it repeated itself. “I ask” — said the vexed Soul within him— “if it is right that an honest effort to follow the teaching of the Christian Creed should be rewarded by a frightful and unmerited accusation against the innocent woman I love?” And then he paused, as though awaiting an answer. Strangely, solemnly, and as with an inward voice, the answer came in the form of another query:— “Is it right that I, the Divine Crucified, should have given My life on earth for men who doubt Me and blaspheme Me even now?” And in the sudden sense of awe and contrition which fell upon him, he covered his face with his hands and prayed silently— “Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil, O Lord! Command me as Thou wilt! — send me Thy Holy Orders, and even if they lead me to my death, I, ordained to serve Thee, will obey!”
And on this his mind appeared to pause, — till it seemed to him that his vow had been accepted. Then in a moment or two he was calm again, and went on with his usual work.
How much he missed Azalea he would not allow himself to think. Ever since he had brought her home to the Vicarage as his bride, it had been the joy of his life to know that at any moment her fair head might peep into his study or her voice call to him in the accents of coaxing sweetness to which he had grown so fondly accustomed. But now the house was empty, — bereft of light, music, laughter and love. He was alone with his own thinking Self and God, — God, that mighty Unknown Power to whom for millions of ages Creation has cried and prayed and wept, — God, that majestic Silence which is never disturbed for all the clamor of men — which creates and kills at a breath, and no reason given, — which is Light and Darkness, Gladness and Sorrow, Love and Hate in one, — and which we instinctively worship in all creeds, not so much because we will, but because we must. But it is natural to weak man to prefer the warm tenderness of a woman’s arms about him to the awful coldness of a bodiless Infinity, no matter how full of exquisite promise and glorious suggestion that Infinity may be, — and it was therefore to be expected that Richard Everton, who for all his anxiety to live a purely spiritual life, had a tender, sensitive heart of his own, would, for the time being, feel a melancholy sense of solitude in the absence of his pretty wife, with a corresponding depression of spirits. There was one thought which now and then pushed itself resolutely into the cells of his brain, to be as resolutely pushed out again by the strong effort of his will, — the thought of Jacynth Miller. He hated, with an intensity of hatred that surprised himself, the memory of that girl’s exquisite face, illumined by its large, starlike dark eyes, and when he asked his inner consciousness the reason of the bitterness which filled him, he had to confess frankly like a man, that it was because she had chosen Dan Kiernan for a lover. The huge, strongly-built brute — a creature whose brawny physique might have served as a model for one of the barbaric chieftains of early Britain, — he, full of a chronic delirium of drink — he, ignorant, boorish and bestial — he, even he, had been privileged to take the kisses of that fresh, rosy smiling mouth, — he had held that light, lissom body in his coarse embrace — by Heaven! — Everton sprang up from his chair and paced the room, stung to something like fury by the horrible su
ggestiveness of the picture. And where was Jacynth now? With whom had she gone? He understood at last the frantic despair of young Bob Hadley on his deathbed, and his agonized entreaty: “Try if you can do anything — save her from herself — from the shame— “Shame there was none in Jacynth, — of course there could be none; — nevertheless the wild cries of the dying lad rang echoingly in his ears— “Hold her! See where she goes! Running, running, running straight into Hell! Jacynth! All the devils at her — tearing her lovely body — her lovely body that God made!” And then those awful words— “God! There’s no God! There never was! It’s all a lie!” With the utmost strength of his soul he fought against the storm of indignation that strove to overwhelm his habitual composure — and snatching up a book from the table he read a few sentences hurriedly to distract himself. The book happened to be Amiel’s Journal and the passages which caught his eyes were these:
“Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven, and to the infinite.
“There are two state or conditions of pride. The first is one of self-approval, the second, one of self-contempt. Pride is seen probably at its purest in the last.”
He shut the volume.
“Measured by that I am the proudest man alive!” he said, “For my self-contempt is almost limitless! I could whip myself with a scourge for the ridiculous mood I am in! A mood unlike me altogether, — a paltry, raging, irritable mood which is absolutely unworthy of any being calling itself human!”
He turned towards the window just in time to see a figure passing it outside — a small, dapper, clerical figure which he at once recognized as that of the little Roman Catholic priest Sebastien Douay, who had called upon him a few days previously. Hailing his unexpected visitor as a welcome relief to his unpleasant meditations, he hurried to meet him at the door.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 714
